I’m keeping the promise I made to Blogging on Bilingualism (or rather the blogger behind it) and I want to come back on the topic of non native parents raising bilingual children, or rather parents raising children bilingual in a language that is not their mother tongue.

All non native parents are not equal. Whether the minority language is the mothertongue of some family members, at least one, does make a big difference, in many ways.

Just to clarify, some parents, like myself, speak to their children in a language they master well but where not raised in, and no native speakers live with the family. Other parents, like Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism, speak to their children their partner’s mothertongue in order to raise them bilingual, often using the MLAH method.

Yes we are both using with our children a language that is not our native one, but there are strong differences among us.

1) Social acceptance. All parents of bilingual children happening to speak a minority language in public are occasionally, or often, frowned upon by opinionated and often monolingual neighbors, friends, colleagues, name it. If they will explain that that language is the language of part of the family they might get some understanding, or at least tolerance, but if this is not the case they are much more likely to encounter open criticism. In fact I often use this factor to buy some comprehension, my child’s

2) Inner motivation. Motivation is key in most situations, not last when raising a bilingual child, particularly when the child starts to answer you back in the majority language. If the minority language is the language of part of the child’s family you know very well why you’re doing this, you are doing something really important for the development of your child and the building of his identity. But if this is just a foreign language why should you go through all this pain? You learnt foreign languages the usual way and you are doing ok, sure enough your child will manage too, may be later in life, won’t he?

3) Language input. Languages are alive. They need to be nurtured, stimulated, cared for. Some people who live abroad with time have problems in speaking even their mothertongue, imagine what happens with foreign languages then… Sure there are many ways to keep a language fresh, things like books, TV, internet, family, friends, holidays even work can help tremendously. Still, a native speaker partner comes really handy…

However, I want to end this post with a positive note. So let me tell how I address these 3 issues.

1) Social acceptance. I don’t care, really. If people are genuinely interested and nice I might as well explain to them how English plays a key role in my life, has been my dominant language for about 10 years and is strongly associated to a whole part of me and of my life I just couldn’t express and transmit to my child in Italian. I might also add that English is my child’s father language. However, if the person is judgmental and opinionated I shrug and move on, people are entitled to their opinions and I can live without their approval.

2) Inner motivation. My motivation is extremely strong, else I just couldn’t carry on with this. I know very well I don’t want my child to grow into the typical spoiled italian boy, who knows and cares nothing about the rest of the world. In full honesty I shall also add that it helps, in terms of motivation, the fact that English is the language my child needs to communicate with his father, even if he’s not part of our daily lives.

3) Language input. I believe,  and this is my personal and unproved opinion, that there are 2 kinds of people. Those who learn languages fast and forget them just as easily and those that learn slowly (sometimes painfully) but then retain everything they have learned with no effort. I belong to the second group. That said, I also read plenty of stuff in English every day (blogs, news, books, newspapers) and have many opportunities to speak it with people.

Thoughts anybody?

Image by A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. 8 reasons why you don’t have to be a native speaker to teach your child a language
2. Bilingual children in non bilingual families
3. Summer vacation options for Italian-English bilingual children

here we are for another Carnival. The family of bloggers involved is growing really nicely and this is really contributing to creating a debate on bilingualism and sharing ideas, doubts, tips and tricks. Most of all I think we can all feel less lonely on our journey, and that is of tremendous help when you need to find in yourself the motivation to stick to your plans and speak that language that nobody else around you is speaking, often enough not even your own children!

So let’s go for it once again, and feel free to join us. You can submit your own posts to the Carnival or you can host the Carnival yourself, you’ll find all the info here. Also, to be always up to date  with the Carnival, deadlines for submitting, new issues, etc please subscribe to the newsletter. You will receive only one or two emails per month, just for coordinating the carnival.

Here we go!

Sarah, from Bringing up Baby Bilingual, shares a truly inspiring story. Clarisse and her family are raising 28 months old Julia quadrilingual. What is really inspiring, and makes me feel slightly envious, is not the number of languages, but where they live, which languages they chose and how they are exposing the child to the languages. And the picture in the background too! This is just like a dream….

