'Bringing up a Bilingual Child' is aimed at (existing or soon-to-be) parents in families where more than one language is spoken, as well as anyone in the extended circle of family and friend of such multilingual families, as well as for anyone coming into contact with them. The aim of the book is to help multilingual families to create a supportive environment for children in which they naturally grow up to speak more than one language. The intention is to give you an easy-to-read-and-use guide to multilingual parenting, providing motivation, ideas, advice and answers to any questions parents may have.

Bringing up a bilingual child has its challenges and it is natural for parents to worry whether their children will learn the family languages.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to announce that my book “Bringing up a Bilingual Child” will be out in June! It is a how-to-guide for parents raising bilingual children in families with more than one language. The subtitle of the book is “How to Navigate the Seven Cs of Multilingual Parenting: Communication, […]

Parents who bring up bilingual children share many experiences, independent of country and language - some of which may even surprise you.

There is no one-fits-all formula to bringing up a bilingual child. However, independent of which strategy you choose, how old your daughter is or which languages she is learning, there are some things you should do your very best to avoid at all times. These are things that may seem obvious, but that we sometimes […]

Discussing my book "Bringing up a Bilingual Child" with Marianna du Bosq from Bilingual Avenue. What do the seven Cs entail?

Preschoolers bite for a variety of reasons. Whatever the reason, parents are usually concerned with this behavior and want to encourage their children to act differently. Check out this post for 5 actions a concerned parent should take if your preschooler is biting others.

So you want to pass on your language to your children, but feel that they are not getting enough exposure to it – a familiar scenario for many minority language parents. You have made a quick calculation and noticed that you are not reaching the recommended thirty percent of exposure during your child’s waking time. […]

Knowing what hurdles may lay ahead, what the myths are and when to listen to others when it comes to raising a bilingual child.

Most parents have an ideal picture of what they want their children to become like when they grow up. Some parents are more specific than others with regards to the personality traits and behaviours they wish for their children, but I’m sure words like ‘happy’, ‘honest’, ‘well-behaved’ and ‘confident’ feature high on the wish-list. The […]

So you have decided to bring up your son to speak your family’s languages – what will this mean for your family life? What will be different? 1. A little bit of extra effort There is a bit of extra effort to be put in for you to succeed in raising your son to become […]

Which family language strategy should you use to pass on a minority language to your child? What if there are several minority languages to choose from?

To succeed in life you need tenacity and perseverance so today’s guest post comes from the wonderful Dr. Michele Borba and is about how to teach our kids “stickability” Dr. Michele Borba is an educational psychologist, parenting expert, TODAY show contributor and author of 22 books. You can also read her daily blog, Dr. Borba’s […]

Starting school is a big change in a kid's life. For parents of a bilingual child there is also the concern about keeping the minority language active.

Tips on how to make your child want to speak your language and make the minority language an active means of communication in your lives.

Are you a parent of a bilingual child? If yes, you will need patience, and it will be tested - in more than one language!

Can a single parent raisea bilingual child? Most advice is for two-parent-families, so in this post I write about how to do it on your own.

Many parents worry about raising a bilingual child and that's unfortunate. There are many benefits of being bilingual. Read them here!

