Bilingual parenting: How Can I stick to my language consistently

Regular readers of this blog might have started to spot a pattern: It's not as easy as I would have thought.

Picture the scene: You've left your home country years ago, started a career, made friends, found love, and started a family. All that in a foreign language. First, it was probably quite hard to conduct your routine in your language. But then little by little it got easier until it became second nature. Congratulations - you achieved proficiency, perhaps even bilingualism.🎆

 It's only natural that you want to pass this super power on to your greatest achievements: your kids. It'll be easy, you'll just speak to them in your mother tongue and let your spouse or partner and the community sort out the rest. Chances are that if you are reading this blog, you already know that bilingual parenting isn't nearly as straight forward as it sounds.

One theme that runs through conversations with parents in this situation is guilt.When I met with Dorit a mum of a 7-year-old boy, she sums it up rather harshly as: "We actually failed completely." Her story mirror a lot of my clients. Her family is a set up of three languages. Dorit is a native German speaker, her husband's background is Hebrew, their family language is English. 

Guilt: a constant companion when it comes to parenting, is especially strong in multilingual families where one of the family languages is falling short. Feeling guilty is easy, but never solves the problem at hand. Yes, it would have been better, if you had spoken in your target language from the birth of your child, and it is precisely the advise I would give to new parents. But you are not a new parent, but with a little work, planning and structure you can still make a positive change.

When should I start?
NOW. It will be easier to get your child onboard the younger they are. So start now. There is no such thing as an ideal moment, so you might as well start now.

That was easy, so let's tackle the hard part.

Quality time: the key to success for bilingual parenting.

Where do I start?
Facebook groups and bilingual parenting can be helpful resources, but one piece of advice that gets trotted out with an alarming regularity is this: "Just speak to your kid in German." Let's be honest, if it was this easy you wouldn't be here. 

The secret, like with starting most good habits, is consistency and realistic goals. If your kids are old enough (I put it around 4 years old), the first active step should be a conversation with your child(ren).
 

In an age appropriate way, tell them what you are going to do (introduce more German), and why. The why is an interesting one, some of your reasons might be perfectly valid, but won't mean a thing to your preschooler. So keep it relevant: the kids will  able to grasp speaking to Oma and Opa (...), being able to watch this cool programme that is only available in German (honest 😉) and having a secret language, but might struggle with the concept of studying abroad and improved career prospects. If your child is generally on board with introducing in German (consider yourself very lucky), you could even set goals for everyone.
In the far more likely scenario that they are somewhere on the spectrum of indifference, reluctance, and resistance, treat this conversation more like letting them know about what you are going to do. Remember, the first rule of introducing an additional language is DO NOT SPRING RANDOM TARGET LANGUAGE ON YOUR KIDS. This is stressful, especially if your kids are a little older. The aim is a fun family project, rather than entering a battle of wills.
Next, set achievable goals: start with one or two weekly sessions; and these should be as relaxed and free from stress as possible: a dedicated playtime, a trip to the park or a relaxed (!) weekend dinner, bath time or whenever your family is at their most happy and least stressed. Quality is way more important than quantity. If you can get your kids to associate German with quality time, you've won half the battle. It helps to plan for something that requires some level  of conversation. Board games provide a fun excuse, some basic stock phrases to get you started. Another starting point is cooking or some exiting arts and craft. There is a fun activity, child friendly instructions provide a visual anchor, so even if you slip into English there is an easy prompt back into German.

 

Games for language learning: Tempo, kleine Fische/ Speed, Small Fish

Author: Günter Burkhardt
Manufacturer: Ravensburger
Suitability:For children from age 3, ideal for reluctant speakers and beginners.
Get it here

In my work with children, I return to one tool more often than anything else: board games. They offer a set of specific vocab and take the pressure out of speaking. Certain phrases are repeated throughout the game and offer kids easy opportunities to test their language skills and gain confidence In this series of articles, I will review Games I have used and how to use them to help your kids learn German (or any other language).

