Cool, He’s Going to be Bilingual! Well, Maybe Not.
“Oh, wie schön!” was the only thing my mom could say before she choked up and started to cry.
Those were happy tears. I had called my parents in Germany to tell them that I was pregnant. My father’s first words were: “You better teach him German.” Well, maybe it was the second thing he uttered. But he hasn’t let up reminding me about the importance of raising my son bilingually since he was born four years ago.
My father told me to speak German to my unborn son every chance he got during our weekly pregnancy-update phone calls. Yes, Papa, I get it. Great opportunity I shouldn’t miss.
My 85-year-old father, who doesn’t speak a lick of English, wanted to make sure he can communicate with his first grandchild. Which is understandable — but also hilarious given the fact that he hardly ever speaks (my poor, inquisitive husband went to college for two semesters to learn German to impress my father only to find out that he doesn’t talk more than eight words in a day). Opa keeps pointing out how much of an advantage my son will have in life knowing two, and later on possibly even more, languages.
While pregnant, I kept envisioning how cool it was going to be to stand in line at a Starbucks and to ask my son in German what he would like: “Was möchtest Du den gerne, Mäuschen, einen Keks oder was anderes?” It would be our own, secret language only we could understand, since I’m the only one who was going to speak in German with him.
The baby was born, three days later the grandparents descended on us for a week, and we were off to a great start. I did famously the first two years. When we visited my family in Germany, it was apparent that my son could understand everything that was being said in German. I was doing a great job speaking in German to him while we were alone together, and that seemed to be enough for him to comprehend it.
But since that visit I have fallen off the wagon. Maybe that has to do with my son getting more verbal himself or maybe I have to answer him more quickly these days, which is hard for me to do in German.
German might have been my mother tongue, but English has been my first language now for over 15 yeas, and I much prefer it. I think and dream in English, and my German is getting really clumsy. I wouldn’t be able to write this post in German, and I find myself grasping for German words that I just can’t recall. Consequently, I’m having a really hard time speaking German with my son. It’s like having to translate what I want to say in English to German, which gets frustrating. In the heat of the battle, it’s so much easier to shout, “Put those shoes on, now!” at my precocious preschooler instead of, “Jetzt zieh’ aber mal sofort die Schuhe an!”
When I videotape my son nowadays, I find myself talking to him half in German, half in English, feeling like a fraud because I’m only doing it in case my parents ever see the footage. And I don’t know if its just a phase, but lately my son doesn’t make it easy for me to impart the bilingual coolness factor: he often refuses to listen to what a certain thing is called in German. His response: “No, it’s not” or “No, I don’t want to say it like Oma says it!” Sigh.
Last year I met another mom, originally from France, who could relate. She said she did great with her first child, the second one hardly knows any French, and she is trying to do her best with her third child. It’s not easy to raise a bilingual child when English is what the child hears most of the time, as in her and in my case.
I started a German-speaking moms group but couldn’t find the time to get together more than twice. I was able to reprogram our DVD player to play German DVDs, so L is now watching a few of them, and I sometimes read to him in German. And we are considering giving up our Saturdays later this year to schlep him to German school an hour away. All of this seems crazy because I should be able to just teach him German myself, but I’m failing. I just can’t bring myself to speak German to him much because it’s such hard work for me.
I’m hoping to get my son to understand what is being said, but I can’t guarantee that he will be able to talk to my parents in German.
Last week I tried again to explain to my parents that raising their grandson bilingually is not that easy. I struggle when talking to them — I have to search for the right words in German to express myself all the time — so they kind of have an idea about my difficulty and how frustrating it can be for me to speak German.
If I don’t succeed to teach my son German well enough so he can communicate, I know I will regret it. I know he will give me grief about it later. I know it is a huge missed opportunity because children’s capacity to learn language is so heightened when they are little. But it’s just not that easy to raise bilingual children, Oma und Opa.
Here is to hoping they will still teach German in high school in 10 years.
This was an original post I wrote for NYC Moms Blog that was published March 29, 2010, and I updated it a little bit.
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My mom moved to the US from Sweden when she came for college (to attend the same college as my dad who came to Sweden in high school as an exchange student).
She had a lot of the same issues as you are having with my oldest brother. There are even fewer people who speak Swedish than German, and it’s certainly not offered in high schools. My dad speaks some Swedish, but obviously his English is far stronger, and they joined a Swedish cultural group, but didn’t keep up with it. By the time I came along, she had given up (partly because at the time, Sweden did not allow dual citizenship although it changed that later, so I still have both). So I only ended up learning a handful of words.
