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I say embrace it. The Western Hemisphere has a very large Spanish speaking population. The worst thing that can happen is your son will speak 3 languages as an adult. And that could benefit him in the long run. As long as he is speaking and studying English at home he should be fine. Don't worry.. Kids pick up language very easily.

The main thing I would recommend here is that you talk English around him. I appreciate that he's probably at daycare for longer time than he spends with you, but parenting time is more 1-1, and therefore has more of an immersion effect than daycare. You mentioned that his primary language is Thai, which I assume is from your wife. (please correct me if I'm ...

From my experience growing up bilingual, the problem won't be that your kids don't want you to speak the "foreign" language, but that they will refuse to speak the "foreign" language. (The fact that you will do uncool things is a given: you're the parent, anything you do is by definition uncool.) The only way to counteract this is to build up a good ...

I'll start off by saying that there is a time and place for text shortcuts like the ones you described. Where, exactly, the time and place for those shortcuts are is subject to debate. In my opinion, the appropriate time and place for this is either in real-time chat, where taking the time to ensure proper spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG) can ...

Why would you ever let your kids swear - even as adults we know that many people are offended, and so even though I may swear in certain select groups, my default behaviour is to never swear and I am generally surprised when I hear others swear. Children should have no reason to swear (adults shouldn't have any reason to swear, but we figure once you are ...

When should I allow a child to swear? When you feel like you should. That's really the only valid answer, as it's an extremely personal decision each parent will make on their own. Along with that comes the whole issue of what is a swear word vs. which is not along with context. I think most would say, in general, parents will frown upon swearing as ...

Your children are probably choosing to respond to you in German because they are more fluent in it, and they know that you understand it, not because they don't want to use Danish. If you are the only person who speaks to your children in Danish, then probably around 70% of their input is in German. Children won't understand why you are telling them to ...

From experience I can tell you being a sister is different than being a parent. If you are worried about how others see her, have an honest, calm conversation explaining about how others see her is important. She can CHOOSE to listen or not (parent vs. sister). This short conversation lets her know you care about her but still respect her decisions. You ...

Have you considered that it is a part of her world, and the fact it annoys you probably makes it even more appealing to her. I don't like it, but it is catching on with that age group. The thing to remember is that language continually evolves- and that evolution is driven by younger generations. While we may not like it, the problem may be at our end. ...

Any age Please start right away! It is great for your child to have even just exposure to another language. Others will disagree and talk about exactly how to achieve fluency, but my take on it is, exposure no matter how small is better than just plain old monlinguism. Since you speak English pretty well, if you used English with the baby 24/7, it would ...

I suspect that your son is probably in an ESL (English as a Second Language) kindergarten class. In most areas of the country this would mean your child would be placed in a class with kids who speak LOTS of different languages (for reference, in the previous school district I taught in we had large populations who spoke Spanish, Russian (or variations of ...

You're taking this too seriously. I work in the tech industry and see new graduates come through who use l33tspeak personally but have no trouble using professional language in a professional setting. Certainly she's not using l33tspeak in her school work and papers, right? As she progresses in her schooling and then career, it's very likely she'll be ...

I will probably soon have the same problem - I am Russian and I live in the Czech Republic. My wife is Czech (although she speaks perfect Russian too) and we have a son. He is 2+ years old at the moment and we have made the rule that she speaks to him in Czech (sometimes in Russian too, as I'm often at work and can't be with my son as often, as she can) and ...

Welcome to the site, Sean! I generally encourage learning foreign languages but it requires that the parents can participate. Don't underestimate the challenge of new languages. My personal experience is that children can learn languages nearly automatically but adults find it very difficult. If you have a history of little or poor language learning ...

Is chatspeak acceptable? Sure, it can be. Is it wise to use? Almost definitely not. Here is why. Language isn't just how we communicate, it's how we think. Imagine a chef who can only describe food as "gross" or "awesome." The chef won't just be poorly respected in communication, he is going to be held back at a level of mediocrity because he lacks the ...

