This paper addresses Spanish-Estonian speaking families' language ideologies in relation to language use in the family setting, i.e. how parents determine to employ languages among themselves and with their children. Family members select different languages for different goals when they talk to one another. In this inquiry, parents draw on their knowledge of the ‘one parent–one language’ strategy but also translanguage for different reasons, constructing novel patterns of bilingual modes. The inquiry explores parents’ attitudes towards language maintenance, transmission, and use with their children. It incorporates the lens of ‘new speaker’ research to assay the empirical data gathered in Tallinn households among Spanish-Estonian speaking families so as to add to a better grasp of family language policy, planning, and management, pointing out how macro-level sociolinguistic expectations and norms might be worked out on the micro level in everyday social interactions.