Bringing up bi-lingual children

DD has friends who send their children to Denmark to stay with GP for months perhaps every other year; they go to school there and are bilingual. The Danes have always been very accommodating about taking these children into a local school - I doubt you could do that in the UK.

Danes struggle with Danish spoken badly. Unlike in the UK and US where most visitors and immigrants we are used to trying to make out and interpret what people are trying to say - in Denmark that just didn't happen.

I went to language lessons and you have to speak perfectly, with perfect grammar and a perfect accent otherwise people don't understand you. It served to keep immigrants out of the labour market as for most it took 3-5 years of fulltime study to achieve the University Entrance level - required for professional jobs - at my language school only one person passed while I was there and she had a Danish mother! Many people failed the test - not on their knowledge but for their accent!

Ah! These children have a Danish mother and Danish GP.

Providing the ability to have two languages is a great gift. My best example is a little boy age 3 who can equally converse in three languages, talks to Dad in Finnish (now there's a tough language to learn); talks to Mom in Japanese and talks to everyone else in his world equally well in English.
I provided my girls with english and french educations but now they are adults and don't use their french they are uncomfortable using it.
I am all for embracing educational opportunities which this is -

Afraid I must admit to failing with DD2 - a difficult demanding child as when she came home from Kindergarten and wanted to speak German she got fed up and one day said, I'm not speaking that English quatsch! and stormed off. I had a lunch to cook , rushed home after teaching most days and so I gave in!
We were also told at school that DD1 would be better speaking German all the time to improve her written German. I could take that from a schoolteacher but not from a Health visitor.

Due to the German school system DD2 learnt English for 9 years, and as a biologist uses it in her job.
There's more to a language than baby talk and to get them through to a really large vocabulary they have to live for sometime in the land of that language. It is important if she is going to remain in Denmark that she speaks Danish perfectly.

As others have said what a load of rubbish. Two of my grandchildren live in Norway and have been brought up with mum speaking Norwegian and dad speaking English to them from day one. Dad is also fluent in Norwegian so conversations move around quite a bit. The gcs are now 8 and 10 and are quite bilingual. There are individual differences though, one is very outgoing and confident and even at age 3 spoke the relevant language to the assorted family members without blinking. The other is a shyer, less confident child who was initially more hesitant about speaking English although we knew she understood everything.

The joke in Scandinavia is that Danish is basically Norwegian spoken with a hot potato in your mouth.

Absolute bollocks, tell HV take a hike. Continue speaking both languages, worked well in our household, no issues just very confident and bilingual offspring!

I've followed this thread with interest. I have Norwegian friends who live in Denmark; the husband was raised in Germany and England, having one parent from each country and the wife was raised in Norway by a Danish mother and Norwegian father. Their children have always been fluent in all four languages.
I have a grandchild whose French mother speaks to the little one exclusively in French and I have no doubt this will eventually result in a confident bi-lingual child.

Please can I sound a small note of caution?
I am upset by the behaviour of this worker, which would, as described be cause for a formal complaint, and possible disciplinary action in our system.

However, all the examples of others grans' multi-lingual children does not mean this one is OK. Multi-lingual children can have hearing & speech problems too.

OP has not said on what basis the worker is concerned, but gives the impression it is just some arbitrary idea. It does not imply confidence in the quality of the worker's assessment of the child, but it does need addressing properly, by someone who has the right knowledge & expertise. That is what the parents need to ask for.

I am very unsure as to the way Health Visitors in the UK operate now. In my day, in a very mixed area, I assessed multi-lingual children all the time. I also saw a number of families, unofficially, when they came 'home' for their annual stay with the British grandparents. They would pop in to clinic and ask me to do a developmental assessment based on UK guidelines for re-assurance. I'm not sure if there is that kind of leeway now, when I gather most areas have suspended clinics.

Like most others here, I think being bilingual is a huge advantage. Children appear to have no trouble with it. I have known many bilingual children. English/French, English/Welsh, English/Dutch, English/Polish.

My son’s Polish mother-in-law started school in England at the age of five knowing only one (very useful) word of English - ‘wee-wee’. She became bilingual very quickly, and now probably speaks the best English in our family.

I have particularly fond memories of two little Dutch boys (6 and 8) I looked after for a while when I was 22. They were both completely bilingual. The 8-year-old delighted in reading his Tin-Tin books to me. They were in Dutch, and he translated into fluent and idiomatic English for me as he went along. It was no effort for him, but I was very impressed.

What on earth has this to do with a Health Visitor? She is clearly ignorant as it seems to be a general acceptance that children learn other languages so much more easily when they are very young. As for tearing your daughter off a strip, this person need retraning in interpersonal skills. Rude!

I was brought up bi-lingual, French to my mama and English to my father, we spoke either language indiferrently in the house. Our education was in English although the country's lingua franca was French creole [we took Cambridge overseas exams!].
I spoke French to my cildren at home until they decided they "didn't understand it"... Many of the language teachers have since told me that they were attuned to languages due to their early exposure.
it seems ridiculous that the HV should be so negative. Surely having two languages as "mother/father" tongues should be a huge advantage to the child/ren? What do they say to Syrians or Ethopians who emmigrate to Denmark? That they shouldn't speak their native language at home??? it all seems very odd.

