Forums Raising Bilingual & Multicultural KidsHow are you all keeping your kid's heritage language alive at home?

How are you all keeping your kid's heritage language alive at home?

17 posts

My husband is from Colombia and I’m from Michigan, and we live in Austin with our 3-year-old daughter. We speak mostly English at home because it just happens naturally, but I can already see her understanding more Spanish than she says. My mother-in-law keeps telling us to stick with Spanish around her, but honestly I’m not great at it and I don’t want to make it weird or forced. We do little things like putting on songs in Spanish, watching Sesame Street clips from Colombia on YouTube, and I’ve been trying the Duolingo app just to keep myself from getting totally rusty. Still, when we’re at the park or daycare, it’s all English, and I worry that by the time she’s older she’ll only know a few phrases and holiday words. Has anyone actually kept a second language going in a mixed family without it turning into a battle?

2d ago

2 replies

Chris Tanaka

#1 · 2d ago

We’re in a similar boat, except we’re in Seattle and it’s French/English in our house. What helped us was picking super specific times for the minority language instead of trying to be perfect all day. My partner does bedtime in French, and I do breakfast and the drive to preschool in English. It sounds small, but it made it feel manageable and not like some huge parenting project. Also, our daughter started responding more once we stopped correcting every little mistake. She’d say one word in French and then the rest in English, and we just kept going like it was normal. Kids pick up way more than they say out loud for a while. I’d say keep doing the songs and videos, but don’t underestimate just having Grandma on FaceTime and letting your daughter hear real conversations.

Brittany S.BASIC

#2 · 1d ago

Honestly, I think pressure can backfire a little. My parents tried super hard to force Arabic on me when I was little and I ended up resisting it because it felt like homework. With my son, I’m the Spanish-speaking parent and I just talk to him naturally, even if he answers in English. No quizzes, no guilt. We also found a bilingual daycare in San Antonio that wasn’t fancy but had a lot of mixed families, and that helped way more than I expected. He heard other kids switching back and forth, so it stopped feeling like his language was the odd one out. If you can find even one auntie, grandparent, or babysitter who only uses Spanish with her, that can make a huge difference.