There is a saying in French that goes : il n'y a que les imbéciles qui ne changent pas d'avis, meaning only idiots don't change their mind. Judging by this saying, I am no idiot because I do change my mind (very) often. When it comes to language acquisition and raising my daughter multilingually, my views, opinions and decisions have changed quite a bit since she was born. This is due to two things. Firstly, as any mother or parent, you imagine how life is going to be with your first born, you dream of things (good or bad) but reality is often far from that image you had. Secondly, before I had my daughter, I was a researcher in language acquisition. As such, I had a good knowledge of what the theories behind the development of multilingual kids were. I had, however, very little hands on experience. As a researcher, I spent 4 years working on young bilinguals' vocabulary development. I studied and followed 13 families for about 18 months. I got to know the children quite well but only on paper. I only met them a couple of times each. All of my linguistic data, that formed the basis for my thesis, was derived from recordings parents made for me during their daily life. Therefore, I knew the theory well. When I became pregnant, I had a fair bit of preconceived ideas as to what I wanted to achieve and how we, as a family, were going to achieve it. Before LJ was born, we discussed our options and decided on a loose version of the OPOL (one person-one language) strategy even though P was not entirely convinced 3 languages were necessary. As we lived in England, his Portuguese was declining fast. He was not using his mother tongue any more (apart from a few conversations with his family back home once a week). After a few well rehearsed arguments, I managed to convince him. As soon as my little one was born, speaking French to her came naturally and I am not sure I could have done it differently anyway. P mixed and switched from the beginning between English and Portuguese even though I encouraged him not to. We settled into this little routine of 3 languages pretty easily and never really questioned any of it. As a researcher though, some things I had encountered in the literature and written about in my own work, remained in my mind. Looking back, these principles you read in textbooks (or in my thesis) are just far from reality based on idealistic assumptions. They, often, are a monolingual's view of the multilingual community. Here are some of the things I took for granted as a researcher but cannot really identify with on a personal level. - Parental strategies: OPOL and other culprits Parental strategies are everywhere in the literature about multilingual children. Most of them are not well documented at all (if acknowledged at all). Researchers mostly study the one parent one language strategy or, more recently, the home/community strategy (where kids speak one language at home and learn the other one outside of home). In reality, there are so many types of multilingual families that it is almost impossible to classify them. Many recommendations about how to raise multilingual kids rely on this OPOL strategy. Yet, I am not sure that recommending a strategy to families or telling them one works better than another one is not (always) very helpful. I strongly believe that people should do whatever they feel comfortable with and feels natural. Showing them and explaining how different strategies work, yes, of course. But then one has to show them not just one, but multiple options. We know so little about how language develops in more complex situation (like our current 4 languages set-up). But that doesn't mean it does not work. - Quantifying exposure In my study, I asked families to quantify how much time their child was exposed to each language. I tried to do it for LJ, last week. It is impossible! A lot of research relies on parents telling researchers how often their children hears each language, so they can have an idea of language dominance and balance. A lot of their results, then rely on those estimates. This is actually a very tricky exercise, even more so for 4 languages. How can you account for the amount of time spent with both parents (speaking 3 languages)? How can you tell if, when your kid is in school or daycare, whether they are playing with their friends in English or listening to a teacher speaking Spanish? How can you tell, when your child is playing by themselves, what language they are thinking/playing in? I, now, realise those numbers families gave me could have been so wrong and nobody has come up with a real alternative yet. - Speak it and they will learn You hear everywhere that children are sponges and as long as you are consistent and stick to your beliefs they will learn. Well, yes, but they also need to have a need for each language and it takes a lot of hard work on the parents' side too. Multilingualism is a family effort. Many parents will recognise that. Because P speaks Portuguese to our daughter, doesn't mean she is speaking it to him. She has no need for it. He understands French and she knows it! Researchers are, unfortunately, not often interested in the wider context and what parents do to help their children's multilingualism (apart from sociolinguists maybe). - Avoiding code-switching Even if most linguists agree that code-switching is a very complex process and is not a sign of laziness or low competence (in most cases), it is still widely believed that code-switching impedes on young children's language development. Most professional advice still goes against code-switching. My attitude towards cod-switching is now a much more relaxed one. I now thinks, that if this is something parents live with in their daily lives, children will learn to differentiate amongst situations when they can and cannot do it. I wrote more on that topic here. - Aiming for balanced bilinguals The scientific literature is often based on an underlying assumption that balanced bilinguals are the ideal bilingual subjects. Both languages should be, as far as possible, to a similar level. This is nearly impossible, in practice, even more so when you are dealing with more than 2 languages. And what if my child uses her Portuguese only to speak to her Grandma in Portugal? What if I struggle to speak about my research in French? Languages have purposes and uses. Multilinguals often prefer one of their languages to speak about a specific topic. French is my language for children. I struggle(d) speaking to new babies and kids in English. I knew nothing of baby-related vocabulary in English.In the great scheme of things, it probably does not matter. Every language acquisition researcher should have children and remember what these children do/did. I think this is even more important in multilingual acquisition. It is like reading or writing parenting books and having a baby in your hands: not quite the same thing. If you are seeking advice about multilingualism, please do make sure the person you are talking to knows what they are talking about (the me now, not 5 years ago) because It makes as much sense to ask your doctor for advice about bilingualism as it would to ask him about your car. Harding & Riley. --------------------------- This post was written as part of the blogging carnival on raising multilingual children. If you haven't checked us out yet, please do so here. We are group of parent bloggers who get together virtually once a month and share our latest thoughts, errors and achievements about raising out kids multilingually. Come and join us, even if you are not a blogger. This month's carnival is hosted by Multilingual Mama. Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Nearly five years ago to the day, I sat, enormous and excited, waiting for the arrival of our new baby. Like so many of us, I had all these grand ideas and plans of what kind of mother I was going …

