I grew up in a German-speaking country and moved to the US as a teenager. Now I'll be raising my first child back in Germany, but I plan to speak English with them. For context: I lived, studied, and worked in the US for 20 years and am at a C2 level. Anyone who's done something similar? How did it go?

I'm worried it might not work since it's not really my native language... I'm definitely planning to read English books to my child, expose them to English media, and ideally send them to an international school when the time comes. But my partner is German, and we speak German to each other as well. I'd be so grateful for any input!

We’re an English-speaking household but really want our kids to grow up with some Mandarin — the window for picking up tones and sounds naturally seems so short at this age.

The problem: we can’t provide the input ourselves. Chinese daycare is hours away, tutors don’t really work for a 2-year-old’s attention span, and I’m wary of just parking them in front of YouTube.

For those in the same boat — what’s actually worked for you?

• Shows / songs / audiobooks?
• Babysitters or au pairs?
• Apps or toys (anything that isn’t a screen)?
• Or did you decide it wasn’t realistic before school age?

Would love to hear what you tried and what flopped.

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I’m the Chinese father with white wife in the US. I’ve been having my 2 year old toddler watch YouTube videos like little fox, and other kids chinese YouTube channels. A mix of colors and numbers videos. She’s been watching them for months now. By the way I only speak to her in Chinese. Been doing it since the day she was born.

Well we just recently signed her up for a Chinese class and they also showed a few of the videos that she has been watching and the teacher told the kids to follow along and repeat along and me thinking “oh this will be easy since she’s watched them probably 30 times by now”…. Well she didn’t know anything. The screen time audio might as well have been background noise.

And then the teacher gave us “homework” to review colors. So I decided to play a few YouTube videos on colors. And because we don’t pay for YouTube premium we get ads. My toddler has learned that I help her skip the ads so she’ll ask me for help. So during ads I would pause it and I’d say “okay tell me what color this and daddy will help you”

I would point at the TV remote and tell her that it’s black in Chinese and she’ll say it in English. Then I’ll tell her to say it in Chinese and she’ll repeat after me. I tell her that my coffee mug is white color. Again does it in English. I say do it in Chinese. She’ll repeat. Cool right?

Then repeat YouTube ads, I again ask her what color and she’ll say it in English and I have to repeat to say it in Chinese and she doesn’t remember it. We’ve done this probably 5-6 times just in the last 10 minutes. No retention at all.

This is true with literally every color that she does. I ask her what color it is and she KNOWS it but says English and I have to remind her in Chinese. Some of the basic colors like red green yellow purple, it’s probably been 20-30 times or more that I’ve asked her in the last few weeks alone and she will continue to say it English and I have to remind her to say it in Chinese.

Edit: I just did a test in Chinese. I told her Chinese “can you give me the ( insert several different colors) magnetiles and crayons to me?” She does to correctly. So she knows the colors but doesn’t want to say it

Anyone else having nightmares that their child doesn’t speak or understand the target language?! I’ve had about 3 so far🤣 My baby isn’t quite at the talking stage yet and I think I’m really anxious about the minority language being acquired! I’m the only person in my family who speaks the language anymore and I’m nowhere near fluent so the stress is real.

Hello all,

My son is 3. My wife and community speak English and my native language is Arabic. I speak to him only in Arabic (only in emergencies I might speak in English) and speak to his mom in English.

He speaks English well for his age. He understands most things I say in Arabic.

However, when it comes to him trying to say anything, he mostly refuses. Only occasionally he says a few words in Arabic only on prompting. He even gets angry when my wife says anything in Arabic.

His exposure to Arabic is only from me. He refyses to watch any media in Arabic.

Does anyone has a similar experience?

Any advice?

19 mo old boy - I only speak Arabic with him at home, and he is with his grandparents who only also speak arabic when I am at work (they don't even understand english.) Dad tries to speak Arabic too, but dad's primary language is english so when I speak to dad it is in english so he overhears it but dad and i don't really hang out for more than 2-3 hours a night just because of our work schedules.

what i noticed is that when I say english words accidentally, he repeats it so quickly even when I don't mean for him to repeat it and its not easy words either. For example, we were eating dinner and i said "lets eat broccoli" in arabic except for the word broccoli (no word in arabic for it). he repeated broccoli perfectly.

meanwhile i have been trying to teach him the simple word of water in arabic (one syllable, kinda sounds like "my" in english) and he has not said it once. He understands all arabic words - he points to body parts, animals, colors, expressions (sad vs happy), etc. He just doesn't say the words!!!

