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On Raising a Bilingual Baby
December 14th, 2010 | 
Author: By Brook, Staff Writer, Baby and Sofia (@babyandsofia)
**Editor’s Note: This is part two in a series on raising your child to be bilingual. Go here if you missed part one.**
I was raised in an English-speaking family. As a child, the idea of learning an entirely new language was both fascinating and seemingly unattainable. I always secretly wanted to learn a second language, but never really admitted it as it seemed like a goal I could never, ever reach.
I studied Spanish during middle school and high school, stopping at Spanish V my junior year. While I could carry a conversation (albeit basic) and read in Spanish, I was far from feeling fluent. Then during my freshman year of college, my parents decided to move to Italy. I was so excited. Summertime, spring break and Christmas vacation would all become Italian vacations. This also meant that I had a chance to actually live in a place where I could study a new language. My parents moved to Italy the summer after my sophomore year and I went with them. I enrolled in a language immersion program and attacked the language with gusto. I was in heaven. Six weeks later, I was back at school and enrolled in Italian for my entire junior year. I studied abroad the following semester in Rome. By this time I was deeply in love my then-boyfriend/now-husband and amazingly quasi-fluent in Italian.
After graduation I was on a plane back to Italy where I took a job at an international Montessori school teaching first grade. Two years later, Giuseppe and I were married. The next year, we moved to the U.S. Not long after we were expecting our first baby, Paolo.
The importance of continuing to speak Italian in our home was brought to a whole new level of importance when the baby was born. When Giuseppe and I first met, he barely spoke a word of English and we relied on my budding Italian. By the time we moved to the U.S., Giuseppe was a great English speaker. After about six months of working here, he was completely fluent. Living in the U.S., it is easy to fall into speaking mostly English in the home. So we work to make sure that our little Paolo is exposed to as much Italian as possible. I think it is truly important that he learns English and Italian simultaneously, without a foreign accent in either language. When we visit Italy, I want Paolo to speak the language fluently and be completely comfortable with the culture and his relatives.
Lots of people ask us if we are worried he will become confused. And I can say with 100% certainty that he will not. Having lived and worked in Europe really taught me so much about lingual and cultural norms and what I want for my family. Children are absolutely capable of learning multiple languages at once and I think it’s a beautiful thing. And I’m sure Paolo will thank us for it one day.
Are you raising your child to be bilingual? Do you have tips or a story to share? Do so in the forum!
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I agree with you 100%! I once read somewhere that speaking another language is like possessing another soul. My husband and I are both fluent in Greek and we have been speaking Greek to our 9 month old daughter since the day she was born. She hears plenty of English everywhere we go and from all of our friends, so I am not at all concerned that she will have any difficulties with English in the future. Besides, I have first hand experience with this myself; my parents only spoke Greek to me when I was a child and I had no difficulties acquiring English. In fact, my father says that the first time he heard me speaking English was when I was 4 and he had no idea how I picked it up!
30ish Mama´s last blog ..It’s Christmas Magic
[...] Yesterday Our Mommyhood published my post on our little Italian-American family culture; hear my take on raising a bilingual baby. [...]
I just love to hear stories like this. I am so super into giving children the opportunity to learn more than one language, and learning at home is such an easy way. What a great story; your little girl is so lucky!
Brook´s last blog ..On raising a bilingual baby- Our Mommyhood
We are trying Chinese with our daughter. It’s my husband’s first language – so he tries to speak to her in Chinese as much as he can. It’s more difficult for me, since I don’t speak the language. But he does a really great job. I feel like these opportunities are incredible for children – if you have another language, why wouldn’t you give your kids the chance to learn it?
Hi Brook,
My cousin married a woman from Quebec. They have five children. When the children were young their mom only spoke French in the home and English outside of the home. As the kids became teens and had friends over, their mom continued to speak to them in French and left it up to them to respond in English or French. All their kids are bilingual. And I am so jealous!