New Zealand’s PM wants to raise her newborn daughter bilingually (Source: radionz)
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, plans to raise her newborn daughter bilingually in Māori and English. Her desire for her child – and all New Zealand children – to grow up proficient in more than one language is not unusual in today’s world and echoes the desires of many Australian parents, too. A recent study of young Australian mothers found high levels of support for bilingual child rearing.
Mothers wanted to give their children “the gift of bilingualism” and spoke glowingly about the many advantages and benefits they hoped bilingualism would bestow on their children. They felt that proficiency in another language in addition to English would enrich their children’s future, that it would give them a career edge, and that it would allow them to travel overseas but also connect with diverse communities in Australia. Many also believed that bilingualism would give their children a cognitive advantage and they were aware of health benefits of bilingualism such as delayed onset of dementia.
In short, like New Zealand’s PM, the mothers in the study aspired to raise their children with English and another language for many good reasons. There was another similarity: while they knew what they wanted, they did not quite know how to achieve their goal. Like Ardern they confided that, while they were sure they wanted their children to learn English and another language, they found it difficult to figure out “how that will happen.”
The main difficulties with raising bilingual children in Australia – as in any English-dominant society – can be traced back to the overbearing role of English. The dominance of English makes bilingual parenting extra hard for a number of reasons.
To begin with, Australians often have relatively low levels of proficiency in another language and this can lead to deep insecurities. How do you do “being a competent parent” while fighting insecurities whether your pronunciation is good enough or struggling to find the right word?
Second, you may want bilingualism for your child. But you also want your child to be well adjusted, to make friends easily and to do well in school. English is the indispensable means to achieve these goals. So, you may suffer from a niggling doubt that the other language may detract from your child’s English.
By focusing on the other language in the home, do you inadvertently jeopardize your child’s academic success or their friendship groups? Research shows that this is not true but it can certainly seem that way when your child throws a tantrum in the supermarket and everyone stares at you as you try to calm her down in another language.
Third, contemporary parenting is difficult and fraught with anxieties at the best of times. Bottle or breast? Disposable or cloth nappy? Soccer or cricket? The number of decisions we have to make seems endless and each decision seems to index whether we are a good parent or a parenting fail.
Questions of language choice and language practices add a whole other dimension to the complexities of modern parenting: When should you start which language? Who should speak which language to the child? Is it ok to mix languages? The list goes on and on. Parents not only need to figure out answers to these questions, they also need to live their answers out on a daily basis.
Furthermore, parenting is not something that we do in isolation. Mums and dads may not arrive at the same answers. When one partner is deeply committed to bilingual parenting and the other is not, that can easily put a strain on the relationship. Many couples know that mundane questions like whose turn it is to do the dishes can easily escalate into a fight when everyone is tired and juggling too many responsibilities. Now imagine such daily problems amplified by debates over whose turn it is to read the bedtime story in the other language or whose fault it is that the bedtime story in the other language is always the same because there are only two books in that language in the local library.
The parents of New Zealand’s “First Baby” want to raise their daughter bilingually because they recognize that bilingualism is important in today’s world – just like Australian parents. They do not quite know how to do it and they will undoubtedly struggle turning their aspiration into a reality as their daughter grows up and starts to have her own ideas about bilingualism. Having to make language decisions part and parcel of all the mundane parenting and family decisions that we all make all the time will be a challenge – just as it is for Australian parents.
But that is where the similarity ends.
New Zealand parents do not have to face the challenges of raising their children bilingually alone – in contrast to Australian parents. We all know that it takes a village to raise a child. Parents need the support of the wider community. This holds even more so when it comes to bilingual parenting. Specifically, bilingual families need institutional support, particularly from schools, in order to thrive.
New Zealand’s te kōhanga reo or “language nests” are preschools that operate through the medium of Māori and have been highly successful in supporting bilingual proficiencies in Māori and English. Additionally, there are now plans to make bilingual education in Māori and English universally available in all public schools by 2025.
In Australia, our policy makers have so far ignored the aspirations of an ever-growing number of families for meaningful language education that fosters high levels of linguistic proficiency in English and another language. In fact, the overbearing role of English in academic achievement often means that schools actively conspire against the wishes of families. As a result, those best able to raise bilingual children in Australia are those who have the means to afford specialized private schools, extended overseas holidays or bilingual nannies.
