Becoming A Bilingual Family And How We Started
If you are interested in how we managed our first months of becoming a bilingual family and how we came up with the idea to face the challenge of speaking English as our second family language for at least 90 days, you will find some insights in this blog ...
Looking back, I think I had the idea to simply start with this "little family challenge" in February. I had just received the information that our precious friends from Australia would visit us in July 2021 in Hamburg again. Wouldn't it be fun if my kids could understand them? And maybe even reply or talk to them in simple structured sentences?
I shared the news with our older children and asked them: "What do you think if I would start speaking with you in English for at least three months before our friends from Australia arrive in Hamburg?".
Becoming A Bilingual Family in 90 Days - The Idea Of The Challenge Was Born
Since I wasn't sure about their reactions they surprised me with exuberant enthusiasm! "Yes, let's do this!". But Charlotte asked me also: "But, Mommy, what if I don't understand you?". I explained them not to worry, cause I would start speaking English and if I would see, they wouldn't understand me, I would say the same sentence in German and then repeat it in English again.
Overwhelmed by their enthusiasm and suddenly by my own fear "OMG, how can I manage this challenge? I said to my kids: Just to inform you, I can't start tomorrow, I'll have to prepare myself a little bit, do some research and some translations and then we can start." Self-doubt and uncertainness caught me and I postponed the start of our challenge.
Becoming A Bilingual Family: How Should We Start?
I talked to my husband about my idea of rising our kids bilingual long time ago, so I knew he would support me. Now that it became concrete, I asked him, which method (Link >) of raising our kids he would prefer:
one parent on language OPOL
one place one language ....
And his answer was OPOL, for the start, with me in charge to speak English with our kids. Ok, let's get started
From that point on, the kids were asking me every week: "Mommy, you said, you wanted to speak with us in English, when do we start?" On the one hand I thought, how wonderful is that? But on the other hand I always thought that I didn't have enough time to prepare myself for it...
Becoming A Bilingual Family: We Simply Started During The Covid Lockdown In March 2020
When we had the Covid lockdown in March 2020, we suddenly had so much time as a family together - why not use this intense time and start speaking in English with our kids?
And so I started to develop our own journey of becoming a bilingual family. It wasn't easy, but to anticipate it is worth every effort ;-)
I decided to start every new day with my new habit, so I translated what I would say to my kids in the mornings into English. While speaking with my kids, every word or sentence I wasn't sure how to express in English, I would write down. When the kids were in bed in the evenings, I would look them up to prepare myself for the next day...
Becoming A Bilingual Family: How You Can Immerse Your Kids With The New Family Language
Since I had a seven-month-old baby, I was breastfeeding, my older kids I had to homeschool in the mornings and prepare and lunch I was looking for an activity for my kindergarten child, our two and a half-year-old son Kalle. Before Covid, we had strict screen times and only watched "The Program with the Mouse" ('Die Sendung mit der Maus', a traditional german kids program) on Sunday evenings as a family together. But how should I keep my little Kalle busy and contempt while dealing with all the other tasks of mine? Special times call for special actions and we decided to give him some screen time, but only with English content. He accepted it without any complaints, whereas Charlotte said: That's really silly! I don't understand a word!!!"
Apart from the screen time we already have a bunch of books in English from our friends from Great Britain and Australia. But this will be another blog post topic for the future.
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 1
Day 1: 30.03.202ß
Hej Everybody, yeahhh! I did it! I started in the morning talking in English to my family. So, how was it going?
I hadn’t really announced the start of the Challenge the day before, so I said good morning to my big kids and told them in English that we would start today with our Language Challenge and that I only want them to hear the language. They shouldn’t feel as if they have to answer me in English. Of course, they can if they want to but they don’t need it. This was important for me to tell them so that they won’t feel any pressure with this language journey. My goal is, that they just have fun while discovering a foreign language in our daily family life. Every word they will pick up will help them in their life to become more open-minded to other cultures and will hopefully provide them with a lot of enriching private and professional contacts throughout their life.
We woke up in the morning and guess what happened? It snowed last night! We have this family tradition that we run around our table on the terrace – bare feet. We always have a lot of fun doing this. When our little 3-year-old son saw Lasse, Charlotte, and me running in the snow he also wanted to go outside and had been so surprised by how cold it was on his little bare feet. But why do I tell you this? Cause it shows that you are constantly surprised in your life with situations that you can't really plan ahead. I prepared for our morning routines some dialogs we are always talking about, or especially me. But then the snowfall happens and I realized, that I never ever talk about snow in my life so far. There is always a first time for nearly everything.
Well, it was a bit awkward for me the whole morning, to be honest. Thinking, hearing, and reading in English is the one side. The other side is talking in English and hear your own pronunciation – which sounds not always very “native”. But we will see how this will change over the next 89 days.
I started to take notes of the sentences I wasn’t able to say in English and translated them after breakfast in English.
