Blending the multilingual family and 5 reasons why I don’t find it easy
This blog post has been long in the making. As we are adjusting to our new life as one happily blended family under one roof, some of our moments are not quite as happy as we had imagined.
One of my biggest internal struggles is that I find myself thinking and speaking almost exclusively in English around the house and my son has completely abandoned all efforts to address me or his biological sister in French or German. There are several problems with that (and I fully realize that it’s mostly in my own head and I could probably work on that if I really really wanted to), but here goes:
- My kids are losing their ability to move in and out of the three languages easily.
- I am afraid that they will never read or write perfectly in German or French and, frankly, those languages are just a whole lot more expressive than English. (More on the facettes of idioms in other languages are coming in another post!)
- I have books from my childhood I would love to read to/with them but I only get them a very limited amount of time and then I have two other kids who need my attention as well.
- The same goes for all those European movies (think Asterix or Nesthäkchen, for example) I schlepped over to the States for them, which they now don’t get to watch anymore because there are other kids around that wouldn’t understand a word. And I do understand that I could just allow them to watch those things on an electronic device but I wouldn’t be caught dead just handing my kids an ipad and calling that part-time parenting. I get that this is sometimes necessary but I feel that my kids get both language instruction as well as social interaction if I just talk to them 😉
- This is the big one! I am a better Mama(n) in my first two languages. Seriously, I am more firm, but at the same time, much much nicer when addressing smaller children in the happy languages of my own childhood. It is a proven psychological fact that multilingual people take on different personalities in their different languages and that is definitely how I feel.
To illustrate: I am always the one in command when I interact with my children. And that is not to say that I rule them and they are never allowed their own opinion or even their own choices; it is just that
- their opinions have to be respectfully and clearly stated, as well as argued effectively and
- if their argument is wrong and the choice they want to make is impractical at best and dangerous at worst, then
I am still the one who is in command and I will say NO at that point.
When my children argue their point with me in German, I try to channel my Dad. The guy who handed me the book “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher/William Ury when I was in middle school and trying to get to go to a “real party”, which, in Germany, at the time meant dancing, kissing, and beer under full supervision of the parents present at the event. My Dad said, “Here. Read this. And when you’re done, you can come back and try to convince me to allow you to go to that party.” He always encouraged us to ask questions and have our own opinion. So when my children are being opinionated, I don’t feel there is anything wrong with that. As long as their opinions are brought forth with respect. And, in German, after years of training, my daughter is really good at that. My son is getting there, but his German is not as fluent as my daughter’s and therefore, he thinks in English and I have not taught him as well as his sister to argue effectively. Again, my fault. But I don’t know how to change that this late in the game, especially since half the people in this house only speak English so that’s the default language.
When my kids speak French – actually, I should say when my daughter speaks French – I immediately take on the teacher persona because most of my conversing in French in the past six years has been with elementary school kids who were not my own. Therefore, when I give my kids instructions in French, for instance, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m speaking to my own children and we are always nicer to other people’s children than our own.
Blending a multilingual family seems even harder than a monolingual family, so, as always, love and lots and lots of open communication is what I rely on to get us through those less-than-happily-blended moments.
Okay, I’m off to share these thoughts openly and lovingly with my partner now 🙂
Cheers!
Ashley@Shakenstirredandblended
Hi, I'm Ashley and I am a freelance writer and editor for one local and one national publication. In my spare time, I teach foreign languages and manage two households. Oh, and raise four children. It's a crazy life that I chose and I love every second of it :o)
Long time supporter, and thought I’d drop a comment.
Your wordpress site is very sleek – hope you don’t mind me asking what theme
you’re using? (and don’t mind if I steal it? :P)
I just launched my site –also built in wordpress like yours– but the theme slows (!) the
site down quite a bit.
In case you have a minute, you can find it by searching for
“royal cbd” on Google (would appreciate any feedback) – it’s still in the works.
Keep up the good work– and hope you all take care of yourself during the coronavirus
scare!
Hi, Justin, so sorry I just saw your comment. Thank you! I use Blog Mantra and yes, the Coronavirus and life in general has definitely set me back on the blogging lol. I will check out your site and write more – I have to go back to supervise my kids’ newly set up homeschool now. Take care, Ashley