Raising bilingual children

I came here to the States when I was 2 months shy of 5 years old. My mom had the foresight to teach me to read and write Korean before we immigrated. I began kindergarten three months after setting foot here, knowing not a lick of English. I dropped Korean and adopted English as my language of choice within a few years though; you know what is your primary language when you do your times tables in that language and when you actually think your thoughts in that language -- mine's English.

Thankfully (although I resented it at the time) my grandmother came to live with us when I was 12, and since I commuted from home to college and continued living at home until the day I got married, I had a good 12 years of Korean immersion during which I also had the good fortune of studying one semester of basic Korean at Berkeley.

My parents and my in-laws can speak English well, although not fluently, so it's not absolutely crucial for my kids to learn to speak Korean in order to communicate effectively with their grandparents. However, I just personally feel that, like it or not, if you've got an Asian face, the world will pretty much expect you to speak some Asian language, most likely the one from whom your forefathers came. And at least one study has shown that growing up bilingually gives an IQ boost. And finally, I've got a dear friend (1/2 Japanese, 1/2 white) who can speak fluent Japanese thanks to her mother, although she grew up in California, went to American public schools, and had a father who doesn't speak a word of Japanese. I figure if she can do it, then my kids can too. So that's why I decided my children will speak Korean as well as English. And for free too -- no special classes to send them to, just do it at home.

As I said earlier, I think in English. Unguarded, the first words that pop out of my mouth are invariably English. When I speak Korean, I must first think the thought out in English, and then translate into Korean. It's a laborious process (at least in my mind) and I wish I didn't have to do that. But it's something that I set my mind to do from the very beginning. And we all know that with raising kids, consistency is key, no matter what the issue.

So from Day One, I spoke only Korean with my kids. I did this from Day One because I know it's almost impossible to speak one language with them for three or four years and then suddenly decide that we're going to speak a new language every day all day long. And the many words I didn't know in Korean? I just threw in the English words, but kept the sentence structure Korean. ("Umma-ga reach mot-hae" for "Mommy can't reach," "Oori freeway taja" for "Let's ride the freeway," etc.) So their vocabulary isn't so good, but their basic sentences are pretty good, as are their accents. I've even gotten comments from fluent native-speaking Koreans that my kids speak Korean better than their mommy does, and they're always surprised when they find out that mommy's the one that's been teaching them everything they know about the Korean language.

My husband, unfortunately, doesn't support me in this endeavor as much as I'd like him to. He doesn't oppose me speaking Korean with them, but he would rather converse in English with them; he says he feels closer to them when he speaks his primary language, English. Ironically, he lived in Korea from 5th grade all the way up until college, so his Korean is so much better than mine, but I dare say that he feels like his relationship with his parents (which is very good) could've been even closer if they shared the same primary language. So although his Korean is better than mine, unfortunately my kids are stuck with learning Korean from me.

(My husband and I speak English with each other (he and I agree that it feels absolutely silly to speak Korean to each other), and so our kids are exposed to English every single day. And despite my reluctance to communicate with them in any language other than Korean, their English skills have not suffered a single bit. My firstborn can read chapter books in English at the second grade level and she hasn't begun kindergarten yet. And she has absolutely no accent in either language. (Yes, I'm just a teensy weensy bit proud of her.) Jury's still out on my secondborn -- she's only three, so her Korean is still much stronger than her English, but she's moving along a similar trajectory as her sister.)

I know that this chapter will probably close soon though. My Korean skills are probably no better than a kindergartener's, and there will soon come a day when the level of sophistication in my conversation with my kids will need to be much higher than my Korean language skills can handle. I'm a little sad at the prospect, because that probably means that there's a good chance that by the time they're in middle school they will only know how to say their name in Korean. But we'll have to cross that bridge when we get there. Until then, I speak to them in Korean and insist that they speak to me back in Korean.

One big fear that I have about raising my kids bilingually is that I'm putting an artificial burden on my relationship with my children. You know how they say that it's very important to keep the lines of communication open, especially when they're going through those difficult years? Am I setting myself up for alienation between me and my kids? And the other big fear that I have is have I set up my kids for alienation from their peers at school? Right now they're in preschool, but there and elsewhere in public I insist on speaking in Korean with them, even in front of others. In a couple of years they probably will be embarrassed by me, and their classmates might also make fun of them for speaking a "ching-chong oriental" language. Am I doing the right thing?

*sigh* How can doing the right thing (according to the studies I'm boosting my kids' IQ for free!) be fraught with so many potential drawbacks? It makes me question whether I'm doing the right thing or not, but I'm given encouragement every time I hear somebody say that they wish their parents had taught them the language of their forefathers.