Q&A: raising a child bilingually

Shelley writes:

You've said enough about your family and your background that I infer you are raising them with two languages, English and Spanish. My husband is Swedish, and I lived there for two years and went to school full-time for the language for a year -- so I'm fluent as well. We are raising our daughter (2 years old, with an October birthday) with Swedish and English, following the "one person one language" method for the most part -- I do speak a lot of Swedish to her, or repeat what I've said in English, etc. as she gets English reinforcement from the 3 days a week she's in daycare and the rest of her surroundings. I've never heard her father address her in English (except for concepts that don't exist in Swedish, i.e. "Easter bunny.") He is home with her two mornings a week, so they get lots of one-on-one time.

When the three of us are together, often English becomes the default, just because our lives are in English for the most part. However, my husband and I are working on speaking more Swedish when the three of us are together. We read and sing in Swedish as much as possible, my husband even translates English kids' books on the fly. We also have a rule that any kids' DVD we possess will be Swedish. Unfortunately, we live in a smallish city and don't know (and are unlikely to find) any Swedish-speaking families for playgroups, etc. We see my husband's parents about once a year, either we go there or they come here, but that hasn't happened since her speaking skills started to blossom.

So far, it's crystal clear that she understands Swedish perfectly, but she doesn't use it nearly as much as we would like her to. I'm looking for tips on raising children bilingually, more specifically on how to encourage a bilingual child to use the minority language."

I've given the wrong impression (OK, somewhat deliberately to help guard my anonymity so I'm not outed to my family) but we only speak American English at home (except when my husband does his ridiculous Scottish accent) for the most part. Our part-time babysitter is originally from a Spanish-speaking country (she emigrated with her family when she was a kid), and she teaches a Spanish class for El Chico and she and I speak Spanish together in front of the kids, but it's not anywhere near raising kids bilingually.

So I am definitely not an expert on raising kids bilingually. But I know there are regular readers who are doing it (Menita, maybe Lisa C, maybe wix, and a few others who've slipped out of my mind right now) who I'm sure could offer their experiences and opinions. And we have several friends who are raising their kids bilingual with one parent speaking English and the other speaking the other language (or the parents speaking one language and a nanny speaking the other), so I've seen how it works for them.

From what I've observed with our friends, the kids seem to use one language primarily and use the other language only when they're with the parent who speaks it or others who speak it to them (meaning grandparents or others who only speak the "other" language). The catch is that the language the kids seem to prefer sometimes switches over time. I remember one playgroup at which a girl who spoke English with her mom and Italian with her dad was speaking Italian to all the kids. We'd never thought about it before because she had previously only spoken Italian to her dad and relatives in Italy, but one day she just started speaking Italian to everyone. (All the parents at playgroup were really amused, but the kids were very confused.) That lasted a month or so, then she switched back to mostly English, and by now (she's 4.5) she switches back and forth effortlessly.

All that is to say that I don't think it's surprising that your daughter doesn't use her Swedish as much if most of what's going on in her life is in English, because it seems to be a normal phase of language acquisition from what I've observed.

I'm guessing that the easiest way to shift the balance of English and Swedish would be to start speaking exclusively Swedish at home. The first couple of weeks would take a lot of mental adjustment for you and your husband, but once you got into the swing of it you wouldn't have to focus on it as much. She's going to continue to speak English from living here, but speaking Swedish at home will give it much more real estate in her brainspace. It sounds like you're flirting with switching over, but just deciding to have Swedish be your official language would probably help you get her to speak more pa svenska.

I think you covered media, and playgroups sound like they won't happen, so I've got no other reasonable suggestions. Does anyone else have anything for Shelley?

Comments

[Mia]

We are in a similar situation as you are. I am from Sweden, my husband knows a little bit of Swedish and we are trying to raise our 16-month old son bilingually in an English-speaking city. I would have to second everything Moxie said and just add a recourse: http://www.svenskamammor.com/ It is a website for Swedish moms and dads and it has a ton of good information about raising a child with two or more languages.
Also check out http://www.svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=306&lid=Barn for Swedish children’s’ shows and related games and stuff.
Lycka till.