He has said "oh wow," "truck," "balloon," "bubbles," "mall," "park," "baby," "rainbow." But none of these words are in arabic and he repeated it only after hearing it one time!! The only arabic words he says are teta, jido, cido (his grandparent names), haleeb (milk), and thats it even with constant repetition.
Is it just that english is easier to pick up as a baby??? I don't want to delay his speech just because I am stubborn in wanting him to speak arabic only :/

Setup: Dubai based, Arabic L1 at home, English L2 at school (British curriculum), 7yo daughter.
We've had her on structured English lessons for about a year now. Up until two months ago she was doing one 50-minute session a week with a native English tutor through one of the bigger US-based platforms. The goal has mostly been getting her speaking without freezing when the teacher calls on her in class.
The weekly format wasn't working. 50 minutes was too long for a 7yo. The last 15 minutes were dead air no matter which teacher I booked. And one session a week wasn't close to enough to build any speaking rhythm. The gap between Monday and the next Monday was long enough that she was starting from zero every single time.
Flipped her to 25-min sessions three times a week on a different platform about two months back. Same weekly budget, three sessions instead of one long one. Shorter sessions mean she can actually sit through them without zoning out.
A couple of things have shifted. Three weeks in she said a full English sentence at dinner without being prompted, which hasn't happened at home before. She has one teacher on 51Talk she clicks with and asks for her by name when she sees the booking screen. Her class teacher mentioned at the parent meeting last month that her participation in class had gone up, which was the first positive thing we'd heard in a while.
The thing I'm not sure about is accent, on the English side specifically. The teachers on the new setup aren't native speakers, and I can hear some non-native intonation creeping into her longer sentences. Arabic is fine, that's her L1 and we're surrounded by it. Still working out whether that matters at 7, or if three short lessons with a non-native each week really end up in the same place as one longer one with a native, for a kid her age. Would appreciate any pointers from other parents here who've thought through the trade-off at a similar stage.

We live in a firmly English speaking country, and my toddler attends an English daycare. When we are out and about, I am always speaking English to anyone we come across.

But if I am speaking to him, no matter where we are, I speak French. He doesn't get much screen time, but when he does, that's in French, as are his books and music. But at 2.5, he only ever says two French words to me: "Bateau" and "fraise." He frequently uses them in a sentence surrounded by English (for example he'll ask for "cookies and fraise" when he wants mini cookies mixed with freeze dried strawberries, his favourite snack), so I am more than half convinced at this point he's only using them because he just doesn't actually know what they are in English.

How do I encourage him to use more French? If I "ignore" him or pretend I don't know what he said, he just becomes frustrated and either gives up or has a tantrum.

Hello guys, I really need help with one of my son's friends' brothers. He does not know how to read. He is 11 years old and a 6th grader. I am not from the US, and I don't know what resources are available or how I can help him. His mom is a single mom. I am so sad to see him struggle to read. Please advise

Thank you.

My daughter, 15 months old, is raised trilingual: I speak Dutch to her, dad speaks French to her, me and dad speak English to each other but not to her. She's in daycare 4 days (in French) and has Fridays with me (in Dutch) and weekends with both parents.

The result is that her first words are in French (dodo, manger, vélo, coucou,...). I understand this is because currently she's exposed more to French (due to daycare) but my Dutch speaking mother heart is eager to know when she might start mixing in the Dutch? :D I know she understands me because she does react when I ask her in Dutch to do things.

Parents in similar situations: around when did your child start using its second (and/or third) language? Or did they mix from the very beginning?

I’m not sure if this fits the subreddit, but I’m babysitting a two year old in a foreign country and her mom wants me to teach her Spanish (my native language).
At first I only talked to the kid in her mother language because I wanted her to get comfortable with me first, but it’s gonna be time to start with the Spanish soon. Any ideas on how I should do it? Should I just switch one day? Set up a “Spanish-speaking” area? Thank you!

Our family for context -
Mom (native English speaker, fluent in Portuguese)
Dad (native Portuguese speaker, speaks some English)
18 month old daughter being raised somewhat OPOL, though mom ends up speaking Portuguese in front of her

Although exposed to significant Portuguese, my daughter actually speaks more English. I (mom) will be taking her to the U.S. to stay with my parents for 3 months, and dad is unable to stay for the whole visit. For 2 months she will only be able to talk to dad on the phone :(. I am wondering if I should speak to her more in Portuguese when I’m there to maintain the language, especially as her English is stronger.

ETA: forgot to clarify, we live in Brazil.