How did it feel: I found myself a little bit insecure and strange. But my husband and my kids accepted the situation surprisingly well. Especially Lasse and Charlotte are so eager to learn English.
So far for today. See you tomorrow, I’ll keep you on track of my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 2
Day 2: 31.03.2020
Hey everybody! The second day of speaking English with my family started for myself later than for the rest of my family, cause my beloved husband heard our little son babbling and took him to the living room, so I could get some extra rest after another night of breastfeeding.
Talking in English on the breakfast table was on the one hand weird cause its not my mother tongue, but on the other hand, it seemed like an old habit … Volker said to the kids: Isn’t it surprising, that we all can understand what mommy is saying even she is speaking in English with us?
And yes, he is right. Lasse and Lotta can either understand what I am saying or they reply in German, that they didn’t’ understand me. Then, I repeat the sentence in English, say the same in German, and end by repeating the sentence in English. Sometimes I also say a single word in English with the German translation afterward.
By the way, what I experienced in the afternoon yesterday: Often I had an English sentence faster on my tongue than the German sentence. Even if I wanted to start speaking English only during the morning routines, I decided to let it flow – cause this is what I would love to gain, a natural flow of speaking English in our family life.
So far for today. See you tomorrow; I’ll keep you on track of my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 3
Day 3: 01.04.2020
Good morning everybody,
Today is the first of April – April fool’s day. So, I tried to prank my two bigger kids with an early wake up in the morning saying: “Hej my lovely ones, time to get up early cause your teacher wrote yesterday very late, that school starts today again.”
Apart from that, talking in English felt better this morning and it becomes easier to speak sentences aloud. I know my accent is very German but if I don’t start to practice it will never change – right?
“Progress not Perfection”.
That seems to become my every morning mantra …
I have to admit, that the thought occurred to me in the morning ‘I am tired, just speak in German today to your family’. But if I start on day 3 to make an excuse to myself, what will follow tomorrow
It’s my dream to provide my children with a basic feeling for this important world language English. So, make your dream come true and keep going!
So far for today. See you tomorrow, I’ll keep you on track of my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 4
Day 4: 02.04.2020
I started the day very easy by talking English to my family, settled everything for homeschooling and then I realized that I forgot the appointment with our little one at the doctor. So my morning Routine ended up earlier than I planned and with that, my whole day ended up different than I planned ahead. I sewed my first four face masks: One each for my parents cause my kids wanted it so badly to give them something to protect them, one for my loving husband cause he is doing the shopping for us in the public, and one for a little kid of one of our best friends. I have to do more in the next days …
Not much for today. I'll see you tomorrow and will keep you on track with my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 5
Day 5: 03.04.2020
Oh No! It really happened! I forgot to speak English in the morning for the first 3 sentences until I realized to switch from German to English. We all laughed about that…
But then we, Volker and I had a nice little talk in English just as if this would be our majority language in our family … maybe we should switch to the method from one person, one language to one place one language?
What I realized over the last 4 days is, that you are acting very well carefully, cause you are not so familiar with all those foreign words. You are in some cases not so emotional and fast in your expression as in your mother tongue. And that's why you react more calmly. At least that's how it looks from the outside... ;-)
So far for today. See you tomorrow, I’ll keep you on track of my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 6
Day 6: 04.04.20
Morning everybody!
Just a little bit English in the morning and then we tidied up the basement and granted our new mudroom!
So far for today. See you tomorrow, I’ll keep you on track of my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
Becoming A Bilingual Family: My Journal Entries For Our First Week, Day 7
Day 7: 05.04.20
I started the day again in English …
But I have the feeling it's not enough. Do I restrict myself too much by only speaking English during our morning routine? I mean, I always speak English when it’s coming intuitive while speaking, but I’d like to do more … but how? Should I start with the lunch routine?
Homeschooling in English is a little bit of a challenge for the kids and also for me. Looking back I had some problems with mathematics in English.
You call the course mathematic, you are calculating and counting numbers and you have to solve arithmetic problems…
What about starting to talk to Anton for the whole day in English with Baby Talk?
What about little playtime sections I could do in English like playing with cars? Their color, their actions, their directions, counting them?
In my challenge, I have planned to repeat the morning routine for 21 days, but I realize that I need more input. I'm eager to speak more English during the day.
In the evening I asked my family how they perceived this first week and Volker and the two big kids said mutually that it is enrichment, sometimes it's challenging but mostly it's fun!
This isn’t too bad for the first week's review, isn’t it?
So far for today. See you tomorrow, I’ll keep you on track of my language journey.
Enjoy your Life
Sabine
What About You? Would You Love to Become A Bilingual Family?
Did you enjoy the sneak peek into our first week of becoming a Bilingual family?
Let me know in the comments below if you have tried a similar adventure of speaking a foreign language with your kids and what are your experiences you've gained from that? If you don't want to miss a single post sign up here for my newsletter.
