please help me. I want to teach my son English but I'm very confused

hello
I have a 19 months old son. we speak two languages( Turkish and Persian) with him.
I planned to teach him English with ‘1person 1language’ method but unfortunately couldn’t.
now I want to start to teach him English but I’m so confused and don’t know what to do.
i have researched about it and there are some people who say teaching a second language to a child younger than 3 years old is not good and it may damage his learning and he will mix and confuse both languages. they say I should wait until he is 3 years old.
what’s your opinion? what should I do? should I wait or not?

and if I can start teaching now which activities and method do you advice?

help me please…
thanks

Hi Aysa!

The decision on which language to teach, whether or not to teach several languages, and how to do this first is entirely subjective to you and your family - while your child is at that very young age, you have the opportunity to teach him multiple languages. The only key to doing this is to be consistent in your usage of the language (so your child has a contextual environment on which to use what he has learned) and to be CONSISTENT in your lessons in teaching him and the USAGE of the language in relating to persons, objects and environments.

I personally grew up in a household where we spoke at least 3 languages, and one provincial dialect (which is sort of a whole language in itself) and I do not remember having any difficulty with language learning. My nieces and the young ones on our family are currently learning multiple languages at home, where we use different languages interchangeably with no issues. :slight_smile: So this will lead me to believe that there is certainly no harm to teaching your child different languages at a young age - in fact, I think this has contributed to fluency in the languages we learned, since we used them in context very often.

I think it may also be helpful if the people who told you that teaching a child more than one language at a young age may “damage his learning” can provide you with concrete evidence that this true. It may or may not, depending on circumstance, and the manner at how the child is taught the language.

Since your child is young, I personally believe that you have a great opportunity to teach your child, since it is during these years when a child is able to learn the most with little effort. And as long as the way the child is taught is filled with fun, and there is consistency in the lessons (this means that if you intend to teach a child a new language, you must also take care to use it and practice it with him), I think that your child will be able to learn with no issues at all.

But of course, don’t just take my word for it. :happy: I am sure other parents here in the forum will be more than happy to help you by sharing their own experiences in teaching their child multiple languages.

Here are some of the threads in the forum which discuss this specific topic:

Helping each other in teaching children multiple languages
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-signing-speaking-foreign-languages/helping-each-other-in-teaching-children-multiple-languages/

Bilingual Education
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/bilingual-education/

Teaching multiple languages you don’t know
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/teaching-multiple-languages-you-don’t-know/

Polyglots
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-signing-speaking-foreign-languages/polyglots/

Teaching multiple languages
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-signing-speaking-foreign-languages/teaching-multiple-languages/

How did you teach your child to speak a foreign language?
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/how-did-you-teach-your-child-to-speak-a-foreign-language/

I really do hope this information helps you on your way to learning more about teaching languages, and please - feel free to share with us your opinion on it!

Thankss sooo much dear Lappy. these threads were very useful. you are a kind person

Hey hi, to teach english to your kids try to start with very simple words so that he will understand basics … just like tell him “come here” , “what are you doing” so that he will understand. when he is 3+ or some thing you can start a training to him. I did same with my nephew who stays in my home now he is 4 , he speaks very good english. hopes its helps you

I was also very reluctant to start the second language. My son is 2 years old. After much thought and much delaying to just start the second language. The reason is because I waited an entire year (since he was one year old) and was only teaching him one language (which was not the language of the country we live in) and only found that this confused him. In the home, we spoke this language and when we left the house, everyone else was speaking English. I recently started the English program and found that it helped him a lot to make sense of the world around him. Things started to click and I believe it was the right decision. We are using the Brill Kids program for both English and the second language which in the beginning might have been a little confusing for him. This is because he would see the same exact picture in one lesson with the word in English and in another lesson it is called something else in a different language. I think (and hope) he will be okay. I think for my situation it is better to teach both languages and hope he picks up as much as possible from both. I already tried delaying teaching the language and this did not work for him. I can tell you that the BrillKids program has improved his spoken language. The changes are subtle, but because I stay with him all day long, I have noticed them. He has said a few new words and tends to babble more. He has only been on the first language for 16 days and the English for 5 days. Good luck to you and I hope it works out for us both.

The easiest way to make the child speak any language allow the child to move with other children who speaks English, if not you can make the child watch English favorite cartoons , so that the child will learn the words quickly