Day 3 of my FB Live every day in November!

Today’s topic is one that I feel the pain of every day. How do I get my kids to speak Chinese to me?

Find out my tips in the video.

I’m still waiting for my video to upload to YouTube so you’ll have to bear with me and see the FB version. But I am away from my laptop right now so we’ll just have to make do.

As always, a quick sum up after the video.

https://www.facebook.com/MandarinMama/videos/1763064097059257/

Ok. I lied.

You can’t.

It sucks but it’s true. Your kids are people and separate from your wants and desires.

Jerks.

However. There are some good reasons your kids probably won’t speak Chinese to you. Here are a few:

1) They lack the vocabulary.

It’s hard to talk about something if you don’t have the words or vocabulary you need in order to express yourself. I consider myself fluent enough in Chinese – but there’s no way I could talk about business, medicine, shoot – anything, now that I think about it – in Chinese. It’s not for lack of desire; I just don’t have the words.

Same for your children. If they don’t have the words to tell you about school or crushes or activities or anything other than some basic stuff, how can you possibly expect them to speak to you in Chinese about it?

The precursor to speaking is listening and comprehension. If you want your kid to speak Chinese, you need to equip them with the words. Up their comprehension as much as you can.

2) Your child may be a perfectionist.

Some kids, even if they know how to say 99% of a sentence, if they don’t know one word, they will refuse to speak Chinese at all. I personally solve for this by using Chinglish and telling my kids to do so. I also ask them to tell me in English and I will translate for them to say in Chinese.

Sometimes, I have no idea how to say something in Chinese. Then, I either look it up in a dictionary or I just use English.

3) They don’t see the use for Chinese.

My daughter, Gamera (6), has lately balked at speaking Chinese because she says we live in America and no one speaks Chinese. It’s true. But too bad. I am the Mommy.

I have had friends who have taken their kids back to Taiwan for seven months just so their kids are forced to speak and absorb Chinese as much as possible. She was sick of her kid losing their Chinese and made the drastic choice to make a huge change in her family’s life.

I am not saying you have to do that. But know that the older your kids are, the more dramatic your course correction may need to be.

Did you know I wrote a book on how to teach your kids Chinese? You can get it on Amazon (affiliate link) and it’s conveniently titled, So You Want Your Kid to Learn Chinese.

It’s full of practical advice, detailed applications, and heavy amounts of snark. Find most of the answers to your questions about how you can get your kids to speak in Chinese.