Most children in bilingual households speak with their parents in the language of the culture in which they live, partly because they are bombarded by that language daily, and partly because children have a powerful need to conform. "As children move from preschool into the early school years they become increasingly susceptible to embarrassment if their parents are different," Dr. Snow said. Answers in English

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When Ms. Pruitt and her husband, Felix Kessler, a professor at N.Y.U.'s journalism school, lived in France, they spoke English to daughter, Gabriela. The child, who was attending French schools, answered in French. The Kessler family then moved to New York, where they enrolled Gabriela in a course in speech therapy to help her with English pronunciation and sent her to an American school. Gabriela now answers her parents in English, even when addressed in French.

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According to Dr. Snow, parents should feel comfortable speaking one language with the children responding in another, thus preserving comprehension skills in the second language. And anyway, Mrs. Pruitt said: "A child should identify with the country she is living in. I am not insisting on bilingual writing here, because I feel she should identify with this educational system."

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Children who do not begin a second language before they begin school often have a problem developing total fluency in that language. "It is almost impossible to change the language of the home after it has been established," Dr. Snow said.

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Eric Fassin, a French national and the assistant director at N.Y.U.'s Institute of French Studies, said that when his daughter started to speak, while the family was living in America, she used English and French. "But then she realized when she was about 2 that the French speakers she knewspoke English," Mr. Fassin said. "We would ask her to speak to us in French and she would say, 'I can't.' "

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But after a summer in France, the child, now 3, recovered her French. "It's not perfect," Mr. Fassin said. "Her R's sound American to me."

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His daughter, like many young bilingual children, mixes up sounds and syntax. She has the habit, while speaking French, of adding the English "s" sound to third-person French verbs -- for example, changing the French phrase for "she works" ("elle travaille," pronounced "el trav-EYE") to "el trav-EYES." She also will use English constructions in French, saying "mon amie's poupee" for "my friend's doll" instead of the correct French construction, "la poupee de mon amie," literally "the doll of my friend."

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Children may also associate one language with particular emotions and activities. "The kids change language according to the roles they act out," Mrs. Climent said. "If they are playing parents they speak Spanish. If they deal with emotions, it is Spanish. English is for their own world, their play world. Whatever things they do in life that relate to their friends they do in English."

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Writing and reading in both languages at once can be problematic, studies show and parents attest. Many educators recommend that youngsters be taught to read and write in the dominant language before being pushed to learn the written skills of the second language, although they see no limit to verbal development.

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The payoff, say many bilingual adults, is worth the hardships they endured as children. "Speaking French with my mother did not exclude me from my friends," said Susan K. Brodie, a freelance book editor whose mother was raised in France. "It was just something weird my mother did. But by the time I got to junior high school, I had the background and the interest to study the grammar and the language. It opened a new world to me."