Raising my boy bilingual

[lisaleger]

Hi all,
I'm a native Spanish speaker and want to raise my boy bilingual. My English is 9/10 so I think I can manage it well.

But being raised in Spanish myself, I lack "childrens vocabulary".

Can you give me some examples of cute words to refer to him or the world around him?

E.g. In Spanish we use "enano" which literally means "dwarf". But I've heard movies use "little man" and sounds way better.

How did you refer to food, people, manners, etc, around them?

Thanks in advance

 

[hiwaystar]

@lisaleger one of the easiest ways to raise a multilingual kid is separating out languages by context. if you have a partner, then one partner speaks to the kid only/mostly in english and the other partner speaks to the kid only/mostly in Spanish.

Or if you're a native Spanish speaker in the US, use Spanish only in the home and English only at school/daycare. Or vice versa if you're in a spanish speaking country -- speak English mostly at home, then let school teach him Spanish.

How did you refer to food, people, manners, etc, around them?

My best advice is to watch children's television (with or without your kid) in English to pick up some kid-related idioms.

 

[nebulamoon]

@hiwaystar An acquaintance is raising their kids tri-lingual, English, Spanish, Polish. Her mom and sister live nearby, and so does his brother. She spoke exclusively in Polish at home, he spoke exclusively in Spanish at home, and they spoke English to each other and outside. When their boy was a toddler he would try to talk to all men in Spanish and all women in Polish. He was really confused why his dads mom didn’t understand Polish.

 

[lisaleger]

@nebulamoon Doesn't this come out of a tedx talk? Lol

 

[nebulamoon]

@lisaleger No, this was one of my wife’s best friend’s good friends. We were discussing this at a dinner/play date as all 3 of our boys are about the same age, and we were living in Chicago. That was about 7 years ago right before we moved.

 

[nebulamoon]

No, this was one of my wife’s best friend’s good friends. We were discussing this at a dinner/play date as all 3 of our boys are about the same age, and we were living in Chicago. That was about 7 years ago right before we moved.

ETA-when I say it like that it makes it sound very tenuous. My wife was roommates with L for 5 years and they remain very close-we go on vacations together, and when my wife and L were on maternity leave we lived 3 blocks apart and they spent almost every day together. The last 2 summers my son has stayed with them while he and their son went to camp. We typically see them 2-3 times a year.

The couple we’ve met several times at Christmas parties and the like. The wife and L are close.

 

[dcbfan]

@nebulamoon Well once he starts interacting will people more often he will take social cues and adjust accordingly, but overall it’s wonderful that he can do all that

 

[hoperaven]

@lisaleger I'm american raising my kid in France with a french dad. Our friends a speech pathologist and she told me to not speak to my baby in french at all because it's not my native language. It's best to speak to kids in your native language. I forget why exactly, but she had a few good reasons. Sorry it's not super helpful.

 

[prettydesperatemom]

@hoperaven It's "funny" (karmic?) to see how things change...

They used to tell people to talk in French at home so that kids would learn the country 's language and not their parents' one.

(As far as I know this was a widespread phenomenon all over Europe done to migrant families btw).

As a kid that grew up in Switzerland, my parents had that same conversation with our school representative and were pressured to give in to stop talking their native languages at home.

My dad had to tell them that he spoke broken Swiss-German at best and barely any German at all to be able to be of any help to us.

Talking Portuguese at home was the best thing they did but it went against what they were told and afaik they only stopped nagging him after I started school and got overall great grades...

My parents just made sure we were involved in our local community (Swiss-German) and had contact with German too ( I pretty much just watched TV in German while growing up).

Despite the pressure a lot of parents didn't gave in and we pretty much ended up understanding not only those languages but a lot of those spoken in each other's homes. I grew up with my friend's grandmother talking to me only in Italian, for instance and my brother's nanny was Italian too and there was a time he spoke it even better than Portuguese or Swiss-German...

 

[hoperaven]

@prettydesperatemom Yeah, i think it's because it's unnatural for the parents and makes it harder for them to connect with the kids if they're speaking a foreign language (as she said)... Plus it translates bad grammer and pronunciation. My daughter's whole life is french, so I'm happy to speak to her in English. I speak to her in french around french people (because I feel weird if no one can understand me).

