In our household, I speak Mandarin and my wife speaks English. So far, our oldest being four and a half, understands what I say but more often than not replies in English. In my opinion, the English environment is just too strong. So, in line with what BobW wrote, we have seen positives from the one parent in one language and the second parent in the other language theory. A key part of this is that I do stay home with the kids. So even though I am about the only person that speaks Mandarin with them, most of their time is with me.
It is my hope that they start developing podcast that are more geared toward child education, however, I still enjoy having the podcasts play in the car and at home. This way I have a lot of Chinese happening in the background of our day to day lives.
Bilingual home
Hi Tony,
In our household, I speak Mandarin and my wife speaks English. So far, our oldest being four and a half, understands what I say but more often than not replies in English. In my opinion, the English environment is just too strong. So, in line with what BobW wrote, we have seen positives from the one parent in one language and the second parent in the other language theory. A key part of this is that I do stay home with the kids. So even though I am about the only person that speaks Mandarin with them, most of their time is with me.
This is one of my favorite websites:
http://www.chinesepod.com
It is my hope that they start developing podcast that are more geared toward child education, however, I still enjoy having the podcasts play in the car and at home. This way I have a lot of Chinese happening in the background of our day to day lives.
Peace,
Daniel