A trilingual upbringing
AdventureDad | March 9
We have a somewhat complicated setup when it comes to languages in our household. We are raising our son to be trilingual from the very beginning. I speak four languages and my better half three so we are used to switching in between languages quickly without thinking about it. I speak only Swedish to our son and my wife only Spanish. And to each other we speak almost exclusively English. I tell our child to get dressed in Swedish and he responds to my wife in Spanish and she comments in English. That’s our every day situation. Pretty weird! Other parents usually wonder if we are doing some kind of science experiment or just trying to confuse our surroundings. The feedback we receive is without exception positive but it also leads to some funny situations.
Because of our backgrounds we are brought up with different languages but want our son to feel equally at home wherever he goes. Communicating with families make it necessary to know at least two languages but English is kind of a bonus. That’s actually the language we are least concerned about since everyone, well at least 99%, learn English over here at our present location in Sweden. And it’s also the easiest language to learn. We talked about languages long before our son was born and tried to do plenty of research of the best approach. We talked to people in similar situations, asked plenty of questions, and researched it on the internet. Most people told us to follow this approach and that the child would pick up the very different languages with ease. So far so good but as our son grows and starts talking more I’m curious to learn more from other parents in similar situations. Does anyone have some helpful hints now when we are in kindergarten and our son is talking a lot more?
We recently spent some time with my wife’s family and our son, who is now two, soaked up the Spanish like a sponge. When we left he spoke 70% Swedish and the rest mostly Spanish. 
That has now been reversed and he also has a few English words. We didn’t think much about this until he went back to kindergarten after a five week break. When he left the teachers heard few Spanish words but now they’re a bit confused. Our son tells them he wants to play with the tractor and they think he needs to pee-pee and take him to the bathroom. He asks for more food and they blow his nose. He wants to go outside and they believe he wants to do finger painting. You get the point. It’s pretty fun but I assume it can be a little frustrating for both my son and the teachers. Very few over here do speak Spanish so I can’t blame the teachers for not understanding everything. We have now started to write down some crucial words for the teachers so at least they know the most important phrases. These situations will happen more often as he grows and we don’t have any brilliant ideas over how to make this a smooth transition for everyone.
There must be many families facing these issues and I would love to hear about how you helped your child(ren) through this stage.
Wow. I took Spanish and French in high school and don’t remember a lick of it, so kudos to you for working on making trilingual children.
Sounds like you may need to change the path of your language use in the home. If you speak in Spanish to him now, maybe you switch to Swedish. Then you and your wife speak in Spanish to each other. Something along those lines. Change it up so that he would be more apt to changing things up outside the home.
Good luck.
Have you thought about doing different languages on different days of the week?
I only know English, so I think that it is amazing. for kids to learn different languages. The only thing I can add, and it is kind of third hand, is this. My cousins kids speak three launages. Their dad speak only German to them, their mom speaks only french to them and the nanny speaks to them in English. No one could understand anything that either of them said at two years old. Seriously it was so confusing being around them. But at 3 or 3 and a half they were both suddenly fluent in all three and could easily go back and forth depending on who they were speaking to. I recomend you don’t worry about it and keep doing what you are doing. He will be fluent soon. Truth is sometimes you can’t understand a two year old who speaks one language. I’ve heard that it takes them a little longer to speak correctly, but that they fully understand all three. It is just their minds take a little longer to process all that information.
We do something similar. Our 3-year-old understands that Mommy says something a certain way and Pappa says it another way. He understands that one grandmother talks like Mommy and the other talks like Pappa. It will blow his mind, though, when we travel to the “old country” this summer and he realizes EVERYONE talks like Pappa. Should be interesting.
I have a good friend who did this with her son (Hebrew, Spanish & English), and many cousins who speak Spanish & English. In all cases at age 2 the kids seem to speak the languages interchangeably (I’ve heard they don’t differentiate in their minds). But I believe the advice you’re getting about it often being unclear in general from kids this age is pretty accurate, so I wouldn’t sweat it. Our daughter goes to speech therapy, so I’ve been know to leave lists of her pronunciation for words as we go along (and she’s only working on one language). What’s important is that they’re encouraged to continue to communicate and don’t get too frustrated.
It takes kids some time to sort out which language ought to be used when, and with whom. Once all that is in place (about age 3 or 4), then you’ll have an even bigger terror: a child who intentionally uses the wrong language with the wrong person to see how they react. My brother and I used to do that sort of thing all the time. Good luck!
We do German and English. As we live in Germany and my wife is the German and spending more time with the kids, that is what they talk all of the time. But the English is there passively and it only takes a few days in England for them to improve dramatically. They would be up to native-langauge standard within three months if we moved there. (My wife’s cousin is in a bi-lingual marriage and moved to GB and that’s what happened.) As English is a very widespread langauge, this set-up is fine. If family-life involves other langauges that are not so widespread, you might want to work on it more.
The only big problem we’ve had concerns stuttering, which can affect many children and then fade away again. One speech therapist advised us to drop the English until it passes. Others have a different opinion but as I never demand English from my children, and never make an issue of it, I kept on the the stuttering passed.
Congratulations on your three languages. I’m pretty confident that time will sort out any mix-ups that occur. After all they also occur within a language as well.
Don’t let anyone discourage you–raising children in a multilingual environment is one of the best things you can do for their intellectual development. I know a couple of people raised in these situations, and it can seem confusing to outsiders at first. A good friend was raised speaking a combination of Romanian, Hungarian and English (yes, all at once). Listening to her speak to family members on the phone is quite the interesting experience. A professor of mine once talked about raising his daughter to be bilingual in English and Tibetan–when they were in the US she refused to speak any Tibetan, and when in Tibet acted like she didn’t know any English! She became perfectly fluent and comfortable with both languages as she got older. Anyway, it sounds like you are doing a good job, and don’t worry…it will all get worked out and you will end up with what you wanted–a bright, happy child at home with all three languages!
I agree with Melissa, continue with your plan. It is a good one! People will be amazed as they watch your child maneuver around a room full of people that speak different languages and they respond fluently in the appropriate language.
My cousins children do it all the time and although of the 3 languages they speak two are very close (French and Portuguese) the kids are all very young (under 10) and converse fluently in those plus English!
Keep up the good work!!
We converse with our daughter mostly in Korean and English. However, since we live in New York, we think it would be better for her to learn the local language…Spanish!
Just kidding, AD. We’re really just teaching the kid to learn Esperanto. We feel confident that it’s going to make a comeback any day now!
I grew up speaking mostly Spanish and learned English when I began school at age 6. I am bilingual today because my parents continued to Speak spanish at home.
When my sons were ages 12 and 7 I took them to Mexico for 9 months and they learned to speak Spanish very quickly. The 7 year old spoke it with more ease and his comprehension was better than that of his older brother. Unfortunately, I did not follow the example set by my parents and speak Spanish at home so they lost the fluency they had learned.
School, the domininant culture and his friends will be the significant factors in the language he uses most often and considers his “mother tongue”. It is up to you and your wife to speak Spanish and English at home so that he does not lose what he has learned because it is true; if you don’t use it, you lose it.
hi there, i followed a link from bloggingbaby and found myself here. we are also raising our child trilingual in german, swiss german and english. on a ideal day, my partner speaks swiss german to Stella, we speak german together (this is the ideal part) and i speak to her in english. the non-ideal trade-off is we often switch between the languages. she also goes to a daycare 2x a week where she hears swiss german only. she understands all languages equally, tho seems to answer and speak more in swiss german. i’m not worried, it’s all coming along. what is freaky is the amount of swiss/german she understands that I don’t! she is only two!