Tempo, Kleine Fische (Speed, Little Fish) is a new favourite among my younger students. It's one of these games that encourages conversation, has tons of educational value and is great fun to play. The premise is easy for kids as young as 2, but the game play is fun for much older children making it an ideal opportunity to get siblings around the table to play to speak. 

 

 

 

The game:

Contents: 2 fishers (green and red), 4 fish (blue, orange, yellow and pink), 1 boat, 1 large river card, 11 river strips, 1 sea card, 1 colour die, instructions in German, French and Italian.

Get started: Place the boat into the large river card on one end, place the sea card at the opposite end. Arrange the river strips between them. The start card for the fish goes traditionally in the middle, but part of the fun is varying the starting points. Making it harder for fish or fishers. Finally, pick sides: are you team fish or fishers?

It's fish vs. fishers in an exiting race down the river. Fisherman Fritz and Fisherwoman Frieda are hungry for fish, but they need to catch them before they get to the ocean. Fritz and Frieda start out 5 spaces behind the fish.The fish get to swim every time the  die shows one of their colours.

Why it's brilliant for language development
The best games in the world are educational without appearing to be. TKF fulfills this brief to a tee. Apart from, get ready for a statement of the obvious, learning the names of colours, this game offers plenty of incentives to speak: from cheering on your team and comparing the performances of the individual fish and the fishers, the detailed, funny illustrations encourage kids to comment on the hi-jinks of the people and animals in and around the river.

This game would make a great addition on most game shelves, in addition to working well across generations, it would also be brilliant in a household with multiple languages playing together.

How to lose the love of your life in 10 minutes: teaching your partner your language.

I would consider myself a fairly competent German teacher, but there is one student I am very reluctant to touch (at least in a professional capacity): my significant other. Many things can go wrong in the attempt to teach your mother tongue to your partner or spouse. The obstacles, be they practical or emotional, are plentiful and more than one blossoming romances have been lost in the process.
In this blog we will be looking at the obstacles and how you might overcome them and when to call it quits to get in a professional.

📸Ben White on Unspash

 

 Theory

It sounds like a great idea, doesn't it? You already spend a lot of time together, it's cheaper than shelling out hundreds of Pounds on language lessons, more interactive than Duolingo and it should be easy, right?

 Practice

One laboured conversation about your respective days and one major argument later, you're back where you started. Turns out teaching a language is harder than it looks

 Why I refuse to teach a romantic partner

After a disastrous attempt to teach English to Mutti LLH when I just started out tutoring, I will not teach anyone who has entered love tier in my personal life and am pretty careful about which friends I would agree to tutor. Teaching somebody close to you, shifts the power dynamic of a relationship and I'm not good enough at compartmentalizing to attempt it. 

Still want to give it a go? How to make it work

As always, I'm going to use English as the community language, and German as the target language as this is LLH's cultural set up, but this post applies to all language combinations.

1. Both partners need to think about how much work they are going to put in.

"We're just going to speak German to each other," is often the beginning of the end of the teaching attempts. If you want to teach your partner your language, you'll have to, well, teach. Talk to each other about how much time and effort you are prepared to put in, and be realistic. With language learning consistency is much more important than quantity, so 2 or 3 15-20 minute sessions over a week will be better than a 2 hour cramming session every couple of months.
Look at your diaries and book in some fixed time slots that you can commit to on all or at least most weeks. A good distribution might be 20 minutes on Monday, speak German at dinner on Wednesday, 20 minutes teaching on Saturday, but it's whatever works for your set up.

2. Get structured

Buy a book. As boring as this might sound, don't wing it. A good course book (one that you can hold and write in) will make your lives a lot easier. You can of course find plenty of material online, but a good book will do a lot of your thinking for you. This book* is an aide for couples who want to study German with each other.

3. Get comfortable with the idea that it will feel weird

I've mentioned power dynamics before and whether you'll sink or swim depends mostly on if you can get past strange teacher and student roles. If you are the one teaching you will have to be patient and diplomatic while the person you love and respect gets things you find very easy wrong repeatedly. If you are on the other side, you need to accept and be happy about your partner correcting you. A lot. The thing with corrections and criticism, no matter how diplomatically delivered the message is still: "You did something wrong." And the more you care about the person uttering said criticism, the more it will sting.