When will our leaders end the disconnect between families’ linguistic aspirations and the education system? When will we see an all-of-society effort to help put the bilingual proficiencies needed to thrive in the 21st century within the reach of all?
Reference
Piller, I., & Gerber, L. (2018). Family language policy between the bilingual advantage and the monolingual mindset. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1-14. doi:10.1080/13670050.2018.1503227 [if you do not have institutional access, you may download an open access version here. The number of OA downloads is limited, so, institutional users, make sure to leave this link for readers without institutional access … An OA pre-publication version is available here].
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I can relate to the feeling of wanting to raise our future kids trilingual and not know how to do it best. Through my studies I have come to learn that it’s potentially beneficial for kids to grow up multilingual, because of the reasons also mentioned in this article. My mother tongue is Spanish, my husband is German and we both communicate in a code-switching mix of all three. Most of the times, we don’t even realize when we change. We realized this because people often ask us “what language do you speak at home?” and then we realize we had just switched, or also people point it out. I must say I love languages and also realize, the more languages I learn, the more flexible I have become in making mistakes in them. For example, I don’t thrive to type perfectly in WhatsApp. I don’t necessarily pay attention to the “accents” in Spanish. I do write them in a letter, but while typing, I “tolerate” myself with some mistakes. The same happens in German, if I’m typing in WhatsApp, and the app didn’t autocorrect that nouns are written in caps, I sometimes opt to save time and not correct myself. I feel like sometimes that might end up damaging a bit my accuracy of spelling / grammar in the future, nevertheless, since I only have so much energy, I try to “Pareto Principle” it. (80-20). And this is a strategy that helps me go through the days, because I’m a very perfectionistic person and I could literally get lost in time trying to improve everything to the maximum, but I have learned in Germany that it is not always about optimizing everything, but about getting everything needed done. This does create a certain insecurity in me in terms of how to raise our kids and if this “laidbackness” could affect negatively the level of proficiency of my kids in their languages. I try to think that it’s better if they speak 1-2 languages in a good level and a 3rd in a satisfactory level, than if they only speak one perfectly. This is still my point of view.
This was my original plan:
Option 1: If we stay in Germany: I speak only Spanish with my kids. My husband speaks mostly English (he’s got a very elevated proficiency but it isn’t his mother tongue) with them. They learn German in the Kita (Childcare) and at school.
Option 2: We move to an English country. (Almost best case scenario in my imagination); I speak Spanish. He speaks German. They learn English at school.
But at the moment: I think maybe it’s better if I speak Spanish, he speaks German, and we decide on maybe 1-2 days where we speak English together. This is assuming we stay in Germany. I came to this thought because I’d like our kids to be “fully integrated” in the culture of their country of origin. I’d like them to read the books that usually kids there read, I’d like them to play the usual games, and know the “typical knowledge”. I realize German kids have an astonishing knowledge of animals and plants. I’d like my kids to have that knowledge, among other things, because I think it could facilitate their school trajectory. I will try and do my best to match this knowledge in Spanish. I also think it’s important that my husband speaks his mother tongue so that the kids can pick up the “proper” pronunciation, because I know I don’t have it always. And I also think the relationship is more natural if my husband can speak in his mother tongue, so that they both (dad + kid) can feel in their language, instead of creating a maybe forced search for trying to express something and not always knowing how.
So, this is my current point of view. I’m “afraid” though, that it might be more chaotic than the way I intend it to be. It might actually end up being a mix of everything, but maybe that’s not that bad either.
Observations in my social circle: My nephews and niece are bilingual. The first two were monolingual in Spanish until they moved (5, 3 y/o) and learned English. My niece was born in an English-speaking country. I’d say they all speak better English than Spanish. But I’m very amazed how well they can express themselves in Spanish, even if here and there they make a mistake. And I think it’s incredible that they have such “high levels” in both languages according to their ages (15, 13, 6).
I think raising a kid bi-/trilingual is a great gift for them, both academically and also emotionally. It allows them to connect with their families overseas, it trains their brain’s plasticity, it might likely have a positive impact in their academics. And I also think it likely helps them appreciate their roots. This usually is rather a late realization, once they’re grown up. When they are kids, I have experienced that they find it rather annoying. Two examples:
1. At my sister’s it’s “only allowed” to speak Spanish. But of course, the kids speak English when they’re alone, because it’s not their go-to language, and maybe the one perceived as “cool” or more “normal”.
