Thoughts on Raising Children in a Non-Native (and therefore imperfect) Language

There are regular bilingual parenting issues and then there are non-native bilingual parenting issues. Those of us who are attempting to raise our children in a language which we do not speak natively will naturally have additional questions, fears and feelings of inadequacy. One of the most common fears, and one that I remember facing when I first started out on our bilingual parenting journey, comes from our imperfect knowledge of the target language. And, no wonder! How can we even think of teaching our children a language which we ourselves haven’t yet mastered perfectly?  It’s a valid concern and it’s one that many parents, who wish to raise children in a foreign language, share. It may seem like an insurmountable barrier to some. 

So often we think that we have to be an expert at something before we can teach that skill to others. But that is just not the case! Just think about real life. If I want to teach my child manners, do I need to have a certificate from a leading etiquette school? Or can I assume that I know enough about manners to teach my children the basics. Granted, I may even teach my children some incorrect manners. For instance, I may teach them to use the salad fork when they should have used the dessert fork…BUT should I let my imperfect knowledge of manners stop me from teaching any manners at all? Of course not. Won’t my children be far better off by learning a few manners, even if some of them might not be exactly perfect, than if I threw in the towel and decided to just not teach them any manners? This same reasoning can be made for most skills and habits that we teach our children. I may want to teach my children to do housework. Does that mean that I need to be perfect at keeping my house clean? Do I need to know all the ins and outs of custodial cleanliness? Or can I suffice with just teaching them what I know? One amazing fact remains when it comes to raising children. Not only can I teach my children something that I know, but I can even help them to become better at something than I am. With the right training, my children can develop even better manners and be even better housekeepers than myself. Yes, of course, we should teach by example. But once our children surpass us, we can still help them learn things, even things that are outside of our own ability. We do this through our encouragement, our efforts in making sure they have the right materials and our finding and placing experts in their path. The bottom line is that you absolutely do not have to be the expert in everything that you teach your children. 

How wonderful that parenting usually starts out with a small, helpless infant, whose knowledge of the world is extremely limited. Surely, we know a little more about the world than our tiny little baby. And that should give any parent a little boost of confidence. The main factor to remember is that we don’t need to have a perfect knowledge of something, we just need to know a little more than the person we are teaching and as that person learns, it’s up to us to learn right along with them and to be the wind beneath their wings. 

Yes, I make LOTS of mistakes in German. And, yes, my children also make LOTS of mistakes in German. But, not once have my kids chastised me for attempting to teach them a language that I didn't speak perfectly. On the contrary! Rather, every single one of my eight beautiful children continues to express gratitude for their ability to speak German, even if that German is flawed and imperfect. My motto has always been: An imperfect second language is better than no second language!

My sweet missionary daughter and her companion, at a Christmas market near Frankfurt.
 Even though I taught her imperfect German,she has still been able to communicate just fine--from the minute she arrived.
In fact, she is often mistaken for a native German.  She'll be the first to admit that an imperfect second language is better than none at all. 

New Featured Non-Native Bilingual Family!

In an effort to try and connect the many families who are raising children in a language that is non-native to the parents, we are featuring some of these families on our new website:

Bringing Up Bilingual Babies

Enriching the Lives of Children and Families through

Non-Native Bilingual Parenting

This month's featured family consists of Tamara, Geoff and their daughter Kaya. They are very familiar to most non-native bilingual bloggers since Tamara has been blogging her non-native bilingual journey for many years now. Tamara and Geoff are both native English speakers residing in the United States. Tamara is successfully raising their daughter in her non-native German.

Tamara was kind enough to share some of her experiences and advice in an article that we recently posted. I loved her last piece of advice, which basically was to worry less and enjoy more. I think that is one of the best gems of wisdom that could be passed on to any parent who is
embarking on the journey of non-native bilingual parenting.

Read Tamara's article: Tamara and Geoff

Link to Tamara's Blog: Non-Native Bilingualism

It has been so enjoyable for me to learn about other families who are also raising their children in a foreign language. I love seeing the similarities. So many of us have worried, stressed and fretted about similar situations and have enjoyed the same feelings of success as our children have blossomed and have grown to love and understand another culture, language and people.

Chickens, Swings, and Summer! Big kids and little kids speaking German together.

I absolutely LOVE summer time. I love having all my kids home from school. This summer is particularly fun, because my college freshmen twin girls are home for the summer, too. We sure missed them while they were gone this past year. The little kids are so happy to have their big sisters home. Michaela and Kiana have been like "other mothers" to them. In fact, the little ones usually run to one of their sisters when they need something, instead of coming to me. They ADORE their sisters. It is so much fun having both older and younger children and seeing the love and joy that exists in their relationships with each other. I can honestly say that nothing brings me more joy than witnessing the sweet love that the kids have for each other. 

