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Minor Issues: Why my husband and I had limited success raising bilingual kids
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The author realised belatedly that she did not prioritise borrowing Chinese storybooks from the library.
ST ILLUSTRATION: CEL GULAPA
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SINGAPORE – My husband and I naively thought we would effortlessly raise bilingual children by implementing the “one parent, one language” approach, in which each parent consistently speaks one language to a child.
We are both fairly bilingual, as least conversationally. And we felt it was important for our children – now 19, 16 and nine – to have a reasonable grasp of both English and Mandarin, as well as the values embedded in the languages.
