Do bilingual kids feel left out at school?

[mcv222]

@lippy1004 My kids never felt left out and made friends super easily. They used it to their advantage sometimes through community language is their 3rd language so sometimes they pretended not to understand nor speak when they felt like it but after s while teachers realized they actually understood and speak very well.

 

[eeasuper]

@lippy1004 At 2 yo they are only barely beginning to learn social play. It's possible she won't even be interacting with other kids yet, or when they do interact it's without words. And at that age they pick up languages lightning fast. So I doubt it will have an impact like that

 

[learnandbloom]

@lippy1004 I have this observation too. I think my kid does feel the othering… she been attending the daycare for 1.5 years now.

But I am letting that part go for now. Maybe she is socially awkward like me and I know I am awkward.

What i am slightly concern is she seems to want to converse fully in mandarin to everyone. While great? But that meant teacher may not understand her. And i think it does bring on frustration for her and add stress.

 

[lippy1004]

@learnandbloom When did she start daycare? Also, does she still feel the othering even after 1.5 years?

 

[machoke47]

@lippy1004 In short, no.

The community language will become their dominant language by the time they are in kindergarten or grade 1 and they won't have any issues. You start with a daycare that has at least one staffer that speaks your language and the rest have the community language. Kiddo will pick it up within a few months.

It is normal for them to mix up the vocabulary until they are about 4, this does not mean they are not able to handle 2 languages.

 

[thabang]

@machoke47

You start with a daycare that has at least one staffer that speaks your language

This would be pretty hard for a lot of people, depending on where you live and what your langauge is.

 

[mamckay41]

@machoke47 It's annoying because I disagree with that... my kid has 3 minority language and 1 community one.

And unfortunately the community one is the weakest and the minority language from my side is the best. He is the best in my language and understands everything at 5 with an adult vocabulary so very well developped. But the community one as I don't speak it is very poor and I can tell he doesn't understand all what he has been told .

Because the issue is that he is only in contact at daycare with this language so many words from the house for example are unknown.

Is it annoying? Yes. Would I have done differently? NO Because I am really proud he can speak French English mandarin and swedish.

 

[lionheartiv]

@machoke47 Not necessarily sold that the community language will become the dominant language in our case.

We live in a pretty bilingual city where French is the community language but a lot of kids also speak English… my son will be going to a French school so I’m curious (now his English is much stronger than his French) but we also speak both languages at home so I think he’ll really just end up with two native languages

 

[godfavorme]

@lippy1004 I feel like a lot of this depends on the community and teachers. If teachers or classmates are xenophobic, it's going to make them feel left out. But in other contexts, I've seen multilingual kids get seen as cool and have other kids begging them to teach words in other languages. My biggest recommendation is to try to find a daycare and school that is welcoming to diverse cultures and explicitly discourages racism and xenophobia. Which is easier said than done.

 

[doulos74]

@lippy1004 Nope. My son went in speaking our native language at a bilingual school and within few months, randomly speaking English more. We are now working hard to not speak English around him.

 

[armsopen]

@lippy1004 I think it highly depends on age. I’m placing my son in an immersion language school when he turns 2.5 because I speak Spanish to him but my husband doesn’t, so I speak a lot of English at home and I want my son to be able to speak Spanish fluently. One of my cousins heard my plan and shared her horror story of being in a bilingual class when everyone else knew English better than her. She was 7 when she first went to an English speaking class and English/grammar is still not her strong suit at the age of 38 due to the anxiety she gets around the language. I have another friend that grew up speaking Bengali and went to a slumber party with all English speaking girls around kindergarten. She cried to get picked up because she couldn’t speak to the girls she would soon start school with but after her first school year of school you would never know she wasn’t a native English speaker.