I am raising multilingual children: we speak Spanish and English, and dabble in Mandarin. I am always on the look out for more tips and resources to help our family’s language journey. Today we’re doing a fun vlogging (video blogging) game with some other international bloggers, and the topic is: “Raising Multilingual Children.” If you’d like tips from multilingual parents and kids, check out the videos below where we ask and answer questions about raising multilingual children.
It works like a game of telephone- the first person asks a question. The next person must answer the question on raising multilingual children in a video, and then asks the next person a question. Instead of writing posts, we do everything over videos. It’s a great discussion loop about parenting and raising multilingual children, with information from around the world.
My question came from Olga Mecking. She is Polish, and she and her German husband are raising their kids in The Netherlands. Her kids speak Polish, German and Dutch! She asked me:
“What materials/methods/activities would you suggest to other parents to help them successfully raise multilingual children?”
Here’s my reply:
My question is a question I am constantly asked by readers, and I directed it to Leanna from All Done Monkey:
“Can a non-native speaker raise bilingual kids?”
Check out her reply, and all of the participants discussing raising multilingual children:
MKB Vlogging Telephone: Raising Multilingual Kids
Watch all of the videos in the series, and learn all about kids, language learning, resources, methods, and activities!
A Life with Subtitles on Multicultural Kid Blogs
Creative World of Varya
Kid World Citizen
All Done Monkey
the piri-piri lexicon
La Cité des Vents
MotherTongues
Españolita…¡sobre la marcha!
Russian Step by Step
Multilingual Parenting
Bilingual Avenue
Life with My Koreans
Finding Dutchland
The best language to choose if you want bilingual children, but both parents have the same mother tongue and live in the country where that mother tongue is spoken is to choose Esperanto as you can become fluent in a reasonable amount of time and therefore speak with ease with your children a language that is not your own mother tongue. Here is a little video showing some young people who were raised with Esperanto and of course at least one other language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzDS2WyemBI
This was really helpful! I am Greek (speak it near fluently) and want to raise my daughter in a bilingual environment, but we don’t live near a Greek School and my husband is a non-Greek (though he has been learning it over the years) so these videos are really neat for me to watch, thank you!!!
I am so glad you enjoyed them! 🙂 I wish you the best of luck raising your daughter bilingual- you can do it!!!!! 🙂