How to raise a bilingual child at home: what actually helps

Short answer: children learn the languages they hear a lot, from real people, in everyday conversation. Research does not point to one "right" method. The families who succeed tend to be the ones who make sure the home language gets plenty of daily use, especially once school starts pulling the other way. Learning two languages does not cause speech or language delays.

That is the whole idea in three sentences. The rest of this guide explains where it comes from and turns it into steps you can use this week.

What the research agrees on

Amount matters most

The most consistent finding is simple: the more a child hears a language, the more of it they learn. In a study of toddlers growing up with Spanish and English, every measure of vocabulary and grammar in each language was related to the relative amount of input in that language (Hoff et al., 2012). A review of social factors in childhood bilingualism in the US came to the same conclusion. It found that the quantity of input has the greatest effect on whether a minority language is learned, and that attitudes towards the language also play a part (Pearson, 2007).

Researchers Krista Byers-Heinlein and Casey Lew-Williams give a useful piece of arithmetic. A toddler who sleeps about 12 hours a day is awake roughly 84 hours a week. So one afternoon a week with a grandparent is only about 6% of their waking life, and that exposure alone is unlikely to lead to acquisition of a language.

Real people, not screens

The same authors note that infants do not readily learn language from television, and that hearing a language from several different people is linked to larger vocabularies. A study of two-year-olds found that the number of different speakers a child heard a language from made its own contribution to their skills in that language (Place & Hoff, 2011).

The home language is the one at risk

In a large survey of 1,899 families where at least one parent spoke a minority language, all the children spoke the majority language, but not all of them spoke the minority language (De Houwer, 2007). School, friends and screens supply the majority language for free. The home language needs a plan. Byers-Heinlein and Lew-Williams mention that many experts suggest giving slightly more early input in the minority language than in the majority one.

Bilingualism does not cause delays

The speech-language community is clear on this. A public guide backed by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association says that using multiple languages does not confuse children or cause speech or language delays. The Hanen Centre agrees: there is no evidence that being exposed to more than one language causes language difficulties or delays.

A bilingual toddler may know fewer words in each language than a child who speaks only one. But when researchers count the concepts a child knows across both languages, bilingual children know about the same number of words as monolingual children.

Choosing a method

Families usually pick one of these. The table is a summary; the OPOL vs minority language at home guide goes into more detail.

Byers-Heinlein and Lew-Williams sum up the evidence: parents should use whatever strategy promotes high-quality and high-quantity exposure to each of their child's languages. De Houwer's survey adds that the families most likely to succeed were those where both parents spoke the minority language at home. The same survey found that OPOL was neither necessary nor sufficient on its own.

Seven things you can do this week

1. Count, don't guess. Keep a rough log for three ordinary days: who speaks which language to your child, and for how long. The researchers above suggest that families should regularly check what their child is actually hearing, not what they wish they were hearing.
2. Give the home language the daily routines. Meals, bath time, getting dressed and bedtime come round every day. If they happen in the home language, the hours add up.
3. Add speakers. Grandparents on video calls, family friends, playgroups, community events, a babysitter who speaks the language. More people means more words and more reasons to use them.
4. Read together, and talk about the pictures. In a study of Latine parents in the US, parents used a median of 34.5 Spanish words when sharing an English–Spanish book, against 7 with an English-only book. Their English did not drop (Reinoso et al., 2025). The study measured what parents said, not what children learned.
5. Include books written only in the home language. A Montreal study found that parents' use of their less dominant language was highest with books written in that language. Bilingual books help parents who are less confident; single-language books give the home language the whole page.
6. Don't worry about mixing. Children who mix words from both languages in one sentence are doing something normal. The ASHA-backed guide calls it an expected part of learning. The research on parents mixing is less settled; see the OPOL guide.
7. Plan visits if you can. A study of Greek–English children in the US and Canada found that home use predicted outcomes, and that visits to and from the country of origin also mattered, especially for vocabulary (Chondrogianni & Daskalaki, 2023).

When to ask a professional

If your child is not using words or phrases at the ages you would expect, don't put it down to bilingualism. The ASHA-backed guide notes that multilingual children usually reach first words and early phrases on the same timeline as other children. If you are worried, talk to your doctor or a speech-language pathologist, ideally one with experience of bilingual children. This guide does not replace that advice.

If it isn't going to plan

Plenty of children start answering in the majority language around school age. It is common and it can be turned around. The guide My child refuses to speak our home language covers what helps.

Pip Leaf makes personalised picture books with English and a family language on the same page, so whoever reads aloud can use either one. Browse the books by language.

Drafted with AI assistance, edited by Dr Gazanfer Gür for the Pip Leaf editorial team. Last updated 26 September 2026.