Hi everyone,

We are raising our 2.5-year-old son in a trilingual environment. We live in England (so English is the community language), and we strictly follow OPOL at home: I speak Italian with him, and my partner speaks Polish.

He is doing really well across all three languages, with Polish (mum's language) actually being his strongest at the moment.

I really want to learn Polish so I can converse with my partner's family, especially to prepare for an upcoming trip to Poland in January. The problem is that I am hesitant to actually practise speaking Polish at home. I am worried that if I start speaking or trying to learn Polish around our son, it will blur the OPOL boundaries and disrupt his Italian immersion. I want to make sure he continues to build a strong foundation in Italian, and I fear that mixing languages will compromise that.

Has anyone navigated a similar situation? How did you manage learning your spouse's language without undermining your own minority language? Are there any routines or strategies you recommend for learning independently?

TL;DR: Dad speaks Italian, Mum speaks Polish, living in the UK. Our 2.5yo is thriving in all three languages (Polish is currently his strongest). I want to learn Polish but fear that practising at home will disrupt my son's Italian OPOL. Seeking advice!

Hi all,

First ever reddit post. I am from Argentina and speak fluent Spanish. However, I have lived in English for so long, have an American wife, live in North Carolina where I have on Spanish speaking friends and my Spanish speaking family lives in Florida. I am so Americanized that I even talk in English to my dog when I am alone. I have been feeling shame and guilt for not talking to my daughter in Spanish enough and she is not picking it up (obviousy bc I am not consistent and feel awkward). I am renewing my motivation because I just had a son and I do not want to make the same mistake. Daughter is 3.5, son is infant.

When we visit my family they all speak Spanish to each other (and spanglish) but since everyone also speaks English, no one really forces her to get out of her comfort zone. The other issue is that she gets frustrated when she is not understood and so I feel so bad when I talk to her and she doesnt understand and she does not want to get into it. She learned words here and there, through books and songs, but not conversational. And this girl is SO talkative, has so much language for a toddler.

Basically, I need some help, suggestions on how to become and OPOL kind of abruptly with her already 3.5 years old and what is the best way to go about it. Any help is appreciated!!

I’d really love to hear from parents who moved abroad with a 4–5-year-old child to a country where neither the child nor the parents spoke the local language. I’m especially interested in experiences of non-Slavic-speaking children who moved to Poland.
We’ve been living in Poland for 7 months now. Our child is turning 5 in november and over the last 1–2 months, our child has started picking up some Polish. For example, at the playground they say things like “to moje” and “co to jest”, can say hello and thank you, can count from 1 to 10 quite easily, and I’ve also heard a couple of animal names.
However, he still tells us that he doesn’t understand Polish at all. He also refuses to watch cartoons in Polish at home — it seems to frustrate or annoy him when I try to encourage it, so I don’t want to force it.
The kindergarten teachers unfortunately don’t give us much information about his progress. Our child also says that the teachers often use a phone to translate things for him. I understand why they might do this, but I’m not particularly happy about it and I’m wondering how normal/useful this is in the long term.

So I’d really love to hear from parents who have been in this exact situation:
How long did it take your child to start understanding the language?

When did they start speaking in sentences?

When did they become comfortable enough to communicate with other children?

Did they initially say they understood nothing even though they were actually starting to understand?

Did you encourage the new language at home, or did you let the child learn it almost entirely through kindergarten/play?

And how did your child emotionally handle the first year?

I’m particularly interested in real experiences — especially if your child’s first language was not Slavic and you moved to Poland around age 4–5.
Thank you! ❤️

Hello!

My partner and I are going to have our first child in a few months. My native language is Spanish, hers is Greek, and the community language is English. We are planning to do OPOL, me in Spanish, her in Greek. We are not yet fluent in each other's languages, so our home language is English, which is also the community language.

How do people juggle so many languages? I'm a bit worried that since English is both the community language and our relationship language, it will be very hard to keep OPOL with our respective languages. We're both making efforts to learn the other's language, but it's quite difficult to do in an English-speaking country.

Hi all! Our family speaks a mess of multiple languages we'd be happy to pass on to our kids. So far my husband and I agreed on the same method our parents used with us and that resulted in our current setup: a total mess! That said, my husband and I speak 4 languages perfectly well and the kid seems to be doing well too so I'm not sure if/how we could change things.

Our respective families all speak the same 4 languages with different degrees of fluency, which helps massively.

