Although I mention parents specifically in the title, this isn’t just for parents to respond.
My wife and I are trying to raise our child to be bilingual (English and Portuguese). Currently we’re both speaking a bit of both to our child and when they eventually go to school we’ll speak more Portuguese as they’ll be exposed to English everywhere else.
Is this a good approach or is there something we can do better?
We speak Irish to the kids as much as possible, essentially all the time. Them learning English is a given, a force like gravity.
We try to get them to read Irish books, watch Irish cartoons, but that can be a struggle with the temptation of English-language ones. Children have their own strong preferences about those things.
When I visited Ireland I was very impressed by the Irish cartoons. Anywhere I went I hardly heard a lick of anything but English, but it was obvious what they were there for and it was very cool thing.
Our little one will be learning Irish as a third language at school.