UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]

At preschool ages there is considerable evidence to indicate that the best way to approach bilingual development is to allow the child to communicate freely in which ever language they wish, according to which parent they are communicating with at the time ( always of course assuming that both parents do communicate with the child in their own languages). The natural inclination of children is to develop the necessary language which is important to them to communicate with 'significant people' in their lives. When both mother and father are equally involved in the child's life and social development this invariably leads to a child developing both languages in parallel. Attempts to unduly influence the acquisition of either language can lead to confusion for the child, and an imbalance, which is extremely counter productive in the long term.

When my children were infants we took considerable advice from several experts in the field, and whilst I as a teacher had some reservations about this approach, it has proved to be highly effective, with both children developing a perfect balance of two very contrasting languages: English and Chinese, before entry into the school system. From that point on however, a far more complex system needs to be developed in order to compensate for what is in most cases very poor support for the bilingual child in most schools.

UK, Ireland / Raising Bilingual Children - How are you teaching your children? Your experiences? [74]

Not at all. As I said in my post...if both parents are communicating equally in their own language with the child in this important formative stage, then the vocabulary is acquired progressively. Unless there is an imbalance ( which I indicated is likely to occur at school or kindergarten age ) then the child should not find samochód any more difficult to say than car. And in fact the example you cite could easily be reversed in many other instances, in which the Polish version would be easier to say than the English.

And so it is a balance which is achieved over time, rather than an exact measurable day by day parallel progression. In a normal family situation both parents are extremely significant individuals to the child. They should in fact be 'THE' two most significant people in the child's life. On that basis, the child will be driven to communicate equally with both parents, and will develop the language accordingly. It is as the child's focus of interaction with others moves outside the family home and circle that other influences kick in. So if as the child grows older any imbalances do seem to be developing, then of course they need to be addressed. But I have always found it to be a quite an amazing thing to behold, when a child of 3 or 4 years of age, sits confidently between both parents, and changes language as instinctively and easily as turning their head around to speak to one or other parent.