Raising Children Bilingually

[cmwatkins]

A discussion for folks out there who may have insight into raising, or being, a bilingual kid:

We have two sons--a four-year-old and a newborn--who my wife (Japanese) and I (American) are trying to raise bilingually. To date, we've used the one language at home approach, with both of us speaking only (or as much as possible) Japanese at home. As he's gotten older, however, two things have started to happen with my eldest son:
* He's exposed more to English now, especially since starting preschool, and is visibly frustrated at times when trying to use, and often ignores us when we speak in, Japanese. He's showing a clear preference for English.
* The need for complex explanations--especially at times when we're trying to warn, educate, or discipline our son--has started to exceed my ability to come up quickly with the right words in Japanese. I'm hitting a plateau in Japanese communications with my son.

For now, we're starting to gravitate instead toward the one-parent-one-language approach to overcome some of the roadblocks, but I'm concerned this will undermine our efforts.

Anyone have similar stories, and maybe suggestions for how to overcome the obstacles?

:: Chris Watkins ::
:: OdoriPark.com ::

[watermen]

Speaking Japanese at home only doesn't really make someone truly bilingual.

He needs to be exposed to an environment outside his home where Japanese is needed. The language that you speak to your parents doesn't really train you in that language most of the time.

It is more than speaking to parents.

Having siblings, relatives and friends who speak Japanese will be more helpful than just parents speaking Japanese. On the top of that, sending him to a school that has equal emphasis on both Japanese and English is very important too.

A kid spent most of his active talking time with his parents when he is very young (less than 6 year old), but as the kid grows up and go to school, he will be spending more of his active talking time with his peers than his parents, therefore the language that was used among his peers/friends has much more influence on the kids than his parents.

Just my 2 cents and personal experience.

[cmwatkins]

Good insights, watermen. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Perhaps when his younger brother is of speaking age, we'll have some degree of built-in reinforcement.
I wonder what other sorts of out-of-the-home speaking opportunities there are. A multi-lingual school is unavailable where we live now, for example, but there's a once-weekly volunteer-run Japanese "school" for kindergarten+ age kids. Play dates with other Japanese speaking kids is probably a vital add. Any other ideas?

:: Chris Watkins ::
:: OdoriPark.com ::

[watermen]

Good insights, watermen. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Perhaps when his younger brother is of speaking age, we'll have some degree of built-in reinforcement.
I wonder what other sorts of out-of-the-home speaking opportunities there are. A multi-lingual school is unavailable where we live now, for example, but there's a once-weekly volunteer-run Japanese "school" for kindergarten+ age kids. Play dates with other Japanese speaking kids is probably a vital add. Any other ideas?

:: Chris Watkins ::
:: OdoriPark.com ::

In my humble opinion, a lot of parents hope their kids to be bilingual. But most of the time, those kids don't end up bilingual.

To be bilingual, it is not just the parents effort, but the kids need to make an effort too, especially living in an environment you described.

Like I said in my previous post, if the only Japanese speaking opportunity is speaking to parents, most kids will not be able to retain the language when they grow up, unless he make an effort to retain it.

As for your little boy, he will most likely end up speaking English with his brother, it is a natural course, because all their peers speak English, therefore they will too.

Most people who grown up to be bilingual naturally because they lived in a bi- or multilingual environment. It is the environment that make people learn a language, not the family.

Take a step back and think how did English become your first language?

1. Parents spoke it, so you learnt it, you learnt the basic.
2. You go to school, talk to your friends, all little kids start to interact in basic-childish English.
3. You learnt English in school, teachers taught you grammar, culture, history and archaic English etc...
4. Now your English becomes better, you watch English drama and movies etc, you start learning to speak like those actors and want to be like them, therefore speaking like them.
5. When do most people start to learn how to express themselves??? Most people learn how to express themselves when they to talk to their close friends starting at a young age, that kind of intimate talks between your buddies is what start to shape a person linguistic abilities. Even those gossips, bitching talks significantly help to shape a person linguistic abilities.

People who are bi-, multilingual by nature, because they lived in an environment that required them to use so many languages while they grow up. Imagine you lived in an area where 50% of the population speak Japanese and the another 50% speak English, your kids have both Japanese and English friends, if they don't want to be left out by either groups, they simply have to speak both languages.

But in your case, not knowing Japanese at all will not make them felt left out. In fact your kids may have peer pressure from speaking another language if he can't speak English properly. Most kids will not understand the significant of being bilingual, therefore speaking something different from his peers will make his peers think that your son is odd. If your son ever felt odd because of this reason, he may even hate to speak Japanese.