Sandra from bxlsprout is raising her child trilingual, which I understand is the bare minimum necessary to guarantee survival in Bruxelles, where they live (I’m kidding, but just a bit). Her point of view is very interesting and quite unusual. Contrary to most parents of bilingual children, who were raised monolingual, Sandra was raised as a bilingual child herself, so she’s looking at her child’s experience through the lens of her own experience.

Mamapoekie from Authentic parenting gives us a different view of Belgium and Brussels, and indeed the experience of living there is very different depending on whether you are a local or an expat. Why in such a multilingual country is bilingualism and cultural differences among the Flemish and the French “side” still considered an issue? Or is it really? Mamapokie reminds us that languages are often used and abused.

Melanie from Multilingualmania hosts Sandrine, who’s raising her children trilingual in a rather hostile environment. If you think raising a bilingual child is hard for you in your settings, try to imagine what it would be like to raise an autistic child trilingual. No I don’t think we can even begin to imagine, but we can read Sandrine’s story, admire her focus and determination and share similar stories on our blogs, because bilingualism is a gift for all children, also those with disabilities, but their parents all too often feel isolated and criticized for their efforts.

Smashedpea from intrepidlybilingual shares one of those moments when you finally  feel you’ve done something right. All your efforts, and doubts and wondering and trying and trying some more were worth it. As I’ve been reading her blog since she started on her journey I’m really happy for her, but also, I think we can learn a lot by sharing the journey with each other. Once you’ve achieved something everything looks obvious and easy, but to keep going when you don’t know where you are going, this is the tough part, let’s just be aware that applies to virtually everybody and let’s share the burden.

Janis from mumversuskids at times finds raising a bilingual child rather demanding, specifically when they start asking really specific questions, which by the way, most parents wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, no matter in which language!

Jan and Souad from babelkid made me laugh. Their child manages to speak Arabic with hardly a whole arabic word in the sentence, yet in her view she is speaking arabic! This is also an opportunity for parents to spend some thought on code mixing and code switching, it’s difficult to expect children not to mix if parents do it.

Maria from Fabmums has a brilliant idea! “Learn though play” and because the kind of game your bilingual child might not be ready available just make it yourself. There you go, really smart!

Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism (last minute entry, my fault) is packed with info and practical advice about traveling with children. It is indeed possible, and it can even be fun, really! all you have to do is make sure you have everything you need. This is a post I’ll go back to over and over in the future!

And finally there’s me, Letizia, here on Bilingual for Fun. I want to question your definition of a bilingual family. More and more families are raising bilingual children against all odds and with plenty of initiative and creativity and a pinch of risk taking. Who are these families? How do they do it? What do experts think of them?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading all these posts and getting to know the families behind them. Before I close I have a suggestion to make, I find Twitter a really powerful tool. It’s much more flexible than Facebook and it allows you to stay on top of what’s going on and to connect in a very effective way. I swear i receive no money whatsoever for saying this, it’s just that I’m looking for your blogs on Twitter so I can follow you there but most of you aren’t on Twitter please, give it a chance, try it. At first it’s rather awkward, but after few days you’ll get used and you’ll soon realize how effective it is. If you have questions feel free to ask, at bilinguepergioco AT yahoo DOT com. Or find me a bilingualforfun or bilinguexgioco.

Finally don’t forget to subscribe the newsletter, so you won’t miss any carnival, do it now, here. And please let us know if you’s like to host, here you’ll find schedule and info.

Next Carnival will be hosted at Mummy do that, those registered to the newsletter will receive a reminder, if not just email sbach AT cartside DOT co DOT uk.

Read, comment, share, think, laugh and try something new. In short have fun!

Image from A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. 5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Since I started talking about bilingual children in non bilingual families, mostly on my italian blog Bilingue per Gioco, I have been flooded with testimonials from non native speaker parents who are going through this experience. It was really a great surprise, this is a form of bilingualism nobody talks about, there’s absolutely no research done on this and the same people involved are normally not very vocal about it, not until now at least.

I think it would be interesting to share some observations and ideas.