[Cassie]

I don't have any personal experience with bringing up bilingual children, but I'm a researcher who works in the field of developmental linguistics (how children learn to speak) and have numerous colleagues who have brought up, or are currently bringing up, children in bi-, or multi-lingual environments. The main trick seems to be exactly what Shelley is trying to achieve -- getting the balance right between the amount of exposure that the child is getting to the various different languages. I live in a predominantly English-speaking environment (in Scotland), and my experience via my colleagues is that the child will get plenty of exposure to English just in their day-to-day encounters with people (at the store, at daycare/playgroup, with monolingual English friends, etc, and later, at school -- and no, incidentally, school-age is not too late for a child to have their first intensive experience with a new language: the child may take a little longer than other children to settle in, and teachers will need to be given the heads-up, but at the age that they would be starting school (here 4 or 5, in the US 6?) they still have the brain plasticity (flexibility) to fully and completely acquire a new language at a remarkable speed, with absolutely no language deficits (unless there are underlying language problems anyway -- but these would affect the child whether they were growing up bilingual or monolingual)). Most of the parents I know have therefore chosen to use the non-environmental language exclusively, so as to boost the amount of exposure that the child is getting to that language. As I think this may be what Shelley is considering doing, I'd say go for it -- it should definitely help her child's bilingualism, and the side-benefits of growing up bilingual (for example, there is evidence that bilingual children acquire literacy skills more easily than monolingual children) are huge.

Two of my colleagues who have raised two sons in an Italian-English setting have written about raising bilingual children for the Linguistic Society of America -- what they have to say is very useful and also quite reassuring:

http://www.lsadc.org/info/ling-faqs-biling_child.cfm

[Amanda]

I have no experience raising a bilingual child, but Slate just had an interesting article on language acquisition that raises some interesting points.

http://www.slate.com/id/2148342/

It supports speaking only Swedish at home, that kids will easily pick up the language of the society they live in, even if it isn't spoken at home.

[Jody]

Yes, I was going to say the same thing: speak only Swedish at home. We're not raising bi-lingual kids (I used to want to, but my husband doesn't speak the second languages I know well enough to want to do it, and honestly, at this point, neither do I, not being a native speaker and not getting enough practice) but we have friends who are. They're all native speakers, or one is a native speaker, and they choose to use the non-English language at home. It seems to work very well.

Although: one family uses their second language to communicate among themselves while we are visiting together, having meals, playing, etc. So the mother will turn to her kids and start telling them things in the second language, in the middle of English-language conversations. And I'm mostly okay with it, but sometimes it feels a little, well, rude. Becuase the kids speak perfect English, and so does she, and it's just ... well, a little like whispering in front of us the whole time. Nothing to do with this subject, but I've wanted to make a tiny whining noise about it for a while, and here's my chance. ;-)

Good luck, I think bilingual life is a fantastic idea!

[ALG]

My mother only spoke Hebrew to me and my three siblings growing up, but my father wasn't fluent in Hebrew so she spoke English to my him and he spoke English to us. My sister, the first kid, responded to my mother in Hebrew, but by the time she was three she was in an English-speaking pre-school and she had started speaking only English at home. By the time I was speaking, the kids only spoke English, but were spoken to mostly in Hebrew (my mother was a SAHM so we spent more time with her than with my father). If we had to talk about someone without them understanding, we all spoke Hebrew. :) The result is that I can understand a lot more Hebrew than I can speak, and can speak better than I can read or write. Still, I picked up Hebrew without any effort and if I wanted to improve my speaking, reading, and writing, I probably could with less effort than a non-semi-bilingual child.

Based on my experience, I think the only way for your child to be truly bilingual is to only speak Swedish at home. If she hears other people speaking English at home, she will start, too, once she starts school.

But half-bilingual is much better than not at all, I think.

[ALG]

Oh, and in response to Jody's comment above, my mother did the same thing--speak to us in Hebrew in front of other people, despite all of us being fluent in English. I know we had some relatives who thought it was very rude. It's weird for me when my mother speaks English to me, though, since growing up, she only did it when she was mad at us (like other parents start using their children's middle names). Trust me, she isn't saying anything secretive unless she looks like she is. I think it's hard enough to speak a "foreign" language in a very English-dominant environment without trying to remember to switch back and forth in the company of others. Also, sometimes it would be something like, "Get your elbows off the table!" and she wouldn't want our relatives to know that she was reprimanding us.