In your case, instead of forcing them to speak another language, I would rather keep emphasizing on the important and benefits for being bilingual. Let your kids decide.

If you really want them to be bilingual, then you really need to move to an environment where both Japanese and English are used. But I don't think there is any such environment in the US.

Even those kids living right in the heart of Chinatown can't really speak Chinese when they grow up. If you take a look at those little kids in chinatown and see what they speak among themselves, they speak English! Parents speak Chinese and they all reply in English. Even for those going to Chinese schools in Chinatown, they still speak English.

[Yamanchu]

Does your wife have any Japanese speaking friends who come around to visit? I think this will help. My wife and I are immersing our daughter in as much Japanese as possible to help her learn Japanese.

Perhaps you could find some interesting anime movies or a series in Japanese it would give him an interest in the language.

What about your wife's family? Usually once or twice a week we speak to my wife's family via Skype. If your wife's family could speak to your son on a regular basis that may help?

Have you been back to Japan with your son yet? Kids are fascinated by different places/cultures.

[QuackingShoe]

I think that it's important to create an environment where the language is rewarded. Kids don't learn a language (even their "native" language) because it's fun, or it's natural, or it's easy... they learn it because they get something tangible out of it, something worth the effort. When literally the only thing they can do in Japanese is talk to their parents, and they know their parents speak English anyway, it's going to seem like a huge rip-off and a waste of time and frustrating effort.

So I would encourage you to, early as possible with the new kid, make sure that there's a wide variety of things for them to enjoy in Japanese. Whether that be people, movies, daily cartoons (get some international channels?), books, or whatever - anything and everything. Just like teaching a child to read well depends largely on your ability to make a child realize he wants to access the things hidden inside books, teaching a child to speak in another language depends mostly on your ability to make a child realize he wants access to those things that only this language can bring him. If the kid wants to watch Doraemon every whenever-it-comes-on, then he has incentive to maintain Japanese, because the two things are essentially one in the same.

[cmwatkins]

Thanks for the great replies. Hope this discussion is proving helpful to other folks, too.

The general theme that I think carries through all of this is:
The child needs to see a value in the language himself. He has to want it. Otherwise, it's a chore.
(This makes perfect sense to me. I'd wager anyone who ever tried to make a child do their homework or practice their violin has hit the same conclusion.)

Some responses:
* Yes, my wife has some Japanese friends with children of a similar age. It does seem to help, although by a turn of the same coin, some of those parents--even where both mom and dad are Japanese--are having similar issues
* We're constantly on the lookout for books and programs. I hate to say it, but shows posted on the Internet are a huge boon, since Japanese videos are scarce and expensive! (The wife and I love Doraemon, btw, QuackingShoe, although I think our son's more partial to "cool" hero shows, like Sentai ranger programs...)
* Biggest disappointment is how our son has started to respond to calls to his Japanese grandparents: He usually refuses to talk to them. Maybe digging out the webcam again would help get him engaged.
* We've taken him back to Japan twice so far, and plan to go again next year. Both trips were a real boon--his language ability blossomed, at least while there!

I'll be taking all this feedback to heart.
Oh, and Yamanchu, good luck with your daughter, too!

[Yamanchu]

Hi Cm, thanks!

Does your son have any cousins his age in Japan he could correspond/skype with?

[cmwatkins]

He does, Yamanchu, and they're about the same age, so that might help!
Although I tend to think they're a tad too young, at four, to be into this--maybe at Elementary school age? Does your daughter do this with any friends or family members?

[QuackingShoe]

I don't know that forcing your kid to have boring conversations over the phone with people they don't know is really the best course of action. It seems like making it even more like work, and thereby giving even more reason to avoid it. Kids think it's fun to hop on the phone every once in awhile, but mostly with people they care about. It's definitely not a way to meet other kids or stay in touch with other kids, because kids like to play with friends, not talk to them. Right?


I really sympathize with the dilemma. It's not something I'm doing (no family), but it's the kind of thing I want to do in the future, and I often concern myself with the difficulties. It's a tough thing.

[gerald_ford]

Yeah, in our case (2 year old), the best policy seems to be exposure, not forcing them. So, when she goes to Japan, she has lots of fun with her relatives, and speaks excellent Japanese. So much so, she forget her English, but I try to spend time with her more, and that helps her English skills now, and she enjoys playing with Daddy.