2. We have Australian friends with German parents. They both come every couple of years to Germany and in conversation with them, who in my opinion do speak German quite well, they have both expressed they wished their parents would’ve been stricter about them speaking German at home, because as kids they found it annoying to have to speak a different language than their friends’ but now, they wish they’d speak better / more “accent-free” German.
This examples, specially the later one, have led me to “assure” myself that I definitely want to try my best to be “strict” enough and “teach” my kids Spanish as well as possible, although I know and can imagine that this is easier said than done and teaching a kid a second language can be very challenging in different aspects.
Oh and in the best case scenario I’d like to be able to afford having an Au-pair.
So much to think about 🙂
One of the key issues is the gap between parents’ enthusiasm for raising bilingual
children and the practical difficulties of actually doing so in everyday life. From my
personal experience I only know one family who is raising their children bilingually. They
chose the one-parent-one-language approach and it worked really well for them. Both
of the parents speak German, but the mother is originally from the UK so her mother
tongue is English. To avoid the problem of being ashamed in public “when your child
throws a tantrum in the supermarket” they don’t see this approach too strict and rather
focus on having natural conversations according to the environment they are in. What
my key take-away of this example is that whie it is important to have an approach and to
stick to it, it can also be helpful to be flexible and adapt to certain situations. Because
not only you may feel ashamed at the supermarket, your child may also feel that way
which could lead to a child refusing to speak a language which made them feel
uncomfortable.
You are so right, Lara: language rules are there to be broken 😉
I found this post very interesting because it reflects my own experience with bilingual upbringing. My parents have different mother tongues, and when I was a child they decided to focus on my fathers language at home, while I learned German through school and my surroundings. As a result, I never fully learned to actively speak my mother’s language.
However, because I was constantly exposed to it through family conversations and interactions, I can understand most of what is being said. Speaking the language myself is much more difficult, and I often struggle to find the right words. In a way, I feel that I was raised “bilingual and a half”, fluent in one family language and able to understand, but not comfortably speak, the other.
Personally, I believe that every language is a key that opens another door to the world. My parents worried that learning more than two languages would be too complicated, but I eventually learned four languages. Looking back, I think children are often more capable of learning multiple languages than adults expect, especially when they are given meaningful opportunities to use them.
Agree that adults too often underestimate children!
I agree with the article that raising a bilingual child can be challenging in many ways. For instance, it can be difficult to get the child use both languages if it perceives one language to be not as relevant as the other, because most family members and friends only speak the dominant language. For example, my cousin grew up in Germany speaking German and Norwegian, since his father is from Norway. Although his father spoke German very well, he only addressed my cousin in Norwegian to raise him bilingual. The result was that my cousin could understand Norwegian but could only speak German, as everyone else spoke German to him. When he was about three years old, he asked his mother in German if she could tell his father that he wanted to play football with him. When she asked him why he didn’t ask his father himself, he said he can’t because his father wouldn’t understand him.
Since my cousin was never confronted with Norwegian except when his father talked to him, he may have perceived Norwegian to be unnecessary as German was more useful. As a result he thought he couldn’t communicate with his father.
What a cute story! Sometimes parents pretend not to understand the societal language to force children to use the minority language, and usually children cotton on to the ruse quite quickly. Your cousin’s case is kind of the opposite – bilingualism is endlessly fascinating 🙂
I found the article very interesting because I did not grow up in a bilingual environment. The article discussed both the advantages and disadvantages of raising bilingual children. In my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages because now that I am older, I want to learn a new language, and it is really difficult. Children who grow up bilingual have the opportunity to learn another language naturally from an early age. I also agree with the article that bilingualism can help people connect with different cultures and communities. That means children might have the oppertunity to leave for example germany and go completely into another country, if they wish. For these reasons, I think parents should be encouraged and supported if they want to raise their children bilingually.
You are so right – parents can’t do it alone and need societal support to raise children bilingually.
My partner is Australian-German and was raised bilingual. I can clearly see that he is much less hesitant to speak English than I am. In my broader circle of friends, I have a friend who attended an international school, and I’ve noticed the same ease when it comes to expressing oneself in another language. I believe it can be a huge advantage to be exposed to another language from an early age. I’m also a big fan of the ‘language nests’ in New Zealand, because they honor the native language and culture in addition. I think it’s crucial to establish such initiatives here too.