My best friend from Maisons Laffitte grew up with a half English/half Russian mum and half French/half Italian dad. Her brother married a Yugoslav lass and my friend's boyfriend was English and they are all real polyglots. At your FF's son's age he will happily pick up language skills and jabber away in both languages. But health visitors and social workers don't like non-standard development. Ignore them. My baby son had a a couple of toys he loved and we were amazed at 4 months we would put them at one end of a rug and him at the other. He had no problem wriggling back till he could get them. Health visitor never said that was impossible and refused to believe us.And he said his first words at 10 months, then refused to say another another word till he was 3. The health visitor didn't see him for years till he was at nursery when she decided he was deaf. Eventually he was diagnosed at 9 with Aspergers, but very bright and it's only a label in his case because he isn't "normal" - whatever that might mean. Although not native speakers, my husband and I are both keen linguists, so my kids all spoke fluent English, French, German and Spanish from early babyhood. Never gave them the slightest problems.

When we lived in Holland with two babies we spoke English at home unless there were Dutch people present. My son was a little behind in his Dutch language development but soon caught up and the upside was that his English was perfect. My daughter could read in English before she went to a Dutch school at 4. Children adapt very easily and being bilingual is a real skill so should be encouraged.

A Dutch friend of mine with an English wife ran a hotel in Turkey, their 6 year old daughter could speak English, Dutch, Turkish and, to accommodate the International Guests, German, French and Italian and was easily beginning to pick up Russian too. My cousin of Swedish/Finnish parentage could speak numerous languages and spent his University time travelling the world learning many languages. The earlier you start to learn more than one language the easier it is to learn more.

The HV is wrong. My 2 GDs live in Germany with my DiL (who is German) and my DS. Both girls are bilingual. My DiL speaks only German to them my DS speaks only English. That way they learn each language from a native speaker. My 6 yo GD now corrects her father when he speaks German, and her mother when she speaks English

I am struggling with this. In the UK of course a child's speech and language development are the Health Visitor's business. One of their tasks is to assess child development, observe and refer as necessary, which parents can refuse if they wish. I don't know how it works in Denmark.

My sister’s granddaughters were brought up to speak English with their father and French with their mother. This has worked exceptionally well. The only thing we noticed was that they were a little later to start talking, but once they did, they haven’t stopped to take breath, in either language!

The HV should emigrate to Switzerland where three + languages are routine. Being bi/tri-lingual is a huge advantage.
Re- the Danes. There's a very attractive Danish woman in a class I attend who is passionately pro-Brexit and extremely nationalistic. Looks like a fairytale grannie, too - how looks can deceive.

My experience of working with inner city children from a variety of backgrounds shows how important it is that children learn how to communicate with their grandparents and other members of the community and that once at school they will rapidly learn the language of the country in which they live even if just to play with other children. These are the children who eventually will surpass the language skills of their mono language peers because they have the confidence, experience and skills.

This is really close to my heart. My parents first language is welsh, they moved to England before I was born. My elder sister spoke both English and Welsh but some moronic teacher told my parents to only speak English to her. They stupidly did as they were asked and It’s something that really rankles with me. I would love to be able to speak Welsh. Teachers etc should mind their own business as kids eventually sort languages out for themselves ??

Tell the Heath Visitor to take a running jump and at the same time request a different person with one or two more brain cells. As a retired academic with lots of experience of teaching students who were brought up bi-lingually and even tri-lingually, and as a grandma with a 3 year old who is spoken to in two different languages by her different nationality parents, I can vouch for the fact that it is much better to adopt this approach than to use just the one. Cognitively, what happens is that the child doesn't perceive there are two languages on the go at the same time, for the child it's just one language but mummy says certain words for certain things, and daddy says other words for those things. It's not until kids are a bit older that they genuinely perceive two different languages and by that time they are comfortable in each. I've seen Health Visitors who are no more than Health Care Assistants, no decent qualification to speak of and certainly no idea about research-based practice.

I was a speech and language therapist and we were asked for advice about this from time to time. The body of research indicates that children will do well in bilingual households. The best strategy is for each parent to stick to one language. Having knowledge of 2 or more languages gives children an advantage since they are able to see how language works (meta-linguistic knowledge). 70% of the world's children are raised speaking 2 or more languages because they grow up in communities where there is a local language and an 'official' language. This person is ignorant of the evidence and probably not a fully-qualified health visitor, but a kind of health care assistant. Unless there are other developmental issues with the child, ignore her.

Get rid of the ill informed health visitor. Two of my grandchildren are trilingual. Their father is English, their mother is French and the lovely woman who looks after them all day is Spanish. It forced us as grandparents to go Spanish classes but when we very proudly tried to talk to them, they both giggled and in very clear English announced they couldn’t understand! The advantages for the children will far outweigh the slight delay in language acquisition in infancy.