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Autism and Bilingualism: Why I Ignored the Professional’s Advice to Drop My Son’s Second...
By the age of two, it was apparent that Oscar was different than other children. “More of a care child,” was how one rather abrupt nursery teacher described him. The first time his bilingualism was brought into question was at the age of three. The advice given by the teacher was to learn Dutch very quickly and only speak Dutch with him. Although as I child I was raised to respect professionals and believed that they knew everything, as an adult I understand that professionals, despite their best intentions, sometimes get it wrong.
Is all the Hard Work of Bilingualism Really Paying Off?
From my kids talking to Jose Luis Orozco in Spanish this past weekend to finding joy in someplace unexpected, I realized all my work in in helping them develop their Spanish is really starting to pay off.
8 Tips for Encouraging Bilingualism in Different Personality Types
Introverted and extroverted children require different approaches for learning the minority language. Here are eight tips for raising bilingual introverts and extroverts.
How Bilingualism Can Fail in Multilingual Families
The challenges of raising bilingual kids in the one parent one language system.
Chinese School Dropout: Why I No Longer Torture My Son With Bilingualism
After three years of flashcards, tracing sheets, computer games and CDs, I’m giving in. I’m a Chinese School Dropout. Or rather my second-grader is.
How to go about Japanese-English bilingualism in the U.S.? I don’t want my kids...
How do you suggest a parent work with, while protecting, her children from the strong pressures to conform to making English dominant in one’s head, in the context of the U.S. and Japan? U.S. bilingualism is short lived. Japanese bilingualism is even shorter.
Perfect Bilingualism: Does it Exist?
Recent research shows that most bilingual speakers, although there may be exceptions, have an accent in one of their languages, or even in both.
What Bilingualism is Not
There are also the myths that real bilinguals do not have an accent in their different languages and that they are excellent all-around translators. This is far from being true.
Study: Bilingualism Good for the Brain
Bilingual children are more effective at multi-tasking.
The Economics of Bilingualism
Not everyone has the same reasons for raising bilingual children. For some, it is necessity, for others a desire.
Is bilingualism hurting my niece’s language skills in both Spanish and English? Are two...
Dear Dr. Gupta,
I am not sure what to do about my niece’s English and Spanish. She has grown up in a bilingual environment. Her...
Why the Surrounding Language has the Greatest Impact on Your Child’s Bilingualism
By the age of four, I had lived in three different countries and spoke pieces of three different languages. I was born in the former Soviet Union to an East German father and a Peruvian mother. My parents were university students in present day Ukraine and they communicated with each other in their only common language at that time, Russian.
5 Games to Get Your Bilingual Child Talking
Encouraging your kids to speak the minority language isn’t always easy so make it fun! Here are five games that will help get them talking.
Myths of Multilingual Families
The key to learning languages in the home—whether one, two, or even more—is interaction. Interaction involves speaking and listening. In many intercultural families, however, children do not become bilingual.
10 Best Things About Raising Bilingual Kids
The best 10 things about going bilingual with your children.
How We Left Our Jobs to Travel with Our Kids
How we left our busy 9 to 5 jobs and saved enough money to take 6 months off with our kids.
Will Three Languages Confuse a Young Child?
I speak Spanish. My wife speaks Italian. We are raising our son in the U.S. Is 3 languages too many when he is really young?
Do WASP Westerners Deserve Visibility in a Foreign Culture?
All too often what might be misinterpreted as a superiority complex over another culture by someone who fits my description is actually something else worth discussing: a cultural defense mechanism. Do we as English-speaking WASPs have a right to defend our culture, one that is so globally pervasive in both media and entertainment? I am about to argue that we do.
Many Languages, One America: 25 Proud Bilingual Children
The voices of 25 bilingual children in the U.S., where one in five kids speaks a language other than English at home. So if you want to know the language America speaks, it's English and 300 other languages. #ispeakamerican
8 Awesome Pinterest Boards for Bilingual Kids
8 pinterest boards you should be following if you are raising bilingual kids.
7 Diverse Children’s Cartoons (where the main character isn’t the standard white one)
Stereotypes run rampant in much of our media consumption and children’s cartoons are no exception. We wanted to find more cartoons that feature kids of different races and ethnicities across cultural backgrounds. Here's our list.
Diverse Children’s Books that Travel to Mexico
We were intrigued when our three-year-old son's favorite country was Mexico (and that was two years ago!). Then jalapeno became his favorite word for a while. And recently we noticed his more concrete desire to learn and speak the Spanish language. Here are six books that take my son on a journey to Mexico from our couch and are perfect for little adventurers!
6 Ideas to Raise a Bilingual Child on a Budget
Raising a bilingual child in a country where bilingualism is not a given can be expensive. When you do not speak a second language, can't afford private immersion school and tutors are too pricey as are the fancy language classes in your community, then what options do you have left? Here are six ideas.
Overheard on the Beijing Subway When People Don’t Think I Speak Mandarin
One unexpected benefit of bilingualism is when I speak English to my daughter in China, people think I don't speak Mandarin and talk very, very freely about all sorts of things about us. Here's what I recently overheard!
7 Benefits of Raising Bilingual Kids
Being bilingual affords children many advantages over the course of their lifetime. Here are seven benefits that have been documented in research and studies.
