More delight, less doubt. Bringing up a trilingual child – the beginning

 

by Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini

I just came back from the hospital with my small and beautiful little boy. He was an easy-going newborn who settled himself into a nice routine very quickly. I loved holding him in my arms late at night and absorbing his peace. Blissful, wonderful peace. I felt enormously happy. I felt rewarded, blessed and enriched; but my fortune was not made of money, but of affection and attachment that strengthened and deepened with every day, unconditionally, unremittingly, and peacefully.

It was in this peace of a quietly breathing newborn baby, in a room that smelled of baby shampoo, just after midnight, that I realised that I want to bring up my son as a trilingual child, that the biggest gift my husband and I can give to him is the gift of languages, an opportunity to enter and explore his parents and grandparents' cultures and to draw strength from them.

But there are other reasons too.

Good Reads: books about Prostokvashino by Uspensky. Read or watch cartoons with English subtitles.

If you ask any child in Russia, who is Uncle Fedor, there is a big chance you will receive an answer that’s full of excitement!
Uncle Fedor is a little but very independent boy, who left the house together with his new friend - the cat. This cat not only speaks people's language and cross-stitches, but also knows the proper way to eat an open-face sandwich so it tastes better!
This wonderful story was written by Eduard Uspensky in 1973. Almost 30 years ago! And it is still loved by children.

You can also find it translated in many other languages:

Life Story: Trilingual mama - trilingual kid. Why would it be any other way?

Trilingual "apple" does not fall far from a trilingual "tree".

Nathalie’s parents raised their kids trilingual long before nowadays multilingual parenting book plethora and well before anyone can google everything.  They did think there was a choice!  And now the story repeats  -  Nathalie is raising her son trilingual and can’t see any other way. 

 Nathalie with Daniël (then 4 months old)

My name is Nathalie (39) and I’m  of a German and a Dutch nationality. After being born in Germany, I traveled around the world with my parents and two siblings. I currently live in Madrid, Spain. I work in a bilingual (Dutch-Spanish) primary school where I teach the toddlers and first grade. 
I am a mother of a nearly two year old boy, Daniël, who is half Dutch half English.  I am a self-proclaimed expert in both multilingualism and moving houses thanks to my upbringing.


I was raised as a trilingual child, and I'm now myself raising a second generation trilingual child, be it with other languages. Many people around us seem to think it is harsh on our child to expose him to not only two, but three languages. Others seem to think we are over challenging the little boy, just for bragging purposes. Neither could be further from the truth. As in my own upbringing, I feel there is no choice than to raise Daniël trilingual, simply because we cannot just ignore one of the three languages.

I was born in Aachen, Germany to a German father and a Dutch mother who spoke English to each other because they didn’t speak the others' language. I suppose neither of them were willing to give up their mother tongue when it came to raising us.

Camping in Kenya

Once my father had finished university he was offered a job that would imply moving all over the world for the next 20 years. The first stop was Nairobi, Kenya where my sister and I were sent to a local (English) school. At home we spoke German to my dad, Dutch to my mother and English at school.

Nathalie with her sister

As my grandparents were mortified not seeing their grandchildren growing up, my parents often recorded cassette tapes of us speaking and singing for them to listen to, which they sent to them. These tapes have become the most valuable and interesting testimonies of our language development. By the age of 3 and 5 my sister and I had formed the most complicated sentence structures applying the various grammatical rules of English, Dutch and German, using all three languages in any given sentence-depending on which parent we were talking to, the language the last song had been sung in or in whatever language a word came to mind first.
To outsiders this must have been a perfect verification against raising children in more than one language. Mind you, at the time you couldn’t google if what you were doing was right. My parents raised us trilingual with no clue as to what they were doing.

Venezuela

The second country (after a break in Holland) was Venezuela. We went to an American school and I think by that time my dad had learned Dutch which became the language spoken at home. I don’t actually know based on what my parents decided to leave out German-possibly it was us, the children who decided we wouldn’t speak German anymore. (I just asked my dad why we started speaking Dutch at home, and even he has no clue). As we were in a Spanish speaking country we also got Spanish lessons at school, and I suppose we learned the basics, but in leaving Venezuela, we left behind our fourth language-Spanish.

The next country was India (again after a little break in Holland) The American school had not really been what my parents had hoped for so we went to a local German school. By now (8 and 10 years old) we were obviously perfectly capable of separating the three languages we spoke and were fluent (but not native) in all three languages. The family continued to speak Dutch at home and we spoke German at school and English when out in Bombay.

