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Starting to talk: bilingual baby challenge

11/3/2017

24 Comments

 
Walking baby little bear dad turn SPL swenglish baby swedish bilingual speaking
​Little Bear is starting to talk. No, he’s not forming sentences yet, or even pointing at things and calling out their names, but the baby babbles are starting to sound like words we just said, and he’s starting to understand noises he makes relate to things. What does this mean for our plan for bringing him up bilingual?
​Causing a few awkward moments, he doesn’t always remember this the next day when Pappa wants to demonstrate Little Bear’s genius to a friend or family member, but it still happens. A few months back ‘ball’ was his first word when bouncing his favourite toy. Then came ‘anka’ (duck in Swedish) when he sees the rubber duck in the bath. Recently it’s ‘geggig’ (or yuck in Swedish). I’d like to say he only says it when there’s something messy around, but he’s taken to shouting the word at me whilst pointing at my face before laughing hysterically. Either he hasn’t quite got that one yet or he’s developing a cruel sense of humour. 

He's also taken to insist on being picked up and shouting 'there!' in Swedish while pointing at his desired destination. What can a parent do but oblige when their little puddle is so cute? Every few days he copies more sounds and learns that new sounds relate to things.

We decided to bring him up bilingual. We want a little guy who can speak fluently in Swedish as well as English. Two-language parenting has its fair share of jargon and acronyms: is your ‘approach’ OPOL or did you consecutively mL@H the little trolls in the minority lingo before ‘immersing’ them through ‘community exposure’. How does your nNLSP tackle your choice of paralleling it if you mL@H, or should you MLP your way through instead?
 
You also come across at least a couple of people who say something like ‘doesn’t teaching your child two languages make them stupid?’. No. I don’t think the Luxembourgish or the Swiss are somehow less smart than the British monoglot. So each time I hear it I patiently point out that the overwhelming science points to kids being given some pretty hefty cognitive advantages if they’re bilingual.
 
Half a year ago a wrote a post on how tough it is to change a family language. A couple of people since then have rightly asked, ‘why do you need to speak Swedish to Little Bear when your wife’s got that covered?’. The two main ways of bringing up kids in two languages are (a) to speak one language at home, and leave the other language up to everyone else to teach them, or (b) the slightly lazier option if you’re the parent that doesn’t speak the home language, each parent speaks to the kid in their own language. To learn a language fluently, the little person needs to spend around 30% of their waking life exposed to the language (25 hours a week), and to feel the need to do it.
 
However, we have a problem living in London. When Little Bear is about 5 he’ll come home from his English speaking school having spent the day with his English speaking friends and English speaking teacher and say to ‘Daddy’ ‘Today I built an elephant out of potato’. Then my wife will say ‘Fint! Vad hetter honom?’ and Little Bear will say ‘Daddy, why is mummy speaking like that?’ Followed a year later by ‘I know you understand me mum’. Before long, my poor wife is single-handedly fighting a losing battle to get Little Bear to speak a fraction of the 25 hours a week he needs to keep up his heritage.
 
10 years later he’ll be saying ‘I don’t wanna learn that stupid language, why don’t you just speak normal like everyone else mum?’ And very quickly he’ll realise all his Swedish relatives also speak perfect English, and this whole Swedish effort really is a waste of time that could have been spent on playing computer games.
 
English has a dangerous trumping effect because it is by far the world’s most useful language, and kids pick that up very quickly. So to help with the fight, we need to at least try to make the home language Swedish to build the dam for the inevitable tide of English that is just round the corner.
 
Problem is that 6 months ago, whilst speaking to Little Bear in Swedish, I continued to talk to my wife in English (we have done so for 12 years, tough habit to break). Not so problematic when our little potato was just learning to role and shuffle around the room and use raspberries as his most advance method of communication.
 
