My mother speaks English and German and my father speaks Turkish English Russian German . I grew up in Germany and I only learned German when I was kid. Thanks mom and dad
My grandparents spoke Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, and probably German too, my parents only speak Spanish, I don't know how the culture on your country is in regards to stranger, I'm from Argentina, and even though it was basically poblated by people from abroad there were not really open minded to hearing people speaking in another language, and most people just try to hide their nationality
I'm Italian born and raised, but the whole world around me including my husband speak English. It's so hard to switch to Italian just when I talk to my children, I'm not a true bilingual I guess and my brain separates the 2 languages... When I'm in Italy and I translate for my husband it's crazy the mess I make! Sometimes I speak automatically in English without thinking about it, then I repeat it in Italian, or I ask my daughter (the youngest is too young and barely talks) to repeat what she said in Italian when she uses English. I also read in Italian at bed time, and their Netflix is in Italian. But boy who knew how hard it is to raise bilingual children!
Italian is my third language. My wife’s native language is Spanish and mine is English. I know not to try to teach my son a language that’s not my native one and no native speakers near me but hope one day I can inspire him to learn a third language on his own.
This is so helpful! I am trying to teach my kiddos Russian. My husband almost always speaks English so the kids definitely favor English. Need to convince my hubby to start speaking Russian at home even though it will be challenging for him.
Speaking from anecdotal evidence of cases I found online it's very unlikely for kids to pick up a language they weren't exposed from birth. Even before that (kids start hearing in the third trimester, there's an explanation on my channel). But it's been a year, how did it go?
That was fantastic! I’m pregnant with my first baby and we’re Brazilian. My husband and I were talking about raise her as a bilingual child. So he’ll be talking only in Portuguese and I’ll be talking in English. This is called OPOL, I guess. So my point is, besides studying a lot about it, we need to be consistent and also creative to do some activities with her. And to learn baby vocabulary because I’ve been studying English since 2005 and I’ve never saw those kind of things in my entire life. I hope that I can do my best for her 🤰🏻💖
Love these tips! I definitely need to get more beginner Chinese books for my kids to read... which means brushing up on my own reading and writing skills. 😅
My mom speaks Japanese and English, my dad speaks English and Indonesian (my grandpa is Indonesian and grandma is Australian), so I'm speaking Japanese, English, and Indonesian. Meanwhile, my husband is Korean but he's fluent is English. We're probably gonna teach our kids Korean, Japanese, and English. I want to teach them Indonesian too but I think that would be too much. Maybe just a word or two.
It won't hurt to expose your kids to Indonesian (besides JP ENG KR) for brief periods of time. Let's say you do it every day before going to bed for ~20 min. From birth to 5yo the total exposure will be a few hundred hours. It should be enough to create neural pathways that will facilitate acquiring the language after the others are secured and fluent.
The awkwardness is real! I was born in the uk and English is my first language. However we moved to Germany when I was a toddler. Both languages were very well developed- however when I moved out from home and got married to a German I barely used English in my everyday life anymore. Now that I’m pregnant I’m trying to get used to speaking English around my husband and it feels so weird / confusing. But I really want to try one person one language once the baby is born so I need to get over this awkwardness 😂
There are many ways but the easiest way to raise a fully biligual child is living in a country abroad (with a different language) and speaking to your child only in your mother tongue. It works 100% but in order for this to work, you MUST NOT speak in the language of the country you're in to your child at home
Yes, that is what my RU-vid sessions are about! Finally someone who gets it. It is actually easier than you think, as long as you start early and never give up!
Thank you for the video! I agree with all you said. I teach my kids English, making "English day", every other day when I try all my best to speak with them only in English all day long.
I grew up bilingual and for me it was a necessity. I always needed to help translate so I was able to keep practicing both languages lol. But thinking towards the future I realized I had no idea how to go about teaching two languages at the same time! Soooo many of my cousins have lost our native tongue and I don't want that to be the case with any future children I may have. So this video was very interesting!
I'm pregnant, my bf is korean and I'm from New Zealand, so I plan to learn more korean bc I'm just a beginner- intermediate, and will try only speak to them in korean, and have my bf only do so, he seems more comfortable with english, even tho his childhood was in Korea, but I really want my child to connect to their roots, to understand their language, and so understanding their family that doesn't know english so well. So I will study hard to be able to teach them
@@meghanaJ7 never heard of that, maybe it use to be like that? But don't think that's the case now, his parents and family are really happy with me and never mentioned that
Excellent video folks, I’ve been struggling lately with the one parent one language method and after 2 and a half years of consistently talking to my kid in my mother language I stopped because it was really affecting our relationship. I’m a bit lost now on what to do and your tips definitely helped rethink my approach.