 5. Overcome the established language in your relationship

 This will probably be your biggest hurdle and one of the reasons why 'just talking in German' is doomed to failure. You fell in love, dated and established a routine in English and now you are meant to just switch to a language that's not only fundamentally different from your own language, it's also a lot harder work than just using the language that both of you speak with ease.
As anyone who has ever failed at a New Year's resolution can tell you, breaking a habit is hard. That doesn't mean it can't be done, but it will require a certain amount of willpower.
Here are a few tricks (mostly for the teachers) to make it easy.

• Try to go for moments where you both (but especially the learning partner) are relaxed and alert.
• Pick your moments for surprise German conversation openers very carefully.
  
• Be patient. It will take the learner longer to say basic things. Wait and only complete the other's sentences if they ask for the right word.
• Correct with purpose: You don't need to correct every wrong article or missed ending. Model correct grammar and repeat the correct form back if it feels natural.
• Keep going even if you decide to skip a practice session. 
• Incorporate fun German activities. Arrange to go for a German walk (just like a regular walk but in German), watch a German movie or cook in German.

 6. Review every now and again

It's easy to get caught up in a circle of obligation, guilt and resentment. To avoid a situation where one party thinks it's going great, while the other resents giving up their free time, being corrected by their partner or being super diplomatic about getting the verb endings wrong AGAIN, check in with each other regularly to see if everyone is still happy with the arrangement.

Mix and match is the way forward

As with most things in life: the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Here the midway, rather than being a compromise, is actually the best of both worlds. Outsource the boring bit to a language course or tutor and spend some quality time practicing German and having fun in the language. If a course is out of budget, this is a situation where a language app like Duolingo might really work as one of the real drawbacks of an app is the lack of real life use of the language.

Have you ever tried to teach your partner a language? How did it go for you? I would love to read about your experience in the comments.

*affiliate link

Books for German Learners: Café in Berlin

 

Level: A1
Author: Andre Klein

Buy it here*

 

Reading for pleasure in your target language is one of the best things you can do to bring you closer to fluency. I frequently credit Harry Potter as my best English teacher. There is only one problem: an original book is quite intimidating. German is particularly hostile to beginners: using convoluted  complex sentence structures is considered good style in some quarters. While digging your way through the words of Günther Grass is wonderful brain exercise for a competent speaker, someone new to the language will be intimidated and frustrated by the experience.

What to do: bilingual books with corresponding texts? Read children's books. Simplified texts? There has to be a better way. Enter Café in Berlin:  this book gets around of the problems of reading books for beginners quite elegantly. There is a little English at the beginning to make the reader feel secure, but not so much as to detract you from your main goal which is to immerse yourself into German. It’s a guide on how to read the book to help you get the most out of your experience.

Meet Dino, a young man from Sicily, who has just arrived in Germany with very little German. Together with Dino you will navigate Berlin learning common words and phrases as they are actually used in German. Each chapter if followed by a glossary of important vocabulary and

You will be able to read this book fluently without much previous knowledge. The stories are interesting and taken from real life. The language is easy to follow without patronising its reader. This is an excellent first reading book for adult readers and I thoroughly recommend it.

 *Amazon affiliate link. If you buy through this link you support LLH providing this content for free.

Why won't you speak: The Perfectionist Child

Last week we've talked about my most frequent type of client: The Perfectionist. Perfectionists frequently think they are bad languages when they just think differently from people who are traditionally good at languages.

The perfectionist child can frustrate bilingual parents. - 📷Ryan Franco on Unsplash

Unsurprisingly, most of the children I tutor for Play&Learn also happen to fall under this umbrella. The initial consultation with the parents normally goes like this: "She understands most of what I say in German but responds more and more in English."
To parents who want to bring their child up bilingually The Perfectionist Child is an often frustrating challenge and many parents will give up (often these Children then come back to the language as Perfectionist Adults who think they suck at languages).