6 months later and he’s now starting to pick up words and listen to us intently (apparently understanding the difference between languages even at this little age). But Pappa and Mamma are still speaking to each other in English. Oh dear, what do we do. It’s just so tough since my Swedish is not good enough to have the deep and meaningful conversations I have with my wife every evening e.g.: ‘tired, where’s food’; ‘pasta, peas, chicken’; ‘ok’; ‘put the dvd in’; ‘did you pay bills?’; ‘no, quiet… sleep now’.
 
I guess we haven’t really tried hard enough? But it’s also exhausting looking after the Little Bear the whole day and working and all the other stuff. Maybe I need to stop making excuses and just get on with it, and soon.

24 Comments
Fran Back With a Bump link
13/3/2017 07:11:39 am

I never realised your wife was Swedish. It must be confusing for little ones but equally the best time to learn two languages. Thanks for joining us for #marvmondays

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Abi - Something About Baby link
13/3/2017 11:38:01 am

I think it's amazing you'll be raising Little Bear bilingual - and I can't believe people tell you that it will make him stupid?! I can only think it will make him even more intelligent! It must be super hard for you though, especially if you are not used to speaking Swedish yourself, but so wonderful for your wife to be able to encourage this part of her heritage in your little family #MarvMondays

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Chloe link
13/3/2017 07:05:57 pm

I think being bilingual is a fab quality to have! Well done you #marvmondays

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Beth Owen link
13/3/2017 09:37:36 pm

My girls are bilingual and my little boy will be too. We are Welsh and that's my girls' first language. My middle speaks better English than my eldest but they';re both best at Welsh. I think it's amazing learning children to speak more than one language. #MarvMondays

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My Petit Canard link
13/3/2017 09:38:22 pm

I so admire families that bring up their children to be bilingual. I think the benefits are absoloutely worth the effort and wish we were in a similar position to do the same with our little ones. I can imagine it is quite a lot of effort if you arent completely fluent in the second language, so I wonder whether it might be worth looking into language schools now or in the future that might help supplement what you can teach little bear at home? I definitely think what youre doing is worth all the effort and super impressive :-) Really enjoyed reading your post, thanks for sharing it. Emily #MarvMondays

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Liane link
14/3/2017 12:29:03 pm

Wow! Well done to both of you for deciding to raise your son as bilingual. I think it's amazing! #MarvMondays

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Mummy Times Two link
16/3/2017 08:33:50 am

I read this post with lots of interest as we are also bringing our son up bilingual. In our house it's me that needs to make more effort #sharingthebloglove

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The Squirmy Popple link
16/3/2017 12:20:18 pm

It's really hard to know the right approach. My husband is a native Spanish speaker and I'd love for my daughter to be bilingual, but we mostly speak English at home - and we live in Scotland - so I don't think she gets enough exposure. She says a few words of Spanish and understands it pretty well, but she'll almost always default to English. #ablogginggoodtime

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Tubbs link
16/3/2017 01:10:01 pm

All the people I know in your situation who decided to stick to one language regretted it later. (This is meant to be encouraging! Hopefully it is).

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Kirsty - Winnettes link
16/3/2017 03:06:55 pm

Keep going, it will be worth it in the end. I wish I could speak another language. They do say kids will pick it up, and they do. He may speak later than his peers if he is exposed to two languages but he will speak two languages and they will speak one! So really is it all bad? He will thank you in the long run. #SharingtheBlogLove

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Annette, Four Acorns link
16/3/2017 04:32:04 pm

Wonderful post! I am French, my husband is Irish, and we live in Ireland with our four bilingual children. We have done the 'lazy' approach, as you call it, since they were born - one parent, one language, and it has worked out rather well. Of course their English is better than their French, but they more than get by whenever we go to France to visit my French only speaking family. It's actually amazing to see them switch immediately, and going back and forth between the two languages depending on who they're talking to.
I've never tried to teach them French, but we read books in French together, and they have a few French language DVDs, etc. Obviously the more exposure, the better, but I've never really worried about how many hours a week, etc.
Have you heard of the Multicultural Kids Blogs Instagram community?
Good luck and enjoy the ride, it seems your little guy has quite a sense of humour :)
#ablogginggoodtime

