native language Archives – Multilingual Parenting

Q&A: The other parent does not understand your language – should you speak it with your baby?

by Rita Rosenback | Jan 31, 2019 | Babies, Coaches, Q&A Being the parent in a multilingual family, Rita R, School-aged children

Question Hello, I’m so happy to stumble upon this website. It is lovely to see that we are not the only one with many MANY questions about raising a multilingual individual and that there is help out there 🙂 Here is our situation: Our son is 4 months old and we...

Q&A: How to start speaking your native language after years of using the majority language with your child?

by Rita Rosenback | May 3, 2018 | Coaches, Language development, Q&A Being the parent in a multilingual family, Rita R, School-aged children

Question Hello I'm very glad to find this website. I have three years old daughter. Our language is Urdu but we start communicating with our daughter in English. In start it was okay but now we are feeling difficulty to explain things to her in English as she...

Q&A: Should parents always speak their native language with their children?

by Rita Rosenback | Jan 29, 2017 | Coaches, Language development, Non-native language, Q&A Being the parent in a multilingual family, Rita R

Question Hello I work in a school and we have concerns about a child whose English vocabulary is very limited. Her mother (who is native English speaker but who spent part of her childhood in France) speaks to her in French at home. Father is absent so French...

Q&A: What if a parent does not understand the language a bilingual child learns first?

by Rita Rosenback | Dec 1, 2016 | Challenges, Coaches, Language development, Q&A Being the parent in a multilingual family, Q&A The trilingual+ child, Rita R

Question Hello, I'm pregnant with our first baby and start to be worried about the future language development of my son. I'm Polish, my fiancé is French and we communicate in English (I can't speak French and my fiancé can't speak Polish). Nevertheless, we live in...

Q&A: How to choose between OPOL and mL@H?

by Rita Rosenback | Sep 1, 2016 | Coaches, Non-native language, Q&A Choosing the right family language strategy, Rita R

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...

Q&A: What to do when it does not feel right to speak one’s mother tongue with a baby?

by Marianna Du Bosq | Jun 19, 2016 | Babies, Coaches, Marianna DuBosq

Question Hello! I just found your site, so first of all congratulations, it is incredibly useful! I was trying to find out what method to use with our future kids, I'm Hungarian native, my husband is Italian and we live in Italy. I speak Italian like a native and I...

Q&A: Should I switch to using my native language with my bilingual children?

by Nick Jaworski | Jun 18, 2015 | Challenges, Coaches, Q&A Being the parent in a multilingual family

Question Hello, We are a family of four, two kids, age 5.5 and 2. Father is fluent in Arabic, French and English. I, the stay-at-home mother, am fluent in English and semi-fluent in Arabic. We live in the US, talk to Arab relatives on Skype weekly, and spend a month...

Mother tongue – how do you define yours?

by Rita | Feb 21, 2014 | Language, Language and bilingualism

Happy International Mother Language Day! There could not be a more appropriate day than today to reflect on the term ‘mother tongue’ – but what does it really mean, especially if you speak more than one language? How should the term be defined in general and what...

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