That's ashame they tried to do that... I'm not surprised though. Luckily the younger generations are much more knowledgeable and educated. The fact that you can speak so many languages is a huge advantage.

 

[lisaleger]

@hoperaven We are both Spanish speakers at my house. We thought of one speaking only onglish and other only Spanish. But I read (and made a lot of sense), that the foreign language speaker parent, would naturally develop a connection resistance. If a parent has more communication friction that the rest of the world, humans are wired to use the path of less resistance.

That's why I usually speak sometimes in English, and some in Spanish. Trying to keep the scope of each moment separated.

Of course I don't want to sacrifice our relationship because of bilingualism.

Thanks for your inputs

 

[masterluthfi]

@lisaleger Can I ask where you read this? I am an early childhood educator with a background in child development and that js not a recommendation that I have heard/read, or would recommend based on how children learn.

Also, I speak Spanish and my husband speaks English. As an educator I have recommended and witnessed many parents successfully teach their children multiple languages like this (each parent/caregiver speaks their native language all the time). Your child needs to hear Spanish as much as possible, as much as English, to be truly bilingual. If you speak English sometimes and your partner speaks it all the time, your child may start to ignore your Spanish since he hears it so much less.

 

[crisko777]

@lisaleger Watching kids TV is probably the best thing to get "kid" idioms, but really, a lot of the words we use with kids are nonsense, so if you want to teach your child English, you could just not use that and they'll be fine.

For example, I call the little ones "munchkins" half the time. That is not really a word you need in English. I referred to things either by their correct name, or by the "name" the kid had given it., e.g. my little sister called her ipad "pindu" because she watched a lot of Pingu on it. So half the time we called it Pindu as well. But if we wanted her to learn English and we were her only source, we should have called it "ipad" or "tablet".

 

[sunnyday05]

@lisaleger Depending on where you are, we have purchased duo language children books. Spanish and English. My husband reads the English, while I read the Spanish. She can hear which is which. We started her in a bilingual school to support us as I am not even close to your level of English (in my case Spanish). But I speak where I can.
I have her watch YouTube shows in Spanish and change Disney/Netflix into Spanish on occasion.

There is duolingo apps for kids as well.

 

[freddie]

@lisaleger I’m generally not a fan of baby languages or making normal words sound babyish. Kids are astoundingly smart, just use your normal vocabulary around him, in both languages.

However, we do use terms of endearment for the kids and they tend to be random words that make no sense lol. I used to call mine chicken or potatoes when they were very small. I don’t know why! Now I tend to use nicknames based on their names or ‘cutie patootie’ or ‘monkey’. Sometimes ‘demon spawn’ lol. For random kids I don’t know but am interacting with, I always say ‘sweetie’. ‘Dude’ is good too and covers boys & girls. These colloquial terms can be very regional esp across the UK and you find yourself being called pet, hen, duckie, etc. Just pick stuff you like, your son will be happy.

 

[lisaleger]

@freddie This is exactly the post goal. Thanks

 

[nodoubter]

@lisaleger Common pet names in our house are cookie (which was a holdover from my grandparents - my grandpa called me biscot in Italian and my grandma continued calling her grandkids cookie in English for the rest of her life), honey bun, little bean, bubba (which evolved from baby, babe, bubby, bubs), babycakes, and buddy. The absurdity of this is just hitting me now but it’s really cute now that my toddler calls me and dad big bean or big buddy.

 

[nodoubter]

@freddie That’s fantastic. I love it.

My partner and I came up with some nicknames for each other years ago. My name is also Clair, so Clair Bear evolved into the French sounding version “Clairbert” but now my partner pronounces it Clairburt because we find it funny. I call him Paulburt. We have since added “burt” to the end of our kids’ names too. This has led my toddler to, on multiple occasions, refer to us as Clairburt and Paulbert since we call him Richburt.

 

[freddie]

@nodoubter That is very cute!

 

[valentinap]

@lisaleger Sesame Street is on YouTube. A lot of the songs repeat most words and make it easy to pick up kids phrases.