Celebrating Holidays as Global Citizens
One of the challenges of living abroad is combining the traditions of your home culture with the traditions of your new country. Have you ever tried to hold a traditional American Thanksgiving in Kerala or a 10-year-old's birthday party in Osaka? Although there are ways to combine traditions, sometimes you just want your own type of celebration, like a Canadian Mother's Day instead of a Chinese one.
Real Intercultural Family in Italy: Dutch, Dialect of Dutch, Italian and English
This Dutch mom is raising a quadrilingual daughter (Dutch, dialect of Dutch, Italian and English) in Italy. See how she does it.
How Immersion Travel Helped My Kids Progress in Spanish
I couldn’t wait to see how my kids would do with their new Spanish when we got to Mexico. 10 days advanced their Spanish way more than I anticipated.
Why OPOL Doesn’t Always Work
Six years into OPOL parenting, and here is what I have learned about raising bilingual kids in the OPOL method.
Real Intercultural Family in the U.S.: Russian, Spanish and English
Meet our newest real intercultural family whose children speak Russian, Spanish, English, and share four cultures and two religions.
Do Bilingual Children Know Fewer Words Than Monolinguals?
Research has often shown that bilingual children produce their first word at about the same time as monolingual children, on average. A recent study analyzes whether children exposed to two languages access words in the brain and produce words in the same way as monolingual children.
29 Tips for Raising Bilingual Kids
Raising a child with good bilingual ability can be a significant challenge. How do you support the minority language so that it keeps pace with the relentless development of the majority language?
What to Expect From Daycare in a Non-Native Language
Three years ago we moved to the Netherlands from the U.S. with our two-month-old daughter. Neither my Italian husband nor I spoke any Dutch. Fast forward to present and we now have a very talkative three-year-old who regularly insists that she speaks only “Nederlands.” This is what we have learned about what you can expect when you send your child to daycare in a non-native language.
Spanish at the Price of Arabic?
One month ago, we embarked on our official trilingual family journey, introducing over four hours of Spanish daily to our children. But more Spanish goes together with less Arabic and I can't help but wonder, is Spanish coming at the expense of Arabic?
Diary of a Bilingual Spanish School
Stories from a second grade immersion-Spanish classroom that embraces a constructivist curriculum. Constructivist theory emphasizes concepts over facts, deep understanding over rote learning and the transfer of knowledge between disciplines.
Fostering Bilingual Education through Two-Way Immersion
Fluent bilingualism is commonplace throughout much of the world. How strange that it’s so difficult to achieve in the United States! Unless we came here as immigrants, grew up in homes where another language was spoken, or spent extended time in a non-English-speaking country, most Americans are likely to be monolingual.
François Grosjean Responds: Cherishing the Multilingual Heart
At the end of last year, the title of a post by Jan Petersen on InCultureParent caught my attention: "How Francois Grosjean Broke My Multilingual Heart." I was troubled at first as I have defended bi- and multilinguals most of my academic life, not broken their hearts!
All I Want for Christmas is Perfectly Bilingual Children
When it comes to raising a bilingual child, I have several beliefs about how you can waste your time.
Is Raising Bilingual Children Worth the Costs?
I am now married to a so-white-it’s-almost-blinding husband, who only speaks English, and together we are attempting to raise bilingual and bicultural children. It is both easier and harder than we anticipated. Oh, and more expensive.
Raising Bilingual Kids? You Could be Raising Them Trilingual!
I’ve made an interesting bilingual discovery with my own children that was confirmed by an expert in child bilingualism.
Speaking in Tongues Film
Why is bilingualism important to you? Answer this question to win the DVD of the film, Speaking in Tongues.
Bilingual Parenting: OPOL or Mixed Language—Does it Matter?
One of the most frequently asked questions from parents bringing up their children bilingually is whether they should speak both languages or separate them. Some bilingual families mix both languages on a regular basis, sometimes in the same sentence. Other families choose to link one language to a parent, a strategy known as the one parent one language (OPOL) approach, to expose the child to a ‘pure’ example of the language.
Bilingual Fact? Girls Have an Easier Time Than Boys
The part of the brain which controls language development develops faster in girls than in boys.
Study: Bilinguals See the World in a Different Way
Bilinguals see the world differently because of the inextricable link between language, culture and cognition (no surprise).
Why Bilingual Children Prefer A Certain Language With Adults
This article is a fascinating look at why children connect languages to a particular person and why they are so adamant about it. If you have ever tried to switch your usual language with a young child, you will know exactly what I mean.
Study: Bilingual Infants Can Distinguish Unfamiliar Languages
Infants raised in households where Spanish and Catalan are spoken can discriminate between English and French just by watching people speak, even though they have never been exposed to these new languages before.
Help! My Bilingual Child Won’t Speak My Language
If you find your child refuses to speak your language, don't hit the panic button just yet. All you need is a little bit of patience and perhaps some organization too.
Raising Bilingual Children in Non-Native Language: Tools for Parents
So your kids have a ton of target-language DVDs, books, websites and toys to fast-track their bilingualism, but what about you, the parent? If the target language isn't your native one, you'll be wanting to maintain and improve it any chance you get.
Late Speaker and Bilingual? Changing a Common Belief
Popular wisdom would have it that bilingual children are generally late speakers. It was certainly my experience when my son at three didn't speak but a few words. People around me would tell me oh, don't worry it's because he's bilingual. My own doctor told me there was no need for concern as my son was learning two languages at the same time.
