Ask Sinews

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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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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

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

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I’m writing because I have several doubts about how to teach my son a language which is not my own. Because it is his father’s language, I’d like for him to learn it as though it was his mother tongue.

My son and I live in a small town (with my son’s grandparents) where no one speaks English. His father and his family are English and, even though they don’t have much of a relationship, I’d like for my son to know about British culture and speak English as well as he speaks Spanish.

Now my son is 2 and a half years old, and he is starting to repeat everything. I try to speak to him in English as much as I can, and it seems like he understands me. But I also speak to him in Spanish, and I have read that it would be better for him to relate English with a specific person. I don’t know if I am confusing him because there are words he doesn’t know how to say in Spanish that he does say in English (though he does understand them in Spanish).

He always watches cartoons in English and I read to him in English and Spanish. My parents ask him to say things in English, but he doesn’t really know what English and Spanish are yet. He can count in both languages but I have to prompt him. If I say “uno” he says “dos” and if I say “one”, he begins to count with “two” all the way to ten.
I’m the only one who speaks to him in a different language and I don’t know if that is enough for him to be bilingual or if he’ll learn when he goes to school and becomes curious about the culture and wants to learn about it. But will it be too late then? I’ve very overwhelmed, I don’t know if I’m doing a good job because I can tell he is evolving more in Spanish than in English. Does this mean he’ll never be bilingual? I always speak to him in English when we are alone, but not at the same time each day, though I’ve read that it’s a good idea for children to associate a language with a time and place, bath time, dinner time, etc. I speak to him in English when I can tell he is receptive.
I really hope you can help me. I don’t know if I should see a professional who could help me, since it is very difficult to do this alone.

Thank you very much.
Helena

Hi Helena!

I think it’s great that you are making such a strong effort to teach your son about another culture through his father’s language. It’s a difficult task, but it’s not impossible! As I always say in our Workshops, don’t get overwhelmed and give up other important things in favor of bilingualism! There will always be opportunities to learn a second language, but our children are only very small once and it is also fantastic to enjoy those years in one, two or many languages.

First, it’s logical that your son would have more vocabulary and sentences in Spanish, and it will also be logical if you notice a significant difference between his Spanish and English as he begins to speak more and interact with more people. This is especially true if the only person he speaks English with is you.
But don’t panic! I believe that every little thing (or big thing) you do to help him learn is allowing a small seed to grow.

Your question brings up several interesting points:
1. “it would be better for him to relate English with a specific person.” In your case, there is no one person who just speaks one specific language. But that is in no way a bad thing. The only thing you need to do is get a bit organized. It’s not a good idea for you to constantly translate what you’re saying or switch back and forth between English and Spanish. You are a model for your child and you should try to be a valid one. No one naturally speaks two different languages at the same time or repeats the same thing in two languages. Conclusion: your language is Spanish and in your daily life you interact with your son in Spanish. But you can choose certain moments during the day to share certain activities with your son in English. This could be reading a story, playing a game, bath time, shopping, whatever you and your son prefer. But try to find some time every day for interaction in his second language.
2. “he doesn’t really know what English and Spanish are yet”. Neither he nor any other small child who speaks two or more languages knows the names of those languages. To him there are just different ways to say the same thing. What you need to bear in mind is that when you want a child to learn two languages simultaneously as a small child, the best way to do this is the natural way. In this sense, asking him to translate something is not a good idea. Why not? Because we naturally use language to communicate, ask for things, get something. If we translate, we are not really meeting any of the objectives of speaking.
3. “it’s a good idea for children to associate a language with a time and place”. This also goes along with what I told you in the first point, but it may be a good idea to clarify this. The idea of associating a language with a time and a place is more about giving a child certain communication norms and not mixing languages at the same time. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be the exact same moment every day (bath time, for example). If this is the way we interpret this, it would not be very helpful for a child. If you only speak English to your son at bath time, he will know lots of bath words in English, but he won’t know anything about food. The idea is to look for moments throughout the day to speak in his second language, but this doesn’t always have to be associated with the exact same activity.