Bombay, India

After India we moved back to Holland where my parents were confronted with various options as to where and in what language we would continue our schooling.  At the time our school language and home language were both good but not perfect, and the choice had to be made not knowing what country the future would bring. The choice (for which I am to this day still grateful) was the European school in Mol, Belgium. The European school gave us the possibility of being educated in all three of our languages. Be it that we had to chose which language would be our first, second and third. In the end, we went to the German section.

When it came to going to university I myself chose to go to a Dutch one, as we were living in Holland. It was at university where I became aware that I was pretty non-native in all three the languages which was quite a shocking realization to me. There I was thinking I was a right genius while getting back papers with more red than you could possibly imagine (and comments like: "This is a primary school mistake". Bit by bit my German and English disappeared to the background as I was living and studying in Holland.

I stayed in Holland till my 30th and then started to get itchy-feet and so I decided to make a plunge to Madrid-Spain. It was here that I realised how much I had missed speaking different languages - all of a sudden I would hardly ever speak Dutch. To be honest, I felt negatively towards the Dutch language, wanted nothing to do with it. I very much enjoyed speaking English most of the time and realised that my identity was actually directly linked to the Dutch language.  English became my first language again as I became an English teacher while I was struggling to learn my fourth language-Spanish.

Now (8 years later) I am still in Madrid, working at a bilingual school (Dutch-Spanish) watching “my” little bilingual toddlers learning to speak their second - and sometimes third language.

My partner is English, and I'm half Dutch-half German. We have a 1.5 year old son Daniël (imagine the struggle to find a name that sounds ok in four languages!) who is being raised trilingual as well. His dad speaks to him in English, I speak Dutch and at a day-care he learns Spanish.

When Daniël was born, we knew we had no choice but to raise him trilingual. The fact of living in Spain, being born to an Englishman and going to do his primary school in Dutch and Spanish, there was no way to chose for a monolingual or bilingual education. Therefore,  just like myself,  Daniël will grow up being non-native in all languages, but sounding like a genius to monolingual people.

I have no regrets about him growing up trilingual, and must admit that it fills me with pride that he understands basic concepts of all three languages. I have no doubt that he will, just like me, be endlessly grateful for the present of multiple languages.

                                                ----
Please contact me, if you are interested to participate in the Life Story series and write about your experience as a bilingual or multilingual child and/or a parent.


You might also like reading:


Can babies distinguish foreign languages?  


Life story: A Journey to Multilingualism.  


PROS and CONS of Raising a Trilingual Child


Bilingual child: when to start reading aloud?


Do you speak another language in presence of your child, but not directly to him? Read , if the passive language learning works


Language resources: 

Kids Radio in different languages from around the world. 

19 great websites with FREE Audio Books and Stories for children in English.

What language should I speak to my child in public? - Multilingual parent dilemma.

Long time before my first child spoke his first word, I asked myself: What language should I speak to him in public, when I am surrounded by other people who do not speak my language? Should I switch the languages and speak to my child the community language so everyone understands? There should not be any harm if I do it (right?), since I am bringing up my child trilingual anyway.

However, after giving this matter a thought, I decided to always speak the minority language to my child and this is why:

Bilingualism and speech delay. How can you help?

Are bilinguals or multilinguals any different from monolinguals when it comes to speaking? Well, yes and no. Bilinguals might start speaking somewhat later; however, the latest research totally rejects a clinical language delays in bilingual or multilingual children as a result of exposure to two or more languages simultaneously.

In "Language development in bilingual babies: no delays, just a few adjustments" François Rochon talks about research of Professor Christopher Fennell of the University of Ottawa's School of Psychology:

Research has shown [...], that monolingual toddlers learn to distinguish similar-sounding words at around 17 months old. Professor Fennell has found that bilingual infants start to do this at 20 months. 

Prof. Fennell doesn't at all believe the "delay" in sound distinction is a hindrance. Bilingual babies are simply learning an adaptive strategy because they're facing a more challenging language environment. That strategy sees them unconsciously ignore some of the sound cues they receive so that they can concentrate on matching the word with the object it represents.

What does it mean for you as a parent?

It means that you should not worry that two or more languages are too much for a child, and that you should focus on how to help your child and ease that task of connecting words with objects. Do not think about it as something not natural and extra work for you. Look at this the same way you look at helping your child keep his balance while he is making his first steps. Come down to your child's level of understanding when you read or talk to him; proving extra explanations. According to the researchers, a 4 month old baby is already learning to connect words with objects. So start early!

