We have all done it. We have said things to our children that we later regretted. Maybe we yelled at them. Maybe we threatened. Maybe we bribed. Yes, we may have even grovelled a little bit (or a lot).
Being a parent means that we make mistakes, many mistakes. We aren’t perfect. Our children aren’t perfect. All we can do is to try our best to learn from our mistakes and to savor our successes.
Finding the balance between authority figure and partner in crime with our children can be very difficult, especially the older our children become. Should we be strict in a given situation? Or should we give in and let our child do what he or she wants?
When it comes to multilingualism, what is most important is that we try to make multilingualism in our lives as comfortable and normal as possible. We need to keep an eye on the long-term goals in the hopes that our strategies will help us to achieve them, rather than sabotage them.
Note that it isn’t always just the words we say that have an impact on our children. It can be that look in our eye, the tone we use or that special way that we let our children know that we are/aren’t happy with what they are doing. Be careful with how you use these things when it comes to your children’s bilingualism.
Here is a list of top 10 things to avoid saying to our bilingual children (or to someone else in front of them!), even if we don’t use the actual words below:
source https://www.multilingualliving.com/2011/11/18/bilingual-children-top-10-things-you-should-never-say/
