Question Hello! We are Americans living in Kuopio, Finland (for over 10 years). We have a daughter who is almost 19 months and goes to Finnish päiväkoti (=kindergarten). I was told by the neuvola doctor (paediatrician) to not mix languages and only speak...
Question Hello, I am a Spanish native speaker living in Canada with my Jordanian husband and h little boys aged almost two and five. At home we speak three languages: me Spanish, husband Arabic and all of us English. My husband and I speak English to each...
Question Good day, Thank you for the good advice on multilingual parenting. I am Dutch and married to a Jordanian (Arabic-speaking). We talk English amongst each other but try to stick with our mother tongues (Dutch and Arabic) when talking to our 15-month-old son. He...
Question Hi, I have been doing a bit of reading on raising trilingual children, as my husband and I are expecting our first child in January. It seems that in most cases the parents have two individual native languages, and the third being that of the country they...
Question Dear Coaches, I would greatly appreciate your advice regarding raising a multilingual son in the following language environment: I would like my son to speak English, Hungarian, German and Spanish. We live in the US, my husband is American and only...
Question Hi Family Language Coaches! I wanted to ask if, in an OPOL household, it would be detrimental if a parent spoke "the other parent's language" to the child in certain public environments. I live in Germany and speak German natively (and English...
Question Dear All, We are an Italian family living in France. We speak Italian at home (two hours at night and on the weekends/holidays) but sometimes in the afternoons after school, when my husband is not there yet, it happens that I speak French as well to my...
“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...
I hear you, you are not alone – come closer so I can give you a virtual hug! Not being able to stay consistent in the language use is the most common reply I get when I ask parents what their biggest challenge is when raising bilingual children. So how important is...
The custom is to make resolutions for the new year, but as we all know, most of them fall by the wayside well before the shops start stocking chocolate for Valentine’s Day. As a parent of a bilingual child, what could you do instead? My advice is to forget about...