Question Dear Rita, Thank you for your wealth of knowledge and great posts! So far bilingual has been easy, since both my husband and I are German and we live in Texas. We both speak our native German with our almost 2-year-old daughter and with each other. She learnt...
40 ways to motivate bilingual children to speak the minority language
Babies and toddlers During the early years of your child’s “talking career” you may be holding a monologue for much of the time, but this is when you set the foundation for the language and there is a lot you can do to encourage your little one to start talking. Make...
Q&A: What to do when the other parent is against speaking the minority language?
Question Hi, I am Chinese and my husband is English. I speak English but my husband doesn't speak any Chinese. I am excited about my daughter learning to speak both languages and I've set myself goal since I was pregnant that I will teach my daughter Chinese, talk to...
Q&A: How to choose between OPOL and mL@H?
Question Hello! My name is Lucia. My American husband and I live in Gijon, a little city in the north of Spain. Right now we are pregnant and we starting thinking which is the best plan to raise our baby bilingually. We have a doubt between two ideas. One, I...
5 thoughts about consistency when using OPOL (one parent, one language)
“We are doing OPOL and I find it impossible to stay consistent in my language use – is my child’s bilingualism doomed?” – this question (or perhaps a less dramatic version of it) often pops up in forums for parents raising bilingual kids. Among the replies you will...
Q&A: Bilingual 3-year-old does not speak – what to do?
Question Dear Coaches, I'm a Chinese mum and our family lives in China. I majored in TESOL and was obsessed in bilingualism. So my hubby and I always talk to my daughter in English and the others talk to her in Chinese. Now she's 3 and she cannot talk, at all....
Q&A: How to choose the languages to speak, read and for media in a trilingual family?
Question Dear Coaches, Thank you for such an amazing informative website which has helped me better understand the world of learning more than one language that I grew up in and that I have taught in. During the past fifteen years I have taught young four-five...
Q&A: Should a minority language parent also help a toddler with the majority language?
Question Hello! Me, my husband and our 11-month-old son (and another baby coming very soon) are living in Australia. My husband is Australian and talks English to our son and I am Norwegian and talk Norwegian to our son. I have some questions that I would like to get...
Q&A: How to maintain two minority languages, one of which the parents do not speak?
Question Dear Family Language Coaches, Thanks for this service, which has been super helpful to us. Our kids are effectively trilingual – fluent in French, English and Japanese. Us parents are bilingual. One of us speaks to the kids in about 50% French, 50% English,...
Q&A: How to plan ahead for raising a baby to be trilingual?
Question Hello! My name is Fatima and I live in the USA. I’m originally from Russia, and my husband is from Jordan. My baby is only 4 months old, I know it’s too early to think about languages now but I don’t want to be late! So I read a lot about multilingual...








