Hi, I'm new to cafe Mom. I speak English, Spanish, and French.

[smartiemouth]

Hi, I'm new to cafe Mom.  I just started teaching two of my four kids spanish.  I am using a partial immersion where I speak to them in spanish for about half of the day and let them watch cartoons in spanish.  HOw do yu teach your kids?

[Sophie1106]

Hi. I'm teaching my daughter Portuguese because mine and my husband's families are Portuguese. She's only 6 months old but I do speak to her in Portuguese for part of the day and I repeat things in English and Portuguese. Like if I say time to eat I'll say it in both languages. I'll be moving in with my parents soon so then I'll probably speak to her in English and they will speak to her in Portuguese since they're better at it than me lol.

[nikolina_mama]

Hi everyone,

I am Russian and my husband is Serbian, so we're using OPOL (one parent-one-language), each speaks their language to our son, who is 6 months tomorrow. It's working out ok for now (obviously! :-)  but I am quite concerned about how he is going to pick up English.

Does anybody have any ideas on how we can recruit new members?

[smartiemouth]

Hi, that is the best time to start them.  My oldest son had trouble just speaking English so I stayed with that for years until he spoke better.  Now I have 4 kids and I am just starting with the spanish.  What I like the best is for them to watch their favorite carttons in Spanish if they have seen them in English and then they will start to get the words.  Well I gotta go teach  ttyl  Sonia

[smartiemouth]

If you live in American your baby will have no problem learning English. When he starts playing with other kids he will learn. By the time I was 5 I spoke three launguages. sonia

[nikolina_mama]

Quoting smartiemouth:

If you live in American your baby will have no problem learning English. When he starts playing with other kids he will learn. By the time I was 5 I spoke three launguages. sonia

Sonia,

Yes, I think so too. But I am concerned about how stressed my son would be if he started day care without knowing a word of English. Do you remember that moment from your childhood - when you started playing with other kids, but didn't know the majority language (English?)?

Zhenya

[smartiemouth]

I remember only speaking french and starting school not knowing english.  I started kindergarden when I was 4.  I bawled my head off every day.  Mostly because I didn't understand what everyone was saying especially the teacher. 

[mattymama]

hello all:) my husband and i speak polish at home. i myself obviously cannot remember what it was like going to school not knowing english -- but rather than dwelling on the fact that your son may at some point "stress out" over this, he will be soooooo lucky in the long run to be able to communicate in russian, serbian, and english! As an aside,as a child i learned to speak a little english from our neighbors :)

[chattyana]

Hi, I 'm Portuguese and my husband is American. He doesn't know Portuguese, so at home we speak English. I don't have any family  nor any portuguese friends here, so my challenge is to expose my daughter to portuguese, so that she learns it. I try to speak with her in portuguese as much as I can and  I have lots of CDs, DVDs, CD-ROMs and books I buy in Portugal everytime we go there, which is at least one a year.   She's now 3 years old and understands almost everything but she very rarely speaks it, just a word here and there...
Any suggestions for ways to convince her to dialogue more?

[spongelearners]

We are raising our 20 month old bilingual (Spanish / Portuguese)  and he appears to be doing really good.

Visit my website for great ideas and resources to help you accomplish your  goal.

Good luck

[shakesrear]

I'm American and I live in France. My daughter is almost 3 and I've been speaking to her in English since she was born. I never did oblige her to speak to me in English, so she has always spoken to me in French, but she understands English perfectly.

I always read her books in English and she watches DVDs in English. I notice that after visits with English-speaking people, she wants to speak English. We're taking a trip to the US in December, so I'm hoping she'll start speaking English after that.

Otherwise, she's very precocious with language, so I don't worry about it.

I spoke only Korean until I was adopted at 4 1/2. I was immersed completely and suddenly into English and I loved it. After a couple of months, I was at ease with English and I quickly forgot any Korean I knew. I realize now that this is the way that I am - I did the same thing when I moved to France at the age of 32. I just stopped speaking English and studied French until I could speak it.