Point on the objects while talking about them, and do the same on the pictures in the books, following a story as you read it to your child. You need to catch new words and follow on them explaining their meanings. I often use Google to find pictures of words  that are not pictured in books we read, or when I'd like to provide some extra explanation and show something in details. Pointing is a powerful tool for creating word-object connection. So make a point to point :)  Read also  How to read to a baby?
 
Researchers also found that children have difficulties to distinguish one languages from another, if the languages you expose your child to belong to the same rhythm category  (such as English and German (stress-timed), French and Spanish (syllable timed), Japanese and Tamil (mora-timed)) . Deborah D.K. Ruuskanen, Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vaasa, Finland, and mother of three bilingual children says:

if there is more than one language in the baby's home environment, then the baby will be learning first to process and separate the different languages, before talking begins.  

As you probably already experienced yourself, there are natural obstacles in the language learning process. So be ready to face this challenge and simplify the language learning task for your child by being consistent. Speak only the language you choose to speak with your child.

If you decided to speak only one language to your child - then do it all the time, without mixing with other languages in direct interactions.

If you, as one person, decided to speak to your child two or more languages, think of the best strategy to separate the languages one from another. You could alternate days or even weeks when languages are spoken to your child, for instance, one day / week Italian only and another day / week -  Hungarian. You could also assign a language to a certain activity: bathing, family meals, playgroups ...  Think of some possible, appropriate to the child's age sign that you can give to your baby, to help him to understand what languages you speak and when. It could be a different color bow in your hair,  a scarf, different picture on the wall. Just use your imagination!

You also need to be consistent with the language you speak to others at front of your child. If you decided to speak to your spouse other language then to your child, please make an effort and speak only that language. This brings structure to the language recognition and, hopefully, helps the child to sort out the languages fast.

Nothing dramatic will happen if you mix the languages. There is a number of parents that does it and they have a bilingual or multilingual child afterwards. However, my position on it: if you dedicate your time to your child, why not just take care of the language consistency part as well to speed up and simplify language learning. I found that naming the languages with their proper name helps in the language separation process.

As you see, there are many variables that can affect when your child starts speaking. My children started speaking within the same time frame as monolinguals do. Since my concentration was on speaking Russian language, their first words and sentences were mostly in Russian.  Interestingly, both children started speaking full sentences in Italian without usual long practice of words. They simply transferred the knowledge about building the sentences from one language into another by modeling the Italian speakers.

If you are pregnant, you might like to know that it is also beneficial to speak the languages you are going to use with your child during the last trimester. Research shows that infants are able to show preferences to and thus, recognition of the languages they were spoken to during the pregnancy after they were born.

When did your bilingual, trilingual or multilingual child start speaking? What do you think helped or delayed the child's speaking in your particular case? Share your thoughts to help other parents who read this page.

Useful Resources:
Language development milestones by ASHA - American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

BE AWARE! Your child can have fluid in the middle ear (otitis media) without you noticing it!  
As it can cause absolutely NO PAIN and your child will not complain. 
READ MORE HERE:  Speech delay due to fluid collection in the middle ear. 

Books about helping children to talk:

Time to Talk: What You Need to Know About Your Child's Speech and Language Development

My Toddler Talks: Strategies and Activities to Promote Your Child's Language Development  by Kimberly Scanlon

The Cow Says Moo: Ten Tips to Teach Toddlers to Talk: An Early Intervention Guide  by Vicky McErlean

Talking with Your Toddler: 75 Fun Activities and Interactive Games that Teach Your Child to Talk   by Teresa Laikko M.S. CCC-SLP and Laura Laikko M.S. CF-SLP

Late-Talking Children: A Symptom or a Stage?  by Stephen M. Camarata 

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Raising a Bilingual Child : Setting Your Priorities From The Start.


9 steps of raising a bilingual child successly



Whay to learn the language: A family vacation, multilingual style. Are you in? 


Can babies distinguish foreign languages?  


The Best Way to Start Building Your Bilingual Child's Vocabulary. 

7 principles to keep in mind while teaching your child to read.

Parents these days face many difficult decisions, no matter if their kids speak one language, two languages or three languages. One of them is whether or not teach children to read in an early childhood, before the school's formal education starts. Some parents decide to wait,  thinking that kids will otherwise get bored at school, some step in and provide the reading instructions before elementary school  thinking that being "prepared" will help children along the way.