Consistency is important in any aspect of raising a child, and no less so when it comes to passing on your language. While a child can learn more than one language even if the parents are not consistent in their language use, the chance of the child becoming bilingual is significantly smaller than if each […]

This is the third post in my four-part A-B-C for parents in families with more than one language. M is for Myths There are so many myths about bilingual children and how to raise them that I don’t know where to start. In my opinion, the most damaging ones are: 1. that you confuse your […]

Our (fictional) bilingual mother has now moved to another country with her husband and two children. Have they made the right school choice for their son?

What is code-switching and how does it differ from language mixing? Do you need to worry when your bilingual child mixes his or her languages?

How to react when a professional or someone else tells you to drop a language to support your child's language development?

Do you HAVE to have a family language strategy to successfully raise bilingual children?

Parents raising bilingual children can learn a great deal from parents whose children grew up to be monolingual in a multilingual family.

How to raise bilingual kids can be a difficult decision to make. There isn't a one size fits all, but what's best for your family. Learn about these 5...

Today I am starting a four part A-B-C for all you parents passing on your languages to your children – or maybe you are planning to do so, but haven’t quite made up your mind yet. A is for Advantages The list of benefits that accompanies being bilingual is long, ranging from the obvious one […]

Are you raising bilingual kids? Do you want to know how to create a positive learning environment so your family will enjoy this bilingual adventure?...

Why would a bilingual child stop using the minority language? What to do if this happens in your family.

Like any other “project” in your life, bringing up your son to become bilingual is much more likely to have a successful outcome if you plan ahead. You may ask: “Why do I need a plan? I grew up to become bilingual without anyone making a plan for me!” This is true – I too […]

Motivation is the key to any language learning, never more so than for a bilingual child keeping up with the minority language. 1 – Habit If you consistently stick to speaking the minority language with your children, they are less likely to want to switch to the majority language with you, even when it becomes […]

Whether or not to correct your child’s mistakes is a question all parents with children growing up learning more than one language have asked themselves at some point. I think the answer can be both Yes and No – not a very helpful answer you may say, so let me explain myself. First of all, […]

I am so excited today to be posting on The European Mama. Olga is a friend of mine from Multicultural Kid Blogs. Many of you will remember the wonderful post she wrote for me earlier this year on the role of church in their lives, even though they are not religious. This post was one…

Parents of bilingual children - what if one of you feels left out

I am sure you have heard about a bilingual child being labelled as 'delayed' in terms of language development. Maybe, it is your own child who has been described as such. A professional (paediatrician or teacher) may have even mentioned this to you, as his/her parents. This is an all too common occurrence. Have you ever wondered why these people may have the impression (as it is often not a proper diagnosis) that your child is delayed? Here is a piece of research that may help you understand it. Johanne Paradis carried out a study in Edmonton, Canada on young children (between the ages of 4 and 7) who are learning English as a second language. Those children had either recently arrived to Canada (for the majority) or they had been solely exposed to a minority language at home. They all had different first languages (Korean, Spanish, Romanian, Ukrainian, Farsi, etc). Paradis' goal with this study was to find out if typically developing children who are learning a second language make similar errors to monolingual language impaired children in order to help further professionals like teachers and language pathologists identify those children that really are language delayed and need further intervention. The study examined several grammatical aspects of the English language (third person singular -s, past tense -ed, progressive -ing, etc) using a standard test. In short, the study found that the bilingual children's results and the errors they made were similar to those made by same-age monolingual impaired children. The children produced errors like: CNDX (age: 6 years old; exposure to English: 8 months) EXP: Who’s your best friend at school? CHI: I don’t have Ø best friend. (Ø should be a)
 FLPP (age: 5 years old; exposure to English: 10 months) EXP: Tell me about your party. CHI: Lots of people camed. (overegularization of irregular past/should be came) 
 LGKR (age: 6 years old; exposure to English: 13 months) EXP: Do you like math? CHI: There ‘s are not maths. (double form of be) The children's overall score on the test fell within the range of scores impaired children get even though there is no reason to believe these children were language impaired in any way. The results of the study clearly point towards the possibility of misdiagnosing bilingual children. The author hopes that the study will also help set appropriate expectations of errors and rate of language development for children learning English as a second language in childhood. Another important point to be drawn from this, in my opinion, is about the use of standardised tests with non native English speakers. It is NOT appropriate to do so even if those children may become very fluent in English in a few months. If you ever hear anyone label a child as delayed, ask how this has been assessed. This is the single most important question you need a clear answer to (to start with anyway). ********************** Paradis, J. (2005) Grammatical morphology in children learning English as a second language: implications of similarities with specific language impairment. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, vol. 36, 172-187.

