Parent to Parent
How do you encourage your child to speak the second language?Visit Spanish-speaking countries and get together with Spanish-speaking parents and single friends who are also committed to keep our mother tongue alive.
— Father of bilingual 11-year old (Spanish)In our case, the Sunday Chinese class is very helpful. We have also bought Chinese books, video materials from China.
— Father of bilingual 6-year old (Chinese)Books, videos (Dora the explorer, Go Diego go), music, toys, everything you find in English just do it in Spanish, but the best are daily conversations. Everybody told me not to speak to him in English [the community language] because he is going to learn it at school but he watches TV in English and we talk to him in Spanish so that way he knows both languages, and he understands. I think you can talk to him in both languages but you have to concentrate most of the time just in one language at home.
— Mother of bilingual 3-year old (Spanish)Books, songs and phone calls from relatives are great!
— Mother of bilingual 1-year old (French)Showing children movies in Italian. Having them listen to children's tapes in Italian. Reading them books in Italian. Taking them to Italy once a year.
— Father of trilingual 8-year old and 3-year old (Italian & Farsi)I take her to both English and Dutch-speaking play groups. A problem I find with most English-speaking Mum's abroad is that they only take their child to English-speaking groups and then send them to an English-speaking school.
— Mother of bilingual 2-year old (Dutch)A challenge has been finding resources to expose my children to the French language, particularly those that would allow them to hear conversations in French. Most of the time they only hear me speaking to them. They do not have the benefit of consistently hearing others speak French together.
— Mother of bilingual 4-year old and 2 1/2-year old (French)My parents' first language is Spanish so my sisters and I grew up speaking it at home. However, I further developed my Spanish skills with Latino friends throughout grammar and high school. For me and my wife personally, we are raising our children to speak and read Spanish first because eventually we believe English will obviously come into play. My wife's first language is Spanish and mine is English. Without speaking too much English to our 2-year-old son, he's already learning English words on his own through friends, neighbors and a little television.
— Adult raised in bilingual home/Father of bilingual 2-year old (Spanish)