Hazel Catkins asked me a series of very interesting questions that I know many people are willing to see answered (I know because people have been asking). So I will answer them here:
Clarissa, could you write a post on the languages you plan/hope to raise your child among? You say you speak Russian at home, so I suppose the plan will be for your son to be bilingual at a minimum.
N. and I speak Russian at home, and we will continue to do so. A relationship is not translatable to a different language, and ours can’t be moved into English. Psychologists say it is common for children of immigrants to form their identity through a rejection of the parents’ language, while the grandchildren begin to show interest in it. So there is a high probability he will be a monolingual English speaker.
Is it particularly important to you or N, though, that he speak Russian?
No, absolutely not. A language is such a foundational, basic ingredient of the human psyche that it allows no interference. Whatever ends up being his first language is perfectly fine with me. The trauma that can be inflicted by messing with it is really not worth any linguistic competence. Languages can be mastered perfectly in adulthood (as I know from personal experience), so he will have the rest of his life to figure out what to speak. So if he comes home one day and says he doesn’t want us to speak Russian to him, I will definitely switch. With N., of course, we will continue to speak Russian.
If he resists once he learns English (at school or elsewhere), will you try to force it or feel any disappointment?
No, never. Such a resistance is absolutely normal. It’s his life, his identity. He should pick the language that expresses him and makes him comfortable.
Will you try to teach him Spanish? Would it be important to you to hire a multilingual nanny or send him to a bilingual school?
I am planning to try “Spanish days” when we will have a day each week when we speak only Spanish. I want to do it as a game of sorts. But the moment I see he doesn’t like it, I’ll stop immediately. I would prefer a Hispanic nanny but purely for selfish reasons. For me, few things are harder than having a stranger around in my house (autism). It would be easier for me if the stranger were a Spanish-speaker. We don’t have any bilingual schools around but if we did, I’d just ask him where he wants to go. Usually, kids want to go where their friends are.
So basically, I’m the most laid back person ever on this particular subject. As a language teacher, I know that the moment any negative feeling or experience attaches to a language, your chances of learning it drop off a cliff. So forcing things in this area is a very counter-productive strategy.
I like such intelligent, interesting questions. Thank you, Hazel!
Clarissa's Blog 
It is common for the children of immigrants in the U.S. to reject their parents language when they start elementary school. This is part of their identity formation, but identity is linked to context, and it is also a result of monolingual language ideologies in the U.S. (which children often can’t articulate but are well aware of) that you may or may not want to promote. Another common trend is for these children to regain their interest in their parents’ language in college (when multilingualism can become cool). Yet at this point, even if both parents and children like the idea of using this language instead of English, they are often unable to switch because the relationship is in English. So while you are correct that forcing children to use the parents’ language will not make them learn it (and will likely have the opposite affect), you should also think about how you can keep their linguistic options for identity formation open as they mature and change.
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“This is part of their identity formation, but identity is linked to context, and it is also a result of monolingual language ideologies in the U.S. (which children often can’t articulate but are well aware of) that you may or may not want to promote. ”
– My role is to create a comfortable environment for the kid. Ideology promotion is what I do everywhere else. 🙂
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What you have planned is a very good way to go about it.
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It is my understanding that language is most easily learned from a young age. I have read that if parents mother tongues are different then the easiest way for the child to learn them is to have each parent speak to their child with that language. I have several clients whose children speak several languages and this is the format that they used with them. We have bilingual children and we also followed a similar strategy. It is also a big help that our community is a bilingual one also. As a respect issue we ask that our kids speak to their French grandparents in French unless the grandparents decide they will speak English.
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“It is also a big help that our community is a bilingual one also. ”
– Exactly. In order to speak a language, you need an entire system in place: relatives, a community, music, television, movies, friends, etc.
“As a respect issue we ask that our kids speak to their French grandparents in French unless the grandparents decide they will speak English.”
– This is something we will have to do, too, simply because our grandmas are not English-speakers.
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Your plan is great.
Also, from experience, in the case of our daughter we did not notice any particular resentment of previous languages in favor of English . I suspect that this resentment is not universal, and often occurs as a reaction to parents trying too hard to preserve their identity and language. I observe a lot of this among our Russian friends – they are relentlessly policing each other about how much their children speak Russian, about attending Russian Sunday schools, etc. We do not participate in it, and we avoid the community pressure by letting them think, without lying, just by omission, that we are Estonian. While in fact we speak Estonian only when we do not want Russians to understand us. 🙂 🙂
So our daughter just speaks English to us, and we sometimes speak English to her and sometimes Russian. She speaks Russian well enough to speak with her grandparents… And it never occurred to us to subscribe to Russian TV. Too culturally alien for us… I was always wondering why you are watching it… 🙂
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I guess I watch it for the same reason other people read fantasy and watch sci fi movies: as an escapist strategy. It’s like a completely alien reality. N can’t get himself to see it as an alien reality, so he avoids most of the shows I watch. If he does watch them, they traumatize him.
I think that you are right, and that if we don’t push it or impose it, the kid won’t need to reject it as hard. It’s like a relative of mine who really wanted her son to be a reader and persecuted him with books. As a result, he detests reading. I, on the other hand, always heard, “Enough reading already, go play with your dolls.” So now I love reading.
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“This is something we will have to do, too, simply because our grandmas are not English-speakers.”
Could you clarify this statement, please? You said in your post that you don’t care if your kid doesn’t speak Russian but here you say that you’d like him to speak Russian to his grandparents.
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It isn’t that I’d like it or not. It’s just that the only way for him to speak to the grandmas at all is in Russian. They don’t know a word of any other language.
Of course, if he chooses not to speak to the grandmas at all, he can do that. Although I’m sure it will be quite hard to sit there in complete silence. 🙂 🙂
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Ah ok, got it. I got confused by ‘..we will have to do..’, suggesting some action on your part to make your kid learn Russian.
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I shouldn’t answer comments at 7 am. 🙂
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