Will my children speak the same language that I do? (Part Two)
My daughter is almost one-and-a-half years old now, and while it seems like her adventure with language is just beginning, science now tells us that children begin learning to differentiate the sounds of languages and voices before they are even born.
My son, who is almost four, is already a very active bilingual language speaker, so you may wonder why I worry about whether my daughter will learn to speak English like my son has. Well, I worry about it because all children are different, and because many younger children in bilingual homes don’t develop the same language skills as their older siblings. There are many reasons for this I’m sure, but the reason that seems most apparent to me at this point in my daughter’s life is the scarcity of time.
Time is a resource of limited quantity, and the more children there are in your household, the less time you will have for each child. Before my son was born, I spoke to him through my wife’s belly every night and sang him songs. After he was born, I held him every day, speaking to him all the while. I sang him to sleep almost every night. I read books to him from a very early age and took him on daily walks. I bathed him most evenings and practiced the ABCs with him while we played in the bath. I spent over two months raising him by myself during a time in which my wife was hospitalized for being at an elevated risk of going into premature labor. In short, I was able to spend an enormous amount of time speaking to my son, playing with him, and bonding with him.
Before my daughter was born, I rarely spoke to her through my wife’s belly. I was too busy putting my son to sleep and often falling asleep with him. Before my daughter was born, I lost two and half months with her because she and my wife were in the hospital. After she was born, the time I have had with her has been, at best, split in half with my son, so her exposure to my English has been reduced by, at the very least, half.
Many experts say that a child must be exposed to a second language for between thirty and fifty percent of their waking time if they are going to become fluent in that language (about twenty-five hours a week). At the moment, I don’t know if I am meeting that requirement with my daughter or not. With my son fighting for my attention on a day-to-day basis, I often wonder how I am going to expose my daughter to this much English. It is my hope that exposing her to the conversations my son and I have, and including her in these conversations will make up for her lost one-on-one conversation time with me.
But will it be enough? I don’t know. I plan to give you updates as her language skills develop.
To learn more about me, and the approach I have taken to promote my son’s active bilingualism, please read the initial post of this title, Will my children speak the same language as I do?
I only have a single child so haven't given much thought to this particular time sharing dilemma before. Trying to include both your children in family activities & conversations seems like a good approach to take, although the age difference might initially make that difficult. Maybe you could have your son help out with the daily routines of your daughter, i.e. helping you feed her, put her to bed, etc. If he talks to her a lot in English and gets in the habit of doing that as they grow up together, it will help a lot.
I worry about whether the level of the conversation my son and I have around my daughter will be too high for her. Whether it is or isn't, the exposure to the sounds of the language and the words in context will be beneficial. I'm trying to encourage my son to speak to my daughter in all English. Right now, he speaks both languages to her. I also try to have him help me read books to her and show her what different things are on the page. It's hard, though, when they both want my attention and they are both going in two different directions. I think as my daughter begins speaking more, it might be easier to guide them both toward communicating in English. If my daughter picks up English as my son did, and speaks to him in English, he will be more inclined to speak English back to her. I think he is confused as how to communicate with her right now. Both my wife and I have told him numerous times that he can't just get mad at her and yell at her, or expect her to listen to what he says because she still doesn't understand what the words mean and what the rules are, etc.
It sounds like you're doing about as well as you can. I wouldn't worry too much about the conversation level. It's more important just to immerse her in the sounds of the language so her ears get used to listening, picking out distinct syllables & sound patterns, etc. The rest of it will come naturally over time, as long as you take a consistent approach and keep it up.
What the language spoken where your children grow up? I have noticed that children go for the language the other children around them are speaking.
My children are surrounded by Japanese. I have always made it a point of speaking English to my son even when he is with his cousins and friends, taking the time to speak to him in English and the people around him in Japanese, and having him say whatever he says in Japanese to me again in English, so he has naturally come to speak to me in English. He also does so to other people that he knows are predominantly English speakers. This has taken a lot of time and one-on-one attention, though. As things are now, if I were to spend that amount of time growing my daughter's English, I worry that my son's language skills would atrophy. I'm trying to figure out new ways to keep them both learning and speaking English.