Raising Bi-Lingual Kids Is Not Easy

This is a pretty vast subject. Let's start the discussion anyway.

It was my hope and desire that my kid would grow up bilingual. To prepare for this, here is what I did.

1. I spoke to her in English from the womb on.
2. I insisted.
3. I read to her lots of books in English.
4. I went to the States at least once a year.
5. I hung out with English-speaking people.

And, guess what. Italian STILL won. I knew this was normal on some level, but deep down, I felt like this was a sort of early rebellion on her part. Sure, she understood what I was saying, but she answered in Italian. Like a dagger through the heart EVERY time. But I did not let on. No.

Instead, I:

1. Acknowledged her, even if she spoke to me in Italian.
2. Answered in English.
3. Died quietly on the inside and pretended it was no big deal on the outside.
3. Tried not to let her know that it was important to me.
4. Pretended not to hear the snide comments from parents of my English students saying "Well, even the Director's kid doesn't speak English, so ours are ok!!"

I, like lots of people in the same situation, concluded that she was a little, how shall we say, Linguistically Lazy.

So I decided to get tough.

I wanted to change her perspective, get her to think that English was easy, that it was part of her. I had to somehow displace Italian, take it out of the equation without taking it out of the equation.

I had the perfect solution.

Slovene Pre-School. I had other reasons to put her there, too. Like the fact that my mother-in-law is from the Slovene minority. I justified it that way, and that we were STEALING BACK the language that was stolen from my husband because they spoke Italian at home.

It worked for lots of other reasons, even if it didn't make her speak English.

It put her in touch with other bi-lingual kids, for example. It made her feel like English WAS part of her precisely because she didn't feel Slovenian.
But then I realized I was wrong.

She wasn't lazy. She just couldn't form the words in English. I found this out one day when I got frustrated with her for asking me for AQUA instead of water.

I made her repeat the longest sentence in English I could think of that would be asking for water politely.

MOMMY MAY I PLEASE HAVE A GLASS OF WATER PLEASE?!

I think I scared her, because she repeated it. But it came out as a strange garbled thing that did not resemble my sentence at all.

That was when I realized the problem was something else entirely.

From that moment on I changed approach. I listened to her in Italian, answered her in English, and then I said her sentence again in English. After a few times she started to repeat. Then within about two weeks she was speaking. Something about that no-pressure practice time unblocked her. She has been an English chatterbox ever since.

I am happy I put her in Slovene school. She is finishing her third year of pre-school now and getting ready for first grade. She is fluent in three languages. She found a way to belong to all three of them somehow and is really proud of what she can do.

I am, too.

The reason I mention this is that I want you to know that if your kid answers you in her dominant language (and it is not English), she probably isn't lazy. She may just need a little more help forming the words.

I hope this helps.

Don't give up. Remember, it only takes one generation to lose a language forever. In most cases, it is the mother's language.

This is another fun page to read on the subject. The comments are so interesting!