“He doesn’t want to speak Turkish anymore.”
“As soon as I suggest an activity in English, he refuses.”
“He understands Spanish, but always prefers to answer in French.”
Many multilingual families know these phrases. If this is your case, there is nothing wrong with it, and nothing to be ashamed of.
But rather than only looking for ways to get the child to speak more, we can also ask ourselves: what place does this language hold in their daily life?
When a language becomes a task
Sometimes, a family language is mainly associated with requests.
“How do you say that in Turkish?”
“Repeat it in English.”
“Do you know this word in Spanish?”
These questions can be useful. But when they make up the bulk of the exchanges in that language, it takes on a very particular role: that of a skill the child must demonstrate.
Yet, in their dominant language, no one is constantly asking them to prove that they know how to speak. They play, they joke, they negotiate, they tell stories, they invent.
Why couldn’t the second language be used for exactly the same thing?
Play shifts the focus
During a game, the goal is no longer to produce a correct sentence. It is to find a pair, ask for a card, win a round, or understand a rule. Language becomes a means of participating in something.
In a game of 7 Families, for example, the child has a real reason to ask their question:
they want to get the card.
It is no longer “repeat this sentence to show me that you know it,” but “use this sentence because it allows you to play.”
Enjoyment does not replace regularity
Associating a language with good times is not enough to acquire it. The child always needs rich exposure, conversations, and opportunities to understand and express themselves.
And games help create these opportunities. They allow the parent to step out of the role of teacher for a few minutes and become simply a playmate again.
A language is also a relationship
We talk a lot about the number of hours of exposure needed to become bilingual. But behind those hours are people: a grandmother telling a story, a father inventing an absurd rule, a mother laughing because she has just lost at Memory again.
Perhaps the goal is not only to give our children the desire to speak a language. It is also to offer them things they will want to experience in that language.
Supporting your child’s bilingualism every day
If you are looking for concrete tools to nurture your child’s languages at home, we have created several resources designed for bilingual families:
- MEMORA : our bilingual memory card game, available in French-English, French-Turkish, and French-Spanish. A fun tool for learning and reviewing vocabulary in both languages, from age 3.
- The bilingual 7 Families game : lthe classic revisited in French-English, French-Turkish, and French-Spanish so you can play as a family while naturally reinforcing vocabulary.
- The guide to family bilingualism : a practical guide to understanding how bilingualism works in children and how to best support them every day.
- Our bilingual crosswords! Two languages in each grid, 35 grids, over 700 words, and a difficulty level that increases gradually from page to page (+16 years)
0 comments