Bilingual family in England (Polish) - advice needed

Hi Aga,

You have indeed done incredibly well and worked very hard to generate the exposure to the minority language (ml) which is the 1st of the 2 core pillars to raising a bilingual child. However, you seem to be finding the 2nd pillar (creating the need) very trying.

From the stories I heard around this forum, seen in real life and experienced myself to some degree, this is very common when the Majority Language (ML) is used at home and/or by one of the parents, and ML schooling certainly adds to the problem. There is such an emphasis on the ML everywhere, and when the child sees that the ml parent speaks the ML, they just don’t feel the need to make the effort to use the ml. Kids tend to go for the easy way out of things: use their hands instead of cutlery, have Daddy carry them instead of using their little legs, speak in ML rather than rattle their little brain to use the ml...

When my eldest daughter was born, we went for OPOL (2 minority languages) with ML as the family language. By the age of 4, my daughter was a passive trilingual who understood absolutely everything but only spoke in ML. The first year of ML schooling just killed off a little more of the little ml communication we had achieved. Finally, last year I discovered, thanks to this forum, the reason for our “failure”: we had kept the ML as a family language.

Luckily, and because our personal situation allowed it (all of us are trilingual in the same languages), we switched to ml@home (each parent speaks their ml) with a strict prohibition on ML use. And this created the “need” in my daughter to start talking in the ml.

You will need to find a way to create that need, but I will leave other forum members in the same situation as yours to give more adequate tips.

Some pretend not to understand the ML when the child uses it with them. I don’t know how you feel about it, it is a bit of a controversial technique.

Have you thought of setting up a daily “Polish playtime” when you’d do fun stuff for maybe 1h during which they’d have to speak only Polish?

Do you play Polish nursery rhymes on CD but also Youtube? I’m no fan of TV for young children but my 19-month-old watches ml nursery rhymes and toddler cartoons at weekends and she already tries to sing some of these! I even had a pediatrician actually recommend nursery rhymes for my eldest daughter’s pronunciation problems.

If you don't already do it, try to emphasise more Polish by wherever possible listening yourself to Polish telly, radio, songs… They don’t seem to but kids actually pick up a lot from their environment. More than once I have caught my eldest listening to the ml telly when it wasn’t even a cartoon (usually if there is an animal, or food, or some pretty scenery). If it can be of any help or give you ideas, you can have a look at my post on Bilingual Monkeys: Bilingual Families and the Importance of Limiting the Influence of the Majority Language at Home.  

As regards the stammering of your son, I would suggest (if you haven’t done so yet) to take him to a speech therapist and seek help. If your son builds his confidence in expressing himself in English, it will naturally follow in Polish (or at least that’s my opinion ). My eldest had a minor pronunciation problem and had speech therapy once a week for a year, it helped her greatly. She used to get frustrated when nobody understood her and now she communicates confidently, whatever the language. I think that the skills acquired in one language can be transferred to other languages (particularly for similar language, e.g:  European languages).

I sincerely hope the little I was able to contribute might help you. Please reach out to us when you feel low. It is a very bumpy road, and I think the level of difficulty to bring up children bilingually always comes as a surprise to bilingual parents.

Take care.

Dear Amy and Adam,

Thank you both of your replies.

I am aware that the need to speak Polish is almost non-existent as my children picked up that I can understand and speak English to their father.

That is the main element I am struggling with, how to do it?, when there is so much of the dominant language around and I need to use it.

I agree - they just choose the easy option but I know I need to carry on.

Adam - I have started to read some of the blog posts and found a few things that I will try.

Amy - thank you, the CD idea with music, stories is great. You can guess what my son is getting for Christmas this year.

Yes, we watch Polish cartoons and do nursery rhymes and I know that they fully understand but speaking is a different matter.

On the positive side we have moments where my son will say "thank you" or "hug me please" in Polish which is lovely.

Adam - travelling is also a good idea but this is more complicated in our case, but that is a different story. Saying that, we are going to Poland in January for a week, however having my husband around in a way is not helpful as my children just go on automatic mode of speaking English.

Regarding my son's stammer, yes, we have seen a specialist and the advice at this stage is to go with the flow, don't put any pressure on him and review when he is approximately 5-7 years old.

I never believed that raising children bilingually would be easy, however there are days that I wish they were.

Thank you again.

Hi Aga!! Welcome! As others have already mentioned, you're putting a lot of effort into getting your children to be bilingual.

All I can add is a couple of experiences, in case it helps. I'm one of those parents who pretended not to understand when their children spoke in the ml. It did wonders for my daughter, who kept saying "water" and "yes" in the ML when she was two. In a couple of days after pretending not to understand her, she switched to saying it in the ml. It made no difference that I spoke with her dad in the ML.

My brother and sister-in-law are doing OPOL, he speaks in the ml and she in the ML. My nephew, who's 2, used to say more words in both, but now he mostly speaks in the ML and says a couple of words in the ml. My brother understands him no matter what he says, but I am a mean "auntie" and make him use the ml when he wants something, like a cookie. He doesn't complain, just sees it as a game and ends up using more words in the ml with me, hehe.

Your eldest may be a little too old for this to work, but, if you want, you could give it a try. Instead of not understanding anything he says, you could pretend not to understand certain words, especially when they want something from you and go from there until you don't understand any English.