Raising kids with two languages

I am an American living in Holland. My husband is Dutch. We are raising our two children bilingual. My son is now 5 and our daugther is 18months. My son started school last year and what a year it was. The language he heard from birth was english. My husband spoke english and dutch to him. We did not realize until he started school he was behind in the language. The school however was not used to bilingual students. How strange that may sound. I advised them he would need extra tutoring. They advised me he did not fit the profile due to his father is dutch, both parents need to be foreign. Of course, my little boy could not communicate like the other kids. He communicated in another way. He is 5 they dont know how to process this. It started to become a behaviour issue, he would pull at a kids hand, push if they were in line. The school was very quick to say ADHD. I as his mother fought like you know what and after quite some and having my son tested. They discovered due to the lack of language skills he brought on other things. Thank god for the current teacher he has now. She has had many confrontations with the Director of the school. He has threatened us with not wanting to help our son. We fought and fought and now he is being moved out of that school. I wonder how many other children are having this problem. It's unthinkable how a school can neglect what is staring them in the face. Thank god for my son's logopodie who is working with him and bringing him up to the level he should be. The school should have put their efforts in testing the language discrepancy.

Reply

I am not a parent (I got here through your personal blog), and I can only speak from my own experiences from my childhood, but I hope you will read this comment and will find it somewhat useful.

My parents are both Korean. Born in Korea, I moved to Japan when I was 1, and moved to the Netherlands when I was 3 and grew up there. My parents didn't know how to handle the 2-year-old toddler speaking to them in sentences which was in both Korean and Japanese in the Netherlands, so they only spoke to me in Korean and taught me only to speak to them in Korean. Korean was thus the dominant language at our home. (I lost my Japanese at the time, but I soon picked it up again when I chose it as one of my high school subjects.)

I started school when I was 4, and obviously I didn't know any Dutch. This wasn't alarming to my parents, though, because they knew I would just pick it up after adjusting to the school and making friends, etc. Whenever I would say something in Dutch to my parents, they would ask me to say that again in Korean. One reason was because they understand little Dutch, but the more important reason was that they wanted me to understand that only Korean was tolerated. I think this is very important: let your sons know that you will only listen and respond to them when they speak Korean to you. This sounds very harsh, but in my opinion, this can be done easily in your house, as both you and your husband speak Korean and ARE, in fact, Korean. French can be learned at school, and it's French that they're exposed to once they leave their home, as someone else had pointed out. That was exactly the same thing for me: it was Korean at home, and once I was out the door, it was Dutch. It's very important that they understand this distinction.

I can only thank my mother for my fluency in Korean. She made sure I knew how to read Korean before I started learning Dutch and the Roman alphabet, and this was at the age of 4, your sons' age. My mother was very strict about this, too. When I was a little older, I was not allowed to go out and play before I finished reading my Korean books out loud, so she could hear my pronounciation and check that I was actually reading the book.

I am not sure how comfortable you will be with the level of strictness that my mother enforced, but trust me, I don't hate this childhood period, and nor will your sons when they grow up. It might be painful and heartbreaking to see your sons not enjoying the Korean lessons, but in the end, it's all worth the effort. Oh, and I went to Korean school every Saturday and went to Korean church every Sunday. I'm only guessing that my parents saw the weekend as the perfect opportunity to smother us with everything Korean :)

Whilst maintaining my fluency in Korean, I am additionally fluent in Dutch and English, I know French and Japanese at a higher intermediate level, and I get by with everyday German. And this is all just by speaking Korean at home with my parents, whilst learning the other languages at school!

In my honest opinion, I think you should enforce the 'only speak Korean at home and to Mommy and Daddy' rule. Only then will they be able to understand that Mommy and Daddy are not like other people they meet at school or at the playground. As I said before, it is very important that they learn the distinction between the language they speak at home with the parents, and the language they speak with their friends and teachers. Also, by teaching them Korean, I do think they learn the notion of 'respect' in a different manner as they learn to speak in 'jondaemal' to the elderly, say, to their grandparents. This is not only beneficial for your children's language abilities, but also understanding the Korean culture.

Hope this helped, and good luck! And please do let us know what strategies you have chosen. Sometimes I do wonder what languages I would teach my future kids...

-- euphrosynely (Korean-Dutch, but more so a global citizen)

Reply

I can only speak from personal experience but I would recommend that you enforce as much Korean as you can now. When I was very young, I spoke Korean, English and Spanish fairly fluently. The only problem was that when I went to pre-school, none of the other kids could understand my garbled tongues. Unfortunately, my mother received some bad advice from one of my teachers, who recommended that my parents only emphasize English at home. Sadly, this led me to lose my fluency in Korean and Spanish. I still have great comprehension in both but my speaking skills are highly limited.