Finally, I would recommend checking out the following link (http://www.rif.org/kids/leadingtoreading/es/leadingtoreading.htm). Here you’ll find many activities you can do with your child. And if you know someone else who speaks English, it would be great for your son to see that there are other people who can interact in that language.

Best of luck and please don’t be overwhelmed. There are many opportunities to learn. Now go have fun with your son!

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.

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Hi!

My husband and I are expecting a little one and we are both excited and anxious about the challenging language environment in which our baby will grow up: My husband is Italian, I am French, we live here in Spain (and plan to send our baby to a Spanish guarderia after my maternity leave ends)… and my husband and I speak English with each other. We are both quite attached to speaking our native languages to him, and neither my Italian and my Spanish, nor my husband’s French would be good enough for us to switch our “couple’s language” away from English.
Do you think hearing 4 languages and being talked to in 3 languages right from birth is going to be an issue for our son? Any recommendations?

Thanks a lot!
Aurelie

Hi Aurelie!
First I’d like to congratulate you! I hope all is well, and I’m sure you’ll have a beautiful baby!
With regard to your question, there is no reason why you shouldn’t raise a child in a multilingual environment. In fact, this is becoming very common! The secret lies in the way you decide to handle this and the amount of effort you’d like to make.

But let’s go step by step. We always say that language is culture, so language is very much a part of human emotions. So it is perfectly logical that both you and the baby’s father feel most comfortable speaking to him in your respective mother tongues. Surely you are both very prepared to speak to your child in Italian and French.
The same thing goes for your language as a couple. If you met in English and have always spoken to each other in English, it is completely logical that you would naturally and spontaneously continue to speak to each other in English. In fact, I recommend that you continue to do so, since this is an important aspect of your relationship.
However, you’ll need to bear in mind one fundamental aspect in your situation. Your child will be interacting in three languages: Italian with Dad, French with Mom and Spanish at school. The language you and your husband speak to each other will only be another model which your child will hear, but he won’t have the need to use it, since no one will be speaking to him directly in English. This factor will differentiate English from the other three languages.

If you read the majority of the responses in the Ask Sinews section, you’ll see that we always say that a child needs to feel the need to use a language if he is going to learn it properly. In your case, this won’t happen with English. In this case you will only be giving him the opportunity to passively listen to a fourth language (and if he needs to learn English in the future, this will surely help him to learn it more quickly).
Before I go, I’d like to remind you that the amount of time your child is exposed to each language is very, very important. So it would be great if both Mom and Dad tried to speak only French and Italian, since his stimulation in Spanish will be very strong once he starts school.
Try to look for ways to have fun with your child while using language as a fundamental tool: singing, reading stories together, playing with puppets…use your imagination!

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.

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Hello, I’ve been reading about OPOL (One Parent One Language) and I found this page, which is very interesting by the way. I’m from Argentina and I’m married to a Dutch woman. We live in Holland with our children. I speak to them in Spanish, my wife speaks in Dutch and we speak English to each other. My oldest son is 3 and a half years old, and he understands everything I say to him in Spanish but he answers me in Spanish mixed with Dutch. Sometimes he begins to ask me something in Dutch until I correct him. He goes to preschool three times a week where they only speak to him in Dutch. How can I get my son to speak to me in Spanish? Should I ignore him when he speaks to me in Dutch or is it normal for him to go through a phase of mixing languages?

Thank you,
Marcos

Dear Marcos,

Your question is very, very common in bilingual families.
In your case, first I should clarify that mixing languages is a normal phase and can even be good for bilingual development. At this point you shouldn’t be worried. With regard to your main concern, it’s very common for children to respond in their stronger language (normally the language of the community they live in, since they receive much more stimulation in that language) when their mother or father speaks to them in another native language, regardless of how well they understand that language.
This is due to a very positive reason: your son is learning about communication and he has discerned two fundamental things about learning to communicate all by himself:
-He knows you understand Dutch because he has seen you speak to other people in Dutch and can tell that you understand what others say to you.
-He knows that sometimes it’s quicker and easier to use Dutch if he wants you to give him something or let him do something.