Great video! And it got me reconsider the way I taught my daughter English. My wife and I are native speakers of Mandarin currently living in China, and we also speak (what we consider to be) pretty good English thanks to our studying and working experience in North America. When my daughter was younger, we tried to speak Mandarin and English to her interchangeably. But as soon as she started to speak up, her Mandarin proficiency has skyrocketed, since her grandparents speak Mandarin at home to her all the time when I go to work during the day, and she also attends a Mandarin kindergarten. And it's only natural that as she is turning 5 years old now, she has a growing preference to communicate increasingly complicated ideas in Mandarin, and her English is still very insufficient for the increasingly sophisticated communicational and emotional needs at her current age. This makes it a lot harder for us to adopt the 'minority language at home' or the 'one parent one language' rules than it would have been, had we started at her early age and stuck to it. We might have to accept the fact that we'll need to teach her English in the traditional learning method for typical second - language learners...
I'm using cartoons to teach my 3 year old Thai, it's so hard when I'm not great at it and my husband can't speak Thai either. I don't think we can stick at it since there's not a massive Thai community where we live to practice on. Thank you for the tips though!
Hey! I know this comment is from a year ago, so how is your Thai language journey going?? Have you seen the cartoons helping? Anything is better than nothing, and I wish y’all all the best! My son will be born within the next few weeks, and I plan on speaking Louisiana French (my heritage language) to him. I’m fluent in French, but I still feel a little overwhelmed with the challenge that lies ahead since I’m not a native speaker. I just want to give my son the gift of knowing his heritage language.
Do you find your children’s language delayed due to learning multiple languages? My 2 year old isn’t speaking too much yet but we’re told it’s due to him being bilingual. We are a English and Korean household.
EmmyJ it can sometimes delay speech but it's really a memory thing. It'll come to him in time. Normal kids can take just as long. Though if he isn't taking in over a year you might want to take him to a speech therapist.
Thank you!!! This helped me a lot. I didn’t really have a method but i now know not to mix languages now! My target languages are Māori and Japanese. 😅
What if the target language isn't used in the country your living in? I would assume it must be very hard four a child to only speak with his/her parents in the target language but not with friends? Any tips?
I'm not an expert, but if their friends don't speak your target language that's fine. You can speak the target language at home and supplement with books and videos. You can also try to meet other families that speak the target language or travel somewhere where it's spoken.
That's so fascinating to stumble upon this video. I didn't expect a host of the best Korean language resource to be here. I hope I will make my bilingual parenting program available in Korean as well. Great tips as well!
This is awesome! I am anglophone and speak French, my partner is Qc French and speaks English. We're aiming for the one parent one language method and hoping to move back to QC when we start having a family. I want my children to speak both languages with a passion. My parents can't speak French and his parents don't speak very good English so fingers crossed!
@@benb1234 we speak an awful mix of French and English and we code switch a lot. It will definitely be an adjustment to transition to one parent one language.
Thanks for your tips ... My son is 3... We are mexicans living in Mexico... I started talking English to my child and his very first words were in English, BUT then I got used to speak just Spanish and now he speaks Spanish only ... And when I try yo speak English to him he is like... "Mom, please speak well" (he means Spanish) 😅... I really want him to learn English at a young age ...
Thanks for the tip. I have a question. My son is 6, he was born in the United States and we moved to Spain when he was 4. I only speak to him in English with the exception of when we do homework for school. I'm in a dilemma because the school doesn't seem to understand that a bilingual child is going to learn how to read and write later than a monolingual child. If he doesn't learn to read and write by the end of the school year they could hold him back and I don't feel that is fair. I want to keep speaking to him in English because it's his native tongue and he loves it when I read to him in English, but I wonder if I should switch to Spanish so that he can advance in school. What would you do?
@@drkbugs Hello! I ended up speaking to him only in Spanish in order for him to catch up with the rest of the students. I did that for that school year and he was able to read and write very well by the end of the year, but his teacher held him back anyway. I was very upset but she wasn’t a good teacher and I realized that it was better for him to repeat with a new teacher than to be at the bottom of his class with a bad one. So last year was really good, he had great teachers and he’s at a great level. Now we speak both languages and he watches everything in english. Oh, and he can read and write in english too! So everything’s good now!!