I have quite a few friends who are raising bi- or tri-lingual kids. The key seems to be enforcing the language that is NOT native to where they are living. Your kids are going to learn French just by living in France. If you want them to learn Korean, try to only speak Korean in the house and have them respond in Korean as well.

Would love for you to keep us posted on the progress. We're trying to raise a bilingual baby in Korean and English. Our child is only 15 months old now so we're just exposing her to both and hope it sticks!

Reply

We are raising our daughter bi-lingual in English & Dutch. My husband speaks Dutch to her, and I speak English. Since she is not speaking -she is only 8 months- we can not judge how well this is working yet. We figure since she spends more time with me she will speak more English at first, but will eventually be fluent in both languages equally. I have heard that children who are raised hearing 2 languages should be fluent in both by the age of 5.

Perhaps with your sons you should enforce a more "Korean only" at home attitude. When they reply in French, you should stress that at home they speak Korean. They are still young so I am certain they will grow up to speak both languages equally well.

Reply

Our experience with our kids (still pre pre-school) and friends' and relatives' kids (elementary and middle school) is that teachers tend to be lazy and recommend parents give up any second language and focus on english.

That is the dumbest advice possible. It makes the teacher's job easier. But it does not benefit the kid.

Teaching your kid a second language is beyond invaluable. It's not just the "cultural aspect" (hey, look, my kid can speak togonese), it also provides them a much better mental framework to understand other languages, including english.

I believe I'm much better at my native language (spanish) because I learned french and english when I was young. And I'm better at english and french for the same reasons.

We plan to expose our kids primarily to spanish at home. And we plan to have serious discussions with any teacher that asks us otherwise.

Reply

Oh, and yes, most kids (again a conclusion I draw from a sample of our kids, friends' and relatives') tend to be slightly slower learners when it comes to english at school. But in a grade or two all differences are gone and they speak english just like your average, single-language, american student (whether that is a good thing or not is subject for a different discussion).

So yes, if you plan to teach your kids two (or three) languages, you'll have to be patient, 'cause they'll have more things to learn, so they'll be slower at first.

Reply

As w/ the first comment I can also speak from personal experience. However somewhere along the way, I lost my proficiency in Chinese. Thankfully I met my wife, who is considerably more fluent than I am, and I began to embrace the language once again. I've seen relatives attempt to raise children in bilingual households. Sadly tho, it seems that whatever dominant language/culture typically seems to stick.

My wife and I have decided that we will have our child attend chinese school on the weekend, in addition to regular schooling. I feel that while he may hate the idea in his adolescent years, that he will appreciate it when he's older.

(Un)luckily for us, depending on how you look at it, my parents provide daycare for my child. As long as that's the case, there is going to be a good amount of exposure to both cultures. I'm just hoping that both end up sticking.

Reply

You'll have to keep us all updated on how it goes.

My husband and I are trying the one parent, one language approach. Our 19-month-old understands both German and English, although when he communicates, he doesn't separate the two. "Light - hei?" I'm just worried that when he gets to kindergarten, he will become much better at German. At least, though, wherever we are (here in Germany or visiting my family in the States), he still gets exposed to both languages on a daily basis.

Reply

My husband is French, I am American and we are raising our 10 month-old daughter to be bilingual. Since we live in America, our technique is 100% French immersion at home, along with French books,music, etc. Since I stay at home with her, this is much easier than if she had another primary caregiver.

Although I started learning French as a child, I became fluent when I moved to Switzerland as a young adult. I can definitely relate to questions of self-doubt as to whether or not I am fluent enough to be passing a native language on to my children! But I know that I am. Perserverance is the key,not perfection.

When I was an au-pair in Geneva many moons ago, one English mother told me that she'd removed her son from the local Swiss school and had placed him in the international school because learning French "was just too hard for him." He was only 3! I think what
she meant was that it was too hard for her. That's the thing, it IS hard, and takes a steady effort throughout childhood.

Obviously your kids are used to hearing Korean, but they're used to speaking French. Maybe you could start by inventing a game (you know, with the 20 hours of free-time you have in a day) where speaking Korean is how they advance and win. Like...kind of like Red Light - Green Light ("Un,deux, trois, Soleil!"). Since there are two of them you could place them side by side so that they compete against each other.

You could hold up pictures of objects and they get to move forward if they shout out the correct word in Korean.

Good luck!

Reply

I can tell you what we're doing with my baby, and my own personal experience. My husband speaks English and I speak mainly Taiwanese with a few Mandarin words thrown in here and there, so 14-month-old Timothy knows words in any of the languages, depending on what he's heard the most, or whatever's easiest to say. I was worried that our daycare provider wouldn't understand him, but since we are also teaching him Baby Sign Language, and our daycare provider happens to know it also, they're able to communicate, despite having different verbal names for the same things. It's funny how that worked out. :)

In my own case, my family moved from Taiwan to the US when I was 3, but my parents were really good about enforcing Chinese at home. They wouldn't respond to my sister or I unless we spoke to them in Chinese. It was frustrating at first, but I'm certainly glad they did it, because now I'm more fluent in Chinese than most others I know who were raised in the US. I don't remember how old I was when they enforced this, but I don't think I was as young as 4. I'm pretty sure I was able to communicate easily in either language when my parents enforced the Chinese thing, so if it's something you're considering, you might want to wait a few years.

