My take away is basically:
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Language schools don’t work… your kids will hate it…
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Immersion is good… like maybe move to your ancestor’s country… (no thanks fam, I don’t like this)
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Only speak your heritage language to your children… And you need to know enough to fully express yourself so you don’t revert back to English (or whatever your new country’s language is)
Yeah… Cantonese and Mandarin might die with me… I don’t even know it enough to be teaching my (future) children… too much emotional trauma from my parents 😭
Why frame is as a failure of the children? What kind of backward bullshit is that? If adults want kids to be bilingual they have to put in the work to make it happen.
I feel as long as they develop the ability to differentiate the sounds, they can learn it later if they want. That’s really the hardest part about it.
For me, it’s more the fact that I didn’t have any community to practice speaking with. And no, talking with your parents doesn’t count! Like especially for me, I grew up pretty rebellious xD Plus I barely had Asian friends growing up, much less ones who speak the same language.
Get them into playing video games in chinese. Thats how most of the bilingual kids/young adults i know in colombia learned.
Give them a dictionary and let them download any games but tell them they have to be in whatever your target language is.