Regarding our new role as parents, we’ve thought about raising our son bilingual as well, but to be honest, the topic often gets lost in the busyness of everyday life. Since our son is still so young, it’s easy to keep putting this decision off, but at the same time, I know how rewarding it would be to establish a structure right from the start. However, after reading this article, I feel I need to bring it up again soon. For my part, I’ve been thinking about using Sweden as a role model when it comes to media consumption in the future. I’m considering introducing movies and TV series exclusively in English, especially since that’s mostly how I watch TV myself.
Good luck with all, Eva! One advantage of starting “from day 1” is that you don’t have to change later, and establish new habits, which is an additional challenge, particularly when life is so busy anyways, as you say.
Of course it is more complex to raise a child bilingually than if only one language is spoken. Nevertheless, the advantages for the child throughout their entire life are significant.
Among my friends, there are several children growing up bilingual. My experience has been consistently positive, although very varied. In each of these families, the parents have different native languages, so it is very natural for both languages to be spoken. In some cases, the other parent speaks the language as well, while in others they do not. Some of the children switch naturally between the languages, while others speak the second language only with the respective parent. And in one case, the children, that are rather young, have always understood the second language but refuse to speak it unless they are in the country where the language is actually spoken.
I therefore think that the facets of bilingual upbringing are diverse and do not always follow the same pattern. It takes courage and certainly a certain degree of perseverance to truly live bilingualism. But I think it will certainly be worth it.
Couldn’t agree more 🙂
I worked at a german school in Nairobi, Kenya for about 8 months. The struggle for choosing the “right” language for different moments, contexts and social situations was something that was present all day long. Even primary school students communicated that they themselves think about when to use which language.
Especially the scholarship students, who were exclusively kenyan, struggled the most: they had two important languages for academic purposes. They needed to learn german, because the lessons were taught in german and at the end of the school career there was the german Abitur. But they also had learn English because maybe they wouldn’t want to study in Germany, as was the plan of almost all the german by origin students. On top of that many kenyan parents wanted their kids to know Suaheli.
The kids that I have worked with during my stay had, like I mentioned, a really hard time keeping up with school.
I think that the focus on having two academicly important languages (english and german) and the lack of support by the school were the key factors for the kenyan students having a worse performance than the german students.
That sounds tough. Was that a German International School? I’ve often seen them struggle with finding a balance between catering to their native-speaking and GSL students. Would love to hear more about your experience at some point.
As a kid I was always very jealous of my friends that had grown up bilingual because I was always eager to learn new languages but not eager to work hard for it. I’m wondering how I can approach the topic in the future when I will eventually have children. I consider myself fluent in English but it’s not my native language and I would be scared to teach my children wrongly. Also since me and my partner both only grew up speaking German it would feel unnatural to suddenly speak English at home. Yet we do consume most of our media and entertainment in English which makes me wonder if that can be enough to at least give children a little head start with learning English.
As you say, it’s not an all-or-nothing problem: even just singing English nursery rhymes can give them that initial familiarity 🙂
I was born in the UK and moved to Germany when I was five, so I grew up between two languages and cultures. At home we mainly spoke English because my dad never learned German, while my mum is a native German speaker. This created an interesting dynamic in our family. My sister and I sometimes wanted to speak German at home as well, especially as we became more comfortable with it at school and in everyday life. However, my father preferred us to stick to English, which sometimes limited how much we used German in the home environment. Looking back, I can see both the advantages and challenges of bilingual upbringing, especially when parents have different language abilities and expectations.
Dads can often be a bit of a limiting factor 😉 – one of my favorite books about bilingual parenting shows that quite clearly: Okita, T. (2002). Invisible work: bilingualism, language choice and childrearing in intermarried families. Benjamins.
I have thought about raising a future child bilingually before, but it seems super tough if you aren’t a native speaker in that second language. We definitely need institutional solutions like bilingual kindergartens or afternoon programs with highly proficient staff. Setting this up is probably very resource-intensive, but it’s 2026 and multilingualism is just too important for society!
At home I would probably introduce a specific “English day” where we only use English at home for that day and use media like books, movies and audiobooks to build early literacy. I’m not sure if that’s enough to actually be “bilingual”. I don’t fear that the dominant language will suffer when raising a child bilingually. Bilingualism is a huge win for careers, travel, and intercultural learning.
I have seen the flip side with friends who never learned their parents native language because their parents prioritized the dominant language just for school success and integration. It makes sense at first, but it robs kids of effortlessly acquiring a language and it will never be this easy again to learn a new language! It may also hinder their ability to connect with their cultural roots. My friends have mixed feelings: some are fine because they picked up other languages later, while others regret missing out and are struggling to catch up now as adults.
