How to bring up bilingual children: practical strategies

I have recently been approached by several new parents asking me for advice on how to bring up their children speaking two languages. They were all impressed by the fact that my two daughters are trilingual, and that they are in turn bringing up their own children bilingually. I will recount here my experience to encourage and support you in your endeavor of bringing up bilingual children. To make it clearer, I will concentrate on my own experience of a Spanish-speaking mother in an English-speaking environment, although parents with a different combination of languages can draw parallels to their own circumstances. I will call Spanish or your native tongue the “minority language” to distinguish it from the “majority language”, the prevalent/official language of the country where you live, English in my case.

A little bit about myself

I am originally from Uruguay, Latin America but have lived in Australia for some 50 years. I have had vast experience in the teaching of the Spanish language at tertiary level. I wrote the Profile of the Spanish Language in Australia, one of the 9 key community languages recognized here, for the National Languages and Literacy Institute and I was the Director of a research center called Language for Export, because I have always been convinced that to unlock the door of international trade you needed to know the language of your clients.

I am also a firm believer that we should not waste the linguistic resources of the country. They should be maintained, pass on and put to good use in society. I said this in the report I wrote for the Australian Government in 1990, titled Language for Export. A Study of the Use of Language and Language Related Skills in Australian Export Companies, now nicknamed “the Valverde Report”.

I participated as well in a multilingual research project called ILOTES (Innovative Languages Other Than English in Schools) in Sydney. The program was created for a multicultural kindergarten in Spanish, Italian and Arabic, three very important community languages in Australia. The project was a comprehension-based course inspired by an “English as a Second Language” program implemented in French speaking New Brunswick (Canada) by Prof. Patsy Lightbown of Concordia University. Through that project I consolidated the notion that comprehension-based language acquisition was the most natural and easy way to teach a second language to children.

Hence, given my background and my academic track record, it was clear and not negotiable to me that my daughters were both going to learn Spanish and English. Being bilingual would give them a better entrance into this competitive world and would help consolidate the Australian paradigm of multiculturalism, equality and world peace.

That’s why I would like to share my knowledge and experience on raising bilingual children and grandchildren and help you in this amazing journey. Let’s start with the basics!

THREE BASIC STEPS

The Secret Formula:

Confidence: Believe in your plan and your ability to execute it.
Preparation: Have a strategy tailored to your family’s needs.
Resourcefulness: Use every tool and opportunity available to support your child’s language learning.

These principles aren’t just helpful—they’re essential. Let’s break them down.

Be Confident

Confidence isn’t just about knowing you’re doing the right thing; it’s about projecting that assurance to your children, your family, and even the sceptics in your life. Confidence gives us the strength to become active, to implement our plans, even the capacity to imagine a new future. Lack of confidence gives us doubts, fears, uncertainty on whether we will be able to implement our plans.

Know Your Why:
Are you raising bilingual children to preserve cultural ties? Open doors for their future careers? Whatever your reason, hold onto it like a lifeline. It will keep you steady when doubts creep in—yours or someone else’s.

Silence the Critics:
You’ll hear the myths:

“Won’t they get confused?”
“Aren’t you delaying their majority language?”
“What if they have an accent?”

Here’s the truth: children aren’t confused by multiple languages. Learning two languages won’t delay the acquisition of the school language, and accents are proof of linguistic skills, not a flaw. Unless your children have a diagnosed language delay you can relax and watch them develop while offering them enough exposure in each of their languages. Not all children begin to speak at the same age. Giving up a language is no solution for language delay and there are many research papers written about this. If you would like to learn more about this issue, please read the research article by Estela Bayarri about myths surrounding bilingualism and language delay in this blog.

When you find opposition, convert them into your ideology so that they can support you in your efforts. Don’t fight them! Bring them to your fold! Convince them that it is for the best for your child.

Celebrate Your Identity:
Pride in your language and culture fuels your confidence. Dive deep into your heritage. Share its richness with your children, from music to food to stories. Your enthusiasm will be contagious.

Be Prepared

Preparation is the backbone of bilingual parenting. Without a plan, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Confidence stems from knowledge: knowledge of yourself and knowledge about your own background and the theories and practices of bilingualism in this case. Knowledge is power. And implemented knowledge is wisdom. Don’t allow anybody to take this away from you!

Choose a Method:
There are several approaches to raising bilingual children. You need to make your choice according to your language skills and those of your family.

OPOL (One Parent, One Language): You speak your language, your partner speaks theirs. Consistency is key. It is advisable that each parent chooses the language they feel more confident with, the language that is linked to their culture and background. If you are not a native speaker, you should choose the language that you have learnt passionately in school. If you don’t feel confident in a language, try to improve it before you attempt to pass it over to your child, otherwise you will encounter glitches in its implementation.
Of course, there are variants. There are families that are multilingual rather than bilingual. Should you try to teach all languages of the family to the child? You could, but that would require a much more disciplined arrangement
mL@H (Minority Language at Home): Everyone speaks the minority language at home, creating an immersion environment. However, if your children only hear the minority language at home and don’t have any input in the majority language, their introduction to schooling could be a bit stressful. Although, they will always learn the school language because it is the language they speak and play with their schoolmates and through which education is imparted. Unless, of course, they are privileged to attend a bilingual school, something that I highly recommend if they are available where you live.
Time and Place (T&P): Assign specific languages to certain settings or times. For example, you can decide to speak your minority language at home and in the car and the majority language when you go shopping or in any social events where other people are involved.

Start Early:
The earlier you introduce your language, the better. Babies are born with an innate ability to absorb language, and those early years are golden.