Sounds like Jargoning. It's a normal developmental language milestone for kids as young as 12 to 18 months. Many kids continue to do it for years, and they develop normal expressive and receptive speech patterns over time. Here's a site where more people share their experiences. Some kids make up their own words and even their own languages around that age ...

I swore worse than a navy gunner in high school, but I feel that it restricted my opportunities in the past. I know kids will be around swearing in school but I don't want them to think I feel it is OK because kids at school swear. When we watch movies I make them say "Don't say bad words" to the TV to get them into the habit of being aware of it and that I ...

Well, I think the general consensus to control your own behavior is the route I'd take. Sure it's difficult, but you can't really expect your child to do (or not do) something you are not willing to do (or not do). Check out this clip on mirror neurons from PBS and you can quickly see biochemically why modeling appropriate behavior is so vitally important! ...

You are asking the wrong question. Your question really is, how can I sensitize my children to understand the context of people with which they are interacting and choose their language and manner of expression accordingly? If that is your question, then all you have to do, is to let them listen to the language of those around them. If they are on a ...

I don't think kids should ever be ENCOURAGED to swear, but I do think some space needs to be made to allow for an occasional curse word. As a middle school teacher I had to figure out how to handle this question with my students in a way that would be appropriate for the classroom and allow room for kids from a variety of backgrounds coming from a variety ...

I will answer, quickly, to say that in addition to @balanced mama's answer, there is a lot of useful information in a book I just read called NurtureShock about how to improve babies' language skills in general (I don't know if these techniques apply to older children, this was all for babies, like the 0-4 crowd). Basically, children learn language/vocab the ...

I think the key is to provide as much language exposure as possible, but in a natural way. Natural sources could be enrolling the child in an English-speaking Kindergarten, TV shows in English, frequently having English-speaking visitors or babysitters, etc. If you don't have any natural sources of English, then it's up to you alone. I'm faced with a ...

A search of several educational databases is not turning up any articles to directly address your question. As you note, most people using home-schooling internationally are expatriates, so searching sites focusing on expatriate home-schooling may yield some helpful testimonials. Your best bet might be to initiate conversations with a few schools to find ...

The wording of your question is going to color your answers. As soon as you say "Should I make X do Y", "Should I force X to do Y" you'll get a lot of reaction to the "make" and "force" part. (current answers excluded!) From my reading of "Raising a Bilingual Child", Zurur, it's common for kids to switch to their stronger language because their goal is ...

In an effort to raise a child with exposure to anything other than just English like many US kids until high school, (which I think puts them at a HUGE disadvantage). I did a little research on the matter last year. The book I liked the most for readability and its seeming ability to support its own theses with corroborative evidence was "The Bi-lingual ...

As a Border Northerner living in the Southwest, I run into this all the time. We even have different names for certain things. Additionally, since I love British Literature, we read a lot that introduces my little girl to other ways to phrase (and even spell things) all the time. I've met kids with parents from the UK and New Zealand and the kids sound ...

From 0 to now, your baby has been listening to the sounds of the language. Quantity is more important than quality-- that seems to be the consensus for the writers of the English, Tagalog and Russian nursery rhyme authors that we read to our baby. Sometimes I go through the alphabet or a list of words and just put them in any sentence that comes to mind ...

I think it is an extremely bad idea to put a child into a school which teaches in a language you don't understand, and they have no background in. Children need help with their homework in order to do well, if it's in Mandarin how in the world would you even know if your child has even done it? And you are right to be worried about your child being ...

I disagree with Valkyrie and Beofett. I am a programmer but I abhor reading articles written in l33t. Even personal ones. If you dig up the history of l33t you'll learn that it's a degradation of another form of writing in the earlier days of computers when 8-bit ASCII glyphs were used as a decorative set of characters as an alternative to the normal Latin ...

I have the same thing - we live in Holland and my wife is Dutch, and we want our child to learn both languages. So from my experience, I can only repeat what has already been said here before, but yes, start talking English with your child right as soon as you can, and be consistent. If you wind up talking Portugese a few times to other members of the ...