… attempting to raise bilingual children

I just removed these words from the description of my blog.

I think 7 years into the journey of multicultural and bilingual childrearing I can confidently say that we have three bilingual children (taking their ages into account of course). Our attempt was a success.

At the start I was often worried and intimidated by comments like “bilingual children are speech-delayed” or “children should learn one language properly first before learning a second” or “kids get confused learning two languages”. Listening to other people’s stories also scared me where the children just didn’t want to speak one of the languages (usually the minority language, the one that is not spoken in the society outside the home). It often seemed like such a struggle to raise children understanding and speaking two languages and not being embarrassed by that.

I think exposing the children to both languages by actually living in both countries has contributed heaps to the success. I’d recommend it to anybody who has the guts to do it. Admittedly it was the hardest time in my life (I’ve experienced so far), moving literally from one end of the earth to the other with three children under 5, but it was also immensely rewarding and exciting … the biggest adventure of my life … so far, who knows I might climb Mount Chomolungma one day ;-)

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One Response to … attempting to raise bilingual children

  1. Michael says:

    To be honest, I don’t think it was just the move to the other country. Even without that I (personally) believe that both parents speaking the minority language at home has also been a big contributor (ie. us both speaking German at home with the kids in Australia, and vice-versa). That was also a point that we were almost scared-off by other people saying that the 1-parent-1-language was the proven best way to go.

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