You want your child to speak a second language but you don’t know how or where to start.

Maybe you don’t speak that language as well as you once did. Maybe you live in a country where you’re the only one around that speaks the language and you’re too shy to speak it in front of others. Maybe it seems not worth it to even try. I had all of these thoughts when we had our son, and I decided not to teach him my native language when he was born. But that changed when he was around 3.5 years old on a trip to Czechia.

I had grown up in a Polish household in Canada to Polish parents where we spoke Polish all day, every day. Despite that, when I moved out of the house at age 24, even with the solid foundation I took from home, my Polish suffered. A lot. Without opportunites to speak in Polish daily, I forgot simple words like ‘bowl’ or ‘outlet’ within a few months of moving out and I was just generally not as fluid in the language as before. Luckily, I found ways to slowly bring more Polish into my day and I managed to reverse the trend so as not to lose it completely.

By the time we had our first child, Oliver, I decided that it was not worth teaching him Polish. I shudder at the decision now but it seemed so valid at the time. I struggled with the language despite growing up in a household with two parents that spoke the language fluently. I married someone who didn’t speak Polish so we spoke English at home and I’d be the only one to speak the language to him. In my mind, that wouldn’t be enough to allow him to be fluent in the language in the long run. I also saw all my Polish friends, with a similar two Polish parent household, struggle to keep up the language and it was frankly a struggle to hear them talk to their parents, where it was a mix of Polish/English just to get their point across. The thought of me teaching Oliver a second language in the current situation seemed pointless when I saw what happened to me and my friends in what could be described as an ideal situation.

It wasn’t until we took a trip to Europe that completely changed my perspective. We were traveling through Europe for 3 months with Oliver who was 3.5 years old at the time and Ella, who was 8 weeks old when we started the trip (I know, we’re crazy!). It was during our second leg of the trip that we stopped in Prague, Czechia that changed my outlook on language learning forever. While there, I saw how similar Polish was to Czech in terms of written words and sounds, so I was able to pick up on conversations and even figure out some street signs just by leaning on my Polish.

And then it hit me.

You don’t need to be perfect in a language for it to be worth learning. You can have just enough understanding for it to be useful and that in and of itself makes it worth it. I subconsciously carried around this belief that it had to be perfect because I remembered the shame of forgetting words I once knew automatically and that felt like failure so why put my son through that?

“We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.”

― Kató Lomb, Polyglot: How I Learn Languages

I realized that there were so many reasons that I could teach my son (and eventually daughter) Polish even if I was damn certain they would eventually stop speaking it (I shudder at the thought but it’s a likely possibility). Some reasons that came to mind:

• They would forever at least understand it as comprehension is always stronger than the ability to speak
• If they decided at some point to take personal responsibility for the language, they’d have a massive head start
• Maybe we would change our plans and move to Poland (spoiler, that’s currently the case)

2.5 Years Later

Fast forward to today and I’m writing this from our apartment in Kraków, Poland where we’ve been living for the past 10 months and counting. The kids attend an all Polish daycare and speak both Polish and English fluently (for their age anyway). The decision to extend our stay in Poland was majorly impacted by how well the kids fit in from the start in their new surroundings. And of course, a lot of that stems from the fact that they knew the local language from day 1. They’ve made friends with locals in the community, taken in events and been able to laugh and play with their cousins thanks to the decision to teach them a language I once thought was destined to be forgotten.

Teach your child a second language if it’s at all within your abilities.

Even if you’re a little rusty or you’re learning a language yourself. Not only will it benefit your ability to speak the language, you’ll be giving your child a gift that can do wonders for their future, wherever that future ends up being.