What does it mean to raise bilingual children in non bilingual families?

Basically what happens is that parents,  or other relatives, who don’t define themselves as bilingual because they were raised monolingual, but who now speak a second or more languages, teach these language(s) to their children starting in early infancy. The parents’ proficiency in the second language can vary, so do the methods they use to teach their children the second language. Some parents go as far as speaking only the second language to their children (that’s my case), others make this language parts of their lives through songs, books, games or similar, with varying degrees of systematic approach.

Is this bilingualism?

Well, experts seem to think so. Any frequent early exposure to a second language is bilingualism, even half an hour of daily playing or reading in the second language. The question is whether this will lead to a balanced bilingualism, but as you all know, as parents of bilingual children, balanced bilingualism is more a dream than a fact, and anyway passive bilingualism is very important too and can lead to active bilingualism when the conditions arise (say a trip abroad).

Is it dangerous for the child to be deprived of the parent’s mothertoungue?

That’s more than fair a question. The answer is not known at the moment, because as I said no research has been done on this specific form of bilingualism, hence we can only be guided from common sense and opinions can vary. I have also asked two experts on bilingualism to give their view and they are both supportive, they are Sabine Pirchio from University la Sapienza, Rome, and Antonella Sorace from University of Edimburgh.

I think we should consider two dimensions in which this could potentially affect the child negatively: 1) if s/he doesn’t learn properly the language that should be his mothertongue, 2) if the parent-child relationship is disturbed by the fact that the parent is not comfortable with the language s/he using.

The former risk in most cases doesn’t exist, these children live in their parents’ home country and are surrounded by the native language in many ways, plus normally only one of the parents uses the second language and only in some cases s/he uses always the second language. So for all these children their mothertongue seems to develop normally, from what most parents say (again this is not the result of a research but a consideration).

The second risk, the parent-child relationship being affected, exists in principle if the parent uses only the second language, but we can’t say whether it is a real concern. This would be really an interesting topic for research! What I personally believe, and recommend, is that parents don’t take drastic decisions unless they feel 100% right for them and they feel totally comfortable, and also that they dedicate lot’s of attention to all channels of communication with their children, eye and body language included. In fact on my italian blog we talk a lot about how to communicate with children and self-motivate them, a quest for bilingualism often becomes a journey into a deeper understanding of the child and of parent-child dynamics. I think that parents who are so concerned and sensitive, as well as willing to question and understand everything they do, face a very low risk of anything going wrong.

In any case, the guiding principle should be to do only what feels right, for most families that means finding a regular but confined place in their lives for the second language, with this approach things can’t go wrong, particularly if parents are creative in the tools they use to propose the language and make it fun and enjoyable.

What about accent?

Yes, what about it? I think that the relevance of accent in language learning has been highly overestimated. Don’t get me wrong, if these children had a chance to learn the language from native speakers parents would be crazy to forgo that opportunity, the reality though is that this is seldom a chance. Even when a native speaker teacher can be fund, s/he normally can do one hour a week at most, way too little for children to learn the language, they need exposure, exposure, exposure. On the other side, if they have an understanding of the language from early on, later they’ll be less likely to say no to things like movies in original language (in Italy movies are normally dubbed), summer camps abroad, theater in the second language, holidays, anything is fact that can give them a chance to interact with native speakers and improve their accents. Language competencies are not static, they develop, so these children stand a very good chance to become really fluent in the second language just because they started early on.

The topic is a really interesting a large one, so it is impossible to cover all the aspects now, but I would like to know what the international community thinks about this, and I’ll be happy to come back on this.

Picture by A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. All non native parents are not equal
2. 8 reasons why you don’t have to be a native speaker to teach your child a language
3. Bilingualism Makes Children Smarter

More and more parents are teaching their children a second language they themselves don’t speak as native speakers. Even more parents would like to do but don’t dare. The assumption that only native speakers can teach their children a second language is deep rooted but not supported by any evidence, on the contrary, it is done (by people who forgot to ask permission for it) and many experts in the field encourage this practice. Here are 8 reasons why you should challenge this assumption, and have a go at it if you really think that’s what you want to do.

