Parent to Parent

If your child(ren) are school age or older . . .Have you found that your children were more resistant to using the second language as they grew older? If so, how did you handle this?

Not more resistant but it becomes more difficult because they lack words when they want to speak with father/mother, so they fall back to English to better explain themselves, so you need to suggest the right words without making them tired.
— Father of trilingual 8-year old and 3-year old (Italian & Farsi)

My daughter is still only in daycare and so far she hasn't shown any resistance in the house with her father. She will not speak though to me in Spanish, though, even if I ask her things in Spanish. My son (11-year old) did become resistant once we were outside of
the all Spanish speaking setting. I wanted to try and keep practicing with him when we were in the US but he has always refused to practice with me. Part of the plan we have to try and avoid the resistance is to provide my daughter with a cultural setting for the language by stays in Ecuador, the home country of her father. Therefore, it won't be just a language that she is speaking at home with one parent and that is the only context. We want to also have the language be part of a larger cultural context and to have her at times immersed in a setting where Spanish is the dominant language rather than English.
— Mother of bilingual 11-year old and 2 1/2-year old (Spanish)

The children do not resist using Chinese. They will speak Mandarin when they need to although their abilities are limited. Sometimes, they will speak to us in Mandarin when they don't want the public to hear what they want to say.
— Mother of bilingual 15-year old and 13-year old (Mandarin Chinese)

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