Plan for Resistance:
Children may push back—especially as they get older and peer pressure kicks in. Be patient and flexible. Even if they reply in the majority language, keep speaking to them in your language. They’re still absorbing it.

Be Resourceful

We live in a golden age of language resources, so take advantage of it.

Use those resources DAILY. That’s the way children learn language. Communicate as much as possible with them from the very beginning in your native tongue, through songs, stories, games, videos, applications on the iPad. Yes, the iPad can be a great resource if administered wisely. You can assign special time to watch selected programs in your language together. Watching videos regularly can be a great language resource. As mentioned before, Patsy Lightbown has demonstrated that listening and reading comprehension are the most important basis for second language learning.

Make it a game rather than a chore. Find ideas on the web, remember your own games when you were a child. My grandchildren love the “rondas” such as “A la rueda rueda” and “Antón Pirulero” for example. Create your own resources and share them. When my daughters were little, we invented short stories in Spanish that I helped them convert into “cuentos”. I have shared some of them already on the web. (Chimbo: Palomita de maíz co-authored with my daughter Cecilia Humphrey: That gave them great pride and sparked their interest.

Make sure they understand:
Always clarify the meaning of words, of stories they don’t fully comprehend.

Practice comprehension exercises when you read them stories or watch videos. Make sure they have understood the meaning of words, the flow of the story and its ending. Are the characters bad or good, who is your favorite, why? What colour is their hair, their eyes, their clothing? How many “enanitos” are in the Blanca Nieves story? Make them think, analyze and respond. Reward them for their work in their second language. When you simplify complex sentences and make them comprehensible to the child, you are supporting their language acquisition.

Songs and Games:
Music is a magical tool for language learning. Sing along to traditional songs or make up your own silly tunes. Games like “I Spy” or scavenger hunts are also great for reinforcing vocabulary.

Travel and Immersion:
If possible, take trips to places where your language is spoken. Seeing it come alive in the real world can spark your children’s interest and confidence.

Local Communities and Playgroups:
Connect with other bilingual families. Sharing experiences and tips can be a lifesaver.

The don’ts

Try not to correct them too much. Limit your corrections to incorrect meaning, that impairs communication. Don’t dwell too much on pronunciation or grammar correctness, especially at an early stage.

I, as a language teacher, made the common mistake of correcting my daughters too much to the extent that one of them refused to speak in Spanish for many years, although she still understood me perfectly well.

Keep remembering the advantages of bilingualism

Academic and Cognitive Superpowers:
Bilingual children develop flexible thinking skills, better problem-solving abilities, and even a leg up in math and the arts. That’s because their brains are constantly juggling two linguistic systems, which builds mental agility.
Cultural Connection and Pride:
Passing on your language connects your children to their roots, whether it’s through family traditions, storytelling, or heartwarming chats with abuelita. It’s about belonging and identity.
Career Advantages:
In our increasingly global world, bilingualism is like having a superpower on your résumé. From business to healthcare to education, being bilingual opens doors.
Social Adaptability:
Bilingual children often show more empathy and better communication skills because they’ve been exposed to different perspectives through language.

Would you let these advantages pass by?

BE RESILIENT

Never give up. Don’t get discouraged. Children go through stages in their lives. When your children are not willing to speak back to you in your language, stop struggling with them. Don’t allow them to hold you to ransom. My experience is that it is better to find other ways to entice them to do it.

Rather than forcing them to talk back to me in Spanish, I kept talking in Spanish and accepted that they answered back in English. They hardly ever requested me to translate anything into English, so that meant that their language acquisition was growing. But remember: communication is what matters. If they understand the message, they are acquiring that language: Comprehension is the first step to production. And the method “comprehension-based-language acquisition” works!

Sometimes, exposing them to a different experience can completely alter their perception of how important your minority language is. When my daughters were 8 and 11 we travelled with them to New York and Montevideo. In that order. Guess what? When they landed in the Big Apple they were absolutely flabbergasted about how many people spoke Spanish in the streets, in the hotel, in the shops, even in MacDonald’s! You don’t hear much Spanish spoken in the streets in Sydney…

To my surprise, they slowly started speaking among themselves in Spanish and when we arrived in Montevideo they immediately started speaking with their cousins and aunties as if that was their normal daily routine. It came as a total surprise to me.

My younger daughter did not practice much Spanish for many years, she refused to learn it in high school but when she started university, she expressed her desire to enrol in that subject to improve it. I drove her to her university for a test, as they had to assess how much Spanish she already had to be able to place her in the correct level. The professor, —who knew me well as an academic—, invited me to stay in the room while she was being tested, to which I replied: “If I stay she won’t perform as well”, as she had already told me she was embarrassed to speak Spanish in front of me because I was such an expert in the language.

As soon as I started walking down the corridor, I could hear her speaking fluently in Spanish, something she hadn’t done for years with me. Tears rolled down my face… It was a mixture of gratitude to her for having absorbed my teachings and pride for being such a resilient mother. I had succeeded!

And guess what? She was placed in an Advanced Spanish class which was a surprise even for me, who was not completely aware of her linguistics abilities until then. She did very nicely with her studies, but she still did not engage with me in Spanish. It was because she could not overcome that feeling of her language not being perfect enough to flaunt it in front of me, the “language expert”, her mother. Mothers can sometimes be too overwhelming… So unfair!

But here comes the last great news: When her first child was born, she immediately requested me to speak to him in Spanish and she started talking to him fluently in Spanish! In front of me! It was as if by being a mother she lost her inhibitions with her own mother, and finally understood that we are not such judgemental baddies. Bravissimo for bilingual children! Keep your spirits up and consult us if you have any doubts.