Thanks, Henrik! Good points. Btw, there is no definition of bilingual other than being able to use two or more languages – no one says that you have to be able to use those languages “perfectly” because, for better or worse, something like perfection doesn’t exist in language.
I think the issue with an overbearing language can applied to any society in which you want to raise your children bilingually. Additionally, I find it also plays a role which status the languages have in the society. For example, my daughter is raised quadrilingual in Germany. The national language German as well as Spanish and English are perceived as desirable languages for a child to acquire, and I have been praised on many occasions for passing these on to my child, claiming it is a cultural and linguistic treasure. However, my husband´s experience is quite different to mine; He speaks with our daughter Arabic and admits that he is often hesitant to speak Arabic to her in public, as he fears that they would be looked at and that our daughter would be confronted with discriminatory experiences early on in her life. So, I understand the point made in the article about the concern whether the language presents an advantage or an obstacle for your child. As to questions about the how of bi-or multilingual parenting: I think authenticity is most important. Parents should feel comfortable in speaking to their child, the language chosen should be able to convey familiarity and intimacy, as well as proficiency. In my opinion, speaking in your mother-tongue is the best way to do that, and ideally you surround your child with a linguistically diverse community that supports the languages it hears and speaks at home.
Good point and good luck – hope she grows up to enjoy all four languages 🙂
The article made me think about my own experience as a babysitter. The children‘s mother is Swiss and I noticed that she usually speaks Swiss German with her children, especially in emotional situations (for example when she is angry or correcting the children’s behavior). When I am present, she switches to Hochdeutsch so that I can understand what she says.
What I find interesting is that the children don’t seem to notice these switches. They also use some Swiss German words themselves without knowing that these words are different from Hochdeutsch. The difference is often not even that big, but sometimes I still don’t understand what they mean. In these situations, they usually correct themselves and use a different word they know. They also have friends in kindergarten, who speak other languages at home, for example Italian. One boy clearly knows that Italian is the language he mainly uses with his mother. This shows how naturally children switch between languages or varieties in everyday life, without even thinking about it too much.
Interesting observation – judgements about language separation often only come with schooling …
In the article, there were questions about when parents should start teaching different languages, who should speak which language with the child, and whether it is okay to mix languages. I can relate to this topic because I experienced a similar situation at work.
A few years ago, my former boss became a father. His wife is from Ukraine and speaks Ukrainian and Russian, he also speaks Russian and German. Both of them live in Germany. They wanted their son to grow up bilingual, but they were not sure how to do it correctly. Since I study to become a teacher for German and English, they asked me for advice, even though I am not an expert in bilingual education.
From my own knowledge, I told them that it might help if one parent mainly speaks one language and the other parent speaks another language. They liked this idea and wanted to follow it. However, after their son was born, I noticed that they often mixed languages naturally, especially during everyday conversations.
This made me realize how difficult bilingual parenting can be in reality. I think it would help parents if there were more accessible studies, books, or guides about bilingual education. It could make the process less stressful for families and give a clear structure.
The UK-based publishing house Multilingual Matters has several really useful books for bilingual parents.
In this case, I am referring to the following questions: „When should which language be spoken?“ and „Who speaks which language with the child?“
In general, I grew up monolingual and primarily learned the language German at home. Both of my parents speak German as the first language. However, it was important to both of my parents that I learn the global language English as early as possible. Altough my parents spoke English with me from time to time, but English was not their primary language and they wanted me to learn the language correctly right from the start. Therefore, they did not speak excessively much English with me. The bilingual aspect came from school settings. It was really important to my parents that I attend a school that offered English starting in the first grade. They believed that early acquisition is crucial because it helps solidify language skills. Therefore, my parents wanted to ensure that this early acquisition took place within a school setting and above all, that teachers with specialized knowledge would guide me in this learning process.
Thanks, Forscherin01! So many decisions to make, even in a relatively straightforward linguistic scenario …
I agree with the article that raising bilingual children can be very difficult. In my view, one of the biggest problems is that both parents need to consistently speak both languages with the child. This is often hard because stress, school, and everyday life make it easier to switch back to the parents’ native language.
I think that only a few families really manage to raise their children bilingually for many years. The situation in society also makes it harder, because children mostly hear one main language at school, in the media, and with friends. Because of this, it is difficult to keep both languages equally important in daily life. In my opinion, bilingual parenting needs a lot of patience, discipline, and support from society.