I can understand both parents' positions; nevertheless, experts on this topic see a great benefit in engaging children in pre-reading activities early in life and at preschool. Doing some rhythm and phonic related activities that help children slowly establish letters-sounds connection and  prepare them for more formal instructions.

A family vacation, multilingual style. Are you in?

Would your family go on a joined multilingual family adventure? Are you afraid that vacation fun will be lost in translation, if you try to share with other families whose children speak a different language?  Read on, there is something to think about before you plan the summer vacation.

Who does not like summers? A summer beach vacation is one of the greatest experiences for every member of the family.  Parents are more relaxed (if not, getting a drink at the beach bar would really help!) and do not nag the kids. The kids are playing with a sand, water, and do not bother the parents. No one gets bored on the beach!  And this is where I am heading to.
 
Last summer we went on vacation with our English speaking friends. It is an English and German speaking bilingual family that consists of father, mother and two cute girls, who are about our Russian-Italian speaking children's age.  It was interesting to watch how the kids' relationship developed. All children spoke their native languages at first, but then, after realizing that "the message" does not get through, they started explaining themselves in the language their friends would understand. Our kids tried to speak English and the friends' kids - Italian. The sign language  combined with the native language worked well to fill the language knowledge gaps! They had so much fun playing in water , building sand castles and sharing toys.

 The children loved the time they spent together, and now are looking forward to another joined vacation this year.

This kind of multilingual vacation is good because:

- it widens child's horizons. The child learns about other languages and cultures,

- it generates an interest and creates stimulus to learn a new language and to proficient the already acquired ones,

- it develops communication skills.

It is important to make children aware of the existence of other languages not only by talking about them, but also by bring them in direct contact with their speakers. It will help kids later at school to realize why they need to learn all the verb conjugations. Kids always need to be challenged to promote development. In fact our friends' daughter is really eager to learn Italian now. She is only 5 years old and Italian language is already on her to-do list!

If you like beach as a destination for your vacations, another good way to expose you children to other cultures and languages is just by traveling with them to other countries' beaches.  For Portuguese you could go to Brazil (easy to access from the Americas) or Portugal, if you are in Europe. For Spanish - beautiful Mexican, Argentinian and Spanish beaches. For English - Florida, California or Hawaii.  For German - beach of the Northern and Baltic Sea would do a great job. For French - Cote d'Azur, Bay of Biscay, Tahiti. For Italian - hundreds of beautiful Italian beaches and amazing islands.  For Russian - the Baltic and Black seas, for Hebrew - the Red Sea of Israel. For Croatian - Croatia.   For Greek - Greece and hundreds of fantastic Islands.  For Arabic - Egypt's Read sea, Tunisia or Morocco. There are so many countries with beautiful beaches!

Where have you been with your kids around the world?
Our family already visited beautiful beaches of Italy, France and Portugal. Where should we head next?

You might also like:

How much time do we have to influence a child's minority language development?

Planting a language tree. Does passive language learning work?

What should I order? Mortadella alphabet!  

Traveling with multilingual kids

Today's post is a little different. I took part in the Multicultural Kid Blogs' Vlogging Telephone. The topic of today's "video phone discussion was "Travel with kids".  

Participants, MKB bloggers, asked each other questions. In my video I answered a question from Olena of  Bilingual Kids Rock : 

What games do you play with your kids to keep them entertained while traveling to your destination by airplane, bus, train or car?

Here is my answer:
 

In the video I ask Mari from Inspired by Familia to tell us about the funniest travel situation her family have ever had.

Enjoy!

7 facts that can determine the language spoken between multilingual siblings.

The moment  you think  you figured  it all out and  your multilingual family found the right balance between the languages for your one and only child, you realize the baby #2 is on the way. And everything you planned so perfectly may go the way you were not expecting! Every parent with 2+ kids would tell you that dealing with two kids is much more complex, it's not really 1+1... So, the main question you never really thought of before: What language would the siblings speak to each other?

Planting a language tree. Does passive language learning work?

Our family, like many other multilingual families, follows a language strategy in which parents speak to each other in a language different from the one they speak to their children. My husband and I communicate with each other in English, I speak Russian to our children, and my husband speaks Italian to them.

