OK, I have to warn you from the beginning. This is a “true story”. Not only true, but also a pride, prejudice, pain, gain, failure, and finally getting the grips kind of story. Got your attention? Cool. Listen up. I will give you a secret on how “not to raise” your trilingual child, so that you can probably skip the “failure part” from your own story.
Yes, finally after a long battle over “theory and practice”; I can say that I am a proud mother of a trilingual. Over the 4 years, this got me on the edge of mental failure – especially trying to find a “method” that fits our family, trying to keep that method within the family, and trying to “ignore” the super parents around who kept blab blab blab’ing on “how natural it is in their family”, “how fast the kids absorb 3,4,5,6,7 languages (no *hitting, I met an African mama who kept all 7 languages at home!) etc.
Ok, now a flashback on who I am. I am a psychologist.Not only a random one (unfortunately), I am a “shrink” and a “neuropsychologist”. Yeah baby. I thought I read it all, I could just use my knowledge and get through this business of raising a trilingual. Easy-peasy. Not really. That is the first piece of information I will give now: “Do not read too much, especially after the child is born”. Why? Because you will get lost in theory and surprised how different it is in reality. Skip that part. Google “OPOL technique” and see how you lost from the beginning: “One Parent, One language, Never mix” simply does not work with more than 2 languages and only 1 parent. Gosh its sooo easy to raise a bilingual, right? (Sorry guys, you do a great job, just pure jealousy here).
The problem with theory is; you tend to forget the basic cliche: “every child is different”. Yes, there are supposed to be some super talented kids around who absorb languages like “you stuff yourself with chocolate in bathroom when your 2-year old is having a meltdown in her room”, but most children are not talented that way.
My child was an exception of theory. She was raised 3-lingual until age 1,5. Me speaking Turkish, daddy speaking German with her and we speak English when we all were together. The first year was easy since there were no expectations of her talking back. The second year, I realized she was far beyond her developmental stage. First time mothering plus being a neuropsychologist hit me hard, ladies and gents, and I started comparing and contrasting my kid. Second advice: Do not do it. Why? It only makes you miserable. I got panicked. She was not gonna talk, EVER.
So what did I do? I went to her pediatrician who was obviously an “expert” in speech development (Nooooot!) who told me “yeah, it’s delaying, not normal” (some doctors really fail in human psychology, right?). So I thought, “Oh no, all the old and wise ladies who stopped me on bus-stops were right! (We call them Oma-Police here, they are those grannies who are always worried about your child being outside without a hat). The brain on development is having hard time, lets make things a bit easier for poor child” and whoooop I dropped the 3rd language. I did! Yes.
And she talked.
Of course.
She talked, but not because I dropped the 3rd language, because it was her personal developmental point of starting to talk. Gosh, she talked and talked... and talked. But she talked nonsense! It was impossible to understand her “3-languages in same sentence” talk unless you can speak all those languages. The books said “it’s a phase, keep on answering her in your own language, she will know soon whom to talk with which language”. But when? I was devastated.. What was I doing wrong that she was just not getting this trilingualism?!
Let me tell you. I was believing theory and other mothers too much! They all told me “yes, sure, ours is trilingual and it’s just so natural and easy” and I believed. I thought I was the only mother who sucked at this trilingualism business and my child was the only one who didn’t get it. But in reality, people just tell you what they believe, not the “brutal” reality. They usually say “sure, she is trilingual” when the child understands all those languages, yet can not speak them properly. Or when she mixes, jams, plays around. Or even when her nanny speaks a language, they assume the child is automatically trilingual! I even met a mother who believed she was raising a trilingual because she was watching TV in language X for 1 hour every day!!! And me, I only accept a child is trilingual when that child speaks ALL three languages without mixing, forming grammatically correct sentences with rich vocabulary. In this sense, are there any trilingual children (at least before Age 3-4) at all???? My answer: No. Never seen one.
So relax! Don’t be a dick head psychologist who questions everything until perfectionism.. Relax..
Until age 3, she lived all these VERY NORMAL phases of more than one mother language acquisition: she mixed, she developed her own rules, she tried using grammar of one with vocabulary of other, she formed logically correct yet linguistically super wrong sentences (this phase was really so much fun). Not so much fun but still normal phases such as stuttering, avoiding one or both or any languages for a long period of time (selective mutism) and being socially rejected due to lack of community language skills etc. Also, been there, done that. Of course when you are living it, it’s not fun. But they all pass eventually, just like all those growth spurts of babyhood or terrible twos pass. And somewhere between age 3 to 4, you realize that you have a child who can speak the community language as good as her peers PLUS at least one language better than them - to be honest, you may end up with a child who can speak at least one language better than you or your husband, too. ☺ Welcome to our boat, fellow parents of multicultural children.
Now let’s turn back to our “poor old 3rd language”, which I radically decided to drop for a while, at age 1,5, panicking my toddler will not speak any language at all. You know what, it showed up by itself at age 3,5! Without any effort, without any intention, to my surprise one day, she started speaking it with her grannies.. Just like that! I was shocked, speechless.. She was there, all by herself, cracking the codes of her looooong forgotten 3rd language! In only 1 month, where we had a long summer holiday with her grannies, she started showing interest in speaking Turkish. After a full month, she was speaking it! – Well, not perfect, but good enough to be able to play with children speaking only Turkish. Now, finally, at age four, she is “trilingual”. Isn’t it a success story? Hell, yeah!
But, to be honest, it was damn hard for us. We failed, got up, tried again, failed again, got up, tried again, failed again. Learned a lot on process. And its another story or multiple stories, I would love to share with you.. Common mistakes, common misunderstandings, common failures, common “I can not do it anymore on the loooong road of “creating a trilingual child”. If I dare to say “trilingual” at all.. I see our family as “on the road of trilingualism” still, because for me a true trilingual is someone who can speak all three languages fluently, in right context, without any (or minimal) mistakes. And well.. we have a looooong way reaching there. But, come on people, be honest! Who does not?! So, why not sharing our experiences, why not saving each other doing same mistakes, why not giving a hand to each other on this common road? Good idea? Then come up, join up!
To be continued.. ☺
Ceren Schubert - Contributing writer from Munich, Germany. She holds double Masters degrees in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Neuropsychology, who choose to give a break on her PhD career to be SAHM of two trilingual (to be) children. When she is not full time parenting; she is also an enthusiastic traveller off the beaten tracks, a passionate blogger, and enjoys being around open minded, colorful and multi cultural people.
She loves dogs a bit more than cats, malaga a bit more than vanilla ice cream, coffee a bit more than sleeping, and summer a lot more than winter. She also loves walking very long distances when she needs to think and sometimes (often) gets lost doing that.. Her latest “project” is learning Qigong, which she started just recently and loved a great deal!
Oh and, she dreams of writing a book one day.
Are you interested to participate in the Life Story series and write about your experience as a bilingual or multilingual child and/or a parent of one? Would you like to take part in the Multilingual Family Interview series ? You can contact me here.
Recommended Books for Parents Raising Trilingual Children
Language Strategies for Trilingual Families: Parents' Perspectives (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Andreas Braun - Kindle - Paperback
Growing up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven (Parents' and Teachers' Guides) by Xiao-lei Wang - Kindle - Paperback
Trilingual by Six: The sane way to raise intelligent, talented children by Lennis Dippel MD - Kindle - Paperback
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