Bao & Bun's Bilingual Journey

Is Learning Chinese Just an Interest or Really a Necessity?

Recently, I talked to a parent who felt really discouraged about their child’s Chinese learning. Progress was slow, and they were starting to think about giving up. Whenever I hear something like this, I always try to gently encourage parents to hang in there. It’s really the parent’s persistence that makes long-term progress possible.

Among my friends, I’ve noticed that when Chinese learning gets tough, many parents back off because they don’t want to fight with their kids or hurt the parent-child relationship. Honestly, that’s very common.

In the past couple of years, as my child started learning more advanced Chinese at school, and we began working on idioms, sentence building, and higher-level vocabulary with a tutor at home, my mindset changed. I started treating Chinese as just another school subject—like math or English. It also needs consistent practice, not necessarily through writing, but through things like reading bridge books or listening to historical stories. We’re taking it step by step, moving toward more advanced levels.

Since my kids are used to doing their daily Chinese homework from school and finishing their weekend tutoring assignments, they don’t seem to feel overwhelmed by it. Sure, they complain sometimes, but overall they haven’t lost motivation.

I think part of the reason is that I’ve tried to offer a lot of fun Chinese content and use small rewards to keep things positive. At the same time, I’ve also made Chinese a non-negotiable part of their routine, which I think helps. So far, we’re seeing steady progress.

In my experience, the early stages of teaching Chinese to kids overseas aren’t too difficult. But once they hit the intermediate stage—when they can listen and speak but aren’t confident reading or writing—it really takes a bit more structure and planning to keep going. Whether that means using a specific textbook or just reading lots of extra books, some kind of plan is needed if we want their Chinese skills to keep improving.

Because our kids don’t use Chinese much in daily life, intentional learning may really be necessary.

From what I’ve seen, if Chinese is treated just as a hobby or if we don’t expect kids to keep improving, their progress usually stops when the learning stops. For example, if a child stops learning Chinese at age eight, even when they grow up, their vocabulary might still sound like an eight-year-old’s.

So at the end of the day, I feel that treating Chinese as just an interest might not be enough to sustain learning as kids get older. But if we treat it like any other school subject that’s part of their routine, then it becomes a natural part of their growth—and that might be what helps them keep going.