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In my family, I am the first-born child. Through the stories of my and my brother’s childhood, I got an idea of what it is like to be the second-born: “We always bought more clothes for Lena”, “Lena was always the centre of attention”, and I remember well the story of Jokica in a pink snowsuit.
Now, 35 years later, I have Lola, my second-born child. I believe we also buy less clothes for him than for his older sister. I also have an impression we photograph him less. Although I do not think either of these two things bother him, since he doesn’t lack the love, attention or hugs. However, it is true he is growing up alongside his older sibling meaning the full focus is not on him (like it was on Klara back when she was his age).
No, Lolo! Your language development journey will not be undocumented!
As a mum raising bilinguals, I consciously decided not to let his speech development pass unnoticed. As with Klara, I started diligently observing and taking notes on his speech and language(s) development. My aim was to dedicate at least one blog post solely to him, the second-born child in our bilingual family.
Only recently have I concluded from experience that siblings cannot have identical growing up conditions, no matter how hard us parents try to make this happen. The second child is never alone, to say the least. They always have the older sibling by their side or somewhere nearby. Maybe at school, or at the seaside with grandma. But the sibling is there.
Same is with the language.
Lola always had Klara, the chatterbox, by his side. So when he started saying his first syllables “ma ma ma” and “ba ba ba” when he was only eight months old, I though he will start talking in no time. But he didn’t, not even when he was 13 months old and when he called banana “nana” (then and never again) and when he uttered “tata” once.
When we were in Belgrade and he was 17 months old, he realised that by saying “mama” he has me at his service every single time. From then on, everything is mama. At the age of 20 months, after we returned from Belgrade to London, he started saying “tata” equally regularly.
He is the king of gestures and onomatopoeia: drms, dings, brms. He understands everything, in both languages. He uses hand gestures and asks I verbalise what he cannot. He replies with “da” or “naaaaa” regardless of the language the question is in. When he doesn’t want something, he moves his head left to right and ripples his nose. If I ask him who is beautiful, he proudly points at himself.
I think he is fine the way he is currently. The other evening, he tried to get something from tata. Tata didn’t know what that something was. Lola then looked at me and I assumed he was asking for his water. I was right. Water was given to him, his need satisfied. That is why I believe he is comfortable without being verbal at the moment. He is extremely cute while gesturing and producing various sounds. Like this he remains baby for longer, receives loads of attention and gets whatever he wants.
Children should not be compared they say
I know children should not be compared. However, when it comes to speech development and bilingualism I like to observe differences in my children as well as differences in immediate environments at their early age. From birth, Klara was equally surrounded by Serbian and English. When she turned one and started nursery, English became dominant. She slowly started saying her first words in both languages soon after she turned 18 months. At Lola’s age, she was verbally communicating with us.
It is different with Lola. Until recently, he was surrounded more with Serbian than with English. Tata always spoke to him in English, but Lola spent a lot of time with me either in London or in Belgrade. He even attended nursery in Belgrade for two and a half months.
Only recently, when he turned 20 months he started attending nursery in London. With all of us who speak a lot (with him and around him), especially with Klara, I believed he would start talking in Serbian a while ago.
I worry!
But he didn’t. He is just starting to be more vocal at the age of 20 – 21 months. He calls himself “beba”, he points and says “torta” for cake, “nona” for the leg and “pa pa”. Now that he is surrounded more with English (at the nursery and at home) he is saying things that sound English. He points around the house and says “voi” or “vii” (if my memory of English phonetic transcription still serves me well, I believe this is how what he says would be pronounced /vɔɪ/ and /vi:/). To me, this sounds like “What’s this?”. Then I start to worry. That he will never speak in Serbian. Last weekend, I don’t know how many times I modelled “Šta je to?“ to his /vɔɪ/. He still hasn’t reproduced it. Then, at times it would occur to me that his /vi:/ may be from Serbian “vidi“, so I started modelling that too. He now says “vidi“ quite confidently.
There are also moments when I ask him where something is and he says “e” /ε:/. It sounds quite “open”, I would say it’s pronounced half way between the palate and the throat. In Serbian, we do not have /ε:/. To me, it sounds like “there”. Again worried, I say “tu” when he says /ε:/. He now says “tu”, too.
The language battlefield
I now came to realisation that I haven’t been in the “starting to talk” phase for three years. I forgot what competition it is when you have two languages in the house. When one of these languages is entitled “the dominant one” and that language is not yours.
In order to try to balance out the absence of Serbian in the community and bring it close to English in terms of active exposure to it I talk all the time, I point, I gesture, I produce various onomatopoeic sounds. That can be tiring.
Reminder not to give up in this crucial moment
I remind myself that this present moment is the challenging one, and it should be tackled. Now that I got reminded how hard it is, I believe this is the moment in which some parents give up and say that their child only speaks in the dominant language. I try to give myself a boost by saying that this is exactly the moment when one should not give up, but build child’s basic vocabulary which will be further expanded later on. Further, this is the moment when the child, Oliver in our case, should get used to speaking to mama in Serbian (and Klara, at least when mama is present).
When these two things get established, it should be easier. At least it was easier with Klara.
Comparison, again!
As Klara before, Lola also goes to nursery four days a week and spends six hours there (in here, this is called a “shorter” day at the nursery). On Fridays, he is with me and with Serbian. I miss having our friends around on Fridays. Klara and I had close friends from Croatia in the neighbourhood who we spent our Fridays with. With Lola, I miss having friends who speak our Balkan language.
Now when I look back, I realise that we were in the heavy lockdown when Klara started to talk. When she was 18 months old, nurseries were shut and she was with me the whole day every day. Maybe this is why she started talking in both languages at the same time.
Monitor and tweak as necessary
Even though this may have been obvious for a while, I have only recently realized on the conscious level that my children’s bilingualism is my current priority in life. For that reason, I give my absolute best to create conditions for Lola to be a successful bilingual. I consciously observe the situation and monitor how things are progressing. If I conclude that he should be exposed to Serbian more, I will make it happen.