changing family language

I really want the Little Bear to speak at least two languages, and it's all the rage now for kids to grow up bilingual. We're told it's better for their brains, and unsurprisingly, for their language skills.

Since his mother's side of the family is Swedish, he'll also need to be speaking the language to feel properly at home when we visit. Although, not as critical as you might think, since all Swede's seem to speak better English than we do here. But it'll be an important part of his identity.

Tiny people seem to learn languages better than big people, so when they're tiny is clearly the best place to start. All you have to do is speak to them in the right language, simple. My wife can speak her mother-tongue and English fluently, and I can just about manage with both. So we're all set to go. Should be easy?

It's not easy. Especially if your an native English speaker with poor language skills. Not hard like having a baby, that's mainly exhausting with lots of easy cool stuff at the end. It's more hard like learning to ski when you're in your 20s/30s...

This marks me out from my wife and her family who, like all Swedes, learnt to ski before they could walk. So she can run hoops around me on the slopes whilst I, the uncoordinated Brit, struggle to avoid collisions and break as few bones as possible.

Like changing your family language after over 10 years of speaking in mostly English, learning to ski late in life is tough because you've got to constantly try, concentrate, unable to let up or you're not going to get anywhere. It's a more mentally taxing journey, although the reward should be big at the end.

It's not so demanding around him of course (at the moment! But just wait till he starts asking me to read some Nobel Laureate in his mother's tongue!). But it's that I know as a family we'll need to start speaking only Swedish to each other if this is going to work. Why only Swedish? Couldn't we mix?

​They reckon kids have to be exposed to a language for at least 30% of their lives to become fluent. Kids need to feel the language is useful, or they'll just switch to the one they think is. 

'it's a more mentally taxing journey, although the reward should be big at the end'

​The Little Bear is surrounded by English because we're living in London, and he's probably going to go to playgroup and school with English friends learning English things. But what about at home? 

​For over a decade Charlotte and I have spoken to each other in English most of the time. I say I can manage in Swedish, but we're gonna make it the only language we use it home if we want to compensate for the English he's gonna get everywhere else. All the stuff says we can't switch languages around him or he'll start to get confused or to learn that he doesn't really need to speak Swedish.

Not to mention my Swedish has a really strong accent, and probably sounds like Officer Crabtree trying to speak French on 'Allo 'Allo. This bodes ill for the little bear learning Swedish properly. Although, if he starts talking Swedish with my accent, I'm going to be pretty pleased with the mini-me cuteness it's gonna have.

But just because it's tough, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. So we're trying (hence the 2 'p's in pappa!). We only speak Swedish to him now, although we're still mostly speaking English to each other. But I'm sure we'll manage to make the switch to fully Swedish speaking at home over the next year, or his Swedish might end up as good as my skiing abilities. 

Great bilingual parenting website to try out if you're interested: ​
http://multilingualchildren.org/