Best way to raise a bilingual baby?

Both my niece and nephew are being raised bilingual.  My sister-in-law
is Latino, and she has a master’s degree in Early Childhood
Psychology.  She did extensive research into how to raise a bilingual
child.

The number one thing that she discovered was that it’s best to only
speak the language that is not considered primary for where you’re
living.  For example, my brother’s family lives in Colorado where
English is the primary language.  So, for the first couple of years,
they mainly spoke to their child in Spanish.  The thinking behind this
is that the children will get plenty of exposure to English from
neighbors, other kids, schools, parents, etc.

My nephew is almost 6 and my niece just turned 3.  Both of them are
completely fluent in Spanish and English.  However, my brother and
sister-in-law now mainly use Spanish for authority and discipline,
which seems to work well for them and their children.

Another important component of teaching your children to be bilingual
is to have both parents fluent in speaking both languages.  My brother
didn’t know how to speak Spanish before he met my sister-in-law. 
However, by the time they had their children, he had become fluent in
speaking Spanish, which greatly helped their children to become
bilingual.

Here are some good articles and resources for teaching your children
to become bilingual:

“On Raising Bilingual and Multilingual Children”
http://www.imdiversity.com/Article_Detail.asp?Article_ID=2404 

“The Bilingual Baby Company”
http://thebilingualbabyco.com/  

“Bilingual Families Web Page”
http://www.nethelp.no/cindy/biling-fam.html 

“Doubletalk: Raising A Bilingual Family”
http://childrentoday.com/resources/articles/bilingual.htm 

“Child Bilingualism”
http://babyparenting.about.com/cs/childbilingualism/ 

“Raising A Bilingual Child”
http://family.go.com/raisingkids/child/dev/expert/dony97fabilingual/dony97fabilingual.html


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Wanted some real nuts and bolts activities

try here

http://family.go.com/raisingkids/child/dev/expert/dony97fabilingual/dony97fabilingual.html

http://childrentoday.com/resources/articles/bilingual.htm

http://www.scholastic.com/smartparenting/experts/reading/0_2_bilingualch.htm

http://www.imdiversity.com/Article_Detail.asp?Article_ID=2404

://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=links+bilingual+baby&btnG=Google+Search

hiya!
 i have two bi-lingual children (german + english)ages 21 and 20, and
a third tri-lingual son (english, danish and icelandic)aged 5 1/2.what
has worked very well for our family is a technique whereby each of the
parents (assuming parents that speak different languages)provides an
anchor role for the childs language development skills, communicating
with the child as exclusively and consistently as possible in the
parents primary language. although this is difficult at times, it
seems to work really well.there is an excellent book by the swedish
professor lene arnberg titled *How Children Become Bilingual* (ISBN
91-46-15477-9,Wahlstrom and Widstrand publishers), which details a
couple of decades of research in this area, and makes for fascinating
reading! further sources for information include: dr.arnbergs doctoral
dissertation *Early Childhood Bilingualism in the Mixed-Lingual
Family*,  and two informative and well written textbooks outlining in
particular the physiologial mechanisms involved in childhood language
acquisition, :1)*Generally Speaking:How Children Learn Languages*, by
R Macaulay, publisher Newbury House and 2)*Second Language Acquisition
in Childhood:Vol.1.Preschool Children*, by B.Mclaughlin, publisher
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
hope this information helps you as much as it helped us. enjoy!
bob