(Re)Introducing the ml to a toddler

Hi Angela!

I'm a native speaker of Spanish living in the US, where my daughter was born (she's 26 months old now). I'm a single mother, so she's stuck with me 24/7. I never use English, our ML, to talk to her AT ALL. Being a linguist who teaches Spanish for a living (and yes, let's admit it, being a little bit crazy as well), I decided that my daughter would definitely be bilingual, and then I thought 'why not multilingual?' So I'm trying. A long, long time ago I studied German, so I decided to introduce this language to her as well. It's been challenging, because I'm by no means a fluent speaker of German (not at all, actually), but I religiously read to her in German every single day, she listens to German songs and cartoons (in addition to the Spanish ones), and I do my very best to use German sentences with her every now and then (things like "which color is this flower" or "where is mom now"). So far, her dominant language is clearly Spanish, but to my surprise, she knows a significant amount of German words too, so when she says a word in Spanish, she immediately gives me the translation in German if she knows it (!!!). And then, one day, I thought "let's try French as well!" The problem with that is, I never studied French. NEVER. Can't speak it, can't read it...so it was even a more daunting task. I figured that this might be her weakest language, but I tried anyway...

... so, once a week, we meet with one of my students, who is a French major, and she reads and talks to her in French. We also watch YouTube nursery rhymes in French (she loves the "Little Baby Bum" ones). Because I can't read in French, I looked for other 'reading options,' and like Marie points out, the reading videos on YouTube are of great help, and she loves them! Now she always asks to watch them. For her age, you can check out YouTube channels like "Maman Christie," "Maman Doudou," "Chevalier Crevette," and her absolute favorite, "Les Petits Coucous" (he might like "Monde des Titounis" too). I've noticed how lately my daughter tries to repeat the sounds that she hears, and very, very slowly, she adds the French word when she gives me those translations I mentioned before. At this point, her French knowledge is more passive than active (for example, I'd say "mouton,' and she makes the correct sound; the same with 'cochon'), but hopefully she'll use more French words in the future.

I'm also trying to do my very best to help her with French. I don't speak it, but I try to repeat what I hear, mimicking the pronunciation the speaker uses. Since I know the phonetic symbols, I'm in the process of transcribing the words from her cute "English-French vocabulary book" so that I can 'pretend I can speak French' and teach her those words. It's been difficult, but I don't know, with Spanish and German, I've noticed that because she hears those words and sentences from me, she seems to be learning them better (or so I think), so I try to add the 'mom component' to her French learning experience. Of course, my main fear is 'what if I actually don't pronounce this word correctly, or use the wrong grammatical structure?,' but so far, she seems to be enjoying the experience.

If you can read French, I strongly suggest that you do that with your son. Read as much as you can! In my experience, this has been CRUCIAL in my daughter's language development in both Spanish and German. And use as many visuals as you can. Offering the English translation, as you mention, isn't probably the best idea (I do that with my daughter, I have to say, but with her two minority languages, never with English). As Adam mentions in his book, the more playful you can be, the more efficiently the kids are going to learn, so make sure he sees things as playful activities, where he can associate actions to words. If your son likes dinosaurs (too much Peppa Pig, sorry!! Ha, ha), for example, you can check out dinosaurs coloring pages online, print some, grab the crayons, and ask your son "do you want to paint a red dinosaur?' and show him with hand movements/actions what you mean, and then say 'or do you want to paint a green dinosaur?' (don't expect masterful painting, though , but to my knowledge, every single kid likes crayons, so he will enjoy this!). You can use French all the time while doing this, keep it simple, and hopefully the tacit vocabulary knowledge he's learning will eventually turn into production, and he'll actually say 'rouge' and 'vert'!

Good luck with everything!

Hi Angela,

I'm slightly late but I was going to suggest an idea: why not arrange a "ml play time" (e.g: 30mins) that you could start with a couple of ml nursery rhymes, then ml storytelling, and finish off with actual playing where you will speak ml only? At first, you can start with a shorter time when you speak in ml, and then increase this as your son gets more comfortable.

Don't be scared to speak French to your little one. Okay you're not a native, so what? Think about it that way: wouldn't it be better that your child speaks French like you than not speak it at all? Because the likelihood is, he's more likely not to learn French if he doesn't get this incredible opportunity of his mum rearing him in that language. Don't doubt yourself, and never let others make you doubt it. You are doing great, and it is still time to make up for that "break" you took. But if you take it up again, never let go again. Bilingual education is a lifelong commitment. And plan ahead, once your son has had a lot of exposure and you can tell he understands the ml, make sure to create a need in him to speak it. Exposure and need are the key combination to get the child active in both languages.

As to bilingual children getting confused, this is one of those myths. What happens is that they might take a little longer to speak but that's simply because they have twice the amount of language to learn than their monolingual peers. My 2 daughters are trilingual, and trust me they don't get confused!

All the best of luck on your journey and for the arrival of your second child.

Thanks very much for your encouragement and good wishes everyone. It's been a great help in stopping the doubting voices who had been getting way too much air-time recently! I'm looking out for some of the Tchoupi books (I see there's one for a new baby sister which seems too good to miss!) and will just focus on introducing the language more and more but not making a "thing" of it. Weirdly, for his own reasons, my son's word for "sausage" is "saucisse" - unprompted coincidence so I'm starting with that.

And if it was the case that he just gets to be comfortable in French at 18, if not fully bilingual/biliterate, that is still an improvement on where he'd probably get if I didn't do anything (the UK education system is notoriously unsupportive about languages!).

Thanks again, everyone!