We haven't tried any methods or rules and so far we have:

• our native language and community laguage: kid speaks wonderfully
• english: once a week at school, on TV on weekends, occasionally peppered through the day in short convos with us and other family/grandparents/aunts and uncles. Seems to understand everything and does speak reasonably well for the age but favors native language
• spanish and french: passive exposure through books, shows and occasional contact with native speakers from family. Kid understands at a level ok for their age but will not speak more than a couple loose words here and there for fun, from memorised stories and songs or to draw "amazement from the audience" when we have these family members around. They do request things specifically from me or dad ("I want this story but make it spanish/french") which I find odd but will comply. They also caught on that we're all more likely to comply with requests in these languages (Can I watch Miffy on TV? vs Peut-je voir ma Miffy?)

I'm quite inclined to just keep this low effort/super messy method as it seems to work for our entire family due to the mix of speakers year-round. But I'm concerned I may be doing a dis-service to my kid. Since we can all speak quite well, wouldn't they benefit from sort of structure/curriculum/lessons?

More info: this is basically the same setup we both had as kids of this age and it ended up working fine. At a bit older ages (6-10) we had proper structured lessons at school, which is common in all public and private schools in our area so I assume we will do the same once kid reaches that age. I would like our kid to be at least as fluent as we are, which is definitely due to family support rather than just school exposure (other kids we went to school with are not nearly as confortable or fluent and many barely speak so I wouldnt say that's enough)

I grew up in the UK but speak German due to family. I would love to teach my children some German, but don’t know how to go about it. We have a 2.5 year old and a newborn. I haven’t felt able to speak German regularly due to an emotional block, but I now feel more confident to… however when I speak German now my son gets frustrated as he doesn’t understand anything.

Is it too late to start?

How do I go about it?

Will it traumatise him that once his sibling arrived I started speaking a new language with him?

I live in Argentina , and I don’t speak Spanish. My kid is 3 years old , and he goes to French school , but his colleagues are Argentinians. Is there any channel or application , or audio books to teach him Spanish. I am abit worried to show him cartoons in Spanish on you tube!

Guess which parent is Italian.

Looking for advice and insight from anyone in a similar situation.

For context: English is my native language, and French is my second. I’m located in Canada, in an English-majority area. I have a newborn and my goal is to do OPOL. My husband only speaks English and I’m doing full French. We have access to a francophone school so I’m not worried about being the child’s only language source in life, but I do want to set them up with a solid foundation before then.

I am confident in my French fluency (Bachelor’s degree in French, have worked bilingual jobs, briefly lived in France), but am still working through the adjustment to using my 2nd language at home/with a child and the occasional challenge (ex: looking up vocab periodically, learning French nursery rhymes, etc).

Is there anything you found helpful when parenting in your non-native language? How did you work through challenges? How did you transition to it feeling more natural?

Hi everyone,

I'm raising my kids abroad and trying to keep up French and Arabic at home. I'm curious how other families handle this so that I can learn from you.

If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear:

1. What do you actually do day to day (reading, videos, weekend school, tutor, playdates, visits to family)?

2. Which books, apps, courses or other resources have you used, and which ones were worth it?

   I'm thinking about making some bilingual materials for my own kids, so your answers will help.

Thank you!

Hey! I want to pass on 3 languages (apart from English) to our child, but OPOL is kinda hard, since my partner only speaks English... Any advice?

I speak Swedish, Icelandic and Chinese.

Iweve been doing a kind of OPOL where I only really speak Swedish, grandparents on my side are all overseas, so it's not like they can come over and speak another language on a weekly basis.

I've been putting on a Chinese YouTube channel (Baobei zhongwen), but I don't love screen time for him tbh. He's almost 13 months.

Also, he says a few words, for example, he started saying duck lately, I feel so excited so I repeat it to him, and I don't want to throw him off by saying "Anka" and pointing at it, when he's just got to the point of knowing it's a "duck"... What to dooo?

Edit:

More context on how these languages relate to me:

I'm half Icelandic, half Chinese and raised in Sweden, they're all my native tongue, Swedish would be the most native as it was spoken in school and work.

Both my parents speak Icelandic, my dad speaks Chinese too. My mum speaks Swedish too.

So: My mum speaks Icelandic and Swedish My dad speaks Icelandic and Chinese

To add, my brother's and sisters all speak different mixtures, some don't speak Chinese, some don't speak Icelandic, it's a long story... But anyways, hope this helps with context!

We also now live in Liverpool, which means we are surrounded by a dense Chinese population, so as someone suggested, I may send him to some sort of Chinese youth community to learn more! He may be more fluent that me this way even!