Hello from Japan:) I’m pregnant now and am planning to raise my child in English too so your video was really helpful:) plus you are very beautiful mama 👶💕
Keep it up Serina!! I really enjoy watching your videos and thanks for sharing your point of view towards parenting. Every video is a new lesson for me to learn! Please keep up all the good work :)
Am a new subscriber here ur information will help me a lot of actually me too my daughter is bilingual. Korean Algerian and I did mistake to mix language French and Korean hhh. I want to know when the baby mix start to talk bcz my daughter has 27 months and she Can just say a few words
Omg I’m so used to speaking two languages mixed with my husband and family that it has become a habit and my kids are struggling to speak both languages now.
Thank you so much for all the good tips about teaching our kids a language. I did enjoy the vedio. 선생님~^^I'm a mom of 6 year-old- boy. Could you teach us some songs for kids?
Hi Serina I really love this kind of video. Really helpful. I wish I could find the perfect method for my kids to speak English more naturally. When you said your son's currently target language is Korean, does it mean that his first language is English ? I love your white shirt ,too So cuteeee ^^
I am an American living in America with my Taiwanese wife and one-year-old son. We speak only Chinese to each other and to him inside and outside the house. My question is: should I at some point start talking to him in English too? Or just let him learn at school when he starts kindergarten?
He will pick it up very quickly in school! I think the best technique would be to try and enforce Chinese only in the home so that he continues to speak that well.
HI! what if one parent is bilingual? How can we teach our child 3 languagues or more? Do I speak one day in one language and the next day in the other one? please I was searching for this in particular.
Thank you for making and sharing this. I'll be applying these rules to myself as I teach my toddler Spanish. I have a habit of breaking into English at times to fill gaps and I'll stop doing that! What about communicating with the other parent around the child if they speak a different tongue? And what if I'm asked to help with some English?
My baby is trying to learn spanish i can understand it and read it better than i can speak it. I dont know too much to where im fluent in it but i know a good bit. Me and my boyfriend have it where i speak Spanish to the baby and my bf speak English to the baby.
Here's a question. How do you best teach the language if your partner doesn't understand your mother language? I speak German and English, my husband only speaks English. Your approach with only using one language per parent at home sounds really good, but is it going to confuse the kid if I talk German to it and then respond in English to my husband? Maybe I'm overthinking it.... 😅
Help! I’m the only one who speaks Spanish in our home. My husband speaks 100% English only, so when we had our first child, I wanted to communicate between the two so I spoke only English in the home and our son is now 7 yo and only speaks English. We had another baby who just turned 1 two days ago and it seems she understands some spanish because her baby sitter only speaks Spanish to her. I try to only speak Spanish to her at home too but sometimes I’ll throw English at her (like at dinner time when everyone is at the table and I want the others to understand what I’m saying TO her). I’m worried she’ll be confused! And my son, will he catch up?
I have been there and I know exactly what you say. I am sure my videos can help you get out of that trap as long as you don't give up! Éxitos, cuéntame cómo te ha ido y pregúntame lo que quieras.
I am looking for Advice??!! My wife and I are going to adopt a child, I am Polish so plan on teaching the child Polish and they can talk to my side of family etc, but as an adopted child they have to settle in into a new place as it is and they will mor elikely be a toddler not a baby, any ideas how to approach it?
My 2.5 year old isn’t talking much. She only speaks like 5 actual words. I think she’s just confused. I live with my parental and they speak Ukrainian, I speak to her in english/Ukrainian and her father speaks to her in only English. His mother speaks to her in Spanish/English. Is it that she’s just too confused?
If people do not mix languages then she shouldn't be confused. My suggestion is that you talk to her in your native language only and the others in the family do the same. Soon she will be talking to each person in their own language. It will work only if people are consistant. Otherwise what will happen is that she will start school and drop all other languages in favour of the language at school. You don't want that to happen!
Hi Meca! Try to find a community of other parents that speak the target language and try to meet on a regular basis. Also, providing your child books, media, and apps in that target language would also be very effective. But honestly, I find having friends who speak the target language fluently will help to really speed up the learning process. Hope this helps! All the best mama and sending lots of love!
