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I am American and I live in France with my French husband and our three children. We are raising our children bilingually- they speak both French and English as native speakers. How do we do it? And why? Those are good questions.
I speak exclusively English with my children. Not only can I not imagine not speaking English with them, we also follow the one parent, one language theory of raising children in multilingual homes. I speak English to them, my husband speaks French. Our kids speak English to me and to each other, French to their father. Together, my husband and I speak both languages.
We read a lot of books in both languages. Every evening my kids choose their bedtime stories and we read the stories from our language. They also listen to kids CDs in both languages. On the other hand, they watch TV and DVDs almost exclusively in English. We get the BBC by satellite, so they watch English kids’ shows. I hate dubbed movies, so any movies they watch are in the original version, which is mostly English.
They attend lots of extra activities in English as well. Special reading readiness classes run by a local American Montessori teacher, or children’s groups through the local English-language association. I believe that it is important to put a lot of emphasis on the minority language (the non native language of the country in which we live) and this approach is working.
Why do I think it’s important to raise children bilingually? There are the obvious answers of increased job opportunities and awareness of other cultures. I think both these reasons are very valid and important. But beyond these reasons is the simple fact that I can’t imagine speaking to my kids in another language than the one that I was raised in, that I think in, that I dream and feel in. And my husband feels the same. Given that those are two different languages, well, our kids are growing up bilingual!
Merci, et bonne journée!
Kelly is a blogger, mom and graduate student. She lives in France with her three kids, four cats and handsome French frog of a husband. You can find her at Almost Frugal and Almost Frugal Food.
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jodi @ bpr 11.13.08 at 8:17 am
Love this post! I spent a year in Switzerland as an exchange student and have always thought that raising children bilingually would be such a wonderful thing! I have a friend whose husband’s native language is Spanish and they’re doing the same with their daughter – thanks for sharing!
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Kelly from Almost Frugal 11.13.08 at 8:40 am
Your welcome Jodi, and thanks for reading!
Kelly from Almost Frugal´s last blog post..Questions Anyone?
Brian Barker 11.14.08 at 11:26 am
I beleive that the attempted dominance of English, as a world language, is contributing to the extinction of minority languages.A non-national, neutral, language could eliminate this by placing all languages on an equal footing. There is an alternative to English as the dominant World Language, and its name is Esperanto.
Esperanto is now within the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide, according to the CIA factbook. It is the 17th most used language in Wikipedia, and in use by Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
The World Esperanto Association enjoys consultative relations with both the United Nations and UNESCO.
An interesting video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LV9XU
Francine 11.16.08 at 4:50 am
This is exactly what my husband and I plan to do with our kids. We are expecting our first in April
I already sense a battle coming with my French mil, but I’m prepared. Another good reason to raise them bilingually? So that they can communicate with both sides of their family 
Francine´s last blog post..Making a list, checking it twice.
Penelope Pince 11.16.08 at 6:11 am
My sister and I were also raised bilingually and I am glad that our mother made the effort. Our mother was from Taiwan, our biological father from Japan, but they met and married in the States, where we were born. Our mother spoke Mandarin to us from the time we were born; our father was pretty uninvolved with our upbringing.
We moved to Japan when I was 3, but I didn’t learn Japanese until I started Kindergarten at 5. Japanese became the primary language my sister and I spoke to each other because we spoke it with our friends, and our mother enrolled us in a Taiwanese school where all our classes (math, science, etc.) were taught in Chinese starting at 1st Grade. When our parents divorced, my sister and I were sent to Taiwan to go to stay with relatives and go to school with our cousins.
My mother remarried when I was 9 and we moved to Hawaii where my sister and I learned English. During that time, our elementary teacher and stepfather forbade us to speak Chinese or Japanese to each other, thinking it would help us learn English faster. Perhaps it did, but we never went back to speaking Chinese or Japanese with each other, and needless to say, our skills in those languages deteriorated, especially after our mother passed away when I was 16.
We can still speak Mandarin because we are still in contact with our Taiwanese relatives, but our vocabulary is much diminished and our Japanese has been reduced to elementary levels. Of course, with a little study it comes back quickly, but it would’ve been better had we continued to use it throughout our childhood and adolescence.
A huge benefit of children being raised bilingually, in my opinion, is the ability to learn other languages with ease. We were fluent in English within a year, and able to communicate and play with our new friends in Hawaii within weeks of meeting them.
We also started German when we enrolled at the Waldorf School in 7th and 8th grades, starting behind the rest of our classes who had had German since 1st grade and catching up quickly.
My ambitious mother also persuaded me to start French (while continuing with German) in high school, which for me was really easy. I also started studying Spanish in 11th grade and was able to pass an exam into college Spanish 102 after studying for one week.
I believe my mother’s influence in never ceasing to speak Chinese to us even when we insisted on speaking English to her, and encouraging me to start studying other languages early in life, made all the difference.
Penelope Pince´s last blog post..Pecuniary Reading: The Costs of Keeping Children, Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Rachael 11.21.08 at 1:01 am
We have raised our family bilingual. They around the preschool age and they are starting to pick up even more as I read them bilingual books. They are able to see the words in both english and spanish and I think it really helps.
Right now their favorite book is “Tim and Kim” by Kay Linda Nord. Nord grew up bilingual in her family and wrote this book in spanish (mexican) for here son, so it really caught my eye. If interested, here is where I found it: http://kaylindanord.com/
Thanks for the post and I have enjoyed everyone’s comments.
Kari 11.23.08 at 2:14 am
I completely agree. The chance to learn a second language is such a gift for our children. It is amazing how much easier it is for them when they start young! Both my kids are in a Mandarin bilingual school and my older one already has a better accent than I do! Learning another language is also good for general cognitive growth. I wish public schools here in the U.S. had more language programs starting at Kindergarten (instead of starting in high school!).
Kari´s last blog post..Using up some scraps
Allyson 11.29.08 at 12:42 pm
Salut, I’m a fellow multilingual mom. My husband is Polish but was raised in Sweden since he was a toddler (in a minority language environment). Then enters the American wife, we lived in Sweden when we had our children, and we made a conscious decision to do OPOL method. After three years, we moved to the US and I switched languages. My children are fluent in Polish, English, and Swedish. My 7-year old can read and write English at grade level and is now beginning to read and write in Swedish as well. We hope that once his Swedish is at grade level for written expression, we’ll begin with Polish (the most difficult and the least used of the 3 languages).
I think it’s great that your children are bilingual and I know for us, it is important that our children can communicate with their family and friends that are monolingual. I feel like their lives will be richer from getting thrice the literature, history, people, books, films, food, and everything else that three cultures entail.