Introductions are in order :)

Indira - posted on 06/05/2012

My almost 2 years old son picking up new words quickly. I'm from Indonesia and fyi there are thousands of local languages in my country. I myself speak four local languages and my husband speak one local language. In everyday life I speak Bahasa Indonesia with my husband. But I have my own English course at home and my kid listens to English words almost everyday. He understand instruction given in any languages. I hope he can at least speak Bahasa Indonesia as his first language, English as his second language and one or two local languages as I believe that it is important to maintain his local languages.

Novieta - posted on 10/21/2010

Hi, my son in 2,5.. I speak Molo Ukuan to him. My husband speaks Surinamese to him. But since we live in the Netherlands, Dutch is being thaught outside our home. He seems to pick up all the languages well. He doesn't really talk much, but he understands most we're saying, no matter what language we're talking in.



He's still young, but I'm glad this community is here, cause I'm sure we'll bounce into some problems later on...

Ruth - posted on 08/30/2010

Hi. I'm a Scot, married to an Englishman, living in Israel. We speak English at home, and our 3 daughters (aged 7, 5 and 3) speak Hebrew almost everywhere else. We try to enforce the rule that English is spoen at home, the only exception being when non-English speaking friends come over.

It was much easier when they were small, but now it is harder.

Your - posted on 08/09/2010

Hi I have a 14 month old son and we speak to him on our native languages, I speak Spanish and English and my husband speak German and English to him, I speak English to my husband... My son goes to day care full time and they speak English ... therefore we use the OPOL method.... we really want our son speak Spanish and German because both of our families don’t speak much English... So the only way to communicate with our relatives is in the other languages.



I have seen that he is picking up one word for each thing… for example Ball he say it with the German pronunciation. Feet he recognize it in Spanish patitas…he says agua… and call my husband Papa and call me mama that is good because is the same in Spanish and German…



I have experienced that songs are a very good start point for babies… as much they do hear as much familiar they get with the languages…



Lorena

Sarah - posted on 08/08/2009

Hi, my daughter is 19 months old and we are trying to raise her to speak Spanish and English. We are not using any "method" per se, but my Costa Rican husband and I try to speak to her in both English and Spanish. We are not very formal with it, so I think she will end up speaking Spanglish like we do. We travel to Costa Rica annually, and his family comes here once a year as well. We try to skype with his family once a week...so hopefully by the time she speaks full sentences, she will be able to use both English and Spanish.

Sarah

Danielle - posted on 07/27/2009

Hi, I'm a single mom to a 7 year old boy. I'm bilingual. I speak Spanish. I have to admit, I was lazy in teaching my son Spanish. I would try for a week or a month or two and then just slip back into speaking only English.



My son goes back and forth in his interest to speak Spanish. When he had a crush on a little Latina girl in his Kindergarten class, he was SUPER-interested in speaking Spanish...now, he only sort of pays attention when I speak to him.



I regret not speaking Spanish to him from birth. I don't think it's too late...but I could be wrong. Anyway, I am always looking for ideas and techniques to help me.



I look forward to hearing how others go about raising bilingual or multilingual children--especially, if you don't have any immediate familial support for the second language.

Gabrielle - posted on 03/10/2009

My daughter is 2 and 1/2 and we're hoping she will end up at least partially quadrilingual. We speak almost exclusively English at home (my husband is Caucasian American) but we started with sign language when our daughter was a baby. We each know maybe 50 signs and we enjoy practicing them together. I am half Latina and speak some Spanish, and my daughter's daycare teaches a little Spanish, too, so we're working pretty well with that. I'm also Jewish and know a very small smattering of Hebrew. We hope to send our daughter to Hebrew school when she's a little older and I would like her to have some familiarity with the language. High hopes, I know, but I have always loved languages, and I hope my daughter does, too.

Mona - posted on 01/16/2009

We are raising a 4 years 5 months old daughter tri-lingually, using the OPOL (One Parent One Language) method. I speak exclusively Arabic to her (my native tongue), my husband speaks Polish to her (his native tongue) and US English is the community language. It has been challenging some times, especially when she was younger and couldn't express herself in English, but it has been very awarding to see how she juggles all three languages so naturally now :) I am a bit of a fanatic about people teachign their native tongues to their children. I personally could not imagine speaking to my child(ren) in a foreign language. Just wouldn't feel right.

Thanks
Mona