Before Pixie was born, I thought about parenting priorities. Nobody will ever ask an adult at what age they learned to read. You can learn to code or memorise the capital cities of the world any time, whenever you’re interested. But there are two important things that are near–impossible to make up for after childhood: the knowledge that one is worthy of love and respect, and the ability to love. So I would put unconditional love first. I would accept my child’s little quirks, respect their point of view and love them exactly the way they are.

Of course there are still a few skills that you can only master if you start in childhood: professional ballet dancing, virtuoso violin playing, speaking languages without an accent. So I was going to focus on just those few: ballet, violin, top five world languages, and unconditional love.

Just kidding! I’ll take strong amateur level ballet, any musical instrument, and native-level Hungarian besides English. And provide unconditional love. Ok, ok, just native-level Hungarian and English: I had my heart set on raising a bilingual child who has strong ties to his cultural heritage. This post is about the first three years of trying to do that.

We took the ‘One Parent One Language’ (OPOL) approach, the most popular choice for multilingual families. The name says it all: I would speak only Hungarian to Pixie, while Pink would speak only English. (We are less strict about the latter, since there is no doubt Pixie’s English will be fine.) For completeness I’ll mention that there is another approach called ‘Situational’, more often done when the parents themselves are multilingual: for example the family would speak one language at home, and another when out and about.

I didn’t expect much difficulty with OPOL at the early stage: Hungarian is my first language, so I thought I would instinctively speak it with my baby. Not so. For the first half year, nearly every sentence I uttered to Pixie was translated in my head from English to Hungarian. It made for some strained conversation.

See, there is a skill that new parents need to acquire for their children’s language development: the ability to have a one-sided conversation. I’m not a very chatty person in general, and the more tired I am, the more monosyllabic I become. So this took effort. It’s hard to learn anything new when you are critically sleep deprived; I would recommend that expectant parents practice narrating their day to a teddy bear. There is help available of course: you can watch more advanced parents do it and copy what you see, or you go to the library for mom-and-baby activities and learn a hundred little rhymes and songs to fill the gaps. But, in an English-speaking community, the help all comes in English. It wasn’t until Pixie was five months old and we had my mom around for a while that I finally had a model for how to carry on authentically in Hungarian.

By the time Pixie was about a year old, I had become fluent, so much so that I started accidentally addressing English-speaking toddlers in Hungarian. Pink’s Hungarian improved steadily, hearing the language spoken every day, and Pixie’s first words were a mix. We had established ourselves as a bilingual family. Despite all the guilt over the slow start, it felt like an achievement.

Sadly, the more Pixie’s world opened up – especially with daycare and friends of his own – the less interest he showed in speaking Hungarian. He must have concluded this other language to be a strange obsession of Mommy’s, shared only by the grandparents who live in her laptop, all of whom are also able to speak ‘normally’ when necessary. “Mommy speaks ‘Garian, Daddy speaks normal” – he said. Around the time Pixie started speaking in English sentences, he stopped speaking Hungarian altogether, even the words he knew before.

I was stressed about this development, as I tend to be when I’m not on track to accomplish life goals. I know now that this happens with virtually every bilingual child where the minority language is spoken by only one parent. In the Facebook group on multilingual parenting, I see this story told every week, by distressed parents searching for the magic trick that will “make” their toddler speak their language. But what can one do?