[Carla Hinkle]

I agree that if at all possible you should speak only Swedish at home. My husband is Italian, but because of various family connections to the US went to English-speaking schools growing up in Italy, so his English and his Italian are both equally good. Meaning that because I speak at best very marginal Italian, it is almost all-English at home (and elsewhere, since we live in the US). Meaning our daughter just doesn't get that much exposure to Italian, which is a huge shame. We do go visit her grandparents and cousins for a month in the summer, but it just isn't the same. Without Italian being the primary langauge at home, it is tough.

We were hoping to send her to an Italian preschool but there isn't one available in our town. So what we are doing is sending her, at age 2.5, to a FRENCH preschool (all in French, 5 mornings a week). My husband (drat those Europeans) also speaks very good French, so our hope is that with all French at school, and reinforced at home, at least she'll get a good 2nd language early and hopefully Italian will be easier to come by later (through classes or maybe summers spent with her grandparents).

Raising a bi-lingual child is a challenge, for sure. If you can swing all-Swedish at home, it will help a lot.

PS you should stock up on kids' DVDs, etc while in Sweden on visits. If your DVD player doesn't play European (region 2) DVDs, check out this website:

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.

For most DVD players it is very easy to make them capable of playing DVDs from anywhere in the world by just making some tweaks using the remote. We did this and stocked up on things like Sponge Bob and Shrek in Italian while visiting this summer (guess we have to get French now, too!).

[Kim]

I don't have any actual experience with raising bilingual children myself either, but I'll go ahead and share my 2 cents worth of family experience, since it seems to support what other commenters here have recommended about speaking only Swedish at home. (That, and I can't resist the opportunity to join the party and associate myself, if only oh-so marginally, with The Greatness That Is Moxie!)

I was recently speaking with my first-generation/"currently using her bilingual skills professionally" mother about this very topic, in the context of the current immigration debate (especially in light of some of its uglier permutations - ie "This is America - Speak English!" and "English as Congressionally Sanctioned Official Language" BS). Since she was the first child of recently emigrated parents (and the first of her generation and extended family to be born in the US) and was raised in a household where Spanish was spoken exclusively, at least when she was pre-school-aged, I was curious about the timing of her early exposure to English. Although I had alway know that Spanish was her first language, I assumed this was just as a toddler, but was surprised to hear that she didn't speak any English until she was 4 or 5 and started school.

I found it rather remarkable, probably conditioned as I am by today's standards of strong emphasis on early language/reading skills, that she could have started public school in the US without being able to speak ANY English. (I actually even doubted her memory, thinking she must have picked up a working knowledge through day-to-day activities of life such as Moxie mentions, but she didn't think so, and being that her family lived at that time in a rather insular ethnic enclave of Spanish and Portugese immigrants (Newark's Ironbound Neighborhood) it is quite feasible that her memory is correct. I was curious as to how she could have possibly caught up or not have experienced a difficult transition, but I suppose pre-K was not as high stakes or high pressure an experience (for kids or parents) in the early 1940s as it is today!

Considering that both of my grandparents spoke serviceable English by this time, I was surprised that they would have started her in school, in their new county, so seemingly ill prepared (again, my mindset probably influenced by current standards of school readiness, or even by my own memories of being read to and status as an early reader) being as they were progressive- and integration-minded variety of New Americans.

The primary explanation for her Spanish-only exposure seems to be less a deliberate effort to raise her bilingual, than out of necessity and custom, as her parents lived at the time downstairs from her grandparents and 3 younger uncles, and being that my great-grandmother did not speak English (and I think refused to learn over the 30+ years she lived in the US - I've always heard her described as a pretty obstinate and disagreeable figure), even though her husband and 4 school-aged-when-they-arrived children all did, Spanish was the default language spoken around her and therefore to my mother.

She obviously was able to acquire English rapidly and without difficulty though, as she excelled in school, was an early reader and was even skipped ahead a grade from 1st to 2nd when she was apparently leading the class by reading to the other children. (Since prior to this conversation, this was my salient impression of her early educational experience, the fact that she went from a non-speaker to a strong reader in little over a year came as something of a surprise, given the popularity of flashcards and vocabulary drills for the 3-and-under set today, and is probably as good an argument as any against the need for all those cognitive/language development tools and DVDs currently marketed for infants!)

In her case, total immersion in the native language seems to have been pretty successful in the long-term as well, as far as this anecdotal 1-person case study goes anyway. Now in her mid-70s, she has a second (or, more accurately, third) career as a Spanish legal/court interpreter. (Her first "official" career was as a High School Spanish teacher, so bilingualism has held her in good stead professionally.)

