There are days when multilingual parenting feels like something I have figured out.
And then there are days when I realize I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
This week was one of those days.
It started, as so many things in our house do, with something completely unrelated to languages.
My children wanted to learn how to type.
They wanted to code.
Python.
Scratch.
Minecraft.
Programming.
They were interested in what they were interested in, and I was trying to remind myself that this counts too. Learning doesn’t always look like sitting down with a language book and completing an exercise.
Sometimes it looks like a child becoming completely absorbed in something.
Sometimes it looks like following a curiosity down a rabbit hole (multiple times daily).
Sometimes it looks like Minecraft videos on Youtube.
And then, somewhere in the middle of an ordinary week, something changed.
I realized that one of my children was struggling.
More than I had realized.
In French.
French is the community language here. It is the language of school, tests, teachers and many of the everyday situations outside our home.
And suddenly I was looking at a test that he had done badly on.
The frustrating thing was that I knew he knew much of the material.
We had reviewed it.
We had gone over basic present-tense verbs more than once.
So I sat down beside him and started asking questions.
Not accusing questions.
Just trying to understand.
“What happened?”
“Did you understand the questions?”
“Was the teacher reading them?”
“Were they on the board?”
“Were they going too fast?”
It wasn’t immediately clear.
But eventually he mentioned that the questions had been read very quickly.
And when we went back through the test together, something became obvious.
He actually knew most of the answers.
There were one or two things that even I needed to look up.
But most of it?
He knew.
And I remember thinking:
Then what happened?
That question has stayed with me.
Because it’s very easy to look at a bad grade and decide that the child doesn’t know the material.
But what if the problem is somewhere else?
What if the child knows the information but can’t access it quickly enough?
What if reading is part of the problem?
What if attention is part of it?
What if processing is part of it?
What if the pressure of a test changes what they can actually demonstrate?
What if handwriting is making things harder?
What if it’s several of those things at once?
And what if being multilingual is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle?
The handwriting problem
We’ve also been dealing with handwriting.
I’ve noticed that his handwriting can be difficult to read, and there have already been situations where marks were lost because the teacher couldn’t easily decipher what he had written.
So we talked about it.
I told him that handwriting matters—not because handwriting needs to be beautiful, but because his teachers need to be able to understand his answers.
And, surprisingly, he sat down and did his handwriting exercises.
Without complaining.
That felt like a tiny victory.
Not because we had solved anything.
We hadn’t.
But because he was willing to work on something that he knew was difficult for him.
Those little moments matter.
Especially when you’re a parent who is constantly looking at the bigger picture and wondering how on earth you’re going to solve it all.
And then my brain started making a list
Of course, once I realized he was struggling, my brain went into problem-solving mode.
Maybe I need to find a handwriting specialist.
I already have the name of someone I can contact.
Maybe I should talk to the former pedagogy coordinator at the school.
She’s someone I trust, and she knows my children.
Maybe I should contact the tutor who worked with him last year.
Interestingly, my son was actually the one who suggested going back to her.
Maybe that’s what he needs.
More support.
Someone outside of me.
And that thought was important.
Because I had already started doing what mothers so often do:
Trying to hold everything myself.
But I can’t.
Not everything.
And perhaps I shouldn’t.
The question I can’t stop asking
There is another complication that makes this harder.
We are a multilingual family.
The languages we use at home are important to us.
They are part of our family life.
They are part of our children’s identity.
I don’t want to respond to a struggle in French by simply deciding that we need to replace more of our home-language time with French.
Because the home languages matter too.
And this is where I sometimes feel caught.
How do I give my children enough of the community language to succeed at school without sacrificing the languages we have intentionally built into our family life?
How do I support the language they need for school without sending the message that the home languages are somehow less important?
I don’t think the answer is to choose one.
But I also know that sometimes my children need more support in the community language than I realized.
And that means I have to be flexible.
I’m not a native French speaker either
There is another layer to all of this.
I’m not a native French speaker.
I speak French, and I use it, but I am still navigating life in a language that isn’t my first.
