Raising bilingual children

Dr Elaine Laforteza, Social Impact Practitioner and Equity & Diversity Project Officer at UTS, has another talent. Dr Laforteza is the host of SBS’s My Bilingual Family podcast – about the challenges of raising bilingual children in our English-dominant country. Dr Laforteza has two children under five who she is raising to speak Ilocano as well as English. She writes here about her experience as a bilingual parent and podcast host.

One of the main discoveries I had from doing the podcast was how important multilingualism is in multicultural Australia – but it’s not often talked about or given legitimacy. And because it isn’t talked about as much, we as parents don’t realise that we’re all going through similar things.

Before I had children, I always assumed that if you speak the language it will be easy to teach your kids. But the reality is that it is difficult to juggle. For example, if only one parent speaks a second language, that parent will worry about excluding the other parent from conversations with children in the second language. We all lead busy lives and we want to make it easier for ourselves so it’s often just easier to speak in English as everyone can understand it.

I had been finding it difficult to speak Ilocano to my children and I did have thoughts that this is just too hard – I’ll give up.

What I didn’t realise before I did this podcast is that so many parents – whether they speak Mandarin, French, Russian or Filipino – we all share these same concerns. However, there are resources and strategies that we can all use to make it more natural and fun.

I learnt from one of the mums, who was interviewed for the podcast that it should be fun for the parent; to meet kids where they are at and that it doesn’t have to feel like a chore. You can play games or make it a competition as kids love that. She taught me not to be upset if kids don’t understand straight away, or if they respond to you in English.

This was backed up by expert speech pathologists and linguists we interviewed. My eldest is five and often when I speak to her in Ilocano, she responds in English. I used to get quite upset and think ‘why can’t you respond in Ilocano?’ An expert pointed out to me that she is still articulating and understanding in Ilocano, and it’s amazing that she is able to respond in English – it shows how multifaceted the brain is.

I used to also worry about my two-year-old son, who is slower with his language development than his older sister. He responds in both English and Ilocano but he mixes things up as well. I was reassured that he is just contending with two or three different language systems, and  he’s making sense of it.

Beyond reflecting on my own efforts to raise bilingual children, I heard so many amazing stories from other families about how they are passing on their language and culture to their children – and some were really creative. For example, one of my favourite stories is about a Korean mother, who speaks Korean, and her mother-in-law who only speaks English. However the mother-in-law enrolled in Korean language classes, and now she is teaching her grandkids Korean. It’s amazing that she’s taken on that role and that much investment.

Another example is a Thai woman who is married to an English-speaking man. Even though he only speaks very basic Thai, the whole family is involved in a traditional Thai musical dance group. He supports the group, so he supports the language community in that way. There are still ways to be involved and support language development other than solely speaking the language.

My Bilingual Family is produced by Masako Fukui and Sheila Ngoc Pham. 

My Bilingual Family is available to listen to via the SBS website, or wherever you get your podcasts.