I wish I had learned it as a child. Some advice I can give, having studied linguistics, is to expose him to as much German as possible, particularly from other people (having him speak to relatives could help, for example). It can be easier also if you create certain rules to stick to, like that you and he converse in German only at home, and maybe even refuse to respond to English if it’s not urgent. It would also be easier if your husband continued to study German so that he could participate too.
It might be that German classes or a German tutor (which could start before high school if you can find them) would be your best bet though.
No matter what you do, raising him in an even slightly bilingual environment will benefit him, I believe. My mother is a Cuban immigrant who started learning English (and stopped learning Spanish) at 9 years old. My dad is American. I’m 30, and when I was young I don’t think that it was thought to be very important to be bilingual, so my mom didn’t even really try. However, I was around spanish-speaking family frequently. I found it very easy to pick up Spanish in high school classes, and was able to go to Spain for a month as a senior in high school and come back basically fluent. (I have since lost that, but c’est la vie.)
I think part of it is natural verbal ability, but I also credit being around another language.
Wow! I never realized that it might be possible to forget your native tounge if you’ve been speaking another language for over a decade. Very interesting. I symphathize with you wanting your son to speak German. That would be important to me, too. But I can see his point of not wanting to speak it since everyone else speaks English, and since he’s just learning to speak himself wanting to use the language he can communicate with the most people.
I can totally relate as I try to raise two Russian speaking daughters with a non Russian speaking husband! Saturday Russian school is a tremendous help as are Russian speaking friends and other Russian centered activities. But the biggest help is spending time with grandparents or other relatives in Russia. We arrive with my girls only speaking in separated words and leave with full sentences!
I’ve met many people who have tried and found it difficult byu the time the child turned 3/4 years old. Their kids rarely speak anything other than English now. It’s sad, but real. don’t beat yourself up over it.
Oh Dagmar, I hear you! It IS so hard to raise bilingual kids, even if both parents speak both languages as in our family.
And, and as you rightly pointed out, it gets harder with each one. My Japanese husband started out super strict with our oldest, and predictably, it went downhill with each kid after.
I think what happens is this: as the kids get older and go to school, their vocabulary and ability to express themselves in English increases much much faster than in the language you speak with them at home. So, they naturally gravitate to the language that allows them to express the increasing sophistication of their thoughts.
So for kids who refuse to speak in the second language, it’s not that they rebel against the second language per se. It’s more that they rebel against how infantalized they feel by their inability to speak at their own level.
Take heart though. Whatever you are teaching them now is probably enough, because just exposing them to another language is making them more receptive to learning later. I learned two foreign languages quite fluently — AFTER college — and it worked out just fine. Just plan on a semester or two in Germany during college and they’ll be speaking like natives in no time!
Carol
My father is first generation German American. He was the first child and he is fluent in German because his parents only spoke German to him for the first 5 years of his life. Then he went to school and kids made fun of him, so they stopped teaching him and barely even tried with his two sisters.
So, when my sister and I came along, he didn’t even try despite our constant nagging. I don’t really blame him considering he was not the one who was around us most of the time and my mother did not speak German (even though her grandmother was first generation German American, too).
Anyway, I think you’re amazing for even trying! I’m sure he’s soaking up even more than you realize!
Hallo Dagmar,
ich habe dich über Hobo Mamas Blog gefunden. Ich finde es sehr interessant, dass du mit den gleichen Problemen wie ich zu kämpfen hast, obwohl du deutsche Muttersprachlerin bist. Ich erziehe meinen Sohn zweisprachig englisch/ deutsch obwohl ich keine englische Muttersprachlerin bin und dachte, dass die Probleme, die auftreten, an diesem Umstand liegen. Aber offensichtlich ist es einfach schwierig, gegen die immer so präsente Umgebungssprache anzukämpfen bzw. sich durchzusetzen.
Lies gerne in meinem Blog mit, wenn du magst.
http://zweisprachig.blog.de
Ich bin immer auf der Suche nach neuen interessanten Links und Studien.
Und Erfahrungsberichten :).
LG
Oh, wie schoen, jemand anderes kennenzulernen von Deutschland! Muss Deinen Blog umbedingt ansehen :) Danke fur Deinen Kommentar!
Hallo,
werde deinen Blogeintrag mal verlinken ;).
LG
The part of the brain that deals with foreign language shrinks if children learn only one language. Later, when they take foreign languages in high school, that part of the brain is small, so it’s not as easy to learn. If you exercise that part of a child’s brain early on (as you have), you encourage that part of the brain to stretch itself, keeping it more open to foreign language learning later. Make sense? So, don’t feel guilty; what you’re doing now is making a difference. When he’s older, if he wants to learn more German, he’ll be able to, because of your efforts.
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