Another question for trilingual families

[matt11confused]

Hi all! It was great to hear from other multilingual families in my other post, and I wanted to share another situation I am facing. I would love to hear how y’all might handle this.

We’re doing OPOL with an almost 1year old. My husband and I have very basic knowledge of each other’s language, and we speak to each other in English, the community language. Baby has much more exposure to my language since I spend more time with him and my language is more prevalent in our place of residence. So we’ve been making more of an effort to go to gatherings with speakers of my husband’s language and also do video calls with my husband’s family members. They are all happy to speak their native language exclusively with baby.

At the same time, they are all very inclusive and fluent in English, so they switch to English around me. This has the unfortunate side effect of reducing baby’s exposure to their native language. I have also noticed baby starts to get annoyed when his grandma switches to English on video calls. I think he knows this means she’s speaking to me and the attention is no longer on him.

It appears my presence is getting in the way of my baby having a more immersive language experience. I’m the primary caregiver and also see myself as a part of my husband’s community even if I don’t speak the language, so I don’t think me just not being around is a good option. I guess another option is for me to learn my husband’s language…… which feels daunting.

I’m curious if anyone else has been in this situation and what you did.

 

[relle25]

@matt11confused I personally wouldn't worry too much about them speaking English to you or in front of you, as long as they're still speaking their native language to the baby. We're a trilingual family and while my understanding of my husband's native language has grown exponentially over the years thanks to the exposure of him speaking it constantly around our kids and spending time with his family, I'm nowhere near spoken fluency and still need to use English to communicate with his immediate family. They will always switch to English at, say, our dinners together to include me in the conversation but revert back to the native language if our kids start talking to them, for instance. I'll also always tell them it's just fine to speak the native language if there's an urgent need to convey some information as quickly as possible and then afterwards my husband or someone else can translate for me.

I wouldn't worry about it too much for video calls either. Kids are smart and figure out quickly whom is addressing whom. It obviously never hurts to learn more of your husband's native language and you'll organically pick up more and more as your kids get older, but for this issue you're mentioning I wouldn't see it as a problem.

 

[matt11confused]

@relle25 Thanks for your input. I’d love to organically absorb my husband’s language, but I’m skeptical that could happen to me. We will see haha.

 

[relle25]

@matt11confused You will, I promise! Hearing my husband speak his language for hours on end to our kids, read them books, hearing the kids speak it to each other- even if I was trying hard not to absorb it, it was inevitable, especially since young kids hear so much repetition.

 

[barsomo]

@matt11confused Yes I have been in a similar situation.

I’m Finnish and my husband is Brazilian. We didn’t know each other’s languages before we had kids. Family members from my side know English although my mom doesn’t speak it, whereas in my husband’s family nobody knows English, only Portuguese. This meant that it made sense for both of us to learn each other’s languages to be able to communicate.

I found it quite easy to learn Portuguese after we started doing OPOL because it was as if I was learning at the same time with our baby. The language that my husband used was so simple, there were lots of nursery rhymes and music and I would more or less hear the same things repeated day after day. We also have Brazilian friends that we spend time with and I’m always actively listening to the conversations that are going on. We’ve been doing OPOL for 5,5y now and I have a good grasp of the language, both in speaking and understanding. I just went to Portugal recently and practiced my speaking there. Got lots of compliments from the locals! Although Finnish is a much harder language, my husband can understand it fully and even speak it a bit.

I don’t think your presence is getting in the way of immersion. But why not go with the flow and immerse yourself as well? You can ask people not to switch to English and tell them you are trying to learn the language. Have fun with it! I’m sure you’ll do great

 

[aldredian]

@matt11confused Have your husband read this: https://bilingualmonkeys.com/how-many-hours-per-week-is-your-child-exposed-to-the-minority-language/

Tips for the non primary caregiver passing on the minority language.

I mean, it wouldn't hurt for you to learn his language but he should learn yours too then. Both of you are passing on minority languages after all so you need all the support you need.

Can your husband not do the video calls with his parents instead of you? That way, you get a break and then maybe they don't have to switch to English.

I do think it is quite important to have time where baby gets one language input exclusively to not disrupt the flow. But you don't have to be too militant around it. Just set some time aside each week where husband takes over and spends one-on-one time with baby and you get to take a break. Win-win really.

The reason I say this is when my son started daycare, he had about a 2 months period where he was at daycare 4 days a week and the 1 day a week he's not at daycare, he was with both my husband and I as my husband was in between jobs at that point.

In other words, he was getting almost full-time English exposure.

Even though I continued to speak only Mandarin to my son (and he'd answer back in Mandarin), because hubby's there speaking English, there was constant switching and I noticed during that period, our son's English shot up rapidly and his Mandarin declined severely. In other words, he was not getting any 100% Mandarin immersion with me during that period.

Once my husband started his new job and I had my son that 1 day a week where it's 100% Mandarin, it balanced out a bit better. Balanced even better if we go visit my parents or when I take him for Mandarin play dates.

You may be the primary caregiver, but if hubby wants his language to be passed on, then he kind of needs to put in the time and effort as well. And there's nothing wrong to tag team and have him have baby exclusively for something like, Saturday morning. Baby gets full immersion. You go and get some me time.

Primary caregiver doesn't mean you have to be around baby all the time.

 

[matt11confused]

@aldredian Thanks for your input. I like the idea about having my husband exclusively watch him for blocks of time and take over the video calls. We’ve defaulted to hanging out altogether when my husband is home since baby prefers me. I need to work on that dynamic and remember me taking breaks is good for everyone.

 

[meshaa]

@matt11confused I commented on your last post also. I have the same setup as you and my daughter is turning 3 very soon.

Of the 3 languages, she's most behind with my husband's by far. This is despite: 1) she spent the first two years of her life seeing my husband's family all the time, where they exclusively spoke their language (we moved away since), and 2) I've been the only source of my language for her except for 1 home country visit and weekly calls with my parents.

But it's because I spend more time with her each day + when all 3 of us are together she comes to me for everything (i.e. when the family is together my language and English dominant).

I've been trying very hard to figure out how to help with this. I completely agree with the other poster it comes down to your husband understanding the effort it takes and putting in the effort. It comes down to consistent exposure of enough hours. I do do some nudging with my husband, encouraging him to spend more time reading with her, and even speaking more when they spend time together (he's not a chatty person).

For me, I'm also ensuring we take trips to visit his side of the family regularly. Also, if / when you're ready for some screen time, you can focus screen time on his language. (Unfortunately for us, my husband's language is a real minority one in the world so there's neither good online content nor many speakers around us.)

I don't have the video call problem because my husband's parents don't speak a lot of English.

But yes, it does take intentionality and effort! Kudos to you for making observations and actively thinking about all this!

 

[knowledgeisnotignorant]

@matt11confused Husband needs to take over video calls and visits to his family. I usually just hop on for a bit during the video calls to say hi to my in-laws and chat a bit in English, but leave it so they can speak in their language to our son.

On playdates and other social gatherings in non-English, my husband and I just give our friends the ok to speak mostly in the non-English language. Some English inevitably makes its way in, but we try to stick to the language we're trying to expose our son to.