Trilingual child and our three parental challenges

I get many comments that it is awesome that my child knows three languages. In general, I think it is quite positive, but boy, there are some things that worry me a lot.

But first, a little bit of a context. We grew up in Poland, then lived in  New Zealand and moved to Japan a year ago. The two of us are already speaking Polish and English fluently (how fluently it is a discussion for a separate occasion). We have spent more than six years immersed in English while trying to keep our Polish intact (let me break it to you: we failed).

We have also made multiple attempts at studying Japanese before the move to Tokyo, each time stopping unfortunately for long enough to have to start from the beginning the next time we gathered some new motivation to come back to it.

So here we are, one year into living in Japan, still not speaking the language freerly. However, we are finally able to at least order food, do shopping and ask basic questions.

Our preschooler on the other hand, not only understands and speaks Polish and English (kind of), but also speaks and understands Japanese. Actually, after a year here, she went from zero to choosing Japanese over the other languages in most situations.

Great! You would say. But here are my three concerns:

1. One sentence in a single language is a challenge

After being immersed in English for such a long time, our Polish faded a bit or even took a second place, especially in the context of our professional lives. That is for starters.

Also, some things are said better in one language versus the other. As we both speak the same languages and roughly at the same level, over the years we have started talking in a mix of Polish, English, and recently, also Japanese.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if not for this little person listening and repeating. To communicate clearly and efficiently we have developed this bisare way of mixing three languages not rarely in a single sentence.

Unfortunately, our kid whether by following our example, or by herself, is doing exactly the same. As adults, we recognise that this method is only successful at home, but our daughter is clueless as she attempts to talk in the same way with her grandma, who speaks Polish.

2. Using all 3 languages equally well is hard

We do not have to use 3 languages equally well, so we don’t. Tomek prefers Polish, I prefere English, and we both berly use Japanese. Nonetheless, we still mix and this is a problem when raising a multilingual child.

We are aware that there are different techniques like one person – one language, which requires each person to stick to one language and one language only. It is super hard though when you are a real human being speaking three languages. The only way this method is truly reinforced is in preschool, where only Japanese is spoken. At home we mix and so does our kid.

3. Learning three languages at once slows down the learning process

Talking in 3 languages makes her speech a bit poorer than single-lingual kids. It was true in New Zealand for English, and it is true in Japan for Japanese.

This is completely normal, but I still worry that it affects her learning. Every night we read stories in 3 different languages, and they are 3 different stories with different topic and vocabulary because we have 0 books in 3 languages. Maybe I should write one…

So as you can see, it sounds awesome if you hear that a child speaks three languages, but is it really? What do you think? I would love to hear your opinion.