My struggles, failures, and successes with raising multi-lingual kids and teaching them a minority language.
My two-year-old daughter recently stopped talking to me.
My six-year-old son stopped talking to me years ago.
In Chinese, that is.
When my daughter stopped speaking to me in Chinese, I felt like I had failed again as a mother and an educator. I had failed with my son when I let English slip into our daily conversations. I failed him when I spoke English in front of other English-speaking friends. I failed him when I spoke English with him at home when we were around my husband. I failed him by not giving him enough Chinese language exposure.
As a result of these failures, my son, who was speaking more Chinese than English until he started nursery at age 3, stopped speaking in Chinese and switched to English before I realized it was happening. I continued to speak to him in Chinese but he would always respond in English.
I had a second child when my son was four. I swore that I would do things differently with her.
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