French daughter 1

Dutch daughter 1 - parent quote 1

I think for new parents, if they’re struggling with the idea of: “do I keep pushing for it or do I give it up?” I think you should push for it. Especially when they’re quite young because they don’t really know what they want [laughs]. I think that… I really appreciate growing up with French, and I would’ve preferred to have a little bit more nowadays, so I think they will appreciate it later on.

Dutch daughter 1 - parent quote 2

[Talking about what advice she would give to parents of bilingual children] I think different forms of the language is quite good. You know like, have some books, and some films, and… it sort of becomes more of a language than some words or something you say here and there. Like it becomes more of a culture almost, if that makes sense? I guess it might depend on the child and what they lean towards. But I really leaned towards reading, I really liked that, so… especially for anxious children like me, if you find something they can feel confident and, you know, quite happy about doing then that’s good. If my main form of learning French had been around Alliance [Française] with lots of people and then I felt really anxious, or if I’d gone to France and everyone had been quite like: “Oh that’s wrong! You said that wrong!” then I would’ve really withdrawn and not felt comfortable speaking it and it probably would’ve got a lot worse I think. So I think feeling comfortable with the language is quite important, no matter what age.