1. Discourage the use of the majority language (in our case, English).
   I haven’t seriously considered this option, but hey, one contemplates all sorts of things in desperation. There are many possible methods of discouragement: from outright punishment, to the parent pretending that they don’t understand the majority language (of course it’s a different matter if they genuinely don’t). Some parents simply don’t comply with requests unless they are asked in the preferred language.
   I personally believe punishment is not an effective parenting tool. In many situations Pink and I do use immediate logical consequences, for example, if Pixie bangs his fork on his plate, I’ll swap them for plastic ones. But for language use, even a logical consequence – such as not complying when asked in English – seems too harsh: my top priority is to build a loving, supportive relationship with Pixie, and that can only be based on open communication. Shutting down communication of any form is being penny wise and pound foolish, in my opinion.
   Pressure can also lead to a power struggle. One day, as a young adult, Pixie will get to decide whether to nurture his knowledge of Hungarian, and I don’t want him to hate the language by then. Finally, pretending not to understand a language that one does understand seems dishonest and condescending. Kids are smart.
2. Explicitly reward the use of the target language (in our case, Hungarian).
   I’ve known kids who can get their parents to pay them money for getting their nails or hair cut. So I’m nearly as wary of explicit rewards – candy, new toy, cash – as I am of punishments: they seem to be a dangerous game. I’ve also read that there is a risk that the desired behaviour becomes dependent on the reward.
   That said, parenting philosophy is one thing, life is another. At Pixie’s two-year-old development checkup, the nurse brought out a box of toys to assess his cognitive skills. Pixie promptly unpacked it all. Once it was established that he was well on track developmentally, the nurse asked him to pack the toys away; Pixie would not hear of it. I told him in Hungarian that after he packed away, we’d go for ice cream: he immediately sprung to action and delivered the most focussed packing job the nurse has ever seen. After expressing her amazement she asked me what I’d said…
   Still, I’m extra-wary of using such tricks for situations that come up constantly (speaking to each other), rather than a one-off occurrence (letting go of the nurse’s toys). Especially so, since Pixie has no trouble communicating with me in English.
3. Implicitly reward the use of the target language.
   As it turns out, I react to Pixie differently when he speaks to me in Hungarian: I find it incredibly charming. Speak to me in English, and I’m a warm, but pretty no-nonsense parent. Say a full sentence in Hungarian, and I melt into a puddle.
   There is a mom in the bilingual parenting Facebook group who achieved minority-language success by taking this spontaneous reaction to the next level. The way she puts it, she was – half-intentionally – a better, more engaged parent in her language. I’m starting to see how this might work, and while I’m not comfortable feigning disinterest if Pixie uses English, I’m definitely more engaged and find it easier to give him my full attention when he makes an effort to speak to me in Hungarian.
4. Provide social and cultural experiences in the target language.
   Social experiences could be Hungarian-speaking friends or activities. Hungarian is a small language, so these were hard to come by in Sydney, but now that Pixie has turned three, I can start taking him to the Hungarian School for two hours on Saturday afternoons.
   Cultural experiences are books, cartoons, songs, etc. These are helpful, and possibly become more helpful as children grow older. That said, the hardest part appears to be getting kids to speak (active language), and that isn’t necessarily accomplished by even more listening (passive language).
5. Make the target language genuinely essential.
   In our case this has only been possible by making it temporarily the majority language, that is, by spending significant time in Hungary. A magic bullet indeed, but moving your family to a different country for a month or more at a time is costly and logistically difficult.
   Up to a few weeks ago, Pixie only spoke sparse Hungarian words embedded in English sentences, and a few very short phrases. While his understanding is on par with native speakers of his age group, his active vocabulary was small and his active grammar near non-existent. We spent the holidays in Hungary and voilà: after less than a month he is beginning to speak in sentences, and attempts to decline words. It’s a miracle! I can see that it takes great effort: his speech is much slower, and when he gets a sentence right, he repeats it many times. I can see him searching for words in his head, and his pronunciation is sloppy. But, for the first time, speaking Hungarian is worth his while: otherwise, his great grandmother and cousin, and the kids he spends time with won’t understand him.
   I believe that if the minority language parent honestly doesn’t understand the majority language, that would have a similar, though possibly slower, effect.

Some of the above has helped Pixie make progress in Hungarian, but none has helped me stress less about his progress. He is only three, with decades ahead in which to forget every word he now knows. Some guidelines state that for native fluency, a child has to hear the language spoken for about 1/3 of their waking hours. I will never be able to meet that amount, or anything close. But, for once, I’ve had an epiphany: the level of fluency Pixie reaches is ultimately his choice. I have influence, but I can’t “make him” speak Hungarian. The childhood exposure I provide will give him a foundation on which he might build, or he might not.

Why am I teaching him Hungarian in the first place? Most of all, I want him to be able to talk to his cousin, and to be able to play with other children when we spend time in Hungary. By the time they are teenagers, most Hungarian kids learn some level of English, so this need will be less acute. Second, I would like to be able to talk with him in my first language. That said, most of my day-to-day relationships – including with Pink – are conducted in English, and I find these relationships entirely satisfying. I think in English most of the time. If need be, I can love Pixie in English just like I do in Hungarian. And third, I would like to share with Pixie the culture I grew up with: stories, books, cartoons, poetry, literature. I am doing this already, and I have a lot of faith that his receptive language, which is already excellent, will not be a barrier to reading in Hungarian. But what if he doesn’t read the poems or stories I loved as a child? This happens to many a parent, with or without a language barrier, and they, too, survive.

What I realised is this, a cliche: there is no use worrying about an outcome I don’t control. Once I shifted my attention from the results to the process, I have been much happier. I have trained myself to speak to Pixie in Hungarian: that was a hard thing to do, and I did it during what was probably the hardest year of my life. I have taught Pink Hungarian in the process, without even trying. I’m doing everything I can to give Pixie and his Hungarian family chances to form relationships, and I’m doing everything I can to also increase his exposure at home. This is the best I can do, and whatever result it leads to will be the best result Pixie and I could get, and I’ll be happy with it. I’ve stopped thinking about the results.

But results there are, and they are fascinating to see. Pixie’s English improved steadily from when he said his first words at one, to lecturing us at three on how we made him sad by saying ‘no’. His Hungarian, on the other hand, has been developing in stops and starts. There have been apparent regressions, where he stopped speaking altogether, only to start again months later at a much higher level. We’re getting a unique window into how his little brain works, and the view is beautiful.

Any multilingual stories to share in the comments?