More French at Home? What About Our Language?

If you are raising your kids in Quebec right now, you have probably heard it. Bill 101 keeps expanding into more corners of daily life. The message is consistent: French is declining, and something has to change.

I understand where that fear comes from; French is a minority language on this continent, and it deserves protection. I am not here to argue with that. I mean this sincerely; I have seen and felt Arabic slip away from Lebanese citizens, and as a Lebanese myself, it aches me deeply (that's a topic for another time).

I want to talk about something the policy conversation in Quebec rarely tackles: what happens inside the four walls of our home when we take that message and translate it, quietly and with the best of intentions, into “we need to speak more French with our kids here.” And if you are raising your kids somewhere else, in another province or another country, this might sound familiar too. Just swap French for English.

A story that keeps repeating itself

I have been an SLP since 2012, and there is a story that comes into my office too often, and more and more into my inbox too, from families who speak all kinds of languages. Not just Arabic. I have heard versions of this story from Spanish speaking, Yoruba speaking, Tagalog speaking, and Portuguese speaking parents:

A well meaning teacher, daycare educator, or sometimes even a pediatrician tells a parent: “Try speaking more French at home, it will help her fit in at school” or “catch up to kids her age by the start of the school year.” The parent, who loves their child fiercely and wants nothing more than for her to succeed, listens, then follows the advice, hoping the child will learn faster, or will progress better if she shows signs of a language delay. So French creeps into bedtime, into meals, into the small daily moments where the heritage language usually lives.

Years later, that same parent sits across from me, and the story changes shape. Yes, their child has learned French. However, the parent tells me, often with a sense of guilt, that they don't know how to connect with their own child in their own language anymore. Along the way, something got lost in translation, literally, and nobody warned them it would happen until it already had.

The hidden cost nobody mentions

The unease I hear from these parents is not really about words or sentences. It's about something harder to measure: the video calls with grandma that quietly lose their value and emotional connection. The family gatherings that become boring for kids who no longer understand the language spoken there. The jokes or expressions parents use that their kids barely understand anymore. The visits from an uncle or aunt that end up happening in French too.

This is not a small thing. Losing a home language is not just losing a vocabulary; it's losing a way of belonging to your own culture, to your own family.

Here is what I want every parent reading this to hear clearly: if this is you, you did nothing wrong. You were trying to give your child the best possible start. That instinct is love, not failure. And here is the second thing I want you to hear: it is not too late. Language can be rebuilt at any age. It takes intention and it takes positivity; the door never closes completely.

Why “more French” does not mean “less of other languages”

Here is where my expertise comes into play. Multilingualism research is clear about this, and I see it confirmed in my own daughters every single day: children do not have a fixed amount of language space that gets used up. A child can build strong French for school and society while also keeping a strong home language for family and identity. The languages are not competing with each other; they are completing each other. They are two pillars in the same house. And opposite what many think, if a child's first language is different from the school's language, it will be the foundation for it, not a wall against it. It's crucial to keep that one pillar strong to keep building more languages on top of it.

This is the nuance that gets lost when a societal level policy gets applied at the family level. Quebec's language plan is trying to protect French as a shared, collective resource across an entire province. That is a completely different project from what happens between a parent and a child at the dinner table. Protecting French in Quebec should not require any individual family to give up Arabic, or Tagalog, or Spanish, or Urdu, or whatever language carries your family's voice.

I am not just an SLP saying this from behind a desk. I am the daughter of Lebanese immigrants. I grew up learning French, English, and Arabic in this exact province. I am raising two trilingual girls in Montreal right now, in this exact political moment. I chose, deliberately, to keep Arabic alive in my home, not despite living in Quebec but alongside living in Quebec. My girls are growing up fluent in the languages of this country and in the language of their roots. All three. Not one or the other.

What I want you to walk away with

If a teacher or a professional has ever told you to lean harder into French at home, please hear this as an invitation, not pressure: you can absolutely support your child's French at school while protecting your heritage language at home. Those two are not in competition, and your child's brain is more than capable of managing both.

If you already feel like your heritage language is fading from your family, I understand that grief; it is real and it is very valid. And it is not permanent. Reclaiming a language you once spoke fluently, or reconnecting your child to one they lost as a toddler, is possible.

You do not have to choose between raising a child who belongs where they live and raising a child who knows where they came from. I have helped families build a multilingual plan that honors both. If that is where you are right now, you can do it too.

I'm here to help,