Original post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/getting-your-multilingual-children-speak-language-yvonne/
One hurdle that many parents (and language teachers) who raise multilingual children face is: how to make your child speak the language you want them to.
My answer to this is: It is important to establish the right "language relationship" at the beginning (during the first three years of the child's life). Many families follow the "one parent one language" (OPOL) policy, and have been speaking in their heritage languages to their children since the child's birth, yet many parents report the frustration that their children do not respond to them in that language. One key issue is:Â
Do parents show understanding of the child's other language(s)?Â
We as parents get very excited when our babies start speaking. So even if our children are speaking in another language and we understand that, we may show understanding with a smile, repeat what they say or respond to the child's needs instantly. A simple example:
Bilingual Toddler: Water
Chinese Mother: Water ah? hao wo gei ni shui
                                               "water right? okay I'll give you water."
Here the toddler says "water" in English and the mother repeats that, shows her understanding together with an agreement to offer water, in Chinese. Instinctively, humans attend to and seek understanding of the others. But in the course of doing this, the child understands that the mothers knows the English word (before they even know what "English" is) and will continue to use that word. Over a long period, the two parties will develop into a more solid dual language discourse, which is harder or more awkward to alter later on.
One strategy to overcome this is to pretend, at each instance, that you don't understand when the child is saying. This takes some practice. There are ways to display your degrees of understanding or lack of, as Prof. Lanza form University of Norway suggested, from minimal grasp "is that you want water?" to a total lack of understanding "what have you just said?" or "hm?". The least understanding you show the more forceful it is to get the child to speak in your language if they want to get something from you. You can also prompt the child with the necessary words in your language to help your child re-do the request.
"Language relationship" between caregivers and children is especially critical in preserving heritage languages and fostering active bilingualism or multilingualism. Please feel free to share your experience and other ideas that can help multilingual children in embracing the target language.