Confidence Is The Key
by Tracy Smith

My three year old daughter switches between English and French with no effort.  She knows to speak in English with me and French with my husband.  Just the other day she said something to my husband in French and I asked her what it was that she had said because I didn't hear it well.  Rather than repeating what she said in French, she translated it perfectly into English. At home she has no problem speaking to anyone in either language.  She chats with my mother in America on the phone in English and her French grandparents in French. She loves to talk.

However, that is not the case at school.  She is still not talking and rarely plays with other children after almost an entire school year. I don’t know if it is all because of her being bilingual or even if that has anything to do with it. When I was a child in school, I spoke very little and had only a few friends. I was so shy that I would not even answer my teacher unless she came to me and I could whisper. My mother was the same as a child in school. My father is still a little shy. I think it is in my daughter's DNA to be shy.

I will admit that in spite of my knowing that being shy runs in my family, I still worry that her being bilingual doesn't make it harder on her.  Her French and English are not as advanced as most children her age.  For several months she was afraid to try speaking in full sentences in either language.  I have been working with her to build her English language skills.  Due to her growing confidence in speaking English, her French has also improved. I was a little surprised by that, until I realized it made sense because her problem wasn't really with English or French but with confidence.  Once she was confident in English she was also confident in French.  She was confident in herself.

Her confidence in who she is has grown in many ways over these past two months.  One day, a few months ago, on the way home from school she told me she speaks English, not French. I smiled and said, “No, you are a little Franco-American. You speak French and English. You are special.”

She knotted her brows together and pouted. She screamed out in anger, “I am American and I speak English!” I thought something must have happened at school. I didn't know what had happened but she was very upset and angry.

I stopped right there in the middle of the sidewalk and dropped down to her level.  When we were face to face I asked her if she had a bad day. She said yes. I asked her why. She said a girl that is one of her friends pushed her. I hugged her and told her that people can be mean sometimes and that maybe her friend was having a bad day, too?

I thought at first it was more than this girl pushing her. I thought she was having trouble adjusting to an all-French environment.  The girl pushing her made her feelings bubble over, which before she had been hiding.  I was wrong.  It was much simpler than that.

In my daughter's mind the little girl was French.  So, that is why my daughter told me she didn't want to speak French any longer.  She was mad at the French.  I finally saw this and had to remind her that not only is the little girl French, so is she.  She is French and it is not something she can just decide to not be.  Just as she is a girl and can't just decide to be a boy. 

I told her that she is beautiful and smart and that I love her. I told her she is special because she has two languages.  I told her that is very, very cool. She liked that.  After I kissed away her frown and replaced it with her radiant smile, she told me, “I like Mama.” It made my heart smile.

Kids are simple and sometimes we make things more complicated than need be.  My daughter wasn't having a big issue with an all-French environment like I was at first afraid of.  She was merely being a three year old.  Because she was upset with her friend who speaks French, my daughter decided she would give up the French language.  Not unlike a child saying they no longer like red crayons because a red headed child picked on them.  She got over it and speaks French better and better each day.  Just the other day she said a word in French I didn't know and used a sentence I didn't know the meaning of. Her French is surpassing mine. 

She will be fine in French and English no matter what.  These are her mother languages and a part of who she is.  As she grows more confident in each language, she doesn't feel insecure about who she is.  She is beginning to see that she can't just decide to not be one or the other.  She understands that it is ok to be both at the same time.  When she is with French she is French and when she is with Americans she is American. 

However, I know that in her heart she is Franco-American.  In her perfect world everyone would speak Franglaise.  We all know that the world is not perfect and somehow I feel my bilingual daughter is a little more prepared for that.  She has adjusted daily to her bilingual world learning to be secure and confident within herself.

© Tracy Smith

Tracy Smith lives in Strasbourg, France with her French husband and three Franco-American children. She enjoys writing about her experiences as a mother raising bilingual as well as bicultural children while adjusting to the French culture and learning the French language herself. You can find her at From my French window or Alsace photoblog.