Bilingual Children At Home - In Italy

Raising bilingual children at home is a learning process for both the parents and the children. My native language is English and I am almost completely fluent in Italian while my husband's native language is Italian and he is not fluent in English. Since we live in Italy and since our common language (between my husband and I) has always been Italian, we have continued to speak Italian to eachother in the home. This I believe has been a negative influence on our children.

I have always tried to speak only English with our children but I find myself more and more speaking Italian to them just because it is becoming more and more natural for me. I really have to stop myself, think and then start over in English. My eldest child who spoke consistently in English with me is now speaking more and more only Italian. This may also have to do with the fact that he is in preschool and speaks Italian with everyone but me. So after doing some research and talking to my husband, we decided that we will try to bring back the English language in our household so that at home we will speak English with eachother, no matter how strange it might feel. It would be the best not only for our children, but also for my husband who has never taken a formal English language class in his life!

The other thing that happened to us regarding our bilingual children, is that my eldest son after returning from a three month vacation in the United States, began to stutter quite profusely. It seemed like the words just could not come out. After speaking with the kind and helpful people at the Stuttering Foundation and reading their literature (www.stutteringhelp.org), we realized that it is a very normal occurence with bilingual children that may come and go, but that will pass in many instances. After a month of stuttering, he is now speaking normally...but in Italian mostly.

There is a lot of literature available about dealing with bilingual children at home but the best advice I found on www.italiakids.com "Raising Bilingual Children: The Most Successful Methods" by Christina Bosemark or visit www.MultilingualChildren.org. These are both very helpful sites for raising bilingual children. I will let you know how we do! Buona fortuna.