Golden Rules

Some “Golden Rules” from The Bilingual Family: A Handbook for Parents, by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley, pp. 87-88:

The child’s happiness comes first.  If ever you should really come to the decision that trying to ‘be bilingual’ is in some sense a source of misery, you should seriously reconsider your position.

The child should never be teased or embarrassed in any way about his linguistic performance, particularly in his weaker language.  This includes protecting the child when he is asked to ‘perform’ by adults and by avoiding comparisons between his performance and that of monolingual children.

The child should never be punished for making mistakes; as far as possible you should avoid correcting your child overtly too, especially if this means constantly interrupting him.

Talk to your child, and this applies to both mother and father.  Provide him with the richest linguistic environment possible (songs, playgroup, books, television, holidays visitors, games) in both languages.

Be consistent in your linguistic behavior with your child, but remember that there are many different ways of being consistent: one parent, one language; a holiday language and a round-the-year language; a weekday language and a Sunday language; the first one to speak chooses the language; everyone speaking their preferred language.

Play it down.  For most bilingual children and their parents, as we have seen, their linguistic situation is just part of their life.  It is a part that can be useful, fun and interesting, but it is still something that they share with the majority of the world’s population and therefore neither a cause for concern nor anything to shout about.

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