1. Language is a living organism, with time it can grow and develop. Your child won’t speak a foreig language the way you speak it, but most likely he’ll be better, often a lot better. As a parent you can lay the foundations and give the child the tools to learn a second language, later in life you’ll be able to offer more sofisticated input if you wish.
2. There’s not such a thing as a pure accent. Many native speakers speak with really think accents, some people speak a foreign language with barely any accent.  Let’s look at Englis for instance, only 2% of the UK population speaks the Queen’s English.
3. Languages are a tool to communicate. Sometimes we become so obsessed with stylistic considerations that we seem to forget what a language is about: communicating. If I understand and am understood I gainaccess to a whole new world of ideas, people, opportunities. True, the better I am undertood the more I’ll be accepted, but accent isn’t the whole thing. I know people who lived in the US for years and still have a very think italian accent, that hasn’t prevented the, from making stellar carrers in US companies and multinationals. The have both talent and the linguistic means to get that talent acknowledged.
4. You can and should provide multiple input for the second language. Teaching a child a second language is a long and demanding process but not one that you have to manage entirely by yourself, along the way you’ll be able to choose among many support tools, or people.
5. Children have an impressive ability to incorporate input from different sources, averaging away all the extremes and creating their own blend, often superior to their parents’.
6. This might be the only chance at hand. Sometimes there simply aren’t that many alternatives around. Immersion school, an au pair, a french aunty are not always available. In these cases either parents go for it or they forget about it and leave it to the standard school programme, which is seldom effective when it comes to languages.
7. Whatever your knowledge of the second language you can find the right approach for you and your family. There is not standard way, but there certainly is a way which will allow you to get the most out of your competencies without nurturing unrealistic expectations and making life hard for anybody. Identifying the right approach, right for you and your family that is, can be difficult, but once done, you are half way there akready.
8. If you really want it, you’ll make it. Motivation make anything possible, and when it comes to bilingual education motivation really is the key to success. Learning a language is such a long process, only those who stick to it will eventually make it. Plus motivation often comes with passion and fun, which are really useful ingredients too!

In conclusion, anybody can raise children bilingual, or rather anybody who really wants to raise children bilingual can do it. If that’s you, wait no further and jump to next question: How? (we”ll get there soon)

Picture by A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. All non native parents are not equal
2. Bilingual children in non bilingual families

Phd Sabine Pirchio says:

Is it advisable to introduce English as a third language in the life of a child? Introducing a language in the life of a child is always a very delicate matter. Whether the child will learn the language or not depends on several factors, including:

• How often the child is exposed to the language
• Who are the people the child can interact with in that language
• How the language is delivered
• Motivation
• Consistency in the approach used

In fact we know very well that learning a language requires considerable efforts and use of mental resources, although it might seem a very natural and spontaneous process, particularly in the early years. Both adults and children go through this process only if they deem it useful or necessary. What children really care about is relating and communicating with people they like and love, and of course engaging with them in interesting and pleasant activities. If they need English in order to accomplish this they will learn it, if not, they won’t. So really it’s up to parents to make a decision and behave accordingly with consistency.

As a psychologist I perfectly agree with what stated in the previous post: English can wait, there’s no hurry! However this is not a hard rule, there are exceptions or way to work around it, here a couple of ideas:

• The child could learn English at day nursery and/or kindergarten. Nowadays this is a widely available option in most countries, often even in state owned schools. At home parents can support and reinforce what the child learns at school, without actively teaching English the parents can help the child’s learning experience by acknowledging and praising him.
• English is now part of our lives, wherever we live, to the point that we often forget that words like T-shirt and computer are foreign words for most of us. This is very similar to what happens with writing, which is everywhere around us even before children know how to write. One option then is to take a similar approach, children are encouraged to “read” and “write” well before they are actually able to do so, similarly they can be encouraged to play with English words.

A key point though is to have realistic expectations about efforts and results: if parents expect children to actually speak English they should be ready to invest a considerable amount of time, identify suitable methodologies and implement them consistently over time, they should also be aware that they are asking a considerable effort of their children and factor in that they might be frustrated if things don’t turn out as they wish.