The key, as I'm sure everyone familiar with this topic already knows, is being able to keep up regular use of the non-environmental language once English becomes the primary language. In my mother's case, even as her immediate family migrated to English over the years, she was involved in a Spanish youth group, studied it in school, and eventually majored in Spanish in college (along with English and a minor in French, so perhaps she just had an aptitude for languages, but more likely her early exposure to more than one language was beneficial). Today, she keeps her Spanish vocabulary sharp and up to date by tuning in nightly to several telenovellas on Univision and Telemundo. :-)

My own Spanish, at one point near-fluent when I lived in Mexico City for a summer immediately after completing AP level Spanish as a junior in HS, has faded badly over the years from disuse. Although I can understand and carry on basic conversations, I certainly couldn't use it professionally as I wish I could (and, sadly, I still need the subtitles for Almovodar films.) :-(

Although my generation was exposed to Spanish when we were young around my grandparents - and certain "essential" childhood words my cousins and I knew only by their Spanish names (culito, caca and chupeta were the only words we knew for butt, poop and pacifier as little kids) - we weren't really encouraged or taught to be bilingual; it just wasn't part of everyday life. As others mentioned, Spanish was mostly used for conversations not meant for small ears (or Anglo sons-in-law.)

Sorry for the too-long post Moxie, just wanted to second the "native language only in the home" advocates, especially in regard to long-term retention, and to point out, as those above with more knowledge on language acquisition than me seem to attest to, clearly there is no problem learning and absorbing English appropriately when the time comes.

[Sarah V.]

I have to offer a dissent and a strong warning here.

I have an excellent book called "Baby Talk" by Sally Ward (which I would very much recommend to anyone, BTW - I must remember to add it to the 'baby book' post a few posts back), which is about ways of helping your child to develop strong language skills. The author (who, sadly, died a few years back) was a speech and language therapist, advisor to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and had a PhD, so this is presumably someone who knows what she's talking about and isn't just handing out an opinion disguised as fact.

Now, what Ward advises very strongly for any bilingual situations is that *you should speak to your child in your own mother tongue*. Even if you've become fluent in another language as an adult. The problem is that you don't speak to small children learning to talk the way you do to other adults. You adjust the rhythms of your speech in particular ways, and this is apparently very difficult to do in a language you didn't learn in childhood yourself. Also, you're unlikely to know nursery rhymes and traditional stories in another language to the same extent, and these are also an important part of helping a child learn language.

As an illustrative example, she cited the case of a three-year-old child she'd seen whose speech was well behind as a result of her Greek parents trying to talk to her in English all the time. As soon as they started talking Greek to her all the time, she caught up very quickly indeed in Greek, and then picked up English rapidly from her playgroup.

Now, if this is correct (and it seems a fair bet that it is, given the training and experience of the author), then it could actually cause your daughter a lot of problems if you're spending a lot of time trying to speak Swedish to her rather than English. ('You' singular, I mean - obviously your husband should keep on using Swedish, since that's *his* native tongue.) It really isn't going to matter that much how quickly she learns her second language (and if she understands Swedish well, presumably she'll start using it without difficulty in her own good time - why the hurry? Trying to rush children through their milestones usually doesn't work as well as just encouraging them to develop at their own pace.) But if her language acquisition in her first language is impaired as a result of you trying to talk a different language to her, then that really is going to cause her problems. I wouldn't risk it.

So - the best bet is to go back to each of you talking your respective native languages to her and letting her pick it up in her own good time. Oh, and do get hold of a copy of "Baby Talk" if you can, because it's very good indeed. ;-)

[Lila]

From my own experience, I can fully support what Sarah V. said. I raise four kids bilingually in my husband's country (Israel). We both use his language when we communicate, but I speak to the children in my native German (which husband understands but doesn't speak). They call me Mama and not Ima, like German children do, but call their father Aba and not Papa.

I've raised them with German children literature, videos, films and cassettes. Every night before they go to sleep, they listen to German stories and songs. I don't want them to feel that German is some secret language I invented. Twice a year, we go to Germany where they are exposed to my mostly non-Hebrew speaking family and friends and they get along fabulously - although they mostly answer me in Hebrew.