[Belton]

Your situation sounds textbook, if only I could remember which book on language I read it in! Children work out quite quickly what the dominant language is and that's the one they want to use. It's about communication not language learning as far as they are concerned. You are in America. It's English. It's everywhere except perhaps in the home from his mother. (and no doubt he's figured out his mother can speak English too)

We don't have children yet, but it's an issue I may face someday so I'm interested in it.
Observing friends children (of Japanese heritage) it's very literally a mother tongue. Used with their mother and playmates of a similar background.
In the wider world of London there is a large Japanese community and also Japanese schools, so there is opportunity as a child to use the language in various clubs etc. (The only adult I know bi-lingual as a child was schooled through that language. ) Ultimately that seems to be the key. Exposure and a real need to use the language.

I know one teenage boy whose mother will only speak Japanese in the house. (It makes me wonder about his English acquisition which is perfect; in fact better than his peers I'd say. ) He does spend some summers in Japan with relatives. However his reading and writing isn't so good and his uncles think he speaks with a foreign accent.

There's hope.
Keep on using Japanese around him, don't turn it into a battle or a chore.

[fnaaar]

I'm half Japanese and half Scottish - I was brought up in Scotland and your story reminds me exactly of my upbringing. My father doesn't speak any Japanese but he was working abroad during my early childhood so I learned to speak Japanese as a first language. however, when my dad got a job back in Scotland and I started school, I somehow refused to speak Japanese anymore, consequently lost the ability and have now ended up here! It is sad that it's so difficult to raise children bilingually but saying that a 4 year old child should "choose" to learn a new language just seems a bit ridiculous to me! I can't really even remember that time very clearly.

I know my mum tried her best given the circumstances (think of the availabilty of Japanese speakers in rural Scotland during the 1980s and you get the picture). Obviously, I wish I could have learned it naturally, but on the plus side I feel as though somewhere I've retained a lot of it and now that I'm studying it, a lot of it feels more like "remembering" rather than learning. So the efforts you are making now will be going in somewhere.

[Yamanchu]

Hi Cm, my daughter's still way too young (only 4 months!) but in readiness, we read to her in Japanese and my wife joins a Japanese mothers' playgroup once a week.

What I meant with cousins etc. is that when I was young, all my cousins lived on farms. It was standard practice for me to go on holidays to the farm all the time and I loved it. I imagine if your son was able to visit his cousins for a holiday, he'd love it too. A different country, experiences etc., every day would be an adventure and he'd want to keep in touch with the kids he made friends with, therefore keeping his Japanese language skills alive.

[QuackingShoe]

but saying that a 4 year old child should "choose" to learn a new language just seems a bit ridiculous to me! I can't really even remember that time very clearly.

While we don't remember it, and so it may seem somewhat difficult to imagine, children are intelligent and are capable of specific choices. However, here, as with most skills a very young child can acquire, it's more of an unconscious choice than anything, because children don't necessesarilly have the mental resources to make long-term, conscious decisions.
Nevertheless, they do choose.
What we do, as parents, is nurture them toward certain choices. It's impossible to actually make anyone do anything, only influence them (perhaps strongly). In these situations, at first, Japanese is shown to be the singular tool vital to getting what they want (by way of asking), and later for all sorts of communication and incredibly access to a world they didn't have access to before starting to use it, so they choose it. But suddenly, the child realizes that English gives them the exact same thing, and much more, so they choose that, which is only logical. Children don't keep crawling as their main form of locomotion after they learn to walk, either. It's become useless, except for play.

The difficult part here is presenting Japanese as something that's worth learning when it very easily isn't.

Japanese for it's own sake is not something that even many adults can appreciate - to most of us, it's a tool that gets us somewhere. So there needs to be something that a child really, really wants to have that can only be gotten through Japanese. The same way that a child learns to read (in their dominant language) when they realize that there's something in books that they really want to have. Or the way they learn to use a computer when they realize there's something they want to access, or, hell, a game console controller when they realize they want to play the games. (Some kids and many older adults never get past the relatively small difficulty of getting used to handling a controller, because it's not rewarding enough).

So that's the huge problem. Somehow convincing a child that Japanese is still worth learning, even though it's incredibly difficult (all languages are), incredibly different from English (making it so you can't bounce them off each other), and the language that's ACTUALLY useful for society and family, English, is one you still, as a 4 year old, barely understand. It's really difficult to counterbalance all those negatives.

Things like what Yamanchu suggest seem like nice moves, both giving them a fun reason to use the language, as well as actual necessity if the family the child holidays with don't speak the other language.

Talking about all of this frankly starts to make it seem rather cruel to the child, doesn't it?