The trick of pretending not to pay attention to him when he speaks to you in Dutch can be useful only sometimes if you don’t use it too much. Use this only to let him know that you prefer for him to speak to you in Spanish because there is no way you are going to fool him. He’s small, but he’s smart!

So, what can you do? I would say the most important thing is to be aware that even if he doesn’t always respond to you in your language, he is learning Spanish in a much more active way (though it may seem more passive) than he would learn in a conventional language class. With a small push towards a ”need” to speak Spanish, he could go from not speaking much to speaking volumes.

The truth is that there is no easy and perfect trick but the following strategies might be helpful:
-The most important thing is to provide stimulation in the minority language so that it won’t be seen as a tool that doesn’t work as well as Dutch (see other responses to Ask Sinews to read about strategies for stimulating the minority language).
-It’s also important for your son to see you speaking Spanish to other people in Holland. This way he will see Spanish as a “priveleged” language for communicating with you. For example, speak with your family via Skype so that both you and your son can speak with each other and your family in Spanish. In any case, he should be present when you speak to your family and should have the opportunity to contribute from time to time.
-Buy games and books in the language you want to stimulate and make sure they are appropriate for his level so that he doesn’t find the experience frustrating.
-Travel with your son to Spanish speaking countries so that he can see how useful Spanish is and can see that Spanish is your strongest language. There it will be much more likely for him to speak to you in Spanish and he may just continue to do so when you get home. Visits from family members who only speak Spanish are almost as useful.

It’s truly important for you not to give up or get too frustrated, since what may seem like it’s not working now can change very quickly with the right kind of stimulation. In any case, your son’s linguistic background in Spanish from hearing you speak to him in Spanish will provide enough input for him to use it easily when he needs it, unlike those of us who learned languages later on in life. The same thing goes for the English he hears his parents speaking at home. Though the active development of this language may be less, an invaluable amount of passive learning is going on and this will be very useful later in life.

Best of luck with your trilingual family project!

Dr. Orlanda Varela
Child Psychiatrist at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute
Dr. Orlanda Varela is a Child Psychiatrist and the Coordinator of the educational project for Bilingual Families at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute in Madrid. SINEWS organizes bilingualism workshops for parents in Madrid, as well as personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families with specific language development problems. For more information, please visit sinews.es

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Hello!

First I’d like to congratulate you on your website. It’s a very interesting site about a subject which matters to us all.

Our case is as follows: we are both Spanish and we live in Spain. We both speak English and German well because we studied at a German school as children and we have lived in England.

We speak Spanish with our children (a two year old and a three year old), since that is our native language. Both children go to a German preschool. Now we are planning to hire a nanny and we are doubting as to whether to hire a German or an English speaking nanny. On the one hand, a German nanny would reinforce their German, which is the language they speak at school. On the other hand, since we know that children can learn languages very easily, we thought that an English speaking nanny would help them to learn a third language. Would it be better to reinforce their German or to introduce a third language? We could speak with the nanny either in German or English.

Thank you!
Manuela

Dear Manuela,

Congratulations on your multilingual family project.

As you have seen for yourself, both options have advantages and disadvatages but they will both provide very positive results: your children will be fluent in two or more languages from the time they are small! Both options are fantastic opportunities for your kids. As you and your partner were both educated in German schools, you already know the advantages and limitations of studying in another language.

Reinforcing German at home with a German nanny would have the following advantages:
-It would provide a less academic stimulation in which your children will learn those popular expressions that distinguish late language learners from native speakers (things like “that’s cool!” which aren’t typically taught at school).
-Creating a connection between the child and German culture, in addition to the language. A German nanny could sing your child songs from her country and teach them traditional games, which vary from place to place.
-The nanny would be a resource for helping with homework if necessary when you and your partner aren’t available.
-I understand that you and your partner speak more fluent German than English, so listening to you speak with the nanny would be useful and stimulating for your children and would help them to identify you as German speakers. And it will make them see that everyone speaks to the nanny in German because she can communicate most easily in that language.

