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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I emigrated to the US as a ten year old, and am using the one-parent-one-language approach to teach my children our heritage language. DH, while supportive, speaks only English.

It started to feel like an uphill battle once the kids started school. They attend Saturday language school, watch no tv except in the heritage language, and I encourage them to speak it with each other, but it’s a struggle. Any tips from those who have done this successfully are welcome![/quote]

My tip for you comes as the child who was in this situation, except that both my parents spoke the other language. You simply have to make the choice as the parent that you will be relentless in only speaking the language to your child and only accepting that your child respond back to you in it. You cannot give in no matter how tired everyone is at the end of the day. Yes, it's an uphill battle, but fight it. It's worth it. It's just something you decide is important and will stick with. With my mom who was the at-home parent she was a little less strict, while my dad would come home from work and say, "I've spent the day working hard in English. Speak to me in X or don't speak to me." Sounds harsh, but I promise we had a great relationship with him and it worked. Since you're the only parent who speaks the language, you can't let it slide due the grind of day to day life.

Don't insist your children speak the language to each other. That's just unnatural. Between myself and my siblings and cousins who all grew up in the US and speak our home language fluently, we have never, ever spoken anything but English to each other when not around the adults. [/quote]

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