Another fun bonus that has come with having a later set of children (there's almost a 9 year gap between the older kids and the younger ones), is that the younger kids have inspired the older ones to really work on their German again. Before the younger ones were born, the older kids had pretty much stopped using their German at home. We had a few German routines, but most of our home language had switched to English. When the younger ones came along, we all decided we would speak only German to the little ones. It's been fun to observe the improvement in the older kids' German ability. They don't speak perfect German, but they get lots and lots of practice at home. In fact, often, my little 6 year old Jonathan, will teach his 17 year old brother, Dallin, a few words. 

I came across this video the other day. Michaela and Kiana had taken the video camera out to the pasture swing. Jonathan, had just caught one of his chickens and brought it up the hill to show his sisters. The reason I like this video so much is because I'm not in it. This video shows how the big and little kids interact when I'm not around. Michaela is taking the video, and because she is out playing with the little kids, she is only speaking in German. If we hadn't had our second batch of kids, Michaela and Kiana would not have been sitting out in the pasture having German conversations. All that wonderful German speaking would never have happened!! Anyways, I'm just feeling grateful for my children today and grateful that we decided to raise them in our non-native German language. 

Define Success

I think I have a unique bilingual parent perspective. Currently, I am poised between my two batches of children. The first batch (5 kids) have pretty much been raised. My oldest three have already left the house. If they are going to progress in German, it will be on their own...my job is done. Even the two teenagers that are still living at home are pretty much "done" when it comes to learning German. If they want to learn more German, they will take classes or go to Germany. They've learned what they can from me.

The second batch, however is still a work in progress. We're still deep in the bilingual trenches. The wonderful thing about raising a second batch of bilingual children is that, this time, I have no worries or doubts. I've done it all before and I know what worked and what didn't work so well. I also know where I need to improve. I'm not so worried about the younger children's English development, because we found that the first batch learned English just fine--in fact, some of them are quite gifted--so we are pretty sure that our younger batch of kids will be speaking English with native-like fluency before long. It's comforting to have been down this road before. I've defined our bilingual goals, I know what methods we are going to use and I feel confident that we're achieving our goals (more or less).

Now, let me just say that I never had a bilingual goal of raising children who speak perfect German. That would be quite unrealistic, since neither my husband nor I speak perfect children. The most we could could hope for would be children who could speak our own level of German. But, even that would be asking a lot, since I actually lived in Germany for some time and studied it in college...and they never have. So, what were/are our goals and did we meet them?

Our goals were to give them the German language and culture. Personally, I wanted my children to be able to identify with my idyllic childhood which I spent on a German Bauernhof in Bavaria. I wanted them to love the German Christmas traditions. I wanted them to grow up knowing that the world was bigger than their back yard and to understand that there are different ways of doing things, different ways of thinking and different ways of speaking and that they are all good. I knew that their German would be imperfect. I knew that they would make grammar mistakes (many of which they would learn from me), but I also knew that I'd rather give them my imperfect German and everything that goes with that, than not give them any German at all.

So, have we been successful? According to my own definition: YES. Our older children, who have already been raised can actually speak German. They can understand almost anything. They can express ideas and make themselves understood. They each have different levels of German. Some of them are naturally more gifted in language than others. Their pronunciation ranges from decent to quite good. Their German is far from perfect. They make grammatical mistakes all the time. If they were to take German in college, they would struggle with the grammar, but they would be able to out-speak and out-comprehend many of their classmates. And I feel certain, that they would be able to learn the grammar quickly, given the opportunity. They will probably have to "unlearn" some incorrect things that they learned in our home, but that's OK.

Now, having already done the "bilingual parenting thing" once, I actually have set my sites just slightly higher for this second batch of kids. I am hoping to help the younger children reach a higher level of German literacy than we reached with the older children. I would like to actually teach them formal grammar and help them learn how to read and write in German.

So, if success is defined by having perfectly bilingual children who speak both languages equally well and native-like, then, no, we haven't been successful. But if success is defined as setting and reaching goals and giving your children a wonderful gift of culture and language that will forever be a part of them, then, YES, we have been successful. In fact, the first time around was so amazing and successful, that we decided to do the whole thing again. And if that's not a sign of success, then I don't know what is.

When did we start speaking the minority language (German) to our children?

