Have you ever met a family where parents speak to a child their heritage language but a child responds back in the community one? Or maybe this is the case in your multilingual family?
It certainly could be frustrating: you were always speaking the target language with your child and maybe he/she even spoke it to you back as a little kid but eventually started to use more majority language with you and finally completely switched to it.
But be positive, your child is still bilingual with the level of bilingualism called passive or receptive, when she accumulates the language enough to understand it but chooses not to use it for various reasons.
What are these reasons and are there any solutions if you would like your child to be an active bilingual?
Please read more here.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 