Introducing English as a third language would have other advantages:
-Early learning allows for a much greater phonetic adaptation and reduces the probability that your children will speak the language with a foreign accent in the future.
-At this time in their lives, your children won’t experience the stress and prejudices of learning a new language which they might experience later. They learn without realizing it. Obviously, this would mean a change and an effort, so it may not be a good idea to do this at the same time as another important change (like starting school, having a little brother or sister, etc).
-Your children will be trilingual! That is, if they receive enough stimulation in each of their three languages (when your dealing with three langauges, you will need to try to maintain at least two hours per day of exposure to each language).

That said, you would need to evaluate the amount of effort (work and money) each option would entail and you would also need to study the children’s linguistic development and the amount of opportunities you would be able to provide in each language.

If you are ever interested, I remind you that in Sinews we do provide counseling for bilingual families on a deeper level, in which we do a more in-depth study of your case through an on-line questionnaire followed by an hour and a half long session in which we’ll ask you for more information and give you a personalized plan, specifically tailored for your family and each child’s needs (total cost: 60 euros) You can find more information on our website: www.sinews.es

Best of luck!

Dr. Orlanda Varela
Child Psychiatrist at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute
Dr. Orlanda Varela is a Child Psychiatrist and the Coordinator of the educational project for Bilingual Families at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute in Madrid. SINEWS organizes bilingualism workshops for parents in Madrid, as well as personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families with specific language development problems. For more information, please visit sinews.es

image credit: strong as a bull, by irene nobrega, via flickr

Hi!

First I’d like to congratulate you on the link in El País digital about your work, which was very interesting. Now I’d like to tell you about my son’s case. I’m Spanish and my husband is English. We live in Sweden. Our son is four and a half years old and I believe that he is now basically trilingual. I always speak to him in Spanish and my husband always speaks to him in English. At home we all speak in English. My son goes to a Swedish school and speaks Swedish there.

I find it interesting that he had never mixed languages and he actually immediately changes languages if he is going to speak to me or his father. One thing that is surely helping him to learn is the fact that his father and I don’t speak Swedish (we understand some but not much), so our son knows he can only communicate with us in Spanish or English. When we go to the UK, he speaks in English with his family, but even when I speak to him in English out of respect for those who are listening to us, he scolds me and tells me to speak to him in Spanish, not English. In Spain, of course, he speaks in Spanish with no problems. When he’s playing in his room at home, sometimes I hear him speaking in Swedish or occasionally in Spanish, but never in English.

We have also noticed that, compared wiht other children his age, he speaks with less fluency or concordance, but we understand that this is not really a problem but rather that he is learning a bit more slowly because he is learning three languages simultaneously.

We might be wrong, I don’t know. My main concern now is reading and writing. He is beginning to come into contact with letters at school and my question is this: should we be doing something with English and Spanish at home? The alphabet is the same with the exception of the three extra Swedish letters Å - Ä -Ö, but the pronunciation is different and he won’t be learning that at school. What is your opinion? Could you please recommend a book about this?

Thank you!
Carmen

Dear Carmen,

First I’d like to thank you for your interest in our work. I’d also like to say that I love how your son “scolds you and tells you to speak in Spanish not English”. This shows just how connected languages are with emotions in relationships. And your son understands this perfectly!

And now on to your question. Learning to read and write.

From my point of view, you can begin this process simultaneously and your child can begin to have contact with the written word in all three languages at once. Of course, this does not mean that he needs to start learning to read and write or that you have to sit down with him to “teach him” to read and write in Spanish, English and Swedish. It just means that you should begin showing him the written word and allowing him to create hypotheses. Just like each language is pronounced differently, each language is also written differently.

One very useful resource are bilingual books, and there are many bilingual books available in Spanish and English. They are great for helping small children to begin to differentiate illustrations from letters and they show both languages in their written form with the same drawing which will help them identify the meaning of the written symbols.

