Raising a Multilingual Child

If you’ve been struggling to get your child to speak more in your heritage language, you’re not alone — and you’re not doing it wrong. This post introduces 7 powerful conversation prompts to spark connection and natural language growth in your home, no matter how busy life gets.

Explore effective language strategies for multilingual families, such as OPOL, 2P2L, Time & Place, and mL@home. Learn how to support your child’s language development and make multilingualism part of your daily life.

Crafting a language legacy for your family doesn’t happen overnight, but with a clear strategy and consistent routine, you can make it happen. Take small, intentional steps every day to raise multilingual children who are confident, connected, and proud of their multicultural heritage.

This is a post I wrote to mothers of multilingual children on my Instagram page a few years ago. A lot of people enjoyed the post and commented on it, so I decided to publish it here on my blog.

Parents from around the world have shared their secret to success by telling us what they do everyday with their multilingual kids!

Even though we live in a world whose population is more than half bilingual; parents wanting to raise bilingual children are often told not to. The comments we receive at times make us feel like they would be better off raising monolingual or children with one language. Below you find a list of ways to deal with the negativity that you may receive.

Over on Instagram, I am sharing a 30-day series filled with questions, tips and activities on how to raise a bilingual or multilingual child. This is from my point of view as a parent. You can follow the whole series with the hashtag #youcannevertalktoomuch and read more about the series on our blog.⁠

This whole situation that we are in right now with Covid-19 and confinement has had both a positive and a negative side for our bilingual / multilingual children. This in-home situation has made our ideal language strategy come to life but has also forced us to speak the majority language of French a little more than we usually do!

There are many benefits of raising a bilingual child and they are not all for the child but for the parents, extended family, the community and the world.