How it's going 7.5 years out with 3 kids and 3 languages- another (extensive) update

[relle25]

Quick background: my husband and I do OPOL, English and Czech respectively. The community language is German. My husband and I use English to talk to each other but only use our native languages with the kids. We will speak German to the kids only if they have a friend around who doesn't speak either of our languages and we need them to understand. They attend German-only daycare, preschool and elementary school but my oldest's elementary school offers a native speakers class for English (English starts early here as a school class) which he is a part of. He is also learning a fourth language at school with lessons in it several times a week.

I used to work in a bilingual elementary school and a bilingual preschool for several years as well before having my own kids.

Accents

I know sometimes multilingual parents are curious about how their kids' accents will sound in their various languages. After observing my own kids and in my work, honestly, it's an absolute crapshoot. My oldest kid has a "perfect" accent in each of his languages and you would assume he is a native speaker of each one in that regard. My middle kid has a bit of a quirky hybrid accent in English (it sounds like a mixture of American, British, Australian and a bit of German mixed in) and has a few minor pronunciation issues in German and English (like the "th" sound in English and the "r" in German). His Czech accent sounds native level. It's too early to say with the toddler as he still has very limited spoken language.

Receptive language

This has been the easiest element of multilingualism with all of my kids- they have all been capable of understanding all three languages early on. German took a little longer since they only started getting it once they started daycare (between ages 1 and 2) but caught on very quickly.

Spoken language

While technically speaking being multilingual does not mean your kid will be a late talker, it has admittedly held true for all of my kids. None of them had a lot of spoken language till closer to age 2. My current toddler is 19 months and has 10 spoken words (in all 3 languages altogether). Anecdotally, this is less than his monolingual peers at daycare that are around his age or even a little younger. They all babbled a lot though.

How we try to reinforce our home languages

• lots of general convo and pointing things out
• books
• audio books
• some TV shows once the kids are older enough (we don't have Ipads or tablets though and don't plan on giving the kids them or phones for years, so we don't do any apps/electronic games)
• music/songs
• we visit my husband's home country fairly frequently, which I have to say is admittedly a big help in reinforcement
• extended family Facetiming or visiting
• having some friends in our city who are native speakers of our languages and hanging out with them and their kids when possible
• board games
• on (rare) occasion there are sometimes English language children's theater or English un-dubbed kids' movies in our city, so we try to take advantage of those

 

[devonte07]

@relle25 Thank you for this great overview!

I’m curious about the school kid: has literacy changed things? Is your 7yo literate in all 3 languages, and how did you tackle that? Has access to reading on their own increased their exposure to their minority languages, and with what results?…

 

[relle25]

@devonte07 No prob!

We have a bit of an odd sitch because my middle kid is hyperlexic and taught himself how to read in all of our languages last year, so actually both of the older kids read now in all the languages (plus now my oldest learned a new alphabet/language starting last year in first grade and can read that too). Both of them being able to read and write has been fantastic- really no negatives I'd say. The oldest was a bit slow to come around to reading for pleasure, but he finally just in the last few weeks has started reading some books for fun. That said, they both still prefer to be read out loud to. The middle kid prefers writing to reading so he spends a lot of his time writing things out which is interesting to observe how he deals with spelling in all three languages since he hasn't had formal instruction in any of them.

The oldest kid was starting in his last months of preschool to start to read in all three languages but didn't really quite take off till he formally started first grade.I never actively pushed them in terms of alphabets and such to learn but I always answered their questions about letters and spelling if they asked me. Since my husband's language will never be formally taught to them in school, we do have to take some more care about it so my husband did actively teach them the phonetics of Czech and all the diacritical marks. As the kids get older, he will probably try to make sure that their grammar is also up to native-speaker par in their writing, since he will basically be the sole source of that. But we have to keep it fun and interesting, I think, otherwise they won't be very motivated, so we will have to cross that bridge more when we get there.

Since Czech and German are far more phonetically logical than English, the kids do generally have a bit of a preference for reading/writing in them and will use German phonetic to write out English words that they don't know how to spell yet- from what I have observed over the years, that's a fairly common phenomenon when English is in the mix English spelling is simply not intuitive and requires a lot of rote memorization, as a lot of its "rules" get constantly violated, which is likely the reason even a lot of native speakers of English have some issues with spelling at times.

 

[mamckay41]

@devonte07 In my case teaching reading french is a challenge haha

 

[devonte07]

@mamckay41 How old is your kid, and what have you tried? My 6yo is taking well to the Méthode Boscher at home, although it is slow going. She hasn’t started school yet (environment language is Germany).

 

[mamckay41]

@devonte07 I tried my method. 4 years old, so far she can read letter by letter and do association of words.

She knows the things like Ou , un , an.

Was funny last time she wrote phonetically rinoceros and draw the animal then showed it to me. Was quite impressed

Today she managed to read Barilla XD

 

[bbyers07]

@relle25 Very good overview. I'm curius, what are the fourth language the oldest learn in school? I would assume french or spanish. And how is he progressing with that language?

 

[relle25]

@bbyers07 It's actually Hebrew and he's doing really well with it! Considering he's only been learning it for a year and a half with just a few hours a week of instruction, he's already able to say some full sentences and understands quite a bit and can write in the alphabet.

 

[rdtoo]

@relle25 This is so awesome to see! We are doing OPOL with Spanish and English, and English is also the community language. Our 4 year old’s receptive language for Spanish is strong, but he always responds in English. We’ve tried to not make overt demands but just continue speaking in the target language , but I’m wondering if we need to do more. Even during extended visits to the home country with only Spanish speaking relatives, it’s still not really emerging as much as we had hoped. Did you encounter this at all and if so, do you have any advice?

 

[relle25]

@rdtoo So in observing a lot of kids at the schools I worked at plus friends' kids as well (we have a ton of multilingual families where we live and the vast majority of our kids' friends are actually at least bilingual) this is also really dependent from kid to kid- some kids are more resistant to responding in the minority language with spoken language even though their receptive understanding is excellent, like your kid. Are there scenarios where your kid is basically "forced" into speaking Spanish (like a relative or a babysitter who doesn't really understand English)? Sometimes that can help, but mostly all you can really keep doing is reinforcing and keeping it fun and motivational. If there's other Spanish speaking families in your area, playgroups, etc, that might also be helpful- the "peer pressure"- like if the other kids are speaking to each other and their parents in Spanish- can also be low key motivational way to motivate spoken language.

 

[wantingtoknow]

@relle25 Thank you! Amazing snapshot.

 

[longroad]

@relle25 Wonderful insights, thank you so much!

As a parent of three who’s a couple years behind you (eldest is 5), I enjoyed hearing about the different accents your kids are exhibiting thus far.

Very cool that they offer a class for native English speakers! Here they don’t start learning English until 12, and I’ve often wondered how my kids will do. I want them to be adequately challenged, but it’s not like the teacher can be expected to make a whole specialized lesson plan for one kid.

 

[justgivemetruth]

@relle25 This is interesting. What do you think was different for your older kid to have developed perfect accents instead of hybrids?

 

[relle25]

@justgivemetruth After observing multilingual kids for many years at work and with my own, I think at the end of the day, the way some folks handle languages can be a talent/gift- some people just have an "ear" for things like imitating accents (my husband is like this, his English for instance sounds like he grew up speaking American English from birth). Short of having an accent coach like for acting or something, I think it's pretty hard to teach a "correct" accent to kids, they either pick it up or they don't. That said, I personally don't think accents are a big deal ever and you can definitely have native-speaker-level knowledge of a language without the native-sounding accent.