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I’m Spanish, my husband is French and we live in Luxemburg. We have a 22-month-old daughter who understands almost everything in both languages, though for now French is her most developed language because she goes to a French pre-school. At home we each speak to her in our own language (sometimes I say things to her in Spanish and French if I can see that she doesn’t understand), but I speak with my husband in French. Is that ok? I don’t know what goes through her little head when I only speak that “strange” language with her. Should I also speak to her father in Spanish? In any case, she understands almost everything in both languages, but she mostly speaks in French. Thank you for your advice. Paloma

Dear Paloma,

Thank you for your question. First I just want to say that both your situation and your doubts are common ones. It seems like your daughter’s language development is going very well, since she understands almost everything in both languages. You are using the One Parent One Language model to raise your bilingual daughter, in which each parent speaks his or her language with the child and the child simultaneously acquires both languages from an early age. It’s also very common for one of the parents to speak the community language and the other to speak a minority language, as is your case.

The influence of the community language is always stronger, since your daughter will have many more opportunities to hear French–at school, on the street, in shops, on TV…–while she only hears Spanish from you. This is why, as a speaker of the minority language, your job of reinforcing her Spanish is harder.

Let’s not forget that children are very flexible and they usually accept things easily. If you are persistent and you always speak to your daughter in Spanish, it will be natural for her. Bilingual children associate certain people and situations with one language or the other. So if she sees that you speak Spanish with her but not with her father or other people on the street, she will come up with the following rule: “Mama speaks that different language with me, but she speaks French with Papa and other people on the street.” It’s important for you and your husband to feel comfortable with each other, so if your language as a couple is French, there is no real need for you to change that. You can’t avoid your daughter noticing that you speak a different language because you’ll have to speak French outside your home and your daughter will pick up on that.

It’s important to create a positive attitude toward Spanish so that she won’t see it as something “strange” but rather something “special.” If she has fun talking and playing with you in Spanish, if you praise her when she understands or says things in Spanish, if she feels that it is useful to speak in both languages, all of this will help encourage her to speak that language.

As I said before, you have the harder job of trying to maintain the minority language; so I recommend you also use other resources so that you’re not the only source of your daughter’s exposure to Spanish. The relationship with her Spanish family will be very important because your daughter won’t have any choice but to use her Spanish: if her family is monolingual, she will have to speak Spanish. If possible, maintaining close contact with family would be very helpful: speaking frequently by Skype, writing letters and emails and, especially, going to visit them or having them visit you.

Books are also very important because they offer a much broader vocabulary than what is generally used in daily life. I recommend buying Spanish stories. You and your husband take turns reading to her in Spanish and French. But please be consistent; Mom should always read in Spanish and Dad in French.

If possible, try to maintain contact with other Spanish families since this will give your daughter more opportunities to speak Spanish. Maybe you could find a playgroup or even organize a playgroup yourself if you know other Spanish families so that your daughter would be more exposed to Spanish outside the house.

I can also recommend an excellent book for parents who are raising bilingual children: “Consigue que tu hijo sea bilingüe“, by Barbara Zurer-Pearson, Ed. Bilingual Readers.

I hope this helps you feel more secure about your bilingual project and I wish you all the best.

Cathy Smitton is a British speech therapist with a great deal of experience working with children. At SINEWS she works with bilingual families within the ex-pat community in Madrid. Cathy is in charge of the bilingualism workshops for parents and English playgroups offered at SINEWS. She also offers personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, visitwww.sinews.es

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My partner and I both speak Spanish as our first language and English as a second language. We have a four-year-old son who just started studying at a French school. We would love some advice about how to help him.

Pilar

Dear Pilar,

It’s wonderful that your son will have the opportunity to speak three languages! Your question is directly related with how to reinforce each language in a trilingual situation. I gather that you’d like for your son to speak all three languages fluently and you’d like for him to learn them in a natural and intuitive way. This kind of language learning is only possible if your child receives enough exposure to each language. He should spend around 20% (16 hours per week) of his waking hours listening to and using each language.

