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[quote=Anonymous]I second these who say the environment always wins. So hold off English as long as possible.

Spouse and I are of different nationalities, and I'm pretty bad at his language and he's equally bad at mine. (Yeah, we take New Year's resolutions to improve but somehow, it never happens.)
So we speak English to each other. When talking to DC, I use my own language maybe 90% of the time, switching to English when I need to yell "Get off the road' or "No soccer in the house" to him and his English-speaking buddies. He also attends language enrichment class twice a month. He is pretty fluent, but English is and will always be his first language. Spouse has mostly spoken English to DC, with the result that DC's knowledge of that language is limited to a handful of phrases of good morning/ good night variety.

In my view, you won't be successful in introducing another language unless you create a NEED for the child to express themselves in that language. Difficult to balance this without becoming a nagging mom who "doesn't hear" when addressed in English. Yet, there are ways, but it's hard work. Try to maximize the exposure - even if it's hard to find same-language kids, if they hear you speaking the language to other adults, this also helps. IN DC's case, there's always a massive upsurge in his abilities when we visit my family overseas, which we try to do annually.

And you shouldn't we afraid of the kids falling behind academically - I know plenty of families who only speak their own language at home, and kids are doing perfectly fine at school. The schools in this area are well equipped to deal with English-as-second-language speakers.[/quote]

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