Requiring children to respond in second language?

[GracieJane]

I speak to my children in German; my DH speaks English and their dominant environment is English. I’ve tried to stay consistent in German, but they respond in English. What should I do? What do you do when your children understand, but don’t speak your language?

[Miss Tick]

If you can forgive my lack of first-hand knowledge, I've met at least 5 families with this dynamic. In every case, when the children eventually needed to respond to someone beside the parent (or, depending on the family dynamic, if the parent insisted) the children could respond almost as if they had been doing it all along. I encourage you to persist! 

[bibiche]

On 5/26/2021 at 3:30 PM, GracieJane said:

I speak to my children in German; my DH speaks English and their dominant environment is English. I’ve tried to stay consistent in German, but they respond in English. What should I do? What do you do when your children understand, but don’t speak your language?

How old are your children? I would just continue to speak to them in German and provide them with opportunities to use their language. Playgroups perhaps, if they are young? German Saturday school? Zoom calls with family members? Fun things like TV and movies only in German. Comic books and magazines in German.
 

You can’t really force them to speak in German. I mean, I guess you can not respond to them if they don’t, but that doesn’t seem healthy. I would just continue to only speak to them in German. They’ll speak it when they have the need. 

[Gil]

On 5/26/2021 at 3:30 PM, GracieJane said:

I speak to my children in German; my DH speaks English and their dominant environment is English. I’ve tried to stay consistent in German, but they respond in English. What should I do? What do you do when your children understand, but don’t speak your language?

It depends on what age/stage your children are.  However, I'm all for explicit and systematic instruction, repeated exposure and over-learning. I think that I present-me absolutely benefits from past-me having made my children do things when they were younger. I insisted that the children speak to me in the Target Language and I started with ritualized activities.

Meals and Entertainment are in Target Language.

I made the target language the language of entertainment. All fun media--video games, music, shows, movies and even Trading Card Games are in the target language. The only time The Boys watch a "fun movie" in English is if we see it in the theaters.

Print articles about their favorite shows in the target language in a large font and read it with them, step by step so that they are immersed in their language and their fandom. When they were young, they didn't have screens at all, The Boys could watch all the Spongebob, Avatar and Naruto that they wanted -- but never in English.

When they played-pretend with various fandoms the play was peppered with Spanish from the beginning. When they drew those cartoons, they were thinking in Spanish.

Also teach them the expressive language that they need for the things that they say, step by step and explicitly.
If one of them is always yelling "Stop it! Leave me alone!" I would teach them to say that in German.

I would have them practice speaking German in role play with stuffed animals.
Teach them expressive language.
Teach them to frame and answer questions.
Teach them to say things that are relevant to their day to day life. Such as

It's mine!

Give it back!

I need my....
I want....
I can't find....
Where is....
Where are....
Can I have...
Can I go...

Teach them to use the past-tense so that they can say what happened. (Because kids loooove to tattle.)
He kicked me.
She took _____.
I did NOT hit him!
etc...

[Not_a_Number]

I saw this dynamic play out with my mom and my half-sister, whose dad doesn't speak Russian. My mom would talk to my sister in Russian, and she'd answer back in English. Eventually, she put her foot down and my sister was required to reply in Russian. This led to pretty annoying power struggles and also difficulties with my sister's dad feeling left out. 

I wasn't planning to teach my kids Russian because I didn't want the power struggles, but then DD8 asked, so I thought about how to do this, and I came up with the idea of doing time-limited immersion. So, we have an hour a day where all we speak is Russian, and that's rigidly enforced. But most of the time, we speak English. 

That has worked really well to remove the power struggle from the situation and still get them practicing. Not sure if that would work for you, but we've liked it and made a lot of progress with it so far. 

Oh, and I have them watch Russian cartoons for fun. They normally don't watch any cartoons, so they feel pretty good about that 😉 . 

Edited June 1, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[4KookieKids]

We struggle to get kids speaking German as well. Here are a few things we do or have done, with varying amounts of success. Many of them are geared towards younger children, but you didn't say how old your kids were, so sorry if none of these are applicable for your situation!

1) Find friends who speak German and have German-only playdates. (By far, this is the best and most efficient way of getting them speaking.) It helps a lot if the parents speak ONLY German with their kids, so EVERYONE is speaking German.

2) German in the afternoon(or morning, or tea time, or whatever you want to make it). Start with 10 minutes of "only German is spoken." Work your way up. 

3) Understanding spoken language is so, so much easier than speaking it yourself. They may really feel very frustrated. When my kids say, "I just don't know how to say it!" I ask them what they want to say, and then repeat it back to them in German. Then I have them repeat the translated version back to me. My goal is to get them comfortable with the words coming out of their mouths -- fluency and comfort will come with time. My older two can speak it in a pinch (like when we travel to Germany), but my younger two can actually not communicate in German what they want to communicate -- English is SO much easier. And until German actually gets easier, it's not going to come naturally or fluently. So I spend a lot of time repeating them back what they just said in English, but doing it in German. This works especially well if they actually want something from me or want me to do something, because I just wait to do it until they actually repeat it in German.

