On Raising Bi-Lingual Children

Picture Caption - "They always say "Hello Kitty", but never bother to ask, "How are you kitty?"

Hey Laowinners!

After experiencing Europe, and seeing multilingualism in daily life, I asked my parents, "why didn't you promote language learning in my early childhood?", thinking that they gave me some disadvantage in life.

Truth is, they never thought it would be an asset for my future. Growing up monolingual themselves, how, and why would they teach me another language?

Fast forward to age 31, and I am raising a bilingual daughter. It's actually pretty impressive. I can now read her a book, ask her over 50 vocab words in the book, and she can say them, and describe them in both Chinese and English. It's funny to watch her speak to Vivi's parents, as well as my parents. She can switch languages mid sentence.

However, as a Patreon asked in the private messages, if I plan to raise my kids in the USA, or anywhere non-Chinese speaking for that matter, how will I deal with the fact that at age 5 and onwards, children stop acquiring language from their mom and dad, and start exclusively learning from their peers and school environment.

As hard as we may try, their Chinese will be limited to the home (unless they have tons of Chinese friends), and in order for my kids to learn proper, business level Chinese, they will have to study in some sort of Chinese environment. If we do decide to stay somewhere that is not a Chinese dominated area, I do worry that I am also giving my child a disadvantage, however, if the base is strong enough from Vivi and I, I would hope that later in life she chooses to study and develop her mandarin through study and travel/living abroad.

What about you guys? Were you raised bilingual? What languages have you learned/tried to learn? Do you think it's important to learn languages?

Thanks for all of your support!