We are a family living in an English speaking country with a 3 year old-year-old. My wife and I speak both French and English and we are committed to raise our kid bilingual in both languages. So farfar our approach has been to expose him only to French since he will eventually pick up English from the outside world :). So his day caredaycare is in French, we (and our family) only speaksspeak to him in French and the cartoons he watches are in French… as a result he only understands and speaks French right now. We are happy about this, but are starting to be concerned that he does not understand/speak English, especially when we have playdates with other kids who only speak English, wewe don't want him to feel that he is different from them.
Our long term plan for us is to follow a strict one-parent, one-language (OPOL) approach (my wife will only speak English and I will speak French to him). Should we start the OPOL approach now? Or Should we continue with only French for a few more years? Also we are planning him on sending him to a bilingual school English/French, so I am not concerned about him feeling different at school, my. My concern is mostly with our friendsfriends' kids and other family members who don't speak French. I also have the irrational fear that he will not learn English well… which I know is very irrational, since English is the main and only language where we live.