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Catie: An Imperfect Mum link
16/3/2017 07:34:04 pm

Don't give up. It is definitely worth it! We are a dutch english family living in Holland. I love that my boys are fluent in both but we are lucky that many people in Holland speak english so they get the opportunity to practice the minority language a lot. Thank you for linking up to #ablogginggoodtime 🎉

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Dave
29/4/2017 08:36:57 am

Hope so! Thanks

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Emily link
17/3/2017 08:22:39 am

I wish I'd learnt another language. I know some phrases that I've taught my girls. Thanks for linking up to #ThatFridayLinky

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John Adams link
17/3/2017 12:13:56 pm

Oh it's so tricky. I don't know in bi-lingual is our aim as such, but with French connections I want the kids to speak better French than I can. It's so difficult to keep up but I wish you every success trying. #thatfridaylinky

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Katy - Hot Pink Wellingtons link
17/3/2017 03:09:21 pm

I can totally understand how difficult it must be, especially with one of the languages being English and living in an English speaking country. But speaking a second language is an amazing skill to have - I've never heard that it has any negative effects (other than perhaps delayed speech early on), only the positives! I'm sure it'll be well worth it in the end. Thanks for joining us at #SharingtheBlogLove

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Anne link
17/3/2017 03:23:44 pm

I think bringing your child up bi-lingual is a brilliant idea. I'm sure they will still speak Swedish even when exposed to a day at school speaking English all day, especially if you start this young.
#thatfridaylinky

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Nige
19/3/2017 09:25:49 am

Good luck I imagine it's quite difficult I would like the girls to speak welsh but we will see Thanks for linking to the #THAT FRIDAY LINKY come back next week please

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Laura - Dear Bear and Beany link
21/3/2017 11:55:01 am

Our friends live in Switzerland and the dad is english and can only speak English, the mum is Spanish and speaks Spanish and English. Their baby goes to a nursery in Switzerland. Yes, her speech is delayed, but it's amazing to hear to learn and it will definitely pay off in the future. Thank you for joining us at #SharingtheBlogLove

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Anonymous
29/4/2017 08:38:31 am

Trilingual is very impressive. We thought about it but thought not if we're struggling with bilingual at the moment!

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Sheila Taylor
30/3/2017 09:44:41 am

Back in the 1980s a German friend of mine, living in London, became a single parent. She decided to bring her son up to be bilingual, so only spoke German to him at home. Whilst obviously understanding everything she said, he stubbornly refused to reply in German and only ever spoke English in England. Interestingly however, when they went to visit her family in Berlin, he would happily speak to them in totally fluent German. He then went on to study German at university.
So, you never can tell.....

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Anonymous
29/4/2017 08:40:49 am

That's reassuring Sheila, cheers! I do worry though

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Sarah Pearce-Nielsen
12/8/2017 11:28:49 am

This is a handy read for me. I live in Denmark and my Danish husband and I would like her to be bilingual. I'm still wondering what the best approach would be. #fb

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oldhouseintheshires link
29/8/2017 10:50:45 am

Oh please carry on speaking Swedish at home...make it your home language. We made the mistake to allowDutch to slip and now have teenagers who cannot speak it. They were spoken to in Dutch as babies and toddlers but because our home language became English, the Dutch faded away and that is my biggest regret. It would be so lovely for my children to speak to their Opa and Oma in Dutch but they can't. Interestingly, my eldest (who heard and did begin to speak Dutch until aged 4) did Spanish and Italian for GCSE and is now studying Spanish at A Level; she definitely has an ear for language. Lovely post but I feel sad about my own children's lack of Dutch. x

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    I'm Dave, dad of Little Bear. Also known as 'Pappa' to the little man as we try and bring out his Swedish roots

    My wife and I are sharing the troubles and joys of bringing up Little Bear equally. This is about my half of the time being responsible for not breaking the baby

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    • Latest posts
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