There’s no one best method to raising bilingual kids. People can have their own preferences depending on their own family dynamic…but there isn’t a single best method that works for everyone. Let’s talk about the 4 most popular methods.
One Parent One Language (OPOL)
In this method, one parent speaks one language to the child and the other parent speaks another language to the child. So for example, Dad only speaks English with the child and Mom only speaks Portuguese with the child.
This is the most studied method and it words for a lot of families…but again, it depends on your family dynamic and how your children are responding to this meathod.
Issues that can sometimes arise, is if only one parent is bilingual then they may feel left out of the conversation between the child and the other parent since they can not understand their conversation.
If each parent is bilingual in different languages, you can even end up raising a trilingual child where mom speaks one target language, dad speaks a different target language, and the child learns the community language at school.
Minority Language at Home
In this method, the target language is spoken exclusively at home with and among both parents. This is how many children of immigrant parents learn a second language. This is the method my own mother used when we were young.
Both parents would need to be fluent in the target language and they would need to speak to each other and the children in that language while in the home.
Issues with this method can arise with kids who have moderate-severe speech delays and who are not exposed to the community language. The danger here is that a child will not have enough knowledge of the community language to succeed in school the first few years. This does not mean a speech delayed child should not be taught a second language! It just means this child should get enough exposure in the community language so that their first few years in school are not too overwhelming. It’s best to ask your child’s speech pathologist for guidance.
Who is this method for? Families with 2 bilingual parents
Who is this method not for? Families with speech delayed children AND lack of access to the community language. Speak to your child’s speech therapist.
Situational Bilingualism
In this method, the target language is used only in certain situations. For example, this could mean the target language is only spoken during a playdate with a certain friend. Or the target language is only spoken when the bilingual nanny comes over.
This method is also used when neither parent is fluent in the target language. Some non-fluent parents will study a topic in the target language and then put together an activity to do with their children. This way, the child and parent can do that activity entirely in the target language. This is actually the basis of our curriculum for our son.
Who is this method for? Parents who are not fluently bilingual
Time and Place
In this method, the family can dedicate certain time or place to speak the target language. For example, for a young family, they may decide to speak the target language when one parent is away at work and then switch to the community language when the parent returns from work. Or, they may decide to only speak the target language at a certain place like the grocery store or the playground.
Some families speak one language during the week and another language one the weekend, or even switch languages every week/month.
The Method We've Chosen
We’ve chosen to do situational bilingualism…for now. Because I’m not fluent in Portuguese I can only speak to him in Portuguese on topics I’ve already studied. So what I’ve done is I’ve created activities revolving around a certain topic, and then my son and I do the activity together in Portuguese. One of these activities is pretending the cook food at his play kitchen. I’ve created printable fruit with Portuguese labels for us to play with and sentence frames for me to use (in case I forget how to say something). Once I learn the vocabulary words and sentences revolving the topic of our play session, I start using them in real life. So, the more Portuguese we use during play correlates to more Portuguese being used in real life.
I’ve done this for multiple topics and I’ve just started putting them together as a complete curriculum for others to use as well. You can find that here.
Eventually, I would like to do Time and Place once I become more fluent and once my son’s speech catches up. My husband has expressed that he feels left out when my son and I speak Portuguese together in front of him which is why I think time and place would work best for us. My son and I can speak Portuguese together, and then speak English when dad is around.
And there you go. These are the 4 most popular methods for raising bilingual children. I’ll just end this post with a friendly reminder that you don’t need to be bilingual to start raising your children bilingual. You can start right now!