grandparents Archives – Multilingual Parenting

Q&A: How to pass on two similar minority languages?

Question Hello, I'm currently expecting a child and I am really torn about what language/ languages we should be talking to the baby in once he/she arrives. My husband and I speak English at home, my family speaks Spanish and his speaks Portuguese and English....

Q&A: “Will my grandson ever learn English, or will he have a strong accent?”

Question Hello My English son married a Mexican girl and their son was born in the US where they still live. My daughter-in-law speaks English but with a very heavy accent and she has found this to be a great disadvantage life and work wise, as where they live...

Granny power for multilingual families [guest post]

Today’s guest post is by Michaela Hansen, the founder of Granny Aupair, an initiative to send young-at-heart grandmas all over the world. Founded in 2010, initially the grannies were only from German-speaking countries, but today more than 1,000 Grannies of...

Grandparents as language support for bilingual children

As parents raising bilingual children we know how important it is to give our kids as varied an exposure to their languages as possible. This becomes even more crucial if we are passing on a minority language. Building a network of people who can support us in this...

Q&A: How to combine OPOL and the needs of an extended multilingual family?

Question Hello, I'm very glad I found the article about the 2 parents, 2 languages (2P2L) family language strategy as it touches on some questions that have been bugging me ever since my daughter (18mths) was born. My husband (Spanish) and I (bilingual English/German)...

From the diary of a bilingual mother, part 20 (penned by daddy)

Fantastic news from the father of our fictional multilingual family, who are living the very real highs and lows of millions of bilingual mothers, fathers and children across the world. They welcome the latest addition to their family on what is the last page...

From the diary of a bilingual mother, part 19

Extremely excited and somewhat worried - our bilingual mother's feelings summed up this week. Real emotions in a fictional setting. Monday Anytime within the next two or three weeks our family member count will go up by one more son or daughter! We don't know the...

From the diary of a bilingual mother, part 17

Follow the joys and challenges of our fictional bilingual mother and her multilingual family with hubby, 6-year-old son S and 3-year-old daughter D. Monday Only three months to go and we will be a family of five – I am so happy we went for a bigger house when we...

From the diary of a bilingual mother, part 16

Snapshots from the everyday life of our (growing) fictional multilingual family, written by a bilingual mother. Monday Feeling a lot better, no morning sickness anymore but still extremely tired, just like with the previous two. I fall asleep on the sofa most evenings...

We try to make the advice on our website www.multilingualparenting.com as useful and reliable as possible. However, the purpose is to provide parents and carers with general guidance and useful tips only. It doesn’t necessarily deal with every important topic or cover every aspect of the topics with which it deals and might not be relevant or appropriate in all circumstances. It is not designed to provide medical advice and should not be relied on as such. The offered advice is for general information and should never be used as a substitute for taking medical advice for specific conditions. Please consult your paediatrician or therapist with such queries. To the extent permitted by law, we accept no responsibility (including loss, damage or injury) for your use of the advice on our website. For further details please refer to our Terms of Service.

grandparents