Reply

I married a Japanese guy from Tokyo and we are raising our two girls (4 and 20 months) bilingually, as well. We just moved back to the states from Tokyo and I am watching my 4 year old go from fluency in japanese to almost entirely English.

I want to enforce a Japanese only thing at home, but am encountering difficulty in three areas. a) I have trouble expressing myself completely in japanese b) my daughter constantly tells me to speak English (as I spoke english to her in japan as it was her only input) and c)my husband always forgets to speak japanese at home.

After some research and informal anecdotal evidence, I think that I would suggest that raising bilingual children is best done (if you don't plan to move between countries) by only using the non-native language at home. It is difficult to do this, I know. As a mother, you feel a little strange outside the home talking to your kid in the "other' language, and sometimes you have to switch back and forth when your kid plays with another. However, in the end, establishing this way of speaking at home will help when the kids go to school.

Reply

We are not a bilingual house but I thought I'd weigh in anyhow. Just keep using Korean at home, the fact that they understand it is HUGE. That they use french is not a big deal, after all you live in France. I think it's that simple. When they get a little bit older you can suggest that they use Korean in the house.

My son's godfather is from a bilingual home, he was upset by a story on our local NPR that some mixed (English in the home and Spanish in the home) bilingual classes in the US were getting flack since the kids all tended to prefer English when not in the class room, despite demonstrated proficiencies in class. To my friend this is natural, it is the US! I think the same would be trus anywhere. That your boys are relying on French, for the most part is how they are adapting to the community around them, a big part of being 3-4. Yet they understand Korean and are adapting to you. I really think it will all come together.

Reply

My mother is German American, my father Brazilian and we lived in El Salvador for the first five years of my life. It was not uncommon to hear things like 'Dame eine cookie, bitter.' coming out of my mouth. My mother made it a point to ONLY speak German and English with me and my father ONLY spoke Spanish and Portuguese. By the time we moved to NY when I was five I was fluent in all of the languages. I immediately started first grade and after a minor three months of remedial English I tested into the gifted program. Now, I speak English much better than any of the other languages but I am still fluent in Spanish and can make by in Portuguese. I can understand German. My mother regrets not maintaining it all after the move. Do NOT give up. Just persevere and I think you'll be surprised.

Reply

My first language was Mandarin Chinese, but upon entering grade school, my brother was super shy, and the counselors told my parents to speak only English to us because they thought he was being confused. We know now that this was bad advice. We both lost our Chinese comprehension, but later in life (college), we picked it up easier than our friends who had never been exposed to Chinese.

I encourage you to keep on speaking Korean at home. It seems to me though that the continuation to learn/speak Korean will be up to your children when they grow up. My brother ended up living in China for two years to improve his Chinese... where as I only took a year in college. And he's the one who despised all things Chinese growing up o_O

Reply

My husband and I talk to our seven-month-old in both English and French, but we haven't worked out a rigid system of one language only or one language per parent yet. Mostly we just talk to Tom in whichever lasnguage the conversation between the two of us was in when we had to break off and comment on his cuteness or new sklill or whatever. The hard part is going to be that I still mostly speak English when I'm home alone with Tom, just because it's easier. I'd like Tom to learn some Bassa (Henri's tribal language) as well, but at this point it doen't seem very likely.

Reply

I'm another American mom living in Holland and raising my son bilingually. We adopted the one language one person concept which is basically only a native speaker of English can speak it to him and same with Dutch. So basically he only hears English from me and my family if they visit, etc and then he hears Dutch from everyone else. I also thought he'd speak more English being with me all day but as of now age 2 and a half it's about even. I will respond to his messages even if they are in Dutch to me but I will respond in English. I may get more firm later on but he has been so behind in speech, I'm glad for anything and I'll take what I can get! I understand Dutch perfectly fine. He did mostly speak English until he started preschool this year and then the Dutch picked up more.. even so he learns most from his Grandmother who he only sees once a week, go figure. I'm still nervous about his delay but so far no one else is alarmed. He speaks about 200 words total in both languages and kids his age learning 1 language should still be above 300 words and speaking in pretty much complete sentences. We just aren't there yet.

Reply

We live in Israel and at home speak only English...publicly it is a mix. My daughters both speak in English and the older one in Hebrew as well...but I know an Ethiopian family in Israel and a Romanian family with the same situation...thje kids only speak Hebrew although they understand they other language perfectly.

Reply