Will my child's attitudes affect the learning of a second language? 

A parent can provide a stimulating language environment, but that is not enough. A parent can take a child on lots of trips, provide plentiful resources and materials in the home for language practice and variation. A parent can ensure that a child meets other speakers of a minority language. All this is valuable and will give the child a good chance of becoming bilingual. Yet, if children's attitude, motivation and interest in their languages are not inspired, the parent may find that hopes about bilingual development are not fulfilled.

Consider this question with an analogy. Some parents buy lots of books for their children. Such parents often believe that, by providing a vast library of books, their children will develop literacy. While creating the right physical reading environment is important, it is clearly not enough. Children need to be encouraged to read. Another cluster of parents tend to think of (and teach) reading as a skill. Religiously, every evening there is half an hour's practice for the child to learn to read. That is excellent, but not enough. Such parents may find that when such children are able to read by themselves, they are no longer interested in books. Reading has been taught as a skill and not as a pleasurable activity of value in itself. Encouraging a positive attitude to reading, making books an enjoyable experience for children, and encouraging them when learning to read is important in the long-term development of reading habits.

The same idea holds with bilingual language development. Providing a stimulating and varied environment for vocabulary and linguistic structures to evolve, ensuring that a child's linguistic skills become well developed is important. It is not enough. It is also important for the child to have a positive self-concept about their two languages. Parents are only one source of language encouragement for the child. For example, the perceived status of a minority language in society will affect the child's language self-concept. To a rebellious teenager, parental approval can have the opposite effect to that intended. Before and during these pivotal teenage years, parents can engineer an appropriate language environment for the child. Examples of parental language engineering include: wisely choosing secondary schooling, taking children to enjoyable events where the minority language is used and inviting friends who speak the minority language to the house.