And sometimes I wonder what that means for my ability to help my children.
Because what happens when your child needs help with the language of the community—and you’re also learning how to navigate that language yourself?
My husband isn’t a native French speaker either, and his French is not as strong as mine.
So when it comes to helping with schoolwork in French, there are limits to what either of us can do.
And suddenly the responsibility can feel very personal.
How can I help him?
What am I missing?
Should I be doing more French at home?
Should I find another tutor?
Should I be talking to the school?
Should I have chosen a different school?
That last question is a particularly difficult one.
I’ve wondered before whether we should have chosen public school instead.
But the public-school environment here doesn’t feel like the right choice for my child.
And our current school has its own limitations.
I’ve already been told in the past that the school isn’t necessarily going to make the kinds of adjustments or provide the kind of support he might need.
So I’m left trying to navigate the middle.
Not wanting to make a drastic change.
Not wanting my child to burn out.
And desperately wanting to make sure he has the support he needs.
I recognize some of myself in him
This might be the hardest part.
Because I remember struggling in school myself.
I remember what it feels like to work hard and still feel like you’re not keeping up.
Recently my son said something that stopped me.
He told me:
“I read so many books, but I don’t remember reading them.”
I understood.
Maybe more than I wanted to.
We talked about slowing down when he reads.
About paying attention to the page.
About how sometimes focusing can be difficult.
And I wondered how much of what I’m seeing in him is simply him—and how much is something that I recognize because I’ve experienced my own struggles with learning.
We are also in the process of exploring whether there may be some neurodivergence involved.
I don’t have answers yet.
And I don’t want to turn every difficulty into a diagnosis.
Right now, I simply want to understand my child better.
I want to know what makes learning harder for him.
And I want to make sure that whatever support he needs, he gets it before frustration turns into exhaustion.
Because I know what burnout can feel like.
And I don’t want him to learn that struggling means he simply has to push harder.
Maybe I don’t have to solve everything
This is where I’ve landed for now.
Not on an answer.
On a list.
A handwriting specialist.
A conversation with someone I trust at the school.
Possibly reconnecting with his former tutor.
More observation.
More listening.
And perhaps less panic.
Because when one of my children struggles, my first instinct is to take everything into my own hands.
But I can’t.
I can’t be the mother.
The teacher.
The tutor.
The language specialist.
The advocate.
The educational psychologist.
The handwriting specialist.
The school coordinator.
And the person who somehow keeps everyone emotionally regulated at the same time.
Something has to give.
And maybe the thing that needs to give is my belief that I have to do everything myself.
So what does this mean for our multilingual home?
I honestly don’t know yet.
And I think that’s one of the reasons I want to write this series.
Because so much of what we see about multilingual parenting focuses on the beautiful parts.
The child who switches languages effortlessly.
The funny translation.
The multilingual toddler.
The first word.
The family traditions.
The language milestones.
And those moments are wonderful.
But there is another side.
There are school reports.
There are tests.
There are questions about whether your child is getting enough exposure.
There are moments when you wonder whether you’re doing enough in the community language.
There are moments when you worry that supporting one language will come at the expense of another.
There are moments when you question your school choices.
And there are moments when you wonder whether you’re the right person to help.
I want The Multilingual Home Diaries to be a place where we talk about those things too.
Not because I have all the answers.
I don’t.
But because maybe I’m not the only mother sitting at the kitchen table wondering:
How do I help my child without losing myself in the process?
And perhaps that is the question I’m carrying with me into next week.
For now, I’m going to keep doing what I can.
I’ll help with the handwriting.
I’ll look into the tutor.
I’ll ask questions.
I’ll talk to people who know more than I do.
I’ll keep watching.
And I’ll keep speaking our home languages.
Because my child’s struggle in one language doesn’t mean the others have suddenly become less important.
It simply means he needs support.
And maybe supporting him doesn’t mean doing more.
Maybe it means learning to see more clearly what he actually needs.
I’m still figuring that part out.
And I’ll be writing about it here.