4) Agree with above comments about only doing German for media/movies/etc. Most netflix originals come dubbed in German.

5) When in doubt: pay or bribe. "If you can speak only German and no English for 10 minutes -- INCLUDING amongst yourselves!!-- you can have a dollar/sucker/whatever. Every day, we'll add 1 minute to the timer before we get the prize!"

The biggest issue I have run into is that the more outnumbered I am by children, the more they speak English amongst themselves. And the more they speak English amongst themselves, the less German there is all around. If you have older and youngers, you could assign an older to read aloud in German to a younger?

[GracieJane]

On 6/16/2021 at 12:19 PM, 4KookieKids said:

ETA: I was trying to quote this

 

“The biggest issue I have run into is that the more outnumbered I am by children, the more they speak English amongst themselves. And the more they speak English amongst themselves, the less German there is all around.”

This is so true. My kids are 3, 5 and 7. I finally enrolled my eldest into Saturday language school, which will hopefully help my pursuit in making them fluent. I’m so discouraged! I mistakenly assumed if I just talk to my kids in their second language, they will pick it up naturally. Silly me! 😀 Both my parents spoke English to us, living in Germany, which is how I learned it. It seems like one parent isn’t enough, or maybe it’s just me! 

Edited September 18, 2021 by GracieJane

[Arcadia]

On 5/30/2021 at 7:10 AM, bibiche said:

You can’t really force them to speak in German. I mean, I guess you can not respond to them if they don’t, but that doesn’t seem healthy. I would just continue to only speak to them in German. They’ll speak it when they have the need. 

My dad speaks to my mom in chinese and she replies in English most of the time. She is actually better than my dad in chinese. My dad’s English is at ESL level. It was funny growing up. My brother is bad at languages regardless how much effort he put in.

On 6/16/2021 at 12:19 PM, 4KookieKids said:

The biggest issue I have run into is that the more outnumbered I am by children, the more they speak English amongst themselves. And the more they speak English amongst themselves, the less German there is all around. 

I only have two kids. However, once DS16 started group swimming lessons and attended preschool, we as parents were already outnumbered. 

On 9/18/2021 at 10:17 AM, GracieJane said:

This is so true. My kids are 3, 5 and 7. I finally enrolled my eldest into Saturday language school, which will hopefully help my pursuit in making them fluent. 

My kids started learning German when they were 5 and 6 years old. They are still attending Saturday german school. This will be the 11th year for them. DS16 doesn’t like to talk and DS15 have to put in a lot of effort for any language including English. DS16 took Japanese at the community college for two years for fulfilling the high school foreign language requirement. Since he rather not talk, you can’t tell which languages he is actually fluent in.

When my kids were in middle school, we toured a German American school that offers the International Baccalaureate program. The school does half the subjects in German and half in English. The students gave their presentations in german for classes that were conducted in German. However, they spoke English to each other during break time and lunch time. 
My kids took the AATG exams at their Saturday german school. There isn’t an age limit even though the website says it is for high school students. https://www.aatg.org/page/NGE

[Matryoshka]

On 9/18/2021 at 1:17 PM, GracieJane said:

“The biggest issue I have run into is that the more outnumbered I am by children, the more they speak English amongst themselves. And the more they speak English amongst themselves, the less German there is all around.”

This is so true. My kids are 3, 5 and 7. I finally enrolled my eldest into Saturday language school, which will hopefully help my pursuit in making them fluent. I’m so discouraged! I mistakenly assumed if I just talk to my kids in their second language, they will pick it up naturally. Silly me! 😀 Both my parents spoke English to us, living in Germany, which is how I learned it. It seems like one parent isn’t enough, or maybe it’s just me! 

Just one parent is hard.  Same here.  As someone else said, I sought out playgroups with German-speaking kids, and as soon as they were old enough I enrolled them in the German Saturday School.  And I also made it the language for entertainment.  All cartoons/TV were only viewed in German.  I played German children's songs in the car. The Saturday School fortunately had a large lending library.

We didn't end up speaking that much German at home - dh is monolingual, and I was also trying to get them to learn Spanish!  But they've all ended up conversant in German; older two are fairly fluent, younger one (most stubborn) has a pretty good receptive understanding and is thinking of trying a grad program in Germany (program in English, but with the goal of getting fluent by immersion while there).

With Covid it's hard now, but getting them to Germany at some point could help.  I took them all to Germany for a summer when they were still pretty young (6yo and twins were 8yo).  One could speak, the others could understand, but it helped their attitude after coming home.  I also sent the most eager one to school there for a month, and both twins for a summer program.  The less eager twin ended up interning at a company in Germany during college, and her German was good enough to function when she got there and got good enough to participate in meetings that were half in Schwäbisch. lol.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Matryoshka

[Not_a_Number]

I think last time I posted on this thread, I forgot to mention that we also got a Russian-speaking babysitter for the kids to practice with. 

They are also kind of excited by the idea of a "secret language" that other people don't understand, lol. But generally, I'm still not pushing the issue much. I'm pretty sure requiring them to speak Russian all day would seriously backfire. 

