Language Training

How would you raise a child bilingually?
Say you wanted your child to be bilingual, say English and Spanish. (Of course considering you speak both languages yourself as well.) How would you be able to raise them to know the differences between each language and know when to use them and who to use them with? What would keep them from speaking "Spanglish" (A mixture of both… Example: I gusta el dog)? And how could you keep them from being more accustomed to one language than the other or forget it? I know there are some people who learn both from their time of birth/soon after; I just don’t understand how they teach them?
Well what if all three were interacting together? (Mother, father, and child.) Would they still stick to the "one parent, one language" or would they all communicate together in a conversation in whatever language they were using at the time?

children have the ability to pick up both languages with ease especially if they are exposed from birth. They may occasionally mix them up when they are little but they will outgrow it as they expand their vocabulary.

A good way if for them to associate one language with one parent and the other language with the other parent.
References :
teacher of many bilingual kids and I’m bilingual and have many friends who are as well.

I grew up with several languages spoken at home, in my case, English, French and Greek. This was before all this "one person one language" stuff… my father speaks five languages and spoke three of them routinely at home, which was how I learned. He was my only parent from aged 4 until he remarried when I was 9, and my mother when she was around only spoke English. I think a bilingual parent is just as good as having one parent for each language.

Kids will mix them in the beginning, when they have few words, but soon they’ll adopt "codes" and understand that the two languages are spoken in different contexts.
My daughter has grown up speaking English, French and Spanish at home. I speak English and French with my family and with my brother and friend (who we share a home with), and my long-time boyfriend is from Argentina. She’s picked up Spanish from listening to us speak it. At 4 she’s as proficient at it as I am. She hasn’t mixed them hardly at all since she was 2 1/2 or 3. As a young toddler, she definitely did, but that was because she was still learning so many words, and words that she didn’t have in English, she might have in French and would substitute it until she learned the word in English. Now that her vocabulary is large in all three languages, she doesn’t need to fill in the gaps in one language with another as much. She knows to speak French when there’s a French speaker around or someone else is speaking it. She knows that it’s not appropriate to speak French or Spanish to someone who’s speaking English.
It’s just something that happens naturally with kids that are raised in bilingual homes or cultures.
In fact, in most advanced countries around the world, second languages are instilled in children from a young age, even from birth. Countries with English as the first language are the only countries that really don’t, and I think the population suffers from it.

About forgetting… I personally have forgotten most of my Greek. I only heard it when my uncle or grandfather were around and they and my father would speak it. But French was reinforced daily, and it has stayed with me. I think if it is spoken routinely, forgetting will not be an issue.
References :