Worries and doubts

Hi Antonia

I appreciate it might not feel like it but it sounds like you have a lot going for you to support your bilingual aims. You have a high level in the target language, your husband has some knowledge of the language even if it isn't as strong as yours and your little girl is very young.

There are lots of people on here with lots of great advice who are clearly doing an amazing job at raising their kids in multiple languages. I just wanted to offer my thoughts (and support) as we have also chosen to add a non-native minority language (in our case French).

Picking up on a couple of your points (in no particular order):

- English orthography - yep that's a pain even for native speakers but the good news is that there a lots of resources for teaching phonics, plus the high frequency words that don't follow any rules - my oldest is learning to read with phonics in his ML school and it's way easier than what I remember learning. There's lots available on the internet and Amy in particular has lots of knowledge about teaching English reading and writing to her children

- Differing levels of English in the household - obviously it would be ideal if you were all able to use the ml all the time but it's not a deal breaker if that's not possible. My husband speaks relatively limited French (our ml) but in general it hasn't been a problem. Our kids are only 5 and 3 so conversations tend to be quite simple compared with adult conversations anyway and if necessary I will summarize what I'm saying. It can easily make a person feel insecure though so it's important to keep talking about it and what works for your family - there isn't only one way to do things

- I highly recommend getting a copy of Christine Jernigan's book "Family Language Learning". There are lots of books and resources on raising children bilingually but most are written for families with native speakers of the target language. This one is written with non-native speakers in mind and I found it hugely comforting and confidence inspiring, particularly when I've been doubting myself. It also has lots of ideas to help make the target language part of your life and to fit with your family's needs. This also has good stuff around the situation where one parent speaks only a limited amount of the target language

- More difficult with covid around but it is worth trying to find any English speaking parent and baby/toddler groups near you to help build your confidence and hear more English "baby talk" if it feels a bit rusty at the moment.

- Don't worry about her having a short attention span at the moment! She doesn't have to be paying attention to be taking in the sounds at this point. Also it doesn't have to be baby books so if you want to read scientific journals rather than Elmer the Elephant then don't worry.

- Keep going even though it seems strange at first. I failed on this with my oldest and he finds the minority language harder than his younger sister.

I'm sure others will have lots of great advice. Good luck, sounds like you are doing great so far!

Hi Antonia,


I'm not a fluent German speaker, and German is my daughter's second ml. It did feel pretty weird using "German motherese," and I really didn't know (I still really don't) if I use the right words/structures...but she is quite fluent in German and I can only hope that her German language skills will become stronger (now she also reads and writes in German to a very basic level, we're still working on that, obviously). It makes me really proud to see how she'll become literate in several languages and will have the chance to speak them fluently as she grows up. It takes time, patience, and effort, so hang in there! You can do this!

Marisa

What did we do? Here are some ideas:
- We only let them watch TV in English.
- I only ever spoke English to them, no matter who else was with us. I'm happy to translate for those who don't understand me, but I've never spoken Spanish to my kids.
- I got audiobooks in English for the car.
- I try to read to them in English as often as I can.
- I made sure to start teaching them to read in English when they were 4 and a half.*
- When they were little, no toys that spoke the ML were allowed at home.
- We got them a lot of books in English.
- Before Covid, we had a native speaker come home for an hour once a week.
- In July, when they were off school, instead of sending them to summer camps in their school, we tried to hire an English native speaker to babysit while we worked.**
- We went to the UK on two different summers, so that they kids were surrounded by it and heard other kids speak it too.

* Regarding teaching to read: I didn't know where to start either, so I bought a book (mine was called The Reading Lesson, but there are others). All I had to do was follow the book and then have them read levelled books (Biff, Chip and Kipper are amazing) every weekday until they were about 6.5-7yo. I never taught them to write, I still don't know how to, but they're learning at school. I also thought reading in a phonetic language would be easier, but it wasn't for my kids. English has much shorter words, so they learned to recognize them much faster than the very long Spanish words, and so they both read faster and better in English. Who would have thought!

** If someone had told me this 8 years ago, I would have said "I won't be able to find all these native speakers to look after my kids", but they were all students. If Italy has one of these programs where English assistants are hired to work at schools, you'll have your pick. If not, I'm sure you can find students who want to make some extra money. Even if you can't find them, it won't matter, because what really made my kids bilingual wasn't the babysitters, but our speaking English to them day in and day out. You'll still have radio stations and TV is you want them being exposed to native speakers. What matters isn't the trips to the UK or the babysitters, but that you never give up and do everything in your power to better their English and your own. If you can do that, you'll be fine. Just keep going.