Before the birth of my first son, I had made the firm decision to raise him trilingual.
It was not an easy choice. I was confident that it's possible to
raise a bilingual child, but my wife and I were afraid that introducing three
languages from the very beginning of his life would be too much for him to handle.
Today, I want to share my experience so far and give you my tips for raising
bilingual or trilingual children. Until he was 2 years old,
my son's kindergarten teachers were quite concerned about his speaking skills.
Compared to other kids in the class, he did not speak much.
His vocabulary was far less developed and, while many of his classmates were already
building sentences, he was still at the stage of group words like "Daddy, bed"
instead of saying "Daddy is in the bed." Many times I had to reassure them by
telling them that for trilingual or billingual children, this small delay was
absolutely normal. Today, at the time I recorded this video, Noa is a wonderful
trilingual who is nearly three years old. He can build pretty long sentences, he
understands complex instructions and is capable of switching between French,
Italian and Romanian without the slightest difficulty. I wanted to record this video
because you need to know that raising multilingual children is not always easy.
If you choose to take this path, there will be obstacles and difficulties along
the way, but, trust me, it's so worth it, and they will thank you later.
I'm very happy to be able to share what I've learned about this topic by reading many
books and articles, talking with other bilingual parents and children, and,
of course, from my own experience. Let's begin with my first tip. Be Clear About
Your Motivation And Goals to Raise a Multilingual Child. To make the process
easier for both you, your partner, and your child, you need to be clear about
what motivates you and your goal. As for me, it was simply unconceivable
that my son would not speak Italian, which is not only my mother tongue,
but a language that means a lot to me. I associate it with my family, the country
where I grew up and a culture I love. I want him to make a true connection
with Italy and feel this culture is one of his own.
So, my motivations are really strong. Are yours? You also need to be clear about your goals.
Do you want your children to be fully bilingual or trilingual, or do
to have a good command of the language? Not native speaker per se,
but able to communicate. Or, do you want them to know some basic sentences and words
in the language? Your answer to these questions will change everything and will
result in a different approach and a different amount of effort from your side.
In my case, it's simple. I want him to be an Italian native speaker and have
a perfect command of the language. My second tip is: Choose a Precise Strategy
There are many different strategies for raising a bilingual or trilingual child.
In my case, I chose the popular OPOL approach, which stands for One Parent One Language.
This is based on a pretty straightforward rule: each parent must
always speak with the kid in a language different from the other parent.
In my case, I always speak in my native Italian with my son, while my wife only speaks
Romanian, her mother tongue, with him. The goal here is helping your child make an
association between a language and a parent. Like that, he knows that he must
use different languages based on the parent he's addressing. In the case of my
son, Noa, the association is so strong that he not only always uses Italian
when they speaks with me, but when he wants to learn a new word, he asks me
"Come dice papa?" Which means "How does daddy says this?"
The advantages of this strategy are that it's crystal clear for the child, you can
easily put it into practice, and it provides a lot of exposure, especially if both
parents spend a roughly equal amount of time with the child. My third tip is:
Stick to the Chosen Strategy Even if it's Complicated or Scary. My situation
is a bit more complicated than most bilingual families. Since we
live in France, one of the disadvantages of the OPOL strategy is that it's
difficult to stick with this rule outside the home. I have observed that
some people do not like it when people use a language they don't know in front
of them. The temptation here would be to make an exception for these people.
I don't. I want my son to speak Italian so badly that I ignore the social pressure
and speak Italian even in front of others. Another common problem is when
people scare you with unsolicited advice. Teachers, doctors, friends, and relatives might
not understand what you're doing and make you doubt yourself, especially when
your child seems different from his peers. Take the example of the
kindergarten teachers who pointed out repeatedly that my son did not have the
same speaking skills as other children. My tip is to not listen to them and only
take expert opinions into account. If you have doubts, read as many books and
articles as you can about the subject and you'll see that what many parents and
experts say is really encouraging. Stick to your choice and do not give up.
You know what is best for your child. Expose Your Child to the Minority
Language a Lot. To explain this tip, let me define the notion of a minority language.
Adam Beck, author of the book "Maximize Your Child's Bilingual Ability,"
is American, is married to a Japanese woman and lives in Japan. In this case,
it's obvious that English could easily become the minority language for his
children because Japanese is not only used by his wife--and women tend to
spend more time with their kids--but it's also the language used outside the home.
In the book, Beck explains how much effort he made to expose his children to
the English language so they would be bilingual. This is a key tip. Don't make the
mistake of thinking that because children are like sponges they will
automatically learn or want to speak the minority language. Many experts say that
children need to be exposed to a language at least 20%
of their waking time or 15 hours per week. My two recommendations are to
start very early, even while the baby's still in the mother's belly, and to spend
as much quality time as possible with your children. In my case, even if I'm with
my son less than my wife, I make sure to read him stories in Italian every day.
We talk and play together at least one hour per day, and I dedicate my weekends to him.
My final tip is probably the most precious one I can give you.
If you really want your children to be bilingual, then Make Sure They Actually Want To.
A child might want to speak the minority language to communicate with
his/her grandparents or maybe to have a kind of secret language to communicate
with her/his parents, or simply because you have shown him/her the bright sides
of the language, or even to feel special compared to his or her mates.
Whether it's an emotional or rational argument, it's vitally important to create and
nurture the desire to speak more languages. To keep this video short and
sweet, I decided to limit myself to five tips and to share only one of the
possible strategies for raising a bilingual or trilingual child, but if you
want to discover other tips and methods there is a much more complete article on our blog.
You can check the link in the video description. And if you learned
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