How We Became an OPOL Family

I said before that we didn’t give all that much thought to raising our kids to be bilingual as we both, that is The Husband and I, just knew that we were going to. This is true in the sense that it was a decision we made easily, not one that was fraught with doubt or questions as to whether or not it was the right thing to do. It doesn’t mean we didn’t talk about it, though – we did, of course, covering everything from how important it was for them to be able to communicate in both English and German so they could talk with both sides of their family; and how great it would be if we could travel to Germany and they’d just be able to talk to the locals and play with whatever kid we might run into; to how amazing it would be if they could do some or even all of their for post-secondary education there; and how funny it’d be if this actually worked and the kids ended up picking up more German than The Husband ever had. We talked about it a whole lot - but always with a sense of excitement and awe.

What we didn’t do was any research on how one best goes about raising bilingual kids. Instead, we jumped right in as we both knew, knew in our hearts and minds, that there was no way we couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. And what made the most sense to us back then (still does now) was for The Husband to speak English with our kids while I was going to speak German with them. OPOL in a nutshell, really, although we didn’t know it. To us, it just seemed to be the most natural way in our situation in that we’d both get to speak our first language to our kid(s).

And sure enough, once Punk 1 was born we quickly fell into a pattern of speaking to her in mainly English (The Husband) and mainly German (me). This, of course, is not pure OPOL, but we never thought twice about The Husband singing German songs to her or copying my German and asking her to have her diaper changed by saying, “Du stinkst! Komm, Windel wechseln!” I also sometimes spoke English with her, and without worrying about it, e.g. at the doctor’s office for a check-up or when one of our monolingual English relatives was around.

It was a wonderful time for us, really. We admired our cute little baby and grew into being parents, and the cute little baby Punk 1 started demonstrating she understood both English and German. When she started to speak, she had words in both of her languages, leading The Husband and I to marvel just how awesome it all was. Her comprehension of German quickly surpassed that of The Husband, something that amused us to no end, especially since it all happened so naturally and seemingly without effort on her part, whereas he had been trying to pick up more German and found it to be quite difficult. She didn’t seem to be bothered by me speaking English to her on occasion or The Husband singing her a German lullaby. We had not yet encountered the OPOL police and didn’t know any better – so we did what felt natural.

Our wake-up call came a couple of years in when we noticed – with horror!!! – that Punk 1’s German was falling behind her English to the point of her not always being able to understand me anymore. With that, our bilingual honeymoon was over.

Initially, I worried and fretted about it for a while, trying different things to get us back to raising a kid that was actually going to understand and speak German, but clearly, it was time to do some research. I read everything I could find on childhood bilingualism, looked at the different strategies, and finally found out about OPOL. What it is and how it works, advantages and downsides, the whole thing. It turned out that we were on the right track, but needed to make some changes if we expected her, and also Punk 2 who had arrived in the meantime, to ever become proficient in not only understanding, but also speaking (and reading and writing) German.

And so The Husband and I talked it over, agreed we were willing to start trying a little harder – and proceeded. We were no longer blissfully unaware and no longer entirely un-worried about the whole thing, but were going to keep going, of course. Our sense of calm left us for at least a little bit, but we went about diving into OPOL more deeply and started to create, for lack of a better word, a more enriched German environment.

Punk 2 was still a baby at the time, so outside of speaking to him in German as much as possible, he was still off the hook, though he of course benefitted from all the extras. Punk 1, on the other hand, came to be expected to actually respond in German. We knew the research was not entirely supportive of this, but found that nothing else we did actually got her over the hump. For example, she turned 3 when we were on vacation in Germany (this was planned before we became a little more hardcore about OPOL) and simply refused to speak any German there at all, even while she was playing with her monolingual German cousins. So yes, we did switch her into German and made it clear that her English-only habit was not going to work anymore, but we did this very slowly and in a playful manner. Some of the games that came out of that time she still likes to play today, so in spite of researchers cautioning against this, it seemed to have been the right thing for her. I also paid a lot more attention to how much English I was actually speaking with her (much more than when we started out, probably because it was easier to keep The Husband in the loop and because it comes much more natural when your budding bilingual child, your conversational partner, answers you in English.all.the.time), and made a conscious effort to keep this to a minimum. I started seeking out other German-speakers more, especially those who also had little kids, and we made an effort to meet up with them. And we continued to do what we had been doing all along – surrounding both kids with German books and CDs, reading, speaking and playing with them in German, encouraging them to use German, going to German cultural events as we came across them, and keeping in touch with friends and relatives in Germany.

And this did the trick for us. It helped – a whole lot actually – and now both kids understand and speak German. We pay much more attention to how their German is progressing, but we are not usually freaked out or worried about it. Admittedly, we don’t have the same sense of innocence about it anymore and make an effort to make/keep German meaningful for them – but we still do not stick to 100% English (The Husband) and German (me). That just doesn’t feel natural or right for us at all times, and I also really love it when The Husband speaks German to the kids. I don’t necessarily love speaking English to them, but I still do at times – at family gatherings when we are in conversation together with monolingual English speakers, at the doctor’s office, during a parent-teacher interview, or when one of our neighbours is chatting us up. I don’t worry about it (though I obsess about it a fair bit), but am much more conscious of how easy it is to slip into English and really make an effort not to. And I am pretty hardcore about not letting the kids get away with all-English responses either, unless I have just spoken to them in English. And I am also strict about not letting them code-switch with me – not because I think there’s anything wrong with it (I do it all the time myself with other German-speakers, just not around the kids), but because they tend to move into an English-only mode pretty quickly if I don’t put my foot down.

We are not exactly OPOL poster children and likely never will be, but we are no longer as relaxed about it as we once were. Instead, we make a conscious effort to make German fun and useful to the kids, and for now that seems to be enough to have gotten them so used to OPOL that they have laughed at The Husband for speaking German, and admonished and scolded me for not speaking it.

So yes, we are an OPOL family, of sorts, and can’t imagine it any other way. At least not right now.

***** This post is part of the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, this time hosted by Cartside at Mummy Do That!