If you are trying to pass on a minority language to your little Perfectionist here are a few steps you can take to help make the process less frustrating for everyone.

•  Forgive Yourself
  The Perfectionist Child normally comes with at least one, sometimes two parents who feel like they failed as parents. Bilingualism is meant to be easy, so it must mean you have failed as parents. STOP! Bilingual parenting is hard. Lots of parents struggle and many give up. If you are speaking to your child in your language, you have probably passed on a lot of knowledge your Little Perfectionist is not ready to use yet. Guilt is an unproductive emotion and coupled with frustration is likely to slow your progress down. Acknowledge that you are doing your best/ and start again on a clean slate. 
• Understand why your Child is Reluctant to Speak
  Before you fix any issues, it might be worth to do some detective work and find out what it is that's holding them back. There is a variety of reasons why your child might be reluctant to speak the minority language. If your child tends towards perfectionism, it might simply prefer not to make a mistake out loud. Language acquisition is a prime opportunity for mistakes so your child might opt for the language he is most comfortable in. But make sure that there aren't any other reasons such as negative responses / attitudes from friends / family members / teachers. It's also very likely that your child simply doesn't see the point of the minority language, especially if you are the only speaker in her environment. If you have reasons to suspect special needs, you might need to change your approach post diagnosis.
• Speak your Language Consistently
  It might seem tempting to give up if your child is indifferent or even hostile to your efforts but make your approach as consistent and predictable as possible. If you are already speaking to him in your language only, great. If the majority language has slipped into family conversation, gradually re-introduce your language. The more negotiable your use of the language is, the more likely you are to default to the majority language. This is easier said than done, especially with a Perfectionist child. The key to success is consistency. Pick a time / day where you will speak in your language to your child. Do this with as much agreement co-operation from your child as you can. Pick a day or activity together that you will always do in your language. Positive, low key activities such as boardgames, arts and craft, baking are ideal because they are fun, have a set vocabulary that you can gradually expand on and you can use instructions / recipe in your language. If you pick an activity your child will probably try to negotiate you out of speaking so it's important to agree some clear rules in advance of the activity and stick to them. This is an example set, feel free to adjust for your family:
  1. I will speak my language, you don't have to.
  2. If you don't want me to speak my language, we will put activity away and do something else.
  Naturally, it helps if you pick an activity that your child really enjoys. Once you have established a routine you can build on this.
• Model and Practise Moving on from Mistakes
  Like in life, mistakes are unavoidable in language learning. The Perfectionist Child is anxious to avoid mistakes at all cost, so it's important how you deal with mistakes: theirs, yours and everybody elses.
  If a broken glass is a massive drama, you beat yourself up about that silly thing you said three hours ago, if your partner is in big trouble for picking up the wrong apples from the shop, you will reinforce that mistakes are to be avoided at all costs. If you aknowledge a mistake as something unfortunate, that you won't do next time, hopefully your child will be more comfortable to try, even if it might result in a mistake.
• Praise liberally, Correct sparingly
  You may have heard of the study, that people perform best in businesses that have a positive feedback - negative feedback ratio of 5:1. They are definitely onto something. In order to improve, we need to occasionally be corrected, but if we only get told our mistakes it very quickly feeds the narrative that we should just stop trying. This is true for adults, how much more impact will a negative comment (and every correction, no matter how kindly worded is a negative comment) on a confident child? How much on The Perfectionist? Watch your child and praise trying new, difficult thing that might make The Perfectionist anxious, Be careful to praise the effort and bravery of your Perfectionist, rather than cleverness or correctness. When it comes to mistakes, concentrate on frequent mistakes or mistakes that could lead to your child being misunderstood. The best way here is to repeat the phrase correctly and praise your child if they repeat it back correctly but don't push for them to repeat.

I hope you will find these tips useful with your Little Perfectionist. If you have a question about bilingual parents, feel free to e-mail me or comment below. I will be pleased to help.