Now it's really amazing how different children react to this kind of upbringing. My eldest son (16) and my youngest daughter (7) speak very good and clear German, some grammatical mistakes but nothing serious. They can really express themselves. The two middle ones are having a more difficult time, actually, my second son, now 14, didn't speak a word until he was more than three years old. supported by a psychologist, I didn't give up although at times it was very difficult. German in Israel! You might imagine easier combinations. But no, I'm glad we didn't stop (my husband's grandmother, a German native speaker, was very helpful, too).

So just continue to do what feels natural to you. You were spoken to in a specific way when you were child - speaking to your children in return in the same language is the right thing to do. Why should I teach my children Hebrew with a German accent if I can teach them perfect German instead? One day, your children will thank you for it. My children learn foreign languages at school, English and Arabic, and have much fun with it. It seems that the brain adds new languages with ease if used to bilingual thinking. My third daughter even wants to study French on her own, it interests her, she says.

So from my experience, bilingual education where every parent uses his/her native language is a successful model. If you can stick to it, you should do so. And write down the funny muddled sentences that you will hear sometimes ;-) They will learn to keep the languages apart.

[Cassie]

In response to Sarah V, I would like to quote from the writing that I mentioned above by Prof Bob Ladd and Prof Antonella Sorace (both have PhDs in linguistics and have worked in the field for numerous years; Prof Sorace is a specialist in developmental linguistics):

" Would it be better to start teaching the second language after children have a good start on the first?

No, definitely not, especially in the bilingual home situation [each parent speaks a different native language] where the second language is likely to seem "less important" to the children anyway. Introducing the second language later is just about guaranteed to make them think it's less important and not worth the effort.

On the other hand, in the bilingual setting situation [both parents speak the same language but live in an environment where that language isn't spoken], there isn't any harm in letting children's exposure to English begin naturally and gradually. As long as the family stays in the US and the children go to American schools, there is no risk that they will fail to learn English. Actually, the more common problem with the bilingual setting situation is that the children sometimes reject their home language in favor of the outside language."

So, the key here is exposure. If you both speak the second language comfortably (and Shelley indicates that she is fluent in Swedish; incidentally, Prof Ladd is a second language speaker of Italian, and has, with Prof Sorace, brought up both their sons speaking Italian at home and English outside the home -- the boys' are now in their early teens and their Italian is flawless (as is their English) despite Prof Ladd's status as a second language speaker of the language), and you are in an environment where the predominant language is English, then you should both make every attempt to speak Swedish at home, as they will probably get enough exposure to English outside the home. As far as parental fluency in the language goes, there is a great deal of (really interesting) research that shows that children can acquire a language perfectly from adults who don't speak that language perfectly. The most well-known cases are those of deaf adults who didn't learn sign language until they were teenagers (this was common in the 50s and 60s and even 70s), and therefore learned it imperfectly. Children of these deaf adults, who are being exposed to an imperfect model of a language (sign language), will nonetheless learn perfect sign language -- children's brains are designed to find the patterns in language and extrapolate from them, even when the patterns are sometimes random and inconsistent. Now, if the parents know next to nothing of the language they are trying to use, this is obviously not going to work, but if one parent is a native speaker, and the other parent is very fluent, the child will be fine in the long run.

Now, of course, as Lila points out, there is an issue of the comfort level of the parents in speaking a given language -- if you simply don't feel comfortable speaking to your child in what to you is a foreign language, then the child will pick up on this discomfort and that will definitely *not* help their bilingualism. In that case you should absolutely do what is most comfortable to you -- this is why despite the fact that I have quite good French as a second language (I grew up in Canada), I probably won't be bringing up my baby (-3 months and counting down) bilingual, much though I would love to (my husband is monolingual English). In that case do whatever works for you -- as ALG notes, some level of competancy in a second language is better than nothing (research has in fact shown this to be the case -- children exposed early to second languages generally end up being better language learners, even when the early exposure is minimal).

