Will this work if nanny does not speak the minority language

[einspectorfidget]

My husband and I speak Chinese Mandarin and are living in the US (obviously, community language is English). We are both bilingual and wish to raise our child English/Mandarin bilingual as well.

We’ve been exclusively talking to baby (2 months old boy) in Mandarin and plan on continuing to do so, since baby will be getting English everywhere else. However, the problem is that we both work and my maternity leave is ending soon, so we are looking for a nanny for starting when baby is 3 months old. We’re trying to find a bilingual/Mandarin speaking nanny so that she can also exclusively speak Mandarin to baby, but it’s difficult to find. If we can only find an English speaking nanny, will it still be possible to raise our child bilingual? The nanny will be spending so much of baby’s waking time with him, speaking English, and he’s still so young. We’re starting to feel a bit desperate on the nanny search situation, the bilingual requirement considerably narrows down the pool.

Edit: I did a search last night if there were similar posts but didn’t really find any. But of course now that I posted this, I see that there’s an extremely similar post 2 hours ago I’ll leave my post up anyway though in case there’s any sort of different suggestions.

 

[aldredian]

@einspectorfidget It will be better if you can find a Mandarin speaking nanny but since you guys are heritage language at home, don't discount the time you're home and weekends where you'll only be speaking Mandarin to your child.

If I look back at my friends, they sent their kids to daycare which is all English (well, they did have some teachers who spoke Cantonese but they didn't speak it to their child all the time) and their kids are still bilingual in both English and Cantonese.

Maybe just find a nanny for now and then keep looking for the Mandarin speaking one.

Also, have you asked around the Chinese expat communities? A lot of times it's through WOM. Further, you could even search directly from China and fly them over if you have to.

My friend asked around back in Taiwan and found a masters student with a degree in early childhood education and brought her over on a holiday visa (we live in Australia). She worked as an au pair at her house for a year, looking after their daughter speaking only Mandarin.

 

[einspectorfidget]

@aldredian Hearing that it worked out for your friend gives me hope!
We’ll try asking around a bit more, but so far, the people we know either don’t have kids so would have no idea, or they only know people who live about an hour or two hours drive away, and not likely will want to commute to our home. And we’re not looking for a live-in nanny for now so an au pair would be out of consideration. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[godmadegorillas]

@einspectorfidget Yes they will still learn the minority language. My son attends a daycare in a minority language, my husband and I each speak to him in our respective minority languages, and my husband and I speak English to each other, and somehow my son is able to speak all 3 minority languages almost equally well. Try not to overthink it and provide as much input as you can in your minority language while you are with your child through media, books, community, etc.

 

[einspectorfidget]

@godmadegorillas Your son is amazing. I guess by the time he becomes exposed to the community language, he’ll be quadruple-lingual!!

 

[hollyroller7]

@einspectorfidget In my opinion, the baby definitely will learn Mandarin even with an English speaking nanny. This is especially true because you both speak it exclusively around the baby. The baby will still be spending tons of time with you and your husband and that will sooo much of the language they will hear.

And communicating with the parents/primary caregiver is absolutely essential for a baby, the baby will absolutely learn it. I wouldn’t worry if it were me, personally. I think there are many many families that speak one language at home and the child is exposed to another through daycare, and the child still learns both. I guess I don’t have a source for my opinions here, but this is just how I feel I suppose.

Also, to supplement, you could have an English only-speaking nanny play music in Mandarin while she’s with him. You even could make it be part of the contract, that at least 30 mins (or whatever) of Mandarin music must be listened to each day, etc. That would give the baby some additional input and the nanny can still dance/fake sing along (or even actually learn the lyrics!) and that would give some additional time per week of the baby hearing Mandarin.