We had decided that we would speak German to our first child before he was born. We came to that decision while I was still expecting. But when our little Benjamin was born, it wasn't so easy. Neither of us was in the habit of speaking German to babies. It was hard to make ourselves speak to our little baby in a foreign language. It didn't feel comfortable or natural. I didn't even really know how to speak 'to a baby' in German. I didn't know all the little baby words.

The first 4 months, we really struggled with speaking German to Ben. He didn't really respond much to our words, so we felt silly talking baby talk in German. But we still tried. It helped us to remember to speak German when we said his name with the German pronunciation. By 6 months, we mostly addressed him in German. At this point, I had no idea whether he would learn German or not. Karl and I spoke only English to each other. Would our little baby pick up the language he constantly heard in his environment (English) or would he actually speak in the language in which we spoke to him (German)? I really had no idea.

But early on, we noticed that he seemed to understand German better than English. It was fun to see that he actually responded to German. We were hopeful and continued to always talk to him in German. Karl's vocabulary really grew as he learned lots of new words. Karl was learning German right along with Benjamin, which was fun for all of us.

In this video (from our college days), you can see that we have already switched to speaking only German to Benjamin by the time he was 10 months. I think it was important that we were speaking the minority language to him well before he was able to produce words himself. You can also see that my German was not perfect.

Lullabies and Nursery Rhymes

When our first child, Benjamin, was born, I was really at a loss as to how to talk to or interact with a baby in German. I wanted to be able to sing German lullabies, but I didn't know any. I had grown up in an English speaking household and my mother had only sung English lullabies to me and my siblings. Even though it seemed strange to sing to my baby in a foreign language, I had decided that I was going to go ahead with our little "German experiment" no matter what, so I started looking for German lullabies to learn. This was before the internet, so I went to the library and checked out German song books. I took them home and, because we were poor college students and didn't own a piano, I played the melody of each lullaby on my recorder and worked on memorizing the words. I would sit in my recliner, as I nursed my little baby, holding the lullaby sheet music and sing my newly learned songs.

I had the same problem with nursery rhymes. As a mommy, I wanted to do little rhymes like: "This little piggy went to market", as I washed his little feet. So, once again, I hit the library and the college bookstore, looking for any material I could use. I collected all the little nursery rhymes and practiced them at home with my sweet little baby.

Looking back, I remember everything feeling so foreign and unnatural as I learned my new lullabies. I had never heard them sung and they didn't have that familiar feel. But, now over 20 years later, those very same lullabies are my children's most precious German memories. They love that they have their very own special lullabies. These lullabies and nursery rhymes are what set our family apart from the others. These are "our" songs and our rhymes and they are very special to us.

Early Expectations

When we decided to raise our children German-speaking, we really did not know what we were getting into. We didn't know anyone else who was doing or had done what we wanted to do. More than anything else, our bilingual adventure started out as a big experiment, in which we hoped that our children's language ability would not be permanently damaged (lol). We obviously would not have proceeded with the experiment, if our hopes and expectations didn't outweigh our doubts and worries.

So, what were our hopes and expectations? I had done enough research to understand the benefits of bilingualism. My first 3 children were born while I was a graduate student studying, of all things, language acquisition. I knew that children were born with the ability to acquire any language in the world. I also knew that by exposing a child to a certain language or languages, that the child would retain his ability to make and distinguish sounds in those particular languages while losing his ability to produce and distinguish sounds in the languages that he was never exposed to.

So, with this knowledge in mind, I thought that, at the very least, we could expose our child to German sounds so that learning German might be easier for him in the future. Of course, I also wanted him to learn to understand and speak German. With both of us being non-native German speakers, I wasn't sure what level of German to expect from our children. I assumed that their German would be imperfect, but I was ok with that. I figured that imperfect German was better than no German at all.

I also realized that at some point we would probably switch back to English simply because I knew that my German has its limits. I just cannot communicate as deeply or express myself as intimately in German as I can in English. I did not want the language ever become a barrier to deep, heartfelt and intimate communication with my children. But I didn't know if we would keep our household German and then only switch to English on occasion or whether we would drop German completely and speak only English at home.

Either way, I think we both agreed that we would push the German as far as we could and just see what happened. 

Why we chose the ML@H method

After researching the different ways to raise bilingual children, we decided that both of us would speak the target (minority) language to the children, which in our case was German. This is also known as the ML@H (Minority Language at Home) method. It seemed like it would be the most effective method for our family. Now, we didn't come to this decision easily. Yes, I spoke German pretty well, but Karl didn't speak it quite as fluently. He had taken several college German classes, but had never been to Germany. He actually minored in French. He had spent 2 years in France (on an LDS mission) and spoke much better French than German. We played with the idea of having Karl speak French to the children, while I spoke German, but after giving it some thought, we decided that we might be more successful if we both spoke the same language.

