Raising your children entails making a number of life-changing decisions for them. In this story a mother questioned if it would be OK for her to raise her twins fluent in her native tongue, which her husband does not speak. Read the story and please share your ideas on what you would do in this case.
Source: Reddit
My partner (18M) and I (17F) have twins (<1F). I speak both English and another language, my boyfriend speaks only English, and we have very different opinions on how to raise the twins. He believes they shouldn’t grow up able to talk with each other behind his back, which I completely understand.
In addition, though he hasn’t said it, I get the feeling he might be a bit concerned that the girls will love me more and speak to me in the other language in his presence, leaving him out of the loop. I completely get where he’s coming from, but I’m of the opinion that the more languages our kids speak the better and that they need to be exposed to my language.
We’ve had several arguments about this and it’s caused a certain amount of strain on our relationship. He argues that since every close family member is fluent in English they have no need to know a second language, which I vehemently disagree with.
It may be worth adding that one of the girls is displaying signs of hearing loss. They don’t believe she’ll be totally deaf and we are still waiting for tests, however we have already started learning BSL as a family, so the girls will essentially grow up trilingual.
I’m honestly at a loss. Do I insist on raising them bilingual or concede to only speaking English? Would I be a Jerk for insisting on raising them bilingual against my husband’s wishes?
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