As Spanish parents living in a Spanish-speaking community, you’ll only need to focus on how to reinforce English and Spanish. Remember that even though your son will be attending a French school, the children will probably speak Spanish to each other at recess. My advice would be for you to sign your son up for an extracurricular activity in French so that you’ll not only increase his exposure to the language but you’ll also put him in a situation in which he has to use the language to interact with others. If a child needs to use a different language at different times with different people, he will have many more opportunities to practice and expand his vocabulary.

In order to reinforce his English, since you are non-native speakers I would recommend choosing a certain time of day for you to speak to your son only in English at home. The rest of the time I would speak to him in your native language, since that will be most natural for you. For example, choose an activity which you always do in English. This could be bath time, an hour of playing together, whenever you’re in the car together and talking while you drive. Of course this won’t be enough to fill 16 hours per week but, as non-native speakers, it would be very difficult for you to offer that much exposure to your son. I recommend looking for other resources outside your home, since nowadays there are many opportunities to encourage your son to speak English. You could hire an English-speaking nanny to play with him in English only. There are also lots of English playgroups where your son would be able to practice his English will other children his age. At the age of four, interaction with your peers is a big factor in language development.

Another important resource is books. There are bilingual books in which the story is written in two languages; often the text for each language is written in a different color and the child will begin to associate the text with each language. It is best for one parent to always tell the story in English and the other to always read in Spanish.
It’s true that it can be difficult to maintain three languages, and it’s common for one of those languages to be weaker. The most important thing to keep in mind is the child’s exposure to each language, finding opportunities to speak in each language and, especially, just being persistent. Being persistent means that if you decide to always speak English at bath time, there are no exceptions, because if not your son will not make an association between the language and the situation and it will be hard for him to find the right words to speak in English the next time you do decide to speak English to him.

I wish you all the best for your trilingual project!

Cathy Smitton is a British speech therapist with a great deal of experience working with children. At SINEWS she works with bilingual families within the ex-pat community in Madrid. Cathy is in charge of the bilingualism workshops for parents and English playgroups offered at SINEWS. She also offers personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, visitwww.sinews.es

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We’ve been speaking English to our children since they were born, and now they are nineteen months old. For now, the intelligible words they are speaking are completely Spanish. What can we do? Thank you!

Begoña

Dear Begoña,

First, I want to congratulate you on your efforts to raise bilingual children. With regard to your question, it is my understanding that both of you speak English as your second language, so I’m well aware of the efforts you are making to give your children the opportunity to learn a second language from the time they were born. I imagine that it is very frustrating to see that your children are mainly speaking Spanish after so much effort.

I should ask you several questions before I can give you an answer for your specific situation. What is your and your partner’s level of English? Do you always speak to your children in English? In comparison with English, how much exposure do your children have to Spanish?

For now, I’d like to give you some general advice about how to increase the possibilities of success with this kind of bilingual project.

In order for a child to learn a language in an intuitive way, he needs to spend at least 20% of his waking hours interacting in that language, which translates to around 16 hours per week. So we need to calculate this, taking into account the time we spend on the streets listening to Spanish, how often you have visits from people who only speak Spanish and how often and for how long your children are listening to their parents speak Spanish to each other. The community language will always have a greater influence on them, so fighting against such a weighty linguistic attack by giving your children adequate exposure to another language and helping them to speak it is no easy task.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible! What can you do to increase your children’s exposure to English? In order to be successful with a second language, children should hear that language in many different scenarios, not just at home but in other places like the park, the street, in shops… It’s also helpful for them to listen to several different people speak, in addition to their parents and teachers, if possible. By broadening your children’s exposure to different sources of English you’ll be broadening their linguistic repertoire. In order to do this, you could hire an English-speaking nanny or take your children to activities with other children in English, such as playgroups organized by English-speaking mothers.

