Does your child start a sentence with one langue and finish it with another? Yes, that happens a lot, but what this really means strongly depends on how you react to that. If you think you just react normal, keep reading, there are at least 5 different ways of reacting normal, they are all normal, but not all the same.

Parents often look at their children’s habit of mixing languages in one conversation (a phenomenon called Code Mixing and not to be confused with Code Switching) with some apprehension, fearing that they child might not become bilingual, or, worse, that s/he might end up speaking a language of his/her own, without mastering any language fully (now THAT would be scary, wouldn’t it?). Although these fears are normally completely exagerated, it still is not only reasonable but also sensible for parents to help children separate the two languages, so how do they go about it?

Research has showed that parents’ reactions mostly fit into one of 5 alternatives:

The parent pretends s/he doesn’t understand and can’t either understand or speak anything but the chosen language, and will wait until the child conforms to that
The parent guesses (or pretends to) what the child meant, normally asking in the chosen language a question like “do you mean…?”
The parent repeats what the child said in the chosen language, without asking any question or expecting any answer
The parent accepts what the child said and continues the conversation in the chosen language, without commenting on the fact that the child had switched to another language
Code switching, the parent follows the child’s lead and starts speaking the language the child had used

Unsurprisingly the first strategy, pretending one doesn’t understand, yields the best results in terms of bilingualism. The more coherent parents are in sticking to one language, the higher are the chances that the child will speak both languages. Unfortunately this method is also the most difficult to implement, both because sometimes it’s hard to pretend one didn’t understand, and because this can generate some tensions or frustration. For sure this approach requires a lot of consistency and firmness.

An interesting point is that all 5 these methods have been observed in families that reported practising OPOL, One Person One Language. That should make you think. This confirms that OPOL is quite a vague word but in reality OPOL is different in every family. Your family’s OPOL is defined by thousand little decisions you take on a daily basis, like whether you give or not a biscuit to your child who’s asking for a biscotto. Little things do add up and create a trend, so be aware.
This does not mean that some methods are better than others and that you should do this or that, by any means. True some approaches will have a stronger impact on promoting bilingualism than others, but this is not the only thing that really matters. You only can and should decide what is best for you and your family, taking into consideration your specific circumstances, your family members’ personality and sensitivity, how much exposure your children have to either language, your relationships, etc.
What this does mean though is that you should take some time to think about it and decide what is best for your family, because if you don’t take a conscious decision you’ll still be taking many small unconscious decisions (like giving that biscuit or not), which might lead you in the right direction, or might not. And again, you and your family are the only persons who can answer that.

Click here to read more on OPOL and different OPOL implementations.

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