Card games like Memory or Pairs are also an option. Here, instead of just pairing up images, children can also begin to match up written words. One card is written in English and the other in Spanish. Or they may be some pairs in English and some in Spanish. Here you can take advantage of the fact that your son does a great job of differentiating and identifying which language each parent speaks. So the pairs in English are for Dad and the Spanish ones are for Mom. In this way, you can all play together and differentiate each language.

At Bilingual Readers you can find many resources.

There are many ways to naturally and simultaneously introduce the concept of the written word in both languages.

The process is just like when a monolingual child learns to read. First he tries to differentiate the drawing of “something” on paper that is not a drawing. Then he begins to understand that that “something” is different if it pertains to Mom’s language or Dad’s language. Then he will begin to act like he’s reading and speak words in English or Spanish according to the kind of writing he sees. Finally, he will begin to apply the different rules for reading and writing. At first he may mix things up, there may be interferences between one language and the other, but he will begin to read and write without realizing it.

So my advice would be to begin to introduce your son to the written word in stories and games so that he will begin to differentiate between the written word in Swedish, Spanish and English.

Best of luck,

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.

image credit: don't panic, by patrick hoesly, via flickr

I just discovered your website, which I find very useful and interesting. I’ve been thinking about bilingualism for some time now, from the time my now one year old daughter, Marina, was born. My greatest concern is that we would like for her to learn a second language right away for all the usual reasons: globalization, lack of jobs in Spain, cultural enrichment, the ability to travel with ease…

Our problem is that we learned English poorly: with little or no conversation and too much grammar, without native teachers…We do not feel able to teach her and we fear that the majority of the bilingual schools are not doing much to improve the system (I’m a teacher). On the other hand, the bilingual schools in Valencia (where we’re from) are expensive, especially if we want to have more children and give them all the same opportunities. And there are other disadvantages, like the educational style and the fact that they are far away.

My questions are: What can we do to help Marina learn English? Movies and cartoons in English? Should we save up money so that she can study abroad when she is older? A native speaking teacher at home once per day or once per week? Where can we find an ideal teacher? Thank you in advance for your response.

Miguel Ángel Mascarell

Dear Miguel Ángel,

First I want to encourage you to follow through with this bilingual project for your daughter. Of course, I’ll also tell you that it is not easy and it does require some effort and cost. But first and foremost, you should decide on a realistic project which will not cause you to sacrifice other essential things in your family.

Fortunately, there are now many ways to expose children to a new language. This no longer depends completely on parents or school. But we must always bear in mind that our children must be motivated to learn the language if we want this to happen in a natural way. This is the key, helping your child to feel motivated to communicate and interact in a language.

This is why movies and cartoons can be a useful tool if one of you sits down with your daughter to share this activity and talk about what you’re watching. Like I said before, motivation comes from interaction. Simply watching television can be a source of entertainment, but it is not enough to acquire a language.

I don’t know what your level of English is, but sometimes you don’t need to worry about speaking to them with an accent if you’re just trying to provide support and reinforcement for the language. For many parents who don’t feel confident about their English, it can be very helpful to read stories, so that they don’t have to worry about grammatical errors. If you feel up to it, you can buy bilingual books and have a favorite stuffed animal “read” the story in English when it is time to “speak/play” the second language. This is a shared activity with Mom and Dad, so this is a motivating way to expose your child to a new language.

Of course, this alone will not make your child bilingual. That’s why it is important that you give her opportunities to do activities with people who will only speak to her in English often enough for her to truly learn the language.

For young children, playgroups with parents, children and teachers who only speak English while doing fun activities can be very helpful. The idea is not to “learn” a language but rather to acquire it in a natural way.

Another option which would be appropriate for a child your daughter’s age would be to hire a native speaking babysitter or invite an au pair to stay at your home (you can find more information on this kind of services at www.soschildcare.com).

Finally, the idea of spending some time abroad is a great one. But there will be plenty of time for that. Now you can start with these other resources, while Marina is young and able to learn a second language naturally and effortlessly.

As you can see, there are several options for helping a child to learn a new language. But whatever you do, remember that the most important thing is to give your daughter opportunites to communicate and to create a need for her to communicate in English while having fun.

Best of luck!

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.