Reading bilingual books or books in English to your children will offer them a broader vocabulary than what they’re used to hearing in their daily lives and it will also encourage them to speak English. It’s important to read books in the language in which they were written so that your children won’t be confused when the time comes to associate what you’re reading with the words on the page.

I also want to make it clear that children learn words out of necessity, and they may not feel the need to speak English now while they’re living in Spain with Spanish parents. But, as parents, you can provide them with opportunities in which they will need to communicate in their second language. Being in contact with native monolinguals will help create a need for them to speak English.

Another possible reason why your children are beginning to speak Spanish instead of English despite your efforts is that language is closely related to emotions. When you want to show love to your children, which language is most natural for you? It’s common for parents to use their mother tongue to express their most intimate feelings even if they are generally making an effort to speak in another language. The power of this emotional interaction is so strong that it can lead children to speak in that language because of the strong positive attachment it creates with their parents. This emotional attachment is very important and valuable because a child’s happiness is the most important thing, regardless of any of our other goals for them.

There are many ways to raise bilingual children, but as non-native speakers I would especially recommend you use other resources to increase your children’s opportunities to speak English and create the need for them to speak it.

Good luck!

Cathy Smitton is a British speech therapist with a great deal of experience working with children. At SINEWS she works with bilingual families within the ex-pat community in Madrid. Cathy is in charge of the bilingualism workshops for parents and English playgroups offered at SINEWS. She also offers personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, visit www.sinews.es

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Happy Book Day!

As many of you may already know, today is International World Book Day. All over the world publishers, booksellers, librarians and other organizations are coming together to to celebrate a love of books and reading. In Madrid we’ll be celebrating La noche de los libros, a night full of fun activities and streets lined with books (click here for a schedule of activities). Wherever you live, we hope you’ll take advantage of this special day to share the magical world of books with your children. And remember that bilingual books are a great way to encourage your children to love reading and languages at the same time. Click here if you’re looking for a gift for your bilingual readers. Happy Book Day!

Ever since we met Roxana A. Soto and Ana L. Flores from SpanglishBaby.com, we knew they were destined for great things. We’ve followed the growing success of their popular bilingual parenting blog over the past few years, and we’ve enjoyed getting to know them as bloggers and friends. Then about a year ago we approached them about publishing a book based on their experiences raising bilingual and bicultural children in the United States, and we were thrilled when they accepted.

For the past year or so we have had the priveledge of getting to know Ana and Roxana better through their writing. After many international skype sessions, hundreds of emails and several marathon writing and editing sessions, we are thrilled to announce that the manuscript for Bilingual is Better is finally complete!

Bilingual is Better is an inspiring parenting memoir by two Latina moms who will do anything and everything to make sure their American-born children grow up speaking Spanish and English. This unique book goes beyond the mere mechanics of raising bilingual children to reveal the very real experiences of two Latina moms who are bound and determined to make sure their children never forget where they came from. Roxana and Ana do an amazing job of debunking old stereotypes and shedding new light on hot topics such as:

*Immigration and the power of the Latino community
*The growing importance of Spanish in the United States and why all children should learn Spanish
*The many cognitive and emotional benefits of being bilingual
*The growing trend among non-Hispanic families who are now raising bilingual children
*Bilingual education and how dual immersion programs could close the achievement gap in just six years
*What it means to be fully American and still embrace your heritage culture

We have high hopes that this important new book will spark a much needed conversation about the role of bilingualism in the United States, and we’re so proud to be a part of it!

Over the next few months we’ll be giving readers an inside look at Bilingual is Better through interviews with the authors, excerpts from the book and other promotional events, but for now we wanted to let you know that Bilingual is Better is already available for pre-order!  Though the official pub date is September 4th, you can already pre-order your copy of Bilingual is Better on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. As many of you may know, pre-sales are extremely important for guaging the future success of any book, so if you plan to purchase the book at some point why not go ahead an pre-order?

Click here to be one of the first to read this exciting new book, and be sure to spread the word!

