If Only I Had Known...

1. When I think of bilingualism, I'm really thinking of balanced bilingualism and probably include biliteracy.
2. Balanced bilingualism/biliteracy might be too lofty a goal for our circumstances.
3. Assuming children will just learn another language because you speak it to them most of the time does not do the trick - if your goal is balanced bilingualism.
4. OPOL, one of the methods portrayed as the holy grail of childhood bilingualism, is likely to lead to receptive/passive bilingualism rather than balanced bilingualism. Unless, of course, it is regularly and strongly supported by all sorts of other strategies (e.g., playgroups in the minority language, trips to a country in which the minority language is spoken; frequent interaction with minority language friends and relatives; minority language daycare; etc.).
5. Sequential bilingualism (how I’ve learned other languages) is very different from simultaneous bilingualism (how the kids are becoming bilingual).
6. When children learn different languages simultaneously, it is to be expected that they will be stronger in one language, mix languages, use the syntactic rules of their dominant language, express reluctance or hostility toward their minority language, etc. In fact, it's practically part and parcel of the whole deal.
7. A monolingual partner may need encouragement to keep going, especially once the children are old enough to speak in the minority language in sentences, and he/she is no longer able to understand everything they say with the few words he/she has picked up along the way.
8. Motivation needs to be part of becoming bilingual, i.e., kids have to put some kind of importance on their knowing two languages.
9. Kids, and I guess people in general, often get used to speaking to a particular person in a certain language.
10. Minority language playgroups can be a bit of minefield as participating parents have different expectations in their children’s bilingualism and very different levels of commitment toward helping their children become bilingual. If the ages of the children are too far apart, friendships that would bring more minority language into the rest of your budding bilingual monkey’s life may not ever occur.

There you have it, my Top Ten List of What I Wish I Would Have Known About Childhood Bilingualism when we first got started.
I didn’t know any of this nor did I think about any of it too much, of course. Mainly because I had little time to do research while holding on to a bunch of assumptions that were in line with monolingual language acquisition or the sequential learning of new languages, rather than childhood bilingualism. Quite honestly, we got as far as we did mainly because of the innate ability of young children to learn just about anything, little sponges that they are, and me following my instincts rather than anything based in theory or research findings.
Had it not been for my guiding principle – to expose our kids to as much minority language as possible – which I have had from the beginning and still hold on to today, who knows what would have happened?
But here we are more than four years later, chugging along just nicely. Both kids understand as much German as English, and we are making strides toward more.
We’ll see where it takes us.
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This post is part of the first ever "Raising Bilingual Children Carnival" hosted by Mummy Do That.