So true! Life often gets in the way of bilingual parenting, as this highly recommended book shows:
Benz, V. (2017). Bilingual Childcare: Hitches, Hurdles and Hopes. Multilingual Matters.
This post reminded me of a situation in my own social circle. A German friend of mine living in the US is currently trying to raise her child trilingually with English, German, and Spanish. She especially wants her child to learn Spanish since it’s the second most spoken language in the US.
I think her main struggle almost matches the linguistic anxiety mentioned in the post. Because she only knows school-level Spanish, she constantly worries that her vocabulary isn’t strong enough. Her husband doesn’t speak it at all and doesn’t really prioritize multilingualism, so he isn’t a help. With her own family back in Germany, she often feels completely isolated in this journey. To fill the gaps, she is hiring German and Spanish au pairs. She feels incredibly lucky to have the financial resources for this, especially since it improves her own Spanish and gives her someone to talk to in German. Fortunately, local middle schools offer both German and Spanish courses, and she plans to enroll her child there as soon as they are old enough.
Sounds like a really complicated arrangement! Good luck to your friend!
Thanks for the interesting article! I found the development of the research area, Family Language Policy, fascinating. I studied languages and language acquisition, learning and teaching in the 1990s. Much of my focus was on Michael Clyne’s work. I have also taught English as a second language and German language.
I’m raising my son using the one language/one parent method. He is nearly 2.5 and understands both English and German. He uses his own sign language and sounds to communicate with us. He now has three words, which you’d find in the dictionary.
I found your article interesting because it seems to indicate that a less rigid approach (one parent/one language) to bringing up children bilingually can work. It also seems to be more accepting of less than grammatically perfect language use.
My concerns, in contrast, to the linked article are the limitations of my German (as a non-native speaker), and accessing other German speaking resources for children. I use youtube videos and have bought children’s books in German. If you could guide me to further reading on bringing up children in a culture with a monolingual mindset, I’d appreciate it.
Further, I wasn’t able to access the reading related to relationship tensions arising from raising children bilingually. I’m finding this is the case in the relationship with my son’s Dad. He, btw, is learning German much the way our son is!
Thank you in advance, and regards,
Sarah
It was an interesting topic. My parents also chose to use Urdu for family communication instead of their mother tongue. So at home we speak in Urdu and at school we speak in Arabic and English. I think it was a wise decision of my parents to teach us Urdu because it connected us with our roots as well as helped us in learning Arabic and English which were necessary to move in the society we live as immigrants. At the same time, it gave us a larger space to express ourselves. Reading in three languages is also an experience worth enjoying.
I was raised bilingual and I couldn’t be more thankful for that.
This a great summary of some of the competing pressures or influences on parents when it comes to family language policy decisions and their implementation. I thought I might share some of my thoughts and experiences of bi/multi-lingual parenting so far.
Choosing to speak my second language (French) with my toddler has been challenging in some of the ways mentioned – particularly, worrying about whether I can meet his other needs (emotional, behavioural, social etc) as he develops, when my proficiency or fluency is not quite as high as my first language (English).
Another concern in our situation is how speaking French with him may impact the family dynamic as my husband does not speak/understand French. At the baby/toddler stage, this hasn’t been a major problem – in fact, it has mostly led him to picking up a number of basic expressions and key vocab, eating, changing nappies etc. Still, I do wonder how this may play out as our son gets older and our conversations become less one-sided and more complex in subject matter.
For my husband, who, when he’s not using his newly acquired French words, speaks Pashto with our son, a key challenge is the lack of learning materials or media that he can share with him to help his exposure. For both of us, going forward, the lack of quality language learning opportunities outside the home means that the onus remains on us to create learning and speaking opportunities for our son.
Thank you for sharing, Laura. When I met your son last, I really enjoyed using my French with him, but I was also conscious of the fact that his skills will soon surpass mine.
It’ll be interesting to see how your family negotiates these languages as he grows, particularly given your own linguistics background, and the competing language ideologies we’re surrounded by. The discourses around transmitting a LOTE by a ‘non-native’ caregiver presented this FLP decision as a positive move, informed by the belief in a bilingual advantage. Unsurprisingly, posters in the forum condemned the decisions of a non-native English-speaking caregiver passing on ‘poor’ English. It’d be worth looking into how the monolingual mindset plays out in a specialised forum on bilingual parenting.