RetireJapan

Time spent overseas is key. My kids went every summer and that made a massive difference.
Also speaking in English only at home helps. They both work for international companies in Japan. They
did not attend international school. One went to university overseas. Any money spent on education is worth
it.

Stuart wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:46 am Time spent overseas is key. My kids went every summer and that made a massive difference.
Also speaking in English only at home helps. They both work for international companies in Japan. They
did not attend international school. One went to university overseas. Any money spent on education is worth
it.

As in Overseas summer camps? How did you handle club activities, homework, friends, and such?

My little guy is only 3months, but I am curious about options and opinions.

His mother speaks fluent English, so we now speak 95% English at home, as the research says we do not have to worry about him picking up Japanese.

He will be going to Japanese public schools form Elementary -> JH and private Japanese high school hopefully.

Interestingly enough research also shows that the mother being bilingual is a much better indicator for the child becoming bilingual in the future, all things being equal.

Stuart, thanks a lot for the information! So for your first kid, did you something like one parent one language before moving to the USA, or mixing spontaneously?

I'd say don't sweat it out and overspend. Adopt OPOL strategy, do you best and relax. A lot of people, including me, learned English (or other foreign languages) later in life, without having an advantage of English-speaking parent, or living in English-speaking country.

I'd say it is much more important to nurture desire to learn and achieve in kids than spend all efforts on the language.

I speak with my kid only in English for 2 weeks, and then only in my mother tongue for other two weeks. As I was told by my more experienced friends in this area, it is important to not communicate with kids in Japanese at any cost - kids are lazy and as soon as they realize that they can talk to you using only Japanese they will drop other languages.

One of the best resources for raising kids here is the JALT bilingualism SIG monographs, many available free for download at the link below. (We're even in there back in the 90s.) Take advantage of the collective experience of people who "have been there, done that."

Disney can be a factor (we still have all the movies on both VHS and DVD, and they did help), but there's so much more to it.

Good luck!

https://www.bsig.org/monographs

Very interesting link, thanks!

We plan to use the OPOL approach, but I speak with my wife in Japanese, so I assume the kid will realize sooner or later that his father can speak and understand Japanese very well. We could starts speaking english between wife and me, as we both are relatively fluent, but I wonder if this triliangualism wouldn't be too much.

But I agree, that the desire to learn is much more important.

It is not a problem that they know that you can speak Japanese. It's inevitable. What's important is that they know that the only language they can speak to you is English. When they talk to you in Japanese - just ignore it, or say "Could you please repeat that in English?" etc.
I've found this resource (esp. the e-mail subscription) useful in creating bilingual (actually, trilingual) environment. Though, I'm yet to see the results, as my kid is only 1yo.
https://bilingualkidsrock.com

The wife and I made the decision a while ago to only use English at home, as we plan on going with the minority language at home approach when/if we decide to have kids. When we go out we use Japanese, but at home, only English. Figured if that it was best to get us into the habit as soon as possible.

Thanks again for the tips and link!

Tony wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:50 am The wife and I made the decision a while ago to only use English at home, as we plan on going with the minority language at home approach when/if we decide to have kids. When we go out we use Japanese, but at home, only English. Figured if that it was best to get us into the habit as soon as possible.

An interesting approach.I'd use Japanese at home and English outside,because people would be all nosy wanting to listen in on what you're talking about.They do in English,but a good chance they don't really understand and I assume they might study English.At present I only speak Japanese to the wife if visiting her parents.The daughter speaks way too much Japanese and at an age where speaking to me in English is often a hassle. Discipline is more important than motivation.