Scottisha cottaa closer  in 2024I founded durin

:Children and languages are my passion and I have combined the two in what has become my calling and career. I strongly believe that the more languages we can speak the better it is for our future, not only as individuals and families, but as communities and countries of this one world we all share. Raising children to speak more than one language allows them to communicate and be the future bridge-builders between generations, cultures, countries and creeds.

Having grown up in a bilingual household with a Finnish-speaking mother and a Swedish-speaking father in a tiny village in the Finnish countryside I went on to study languages at Åbo Akademi, the Swedish-speaking university of Finland. I studied German, Swedish and Finnish along with some Dutch, French and Spanish, spending some time at the Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany.

My first book “Bringing up a Bilingual Child” was inspired by my experience of raising two daughters to speak our family languages, Finnish, Swedish, Punjabi and English. The book is an easy-to-read guide for parents in multilingual families, with practical advice and ideas on how to successfully pass on family languages to the next generation. My second book is the fictional Diary of a Bilingual Mother, an ebook coming out in 2025.

2019-2021 my company was one of the project partners in the Erasmus+ funded PEaCH-project, during which I co-wrote the two PEaCH guides – one for parents and the other for educators. As a follow-up to PEaCH, together with some of the PEaCH Ambassadors, I founded the charity Bilingual Family (SCIO050364) in 2024, which is my most exciting project at the moment.

Whatever free time I have, I love spending with family – I am currently helping to raise the third generation of bilinguals in my family. After my move closer to nature in 2021, to a Scottish riverside cottage, I have rediscovered my love for gardening, the haphazard way – my garden pretty much decides what grows where, I am just the guardian. Of course, the scenery in Scotland invites to hikes, which I enjoy with my husband.

You can find out more about me and my mission in the several podcasts, interviews and articles I have been featured in.

Thank you for being part of the Multilingual Parenting community!

Yours,
Rita