Becoming multilingual involves learning more than several languages. Children also need to learn about the rules for using these languages: when to use what language, who speaks what, what to speak with each person if they speak more than one, etc. Yes, it is a tough job becoming multilingual. This aspect of becoming a multilingual is as important as just learning the languages themselves, in my opinion. And it is one we can easily forget about. Yet, I feel young children may need help and reinforcement from adults to attain this important pragmatic skill. Studies have found that children can differentiate between languages from as early as 2 years old (Genessee, Nicoladis & Paradis, 1995). At this age, they obviously do not know what a language is or maybe still struggle with the fact that they are learning two distinct languages but they understand that, for example, mummy says 'duck' and daddy says 'pato'. Around the same age (2 to 3 years old) multilingual children start to want to categorise people according to their language knowledge. Just like toddlers attempt to categorise everything in their life and impose their vision of things (ah, the terrible twos), multilingual toddlers apply this to language. This is where they may say things like: "X speaks like Mummy". These are very important peieces of information to a multilingual. And these should be encouraged, explained and facilitated by the adults around them. It helps multilinguals become more aware of who everybody is and shape their view of the world. LJ is a big fan of such categorisation. To be fair, we probably reinforce it as a family. When she meets new people or we talk about new people she is going to see, we always include language as a criteria and descriptor. Last week we had house guests for the weekend from the UK. They are long time friends but LJ does not remember them. Our description sounded a little like this: "E is 4 and O is 8 years old. They will come and play with you. They will share your room. They love riding their bikes. And they speak English like Maman and Papa when they speak together. They say 'hello' and 'how are you'." She quickly added: "and like me"! LJ is quite shy a definite introvert personality coming through. And we feel this is a barrier she doesn't have to worry about as we have already explained who speaks what. She now likes to know who speaks what and will often ask us spontaneously. A consequence of this categorisation, I feel, is that she is uncomfortable with people who constantly switch language when addressing her (apart from her dad). A few people we know, who are themselves multilinguals, address her in a different language each time they see her or even during a conversation. This means that she never knows what language to address them in and reinforces her shyness towards them. She will more often go towards someone new but who sticks to one language than someone she has met before but who keeps switching from one to another. We have many examples of this situation happening. It may be that her language maturity is not sufficient yet to say: "hey, you said you speak German, so let's stick to that!". Part of it may also be due to linguistic immaturity where she may not have the required vocabulary and knowledge in that language to respond. But this is not the only reason as it also happens with French (which is still her dominant language). She will sometimes switch language with children she knows speak German and French. As she attends a bilingual kindergarten, she knows a lot of the children there speak both languages and she will address them in either language and often switch or mix with both. I feel these children have been put in this 'bilingual box' and they are allowed, in her mind, to switch with her and her with them. Becoming multilingual therefore involves being able to categorise people in language boxes and as many toddlers and young children know, moving around those boxes is a big no-no. We have found explaining what language is spoken by whom very important and necessary for our little introvert.

Thoughts on teaching a bilingual child to become biliterate - how the best way is what works for you.

Grandparents are important to all kids and particularly so to bilingual children.