Language needs to be intentional.
One can set up a Chinese week or weekend when everyone needs to make the effort to speak the language. There can be a silent hand sign, such as a ‘C’ made with a thumb and forefinger to denote alert to speak Chinese instead of verbal warning, because the latter can get annoying after a while.
My kids get resentful when I ask them to “speak Chinese.” I need to learn how to effectively use the language too.
How does it work if another parent doesn’t understand the language?
In a book about bilingualism I can’t remember the title now, they suggested to link the language to a situation. For instance, some people found really helpful to speak the language while driving in the car, so the kids got used to that. Parties and cultural celebrations are also good, the problem I see with that is that it’s very difficult to monitor other people’s families, so with a lot of children around it’s not difficult to fall back into English when it is the language that most children speak well.
So true! We try our best to provide an environment that are vital to their growth, and linking language to a situation is a great start. It will be more comfortable as time goes. We cannot persuade everyone to have our point of view, not that we should anyway, but it would be great if we can only find a few souls who have a similar vision and who agree to provide a Chinese-only environment on a regular basis of the children, then we can take it easy on those other sporadic situations where only English is spoken, e.g. like a special Chinese club for an hour a week with a specific group of kids, playing together would be ideal. Please read Situation #2.3: My child speaks to me in fluent Chinese; but somehow he tends to speak to his siblings and friends in English, even though they too can speak Chinese fluently…