Parent to Parent

What have been the biggest challenges or issues of raising a bilingual child?
How did you resolve the issue?

Keeping Spanish as our primary home language when our son was turning seven, as he would all too often insist on responding in English to our Spanish conversation. We had been forewarned this was a critical age. Fortunately, we are able to travel to our native country, Venezuela, at least once a year, and meeting there during vacation time with a bunch of Venezuelan cousins has been crucial for our son keeping fluent in Spanish and continuing to speak it at home.
— Father of bilingual 11-year old (Spanish)

Teaching him correctly and making him think and understand in both languages but separately, not in "Spanglish." We talk to him, play with him and read just like a daily routine in Spanish.
— Mother of bilingual 3-year old (Spanish)

The children, who have not been officially schooled in Japanese, use that as a tactic, at times complaining that they cannot understand when Japanese is being used (when being disciplined or assigned chores for example). As a result, more of my wife's communication than we would like takes place in English and the children are not functionally bilingual as we would like them to be. Interestingly, when they spend any extended period in Japan, it is clear that they can understand the language. It is more in the area of conversation that it gets difficult for them. This is an ongoing issue and we continue to debate solutions — mainly revolving around having the children spend more time in Japan or attending Japanese school in the US. If the children were to spend a summer in Japan for example, we would try to maximize the time that the parents will not be there, which will force them to rely on Japanese. Although they have bilingual friends, the default language is English, and this does not benefit them.
— Father of bilingual 11-year old and 7-year old (Japanese)

I think that feeling comfortable enough to speak French in public places was the hardest at the beginning. But I have no problem with it anymore. And, to try to make other moms and dads relax about it, I usually try to speak to their kids in English, so that they know that they can speak to us in English.
— Mother of bilingual 1-year old (French)

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