How to Raise a Bilingual Child When You Don’t Speak the Language Fluently

A real-world guide for desi parents who want their kids to know their mother tongue, without pretending to be something we’re not. If you’re trying to raise a bilingual child and you’re not fluent in the language yourself, this is for you.

There’s a moment that changed everything for our family.

Our son, who was just starting to fall in love with books, would toddle over to my wife with a Hindi book in his hands, ready to crawl into her lap. And she would have to gently send him to me instead.

She can’t read the Hindi script. She grew up speaking the language with her family, understanding it deeply, loving it fully. But somewhere along the way, like a lot of second-generation desis, she never learned to read it. And now, watching her own son hand her a book and have to redirect him, she felt something we both started feeling a lot back then. A small, painful gap between the parent she wanted to be and what the books in our house allowed her to be.

That was the dealbreaker for us. That single repeated moment, our son being told “Papa will read that”, was the reason Unapologetically Desi exists.

If you’re reading this, you probably know the feeling we’re describing. Maybe you grew up hearing Hindi or Telugu or Gujarati at home. Maybe you understand more than you can say. Maybe you can hold a phone call with your parents but couldn’t read a children’s book to save your life. And now you have a kid, and you want them to have what you have, or maybe a little more.

Here’s what we’ve learned, both from raising our own son and from talking to hundreds of families like ours: you don’t need to be fluent to raise a bilingual child. You just need a different approach than the one most of us grew up assuming we needed.

The myth holding you back from raising a bilingual child

A lot of parents believe their child needs a fluent speaker, ideally one with a teacher’s diction and a grandparent’s vocabulary, to actually pick up a heritage language.

That’s not how kids learn.

Babies aren’t grading you. They’re absorbing patterns, sounds, and emotional warmth. They’re learning that this language is theirs because it’s part of how Mum and Dad talk to them. Whether your sentence structure is textbook-perfect doesn’t really enter into it.

What matters far more is consistency and exposure. A child who hears the language regularly, even imperfectly, even in small doses, has a foundation. A child who only hears it at one auntie’s house twice a year doesn’t.

Settle the most important thing first. Being a non-fluent parent does not disqualify you from raising a bilingual kid. It just means your approach has to be a little smarter, and a lot more honest.

Start with what you actually have

Most desi parents in the diaspora have what we’d call “warm vocabulary”. The words you grew up hearing during everyday moments. Food words. Bedtime words. Affectionate names. Half-sentence instructions your mum used to throw at you while doing four other things.

That’s gold. Use it.

You don’t need to teach a curriculum. You need to weave the language into ordinary life:

• Mealtime words: khao, paani, doodh, garam, thoda aur
• Bedtime phrases: so jao, neend aa rahi hai, achha sapna
• Affectionate calls: beta, raja, chinna, dikra
• Everyday verbs: aao, jao, dekho, suno, baith

Pick a small set you’re comfortable saying naturally. Use them every day. Don’t switch to English just because your sentence isn’t grammatically clean. Half-mixed is fine. Children sort it out.

Read to them, even if you don’t read the script

This is the part where a lot of desi parents quietly give up. They want to read a Hindi or Telugu or Gujarati book to their baby, but they never learned the script. Or they did, twenty years ago, and it’s gone.

For a long time the only options were: learn the script as an adult (good luck with a newborn), or skip it.

This was the exact wall my wife and I hit. I could read to our son. She couldn’t. And in a household where we were trying to share parenting equally, that gap mattered. It meant our son was learning, on a quiet level, that one parent was the “Hindi parent” and the other wasn’t. It meant my wife was being asked to opt out of a part of his life she desperately wanted to be inside of.

So we made the books we wished existed.

Our bilingual board books are written in English phonetics, so the Hindi, Telugu, or Gujarati word is spelled out the way it sounds. You don’t need to read Devanagari. You just open the book and read.

Reading aloud is one of the most underrated bilingual parenting tools we have. It introduces vocabulary in context. It models pronunciation in a way conversation often doesn’t. And it associates the language with cuddles and bedtime, which is the kind of emotional anchoring that lasts.

Even ten minutes a day. That’s the whole prescription. The only catch is that both parents need to be able to do it. Not one. Both.

Code-switching is not a problem to fix

Your child will mix languages. They’ll say “Mama, can I have more doodh?” or “Where’s my chappal?” mid-sentence in English.

This freaks parents out. It shouldn’t.

Researchers call this code-switching, and it’s a normal stage of bilingual development.Not confusion, not regression, not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. Their brain is managing two language systems at once. That’s a flex, not a flaw.

Don’t correct them sharply. Just naturally model the full sentence back. “Oh you want more doodh? Yeh lo, here’s your milk.” They’ll calibrate over time.

Let the grandparents do their thing

If your parents or in-laws speak the language fluently, and you have any access to them, in person or over video, let them in.

A weekly FaceTime where Nani only speaks Telugu. A summer visit where Dada Dadi refuses to speak English. A WhatsApp voice note from your aunt that your kid listens to twice. These tiny consistent inputs from a fluent loved one are doing more than you realise.

Kids are remarkably good at figuring out who speaks what. They’ll switch automatically once they get the cue. The trick is just making sure those cues exist in their life.

Set a goal that’s actually yours

Here’s where we want to be honest with you, parent to parent.

You probably don’t need your child to be a perfect bilingual writer who can recite Tagore. You probably want something quieter and more meaningful. For them to understand their grandmother on the phone. To recognise the language as part of who they are. To not feel like a foreigner at their own family wedding.

Those are very different goals from “fluent literacy”, and they require very different effort levels. Pick the goal that’s actually yours, not the one your aunties want you to have. Sustainable beats ambitious every time.

A few things that just genuinely work

If we had to compress everything we’ve learned into a small list, this is it:

• Read aloud daily. Even five minutes. Bilingual board books are built for this.
• Pick ten phrases you’ll commit to using every day. Bath time, mealtime, bedtime.
• Don’t switch to English just because you stumbled. Stumble in the language. That’s modelling too.
• Make sure both parents can participate. This is the one most families overlook.
• Lean on the grandparents. Voice notes count. Weekend calls count.
• Play the music. Old film songs, lullabies, devotional music. The soundscape matters.
• Forgive yourself for code-switching. Yours and theirs.
• Stop measuring against fluency. Measure against connection.

The guilt is real. Don’t let it stop you.

There’s a specific guilt that comes with being a desi parent in the diaspora. The quiet fear that you’re letting something irreplaceable slip through your fingers. That your kid will grow up not knowing where they’re from. That you should have done more, started earlier, married someone who spoke better Hindi, kept up with weekend language school.

We’ve felt all of it. My wife felt it the day she had to send our son to me with a book she couldn’t read. I felt it the first time I had to Google a word mid-sentence.

But here’s the thing nobody tells you. The parents who are worrying about this are the parents who are doing it. The very fact that you’re reading a blog post about raising a bilingual child means you’re already further along than you think.

You don’t have to be fluent. You have to be present.

And honestly? The most powerful thing you can model for your child is not a perfectly preserved language. It’s two parents who tried, imperfectly, lovingly, in two languages, to keep something alive together.

That’s the lesson. That’s the whole thing. That’s why we made these books.

Unapologetically Desi makes bilingual board books in Hindi, Telugu, and Gujarati, written in English phonetics so every parent can read along. Built by parents who needed them. Browse our books here.

Frequently Asked Questions