Hi,
Thank you for your attention. My daughter is 4 years old and speaks Spanish and a little bit of Portuguese. She only speaks a few words but she understands everything. She is also learning the colors in English, especially “blue.” Mother: Brazilian. Father: Spanish. School: Spanish and English bilingual.

I noticed that my daughter started speaking Spanish later than the other children. But her teacher says she is linguistically behind the rest of the children in her class becuase I speak to her in Portuguese. She suggested I stop speaking to my daughter in Portuguese for a while to see if her language skills improved. My daughter’s problems began when she first started school. She doesn’t speak very much but she does understand both languages. I don’t know what to do. For example she says things like “mama quero pan aceite azúcar.” She has problems with pronouns, verbs and phonetics. She mixes languages and says things like “mama a bici es blue.” Another example would be how I show her the color red and tell her that it is “vermelho” in Portuguese and she says no Mom, it’s “rojo”.

I think it’s normal from what I read in your book about bilingualism. We need to be patient with her and give her more stimulation. But her teacher doesn’t agree. He thinks she needs help, like some sort of classes for foreign children. I’m thinking of taking her to see a speech therapist. And I will speak to her pediatrician. What should I do? Thank you for your attention.

Livia.

Dear Livia,

First I just want to say that I understand your concern and the anxiety you must have felt when you were told you would have to give up speaking your mother tongue to your child. As you already know, we use language to transmit many things involving our culture and history, and it would be a shame if your daughter couldn’t take part in that. But it would be even more of a shame to think that you should have to change the way you communicate with her, since that would mean more than just a severing of “linguistic ties”; it would mean changing the interaction and relationship between a mother and child. If you can’t communicate with your child in the language you are most comfortable in, all those emotionally charged expressions wouldn’t have the same meaning. So, just as we do with the thousands of families and children who come to our center, we are going to try and look for a solution which will allow your daughter to continue to “grow” linguistically without having to give up either of her languages.

At Sinews we deal with truly complex cases when it comes to communicating and in most cases the children continue to be exposed to two languages, especially if their parents speak different languages. The psychological aspect is very important for the development of a person as a whole, and the relationship and interaction between a child and her parents and what the parents transmit to their child is an important part of this.

Like we always say at our center and our workshops, being bilingual DOES NOT CAUSE PROBLEMS.

I’d also like to clarify something you said about a language delay being normal in multilingual children. While it is true that some children who speak more than one language take longer to speak than some monolingual children, we must be really careful about making generalizations. The same thing applies to “mixing” languages.

In many cases it is necessary to make an appointment with a speech therapist who is also an expert in bilingualism, someone who has the necessary tools to help bilingual children and the experience to evaluate whether or not a child’s language development is normal for someone who is exposed to several languages or if, on the contrary, there is in fact some sort of speech problem.

With regard to the speech “delay” your daughter is experiencing, as I said before, there are “normal” speech errors and others which are not so normal, which is why we would need to determine the cause of these errors. Often they may be due to being less frequently exposed to a language or perhaps the child’s language model is not effective for that child. Other children may actually have a problem.

In any case, we can determine whether or not there is a real problem by doing a thorough evaluation of your daughter’s speech processes. In order to do this, we specialists have many tools which help us evaluate multilingual children and families. Once the initial evaluation has been made, we can then set objectives and take steps toward improving the situation.

In your particular case, it would be a good idea for you to take your daughter to visit a specialist in bilingualism who can evaluate her and design a plan for her treatment (objectives, language in which she will be treated, changes to either language, etc). It is true that it is sometimes hard to locate a specialist in bilingualism who also speaks the languages we would like for her to speak during the treatment (especially if you’re trying to find someone close to home). In this sense, I’d like to let you know that it is not necessary for the person who does the initial evaluation and follow-up treatment to speak the language that you are trying to stimulate. The most important factor would be to find a specialist in bilingualism. This specialist will then coordinate with the speech therapist who the parents decide should carry out the treatment. So an expert in bilingualism will make an evaluation and determine which steps need to be taken and a speech therapist, a native speaker of Portuguese in your case, who does not necessarily even need to have experience with bilingualism, will coordinate with the specialist and follow the treatment plan.