In our multilingual family set up children are exposed to English language mostly passively with very little active interaction. I always believed in the power of passive language learning; however, I was still wondering if it can bring any good results. My children are now 4,5 and 2,5 years old, and everyday I see more and more

Life Story: My Three Languages – English, Spanish and Quechua

This is a story of  Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou.  She is trilingual and speaks English, Spanish and Quechua, an indigenous language of the Andean region in South America. Her multilingual parents did not speak all three languages to her, but only English.  Nevertheless, the multilingual environment she was surrounded by shaped her life in a unique and a beautiful way.

What should I order? Mortadella alphabet! - Fun way to learn letters and start writing them.

 Apparently there is nothing as easy and fun as teaching  your child letters using an aromatic Italian mortadella! One evening I was preparing appetizer for kids, I took a big piece of  mortadella, the Italian heat-cured meat sausage,  and

2013 - Raising a Trilingual Child Blog Posts in Review

The 2013 year is behind the shoulders. It was the first year in the life of this blog.

Thank you everyone for joining me! I appreciate your positive feed back! 

Even though my children and my ambitions to teach them three languages (Russian, Italian and English) kept me busy, I tried hard and I managed to find time to share my thoughts, ideas and discoveries with you.

I started the blog with the post Raising Bilingual / Multilingual child. Where to start?  describing our family strategy: Exposing our kids to languages  and created the multilingual family Language Strategies page for your reference.

I believe reading is essential in teaching a child speaking and developing a rich vocabulary. Guess when did I start reading to my child? You can find the answer in Bilingual child: when to start reading? post and the tips are in How to read to a baby?

Do you know anything about virtual babysitters?  Skype has opened a virtual window between our living room and Russian speaking grandparents. I am so thankful my parents could support me in many ways: virtual babysitting is one of it. Preserving grandchild - grandparent bond and keeping up the minority language with video calling.

How do you call the languages you and your spouse speaks? I believe Naming languages with their proper name  also helps children to separate the languages easily and gives a wider view without limiting to only family boundaries.

As a parent teaching children a minority language I learnt how not to pass on an opportunity to expose them to new words: Walking with your baby and showing him the world.

Ha ha ha or correcting your child's pronunciation problem. post was born after a lot of worries about my son's wrong pronunciation of the Russian letter "X".

I asked myself and answered a question: How much time do we have to influence a child's minority language development?

When my younger child started speaking I was wondering what language she would speak with her brother: What language do multilingual siblings speak to each other?  I am so glad that as of today it is still Russian - the minority language and hope it will stay this way for at list one more year.

I should stress once more that it is important to be proactive in introducing new vocabulary in minority language: Being proactive in exposing your child to the new vocabulary .

I answer the question: Should I correct my child speaking?

As parents speaking a minority language, we also need to work on being a good example for our children: How to prepare yourself to be a speaking model for your child.
Many of us have ups and downs on the way to multilingualism. The right motivation helps a lot in staying on track, but this is the reality: "No English!" Motivation is the key.

Some fun activities for language development were born while interacting with my daughter: Mixing art, material objects and imagination - a recipe for language development.

My friend asked me a very good question I found an answer to: Can babies distinguish foreign languages?

I welcomed Amalia, a guest on my blog pages with her amazing  Life story: A Journey to Multilingualism. If you are bilingual or multilingual from birth and would like to share your story, feel free to contact me via email: trilingualchildren [at] gmail [dot] com.

Many of you agreed that Teaching the letter sounds before letter names helps in facilitating teaching a child to read.

If you know good documentaries about nature, please share them in the comments of  A touch of nature on a rainy day post.

If you are expecting a child and/or still have to figure out how to merge the multicultural traditions, reading the post When to give your child Christmas presents - an international family challenge. might give you some ideas and help you to make the right decision.




My children enjoy reading books with me and I am glad that many blog readers found very useful the Russian children's books list . You can also review my kids favorite Russian cartoons and movies at the end of the book list. Some more resources in Russian:  Russian winter season kids songs  and books review.

Happy holidays to everyone! 

Let the 2014 bring you love and happiness!

When to give your child Christmas presents - an international family challenge.

As many multicultural families, our family was also challenged with making a decision about how to celebrate Christmas. Before the children were born I did not think about when I should receive and give Christmas presents. I lived so far from my country of origin, from my friends and from the traditions I grew up with, that I simply joined my husband and our friends for December 25th celebration. But then the kids were born and this has change me 180 degrees. I wanted so much to share with them the joy that I lived through year after year in my parents home. I wanted to see my children's smiles as they discover the presents under a Christmas tree, as I did back then. I wanted them be exited to decorate a Christmas tree. I wanted them to look forward to the winter holidays the same way I did.  Not only because it was a present time, but because it was the time full of magic!