On the other side a light, a playful approach would do no harm. Things like “gimme five”, counting “one, two, three”, singing “jingle bells” or watching English cartoons has no negative impact on the child’s psychological health, on the contrary it can even be positive if the whole experience is pleasant and loving. However in this case one can’t realistically expect the child to learn the language, not even to familiarize with it, unless these experiences were frequent and both consistent and diversified.

A last point. Parents might consider the early introduction on English because they would like the child to have a positive attitude towards the language before they are taught it at school. However if the school environment will be good and supportive there’s no reason why the child should offer resistance to learning the language, the association English=Good and fun will easily happen in due time. However if the school environment or the way English is taught at school will be negative or demotivating, this will unfortunately but surely overwrite any previous, positive, experience.

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*PhD. Sabine Pirchio does research in Developmental and Education Psychology at La Sapienza University (Rome- Italy). Her work focuses on language acquisition and use, particularly on second language acquisition is infancy; relationship between gestures and language in the development of normal, bilingual and special needs children; relationship between abstract abilities, bilingualism and cognitive development as well as integration of immigrant children in primary school. Sabine is French-Italian bilingual and is raising her child, 21 month old, bilingual.

Related posts:

1. Children who can speak two languages are better at learning a third language
2. Lisa's recipe for trilingualism
3. Bilingual children in non bilingual families

 An italian mom who is raising her child bilingual in English, although none in the family is an English native speaker, asked some tips about how to find Enlish speaking opportunities for the summer vacation. Of course a trip is always a good idea, although the trip is expensive and is always done with family, which speaks italian… Here’s a nice alternative idea, which suits nicely both children that live in Italy and children who live abroad and have some italian origins: Arte al Sole.

Arte al Sole is a summer camp for international children focussed around fine arts, promoting creativity, enjoying nature and local cuisine. It’s run by Shannon: mom, american (she lives most of the year in the States), fine arts expert, passionate about Italy and italian arts.

I asked Shannon whether she thinks Arte al Sole camps would suit bilingual children, that’s what she says:

“Our summer camp welcomes a few bilingual children every year, and many from Italian American families who are not necessarily bilingual but have had Italian language exposure or instruction throughout their childhood.

It’s interesting, because, as I’m sure you know, there are many English language intensive summer programs for Italian children to practice their English, but I’ve heard from Italian parents these past few years that in many cases their children don’t perceive this option as a “fun” experience, and so they inquire about Arte al Sole because it has an appealing artistic/cultural curriculum that they feel their children would enjoy, but is conducted primarily in English with staff and other children who have the ability to speak Italian if necessary. So, the “playful” or “fun” aspect seems to subtly lend itself to the variety of multilingual experiences among the kids.

It is different every year, but the children really do enjoy sharing their language abilities among each other in a relaxed, natural way, which is so endearing. This year we have a few children who attend international schools in Italy and a few who attend Italian state schools from families with Italian mother/American father or vice versa. The remainder are American families organizing their summer vacation in Europe around attending this camp, many of whom are Italian American or have a strong connection to Italy .

So, in summary, the program supports bilingualism truly through an emphasis on the “play” aspect and on the children’s natural desire for cultural exchange. I can very strongly say that when the kids are allowed to proceed on their own level and at their own initiative in language exchange, they flourish more than when it is perceived by them as imposed or mandatory. Furthermore, we have some wonderful local Lucchese artists, cooks, and a book author who conducts our tour of the center, so the children are always so polite and in a sense honored to share their Italian language/or English as appropriate in a respectful way with the teachers who have either English or Italian as their native tongue.”

I think it’s a great idea, and I believe that it takes passion to live in the States and organize summer camps in Italy, and when things are done with real passion they always have something special about them.

If you have already experienced Arte al Sole’s camps please share your experience, or if you are planning to do so please let us know too, but be fast, as the first session is sold out since April already!

Related posts:

1. Things I’ve done…
2. Lisa's recipe for trilingualism
3. Linda and her international, and multilingual, family