[skydelph]

From my experience, it depends very much on the age of children. My friends' kind were in a three language environment from birth and could speak all three, when talking to a person from the family who is native speaker of a certain language.
But most kids have to learn two languages at a school age. In this case the most common problems are that they are mixing both (especially while writing) or cannot remember certain words fast in a sentence (while speaking).
The best way I know is to have an ‘English’ or ‘German’ days at home, when all of the members use only one language, which is not native. And concentrate on reading in a non-native language.

 

[Amy Stewart]

My daughter is 5 years old and she is learning Chinese. Sometimes when she is enjoying her time, she will hum a Chinese children's song or two that we learned together. One time she said a Chinese phrase that I didn't understand and she seemed to think that was funny, so she started to answer my questions in the Chinese she had learned a lot. I think this is a good thing because her goal in learning Chinese is to be able to converse with others in Chinese.
I think if your child is very young, you don't have to force him to answer you in a second language, you can let him talk to you in a second language as if you were playing with him, so he will be less offended.

[pmeilaen]

On 5/26/2021 at 3:30 PM, GracieJane said:

I speak to my children in German; my DH speaks English and their dominant environment is English. I’ve tried to stay consistent in German, but they respond in English. What should I do? What do you do when your children understand, but don’t speak your language?

I had the same situation when my oldest was born over 20 years ago.  I am a native German, married to an American and living in the U.S.  I decided to NEVER speak English to my son and his four siblings, who were born after him.  That meant German in front of in-laws and other people who did not speak German.  That caused some misunderstandings, but I tried to keep my talking brief if other people were around.  I also only read German books to them when they were little and sang German songs.  All of my children learned German first before they ever spoke a word of English.  What really helped was that my husband also became fluent in German and German became our weekend language: My husband spoke English to the children during the week, but German on the weekends.  When my children discovered that there were two languages in their lives and tried to speak English to me, I simply ignored them if it was a non-emergency.  I told them I did not understand their English when it was addressed to me.  Since they were little when I said that they thought that that was the way it was and never tried English again.  When they got older, they had to learn to read and write in German as well as English and now I can read Goethe's Faust with my high school students.  English is their strong language and they tend to speak English among themselves, but they have beautiful German and still speak German to me all the time.  So, don't give up and don't make a big deal out of it.  If children realize that you want them to speak German, it will probably backfire.  I think the German language school you are trying is a good idea.  It shows your children that other children their age also speak German.  We tried a school like that while living in London and it was an interesting experience for them.  All my relatives are German and so my children have to speak to them in German.  Maybe you could find some people who don't speak English and then your children would notice that German can come in handy.  

[GracieJane]

On 7/23/2022 at 1:48 PM, pmeilaen said:

I had the same situation when my oldest was born over 20 years ago.  I am a native German, married to an American and living in the U.S.  I decided to NEVER speak English to my son and his four siblings, who were born after him.  That meant German in front of in-laws and other people who did not speak German.  That caused some misunderstandings, but I tried to keep my talking brief if other people were around.  I also only read German books to them when they were little and sang German songs.  All of my children learned German first before they ever spoke a word of English.  What really helped was that my husband also became fluent in German and German became our weekend language: My husband spoke English to the children during the week, but German on the weekends.  When my children discovered that there were two languages in their lives and tried to speak English to me, I simply ignored them if it was a non-emergency.  I told them I did not understand their English when it was addressed to me.  Since they were little when I said that they thought that that was the way it was and never tried English again.  When they got older, they had to learn to read and write in German as well as English and now I can read Goethe's Faust with my high school students.  English is their strong language and they tend to speak English among themselves, but they have beautiful German and still speak German to me all the time.  So, don't give up and don't make a big deal out of it.  If children realize that you want them to speak German, it will probably backfire.  I think the German language school you are trying is a good idea.  It shows your children that other children their age also speak German.  We tried a school like that while living in London and it was an interesting experience for them.  All my relatives are German and so my children have to speak to them in German.  Maybe you could find some people who don't speak English and then your children would notice that German can come in handy.  

Thank you! I love that you spoke German exclusively to your children. 🙂 I am just *now* speaking German with my kids in front of others. It was so deeply ingrained in me that you speak the common language in the company of others that I hesitated for a long time. But now I’m realizing strangers really don‘t care that much what you are saying to your kids. It was a weird etiquette hurdle to overcome but now it seems much easier to stay on language all day!

[pmeilaen]

On 8/19/2022 at 6:29 PM, GracieJane said:

Thank you! I love that you spoke German exclusively to your children. 🙂 I am just *now* speaking German with my kids in front of others. It was so deeply ingrained in me that you speak the common language in the company of others that I hesitated for a long time. But now I’m realizing strangers really don‘t care that much what you are saying to your kids. It was a weird etiquette hurdle to overcome but now it seems much easier to stay on language all day!

I am so glad that this was helpful! At the beginning, it feels strange to speak German when other people are around, but you could try to minimize long German conversations in front of others and save them for more private times.  But short sentences and questions are normally not offensive to people who do not understand the language.  And if you run into someone who feels hurt because he or she does not know the language, you could briefly explain what you are doing and why you are doing it.