Sarah V suggests that "It really isn't going to matter that much how quickly she learns her second language (and if she understands Swedish well, presumably she'll start using it without difficulty in her own good time - why the hurry?" Yes, this would be true -- if the child was being brought up in an environment where he/she was being exposed to as much Swedish as English (like the Greek parents speaking only Greek at home and letting the children acquire English outside the home). The issue here is not just time -- how early you expose the child to a language (this is crucial, by the way, but not the only issue) -- but also degree -- how much exposure the child gets to a language *from people who interact with her* (so unfortunately while Swedish DVDs are a fantastic resource, they can't replace a person who interacts in the language with the child -- there's plenty of research on this too). If the child is only getting Swedish from *one* person (her father) and everyone else around her, including her other main caregiver, speaks to her in English, there is an imbalance in the amount of exposure she is getting. She will almost certainly acquire a decent amount of Swedish, but she will probably not become as fluent as a native speaker.

Also, not to dump on Sarah Ward's research (which I must admit I am not familiar with), but, while there is indeed evidence that children growing up in truly bilingual environments are often somewhat slower in terms of their overall linguistic development, they are not permanently stunted in some way in terms of their development. The crucial thing to know is that unless there is an underlying language deficit, the child will *always* catch up with his/her peers -- they will hit all the linguistic milestones (generally within 6 months or so of when the peers reach a particular linguistic milestone), and will be fully competant in both languages by the time most children are fully competant in only one language.

Whew! That was a long post! Ok, I'll get off my hobby horse now :) Many thanks Moxie for your good advice and for this fantastic forum.

[Cassie]

Argh. Excuse my typos. I need to learn what I'm always telling my students -- proofread, proofread, proofread!

[Lisa C.]

Coming a little late to the party here, but here are my two cents.

My husband is from Iran and speaks four languages: Azari Turkish (from birth), Farsi (learned in school so started around age 5/6), Istanbul Turkish (college, so acquired around age 24), and English (acquired around age 35, but studied for several years prior). When our son was born, I spoke English to him, and my husband spoke to him almost exclusively in a mix of Azari and Farsi. It is a custom in his family to kind of pidgin the two languages together, so that's how he spoke to DS. DH took care of DS while I was working until he was 18 months old, so he got a lot of early exposure to Farsi. We also spent several weeks in Iran reinforcing Farsi during the first two years of DS's life.

When DS was 18 months old he was speaking Farsi and English with about a 50/50 split. Then DH bought a business and started working 100 hours a week. Consequently we never see him and DS's Farsi skills have suffered accordingly. Now he only knows a few words of Farsi and speaks English exclusively. Because DS speaks English to DH, DH almost always answers him in very broken English, no matter how I try to encourage him to speak Farsi to DS.

My father speaks French to DS. We see him about 10 hours a week and I also play French tapes at home to reinforce the language. At this point I would hazard a guess to say that DS's French vocabulary is more advanced than his Farsi vocabulary. He will speak and answer in French when my father is around. My father NEVER speaks to DS in English, unless he's just not getting the point of what Dad is saying. Consequently DS speaks to him in French.

I have tried, time and time again, to reinforce that DH should speak to DS in Farsi, but he just doesn't get it, or is not inclined or whatever.

So from my experience, I think the OPOL approach is the best way to go, even if the child does not see the secondary language speaker as much has he does the primary language speaker. I look at what my dad has accomplished with DS and I am truly amazed because they see each other so little. I think if DH followed suit DS's Farsi would catch up quickly.

[wix]

I -wish- we were raising CX bilingually. Sadly, no. If we can find Vietnamese classes in Austin, I expect we'll send him there, but we're not equipped to do anything at home.

[smashedpea]

Another latecomer :)

We are trying to raise our now 15 months old daughter bilingually, English and German. We live in Canada (the English part) and my husband speaks only English. I am a native German speaker and try to speak to her in German only, though I don't when we're with other people who only speak English so as not to appear rude.

She is not speaking yet (though she babbles all day long), but seems to understand both English and German equally well. We were told by both our midwife and her doctor that she might be late in actually speaking, but that when she will start, it'll probably be in both languages. I guess we'll see soon :) They also told us that raising her bilingually is good for her development.

We are not really following a method or anything, I just try to give her as much exposure to German as possible and my husband helps as best as he can - i.e, from repeated listening to German kiddie CDs, he now knows some German kiddie songs, with a bad accent, but he tries :) German relatives visiting help as well and I made them all give us German CDs, books, etc. as gifts instead of clothes and toys to help with this.

We'll see how it goes. I'm assuming that one day she'll not want to learn/speak German anymore, but I really hope that she will stick with it.

I'm not sure any of this helps, but I guess maximizing exposure and making it fun would be my tips.

Good luck :)

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