Before my son's first December has approached I talked to my husband. We discussed our values. I told him what was important for me and he shared what was important for him during the Christmas time and this is how we decided to celebrate our Christmas and New Year.

Since I grew up during the Soviet time, there was no Christmas celebration. Everyone celebrated a New Year. Everything Western world does for Christmas, Russians did  and still do for a New Year. There are big family gatherings, dinners, parties, fireworks, carnivals you name it! Everything but there was no church of cause.  The Italian traditions are different from what I am used to. One day I will write a post about a Christmas  celebration in Italy to give you more insides. ( And here it is! CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS in ITALY ) So we had to compromise and this is what we settled on.

Our international Italian-Russian family starts decorating the house inside and outside in early December. For the moment we do not do the nativity scene, that is called "presepe" in Italian, but a Christmas tree. And we decorate it with ornaments  that I picked at the local store and that my parents brought from Russia, my very very old child-safe paper and plastic ornaments that are so dear to me. (The glass ornaments have to wait until the kids are older). Even though the Christmas tree is ready for December 24th, the children can find presents under it only on New Year. They still receive plenty of present from Italian relatives on Christmas day and do not feel excluded. I would not want them to!

We celebrate Christmas Eve within our family by preparing a nice traditional dinner and join our Panettone and Pandoro. (see a full list of Italian traditional Christmas sweets here). The time we spend in Germany made its imprint on out taste buds. We do not see Christmas table without Lebkuchen and Stollen, the German traditional sweets! This year I plan to include my family tradition and bake some sugar filled "Plushki". Just writing this brings me back to the time I spent with my grandfather  preparing the sweets. He actually was our family's great cook!
Italian relatives for lunch on Christmas Day. Christmas sweets list for us does not became exhausted with two Italian traditional sweets:

The New Year celebration is a little party for our family with "Spumante" ( Italian champagne)  for the big once and sparkling water for the small. The kids stay up until they feel tired and ready to go to bed on their own will, just to wake up in the morning to tier apart the wrapping paper from the gifts. Big thank you to Russian "Ded Moroz" or Italian Santa for brings presents to us, parents, as well and hanging chocolate mini-Santas all over the tree to make the kids day! 

The new year started, but winter holidays celebrations for our family are not over yet. January the 7th is the Russian Orthodox Christmas day, which we also celebrate with a nice meal, even though I never celebrated it as a child. I believe children need to know that other religions do exist, and they can start learning about their differences from this simple thing - different days of celebrating birth of Christ.

Now you have learned how our international family celebrates Christmas and New Year. If your multilingual family is faced similar challenge and have to make a decision, I hope answering the following questions will help you:

What celebrations and rituals are important to you?
What can you do to support your spouse traditions?
When do you give children presents and how would you do it?
What do you need to explain your children about your traditions and possible differences?

Happy holiday season to you all!





You might also like reading:

Can babies distinguish foreign languages?

Pros and Cons of Raising a Trilingual Child.

How to prepare yourself to be a speaking model for your child. 

How to read to a baby?  

Visiting Italy in Spring. Your picture guide.

Why You Should Visit Italy During Winter Holiday Season and Why You Should Not.

A touch of nature on a rainy day. Best nurture documentaries in English to watch with children.

I am not a supporter of putting children at front of a TV screen; however, I see a significant benefit in watching movies, cartoons and documentaries in the case of promoting non community language abilities in children. I do limit TV time as much as I can and prefer to snuggle  with my kiddos on the couch with a book instead. That said, I see a need that bilingual children / multilingual children have in that special world that cinema gives them. It works as one more minority language point of reference for them, a strong one that  should be provided especially when only one parent speaks it.

We set a rule for our children that limits the Italian TV exposure to weekends only. During the week they are allowed to watch programs in the languages they are less exposed to in everyday life, such as English and Russian.

I tried to show the cartoons that follow the interests of my children by acting proactively, as I write in Being proactive in exposing your child to the new vocabulary. I first read a book with my son about first planes and boats and he just loved the vision of the Russian ice breaker "Arktika" crushing the thick ice and polar bears running around that he became really interested in boats. I try to provide as much information as I can to feed his hunger for knowledge.  This days we watch cartoons and videos about sea life and pirates.

Turning on the TV gives me a break to run the household errands, but I try not