Livia, my recommendation would be for you to continue raising your daughter to be bilingual while making sure she gets the help she needs to correct these errors and help her succeed!

Best,

Mariana

Mariana Lombardo is an experienced children speech therapist. She does clinical work at SINEWS with bilingual families in the expat community in Madrid. Mariana is in charge of the workshops for bilingual families offered by SINEWS and she also gives personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, please visit www.sinews.es.

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Good afternoon, and thank you for your wonderful website and hard work. I’m sending this email because my partner and I are a German-Spanish couple living in Norway and we speak English to each other at home, so our 21 month old daughter hears four different languages on a daily basis. A few months ago she began to say many words in all four languages, but she has stopped saying many of those works. Now she only uses 4 or 5 words total. Is this normal? I spoke with her doctor and pediatric nurse, and they are not worried about it, but I am. I suppose I’ve been worried about her having four languages since she was born.

Thank you,
Maria

Hi María,
First, I’d just like to clarify a few points. From what I understand from your question, you speak Spanish to your daughter, your partner speaks German and you live in Norway. Your daughter’s English is passive, since this is the language you speak to each other as a couple. If this is true, your daughter is trilingual, with passive exposure to a fourth language.

From there we can move on to another important factor: the amount of time and quality of interaction your daughter receives in each of her languages. Language acquisition is a fairly complex process which requires, among other things, a large quantity of time in which to learn to understand the world, the objects in the world and the relationship between objects, people and the world. For this reason, it usually takes children between 1 and 2 years to start “using words to speak”.

For children who are exposed to several languages, this process is even more complex, since they are constructing these hypotheses and the relationships between objects, people and the world in different codes. It’s very normal for multilingual children to begin to pronouncing words in different languages they are exposed to when those particular words become easy and useful for them. At some point during this process, children begin to progress in their hypotheses and they may experience a sort of “mutation” phase in which they suddenly stop speaking, and it seems like they lost the words they used to be able to say.
This phase, which is relatively short, is necessary for them to continue progressing in their acquisition of several languages. This is because children begin to progressively learn new words and the relationships between those words, and they need time to clarify some of the rules about each of the languages they are exposed to.

Now back to the two important matters we discussed at the beginning of this response. In order to “help” children along in this process, as adults we must give them clear models of linguistic codes, where there are certain rules. It is not a good idea to constantly mix languages with your child by using all of the languages you know. At home you’re giving a clear message, but what happens when you’re with your neighbors? If you want to stimulate your child’s Spanish and English, you can speak Spanish (or whichever language you’ve chosen to naturally and comfortably speak with your child) in your daily life, except when you are playing a certain game or doing a certain activity, in which you will be speaking English. This gives a clear message: Spanish except when we’re playing this game in English.
This is one way to help children with their linguistic organization so that this analytical process going on in their brains will be effective and will help them to communicate efficiently in all of their languages (though they are generally more comfortable in one language than in another).
With regard to exposure time in each language, bear in mind that your daughter will need to be exposed to each of her minority languages (in this case, Spanish and German) for at least 20% of her waking hours per day. So if your daughter has begun to participate in activities with other children in Norwegian (playgroups, preschool, sports, workshops, etc), it is possible that this “mutation” phase is due to the fact that her Norwegian is growing stronger because of a diversity in stimulation in this language.
In any case, it is very normal and you shouldn’t be worried. However, if this should continue for a long time, don’t hesitate to consult with a specialist.

Best,
Mariana Lombardo

Mariana Lombardo is an experienced children speech therapist. She does clinical work at SINEWS with bilingual families in the expat community in Madrid. Mariana is in charge of the workshops for bilingual families offered by SINEWS and she also gives personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families. For more information, please visit www.sinews.es