Anyone planning on bringing up your baby bi/multilingual?

Hi, my name is Vida and i’m Thai. Mama to be and at the moment i’m 7 weeks. I do plan to raise my kid be bilingual. So i’m going to speak Thai and Chinese at home with my kid and let my kid learn English from the school. So him or her can learn the correct grammar and accent from the teacher.

Yes. I told my partner who speaks Swahili that I wanted our child to know how to speak it flauntly alongside side English. As I see it as being apart of them.

That's so cool! Have you given it any thought yet how you're going to divide speaking both Thai and Chinese to your baby? Mine's due in a few weeks and I keep wondering how to best split the time I speak Spanish and German to her so she gets equal amounts of exposure to it.

that's fantastic! I also think it's so important to pass on language to the little ones as part of their identity.

Hey Christina!! My husband and I are both Nigerian (although I’m half American too 😄), so our plan is to have my husband speak to our son in Igbo as often as possible, if not exclusively.

most definitely. On top of any cultural traditions ect.

i’m thinking to speak Chinese when we go for food shopping or go out. And Speak Thai when we’re at home.

Hi fellow warrioress! How's it all going? Yeah, the one parent one language thing is a great idea from what I read. Are you thinking of speaking both English and Igbo to your little one, or just English? I want to expose our baby from day 1 to all the languages she'll hopefully be learning, but worry that I might get a bit lazy with it. So much to consider when wanting to bring up a perfect little human. 🫠

yeah, the activity based split is definitely an option! I think I might start with changing languages every day, and see how I get on. I read recently that the main problem isn't the kid picking up the language, but the mental effort for the parent to switching languages all the time. Do you speak Thai and Chinese at home regularly? I only speak English at home with my partner, and Spanish and German never happen "naturally" if you know what I mean.

totally get what you mean. And yeah it’s kind of hard to put up with switching languages regularly. But i guess i’m lucky that my mum can’t speak English so i have a chance to speak Thai as much as English too. Although with Chinese i have nobody to speak with at the moment except my friend but i’m not seeing them that often so it’s kind of hard.
Maybe you can start doing it by watch movie in Spanish and German with the kid or open music in those languages for the baby.

lol! I know…it makes my brain hurt 😆…sadly, my dad never taught me Igbo, so I only know a handful of words. So, I’ll be the boring English speaker and my husband is already plotting to make fun of me in Igbo, with our son…just lovely! 🤣 He will also get a chance to practice when video calling my in laws in Nigeria, so hopefully, it will stick.

😂😂 yeah, languages can make one's brain hurt unfortunately! It's fantastic, though, that your husband can pass on a bit of both your heritages by taking in Igbo. But jokes aside, are you worried that they could secretly be taking about you? The reason I ask is because my sister in law didn't teach my niece any Italian because she was worried that my niece could eventually insult my brother without him realising (I do admit, my - now ex - sister in law is a bit extreme though 🤦). But my partner said the other day that he's worried that I'll end up having a "secret" language with our little one. So, thanks to all those crazy pregnancy hormones, my brain is now in overdrive trying to come up with best ways how I can speak to her in English in a "family setting" ie. when he's present, but still manage to teach her enough Spanish and German in other situations (we both work from home, so we'll be having LOADS of family time I think).

I honestly never thought about it that way, and with my personality (I’m pretty laid back), I can’t imagine being bothered by the idea. I think that I’ll be instilling a sense of respect in him, so even if he wanted to talk about me/was mad and wanted to insult me, he’d do it in his head or his bedroom, like we all learned to do as children lol!

I think it will already be hard enough to create an environment for him to become fluent, since he’ll only have dad to practice with, on a daily basis, so I wouldn’t want to further restrict those learning opportunities.

Yes I am but Spanish and English and my mother homeland dialect