Having us both speak the minority language at home made sense to me. I figured that neither of us should speak English, because the children would get enough English from living in an English-speaking community. I assumed that they would learn English just fine from their surroundings, just like I had learned German while living in Germany as a child. I wasn't 100% sure that my children would acquire English perfectly, but we decided to take the risk.

Another reason we felt like we should both speak German, was that with both of us speaking the minority language (German), we thought it would be easier for us to counteract the huge influence of the majority language (English). If English were spoken by one parent in the home (especially if it's both parents' native language and the community language), we felt that it would be very hard to keep it from becoming the main household language. I assumed that if one of us spoke English and the other German, that the children would feel like they had a choice of which language to speak and, given such a choice, I assumed that they would almost certainly choose English.

I knew that we had to push German 100% during the toddler and preschool years. I wasn't sure what would happen when we sent our children to school, but I knew that once they started school that they would be hearing more English than German and that English would start to become the dominant language. We decided to start speaking German right from the start and not to wait a few years until they learned English. Once again, its all about taking away the children's choices...lol. If you start them in the minority language and it's the only language they know, then they really don't have a choice as to what language they will speak. But given a choice, I knew from other families' experiences, that the children often chose to speak the dominant, or community language rather than the target, or minority, language..

Of course, these were all assumptions at the time. We didn't really know what would happen since we didn't know anyone else in our situation. We knew other bilingual families, but none where both parents were speaking a non-native language. In the end, we made our decisions based on a gut feeling that this whole bilingual experiment would be a good experience and that we wouldn't ruin or harm any of our children in the process. And now, 8 bilingual children and 20+ years later, I am happy to report that our assumptions and methods actually worked with hardly any children ruined in the process. We have thoroughly enjoyed our bilingual adventure and, given the choice, would do it all over again.

My German Language Background

My introduction to the German language came when I was six years old. We had been living in Stockton, California, when my dad accepted a job in southern Germany. We thought we would only be there for a few months, but we ended up staying 5 1/2 years. Instead of just renting a regular apartment or house, my mother, being a romantic Sound of Music fan, found us a vacation rental in a dairy farm in the foothills of the Alps. It is common for some of the farmers to make a little extra money by turning a part of their large farm houses into vacation apartments. We surprised the sweet German dairy farmers by showing up in the middle of winter in our Californian wardrobes looking to rent their apartment--which is usually only rented out in the summers. Needless to say, we loved it and the wonderful family so much, that we stayed in the apartment the whole time we lived in Germany.  (our farm is the one in the back ground, directly to the left of the church's roofline)

I had just turned 6 and did not speak a word of German. That didn't stop my parents from enrolling me in Kindergarten within a few weeks. I still remember sitting in the corner of the classroom not understanding anything that was going on. I even wet my pants, because I didn't know how to ask where the bathroom was. It was very scary at first. Most of the kids were from the local dairy farms and had never seen an American before. They thought I dressed funny and made fun of me. I don't really remember learning the language. But I do remember that with time, I became more and more aware of what was going on around me, which meant that I was indeed learning. By 2nd grade, I could understand most of what people were saying and I also started making friends.

Our home language was always English. My mother would give us English homework after school. We worked on spelling and writing. She wanted to make sure that we would be able to seamlessly enter back into our grade level upon returning to the States. There was a US Army base nearby, and so we also had access to some American culture. I even joined a Girl Scout troop on base. We met a few American families through our church. Our congregation was mostly German and church was held in German, but there were a few American army families who lived off base who attended our congregation.

In southern Germany, or Bavaria, where we lived, the locals speak a very thick accent. I prided myself in being able to speak Bairisch (Bavarian) almost as well as any of the Bavarian farm girls. By 5th grade, I was fully immersed in the rich Bavarian culture and loved it with all my heart and my German was quite good. I got good grades in school and was almost as comfortable with German as I was with English. Our little rural school was small, less than 25 children to a grade, and I was friends with everyone in my class as well as the classes above and below mine.

When it came time for my family to return to the States, I was heart broken. I was 11 years old and did not want to leave the farm, my friends or the beautiful countryside. I felt much more connected to Bavaria than I did to the U.S. It was a hard move.

Once we moved back to the states, my German quickly declined because we almost never used it. I could still understand everything, but my productive language really suffered. My grammar was terrible. I had never really learned any grammar and didn't understand it.

Fast forward to college: I decided to major in German teaching. I skipped all the lower level German classes and thought I could jump right into the advanced language and grammar class, which I failed and had to retake. But with time, and a more solid understanding of grammar, my German slowly began to improve again. After a few years in the German program, I got a job teaching the lower level college German classes. Teaching German helped my German to improve tremendously. Of course, my German is far from perfect. I often make grammatical mistakes and often don't know the correct phrase to use in a given situations, but I can usually work around those problems.

Today, my German is relatively good, but only because I use it on a daily basis with my children. Speaking German to them has made a huge difference in my ability to retain the language. I haven't improved a ton, because I don't spend a lot of time talking to native adults. I basically spend all my time practicing what I already know. But even merely maintaining my language ability, beats the alternative, which is to slowly lose it altogether. So, I have been very grateful for our decision to speak German to our children.

Why we decided to start a bilingual family

Back when I was in college and working towards my masters in Language Acquisition and expecting our first child, I came across a book by George Saunders (see reference below). I was intrigued by the fact that Mr. Saunders raised his children German-speaking even though he was a native English-speaking American. The more I read, the more excited I got. I had never really considered raising my children German-speaking. It was a novel idea! And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, "I can do this." If George could pull it off as a dad who worked outside the home, then certainly I could do it as a stay-at-home mom. My German was far from perfect, but my pronunciation was pretty good. And speaking German to a baby wouldn't require super complex language structures. This was definitely something I could do.

The more I mulled the idea around in my head, the more obsessed I became with the whole idea. I started researching non-native bilingual parenting. It was 1990 and there just wasn't that much info available. Most of the research I came across discouraged what I was hoping to attempt. Most of the reasoning was that if you speak only your imperfect, non-native language to your child, that your child will not learn ANY language well. This was probably the biggest obstacle in my decision making process. I sure didn't want to harm my child's language ability and take away or hamper his future ability to express himself.

But the idea continued to grow despite the doubts. I did find some positive research that supported my intentions. I read about the many hearing parents raising children in (their non-native) ASL and vise versa: Deaf parents who "spoke" ASL to their hearing children. These children usually grew up to speak English just fine. My husband and I discussed my findings and decided that we would give it a try despite all the nay-sayers, mostly because of our gut feeling that we could pull this off.

Saunders, George. Bilingual Parenting: Guidance for the Family. Multilingual Matters, Ltd.: Clevedon, 1982.

OPOL or ML@H

So, once the decision had been made to raise our children bilingually, we had to decide exactly how we were going to do it. There are two basic theories or methods when it comes to raising bilingual children.

In a bi-cultural family, where each parent speaks a different native language, the OPOL or One Person, One Language is, by far, the most popular choice, because each parent just speaks his/her own native language to the child and the child is exposed to both languages. In our minds, the ML@H, or Minority Language at Home seemed to make more sense. I'll discuss the reasons why we chose ML@H in later post, but in the meantime, here is a good description of both methods from Omniglot.com.

1. One Person, One Language (OPOL) is the most common family language system in use. For instance, Kees speaks his native Dutch, while his wife speaks English. Each parent or caregiver consistently speaks only one language to the child. Sometimes OPOL requires extra "language supplements," such as playgroups, visits from family, a trip to the country, or a native speaking nanny or au-pair. It helps tremendously for your child to hear that his parent isn't the only one who speaks this language. Kids are savvy little creatures who are quite capable of reasoning that they don't really need to know a language if it is only spoken by one other person.
2. A second option, slightly less common but tremendously successful is Minority Language at Home (ML@H). It simply means that everyone speaks the minority language at home, even if this language is not the native language of both parents. It is probably the most reliable method for raising truly native speaking children since it ensures consistent interaction from birth until the child leaves home. However, the ML@H parent has to be able to quell doubts and stay the course unwaveringly. When your child isn't speaking the community language on the same level as his or her monolingual peers (generally the ML@H child doesn't reach parity with them until around 5 years of age), it's difficult not to worry. The McColloughs in Germany remember "We were watching other children jabbering away in complete German sentences, while Patrick seemed incapable of getting out two or three connected words." Within months after starting preschool, however, he had transformed completely. "Now he can't stop talking in either language." Even when you know that your child is going to catch up, it can be daunting to watch him struggle. Some parents fear that he will never learn the primary language, even though this really only occurs when children are isolated from the primary language within a minority speaking community.

Ager, Simon: Citing Sources: [http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids4.htm]: para. 3-4: [Jan10, 2014]

There are many factors to take into consideration when deciding on which method to implement in your family. One of these factors is whether or not both parents can speak the target language and another is the family's country of residence. Rather than explore all the factors, I will try to explain the reasons why we felt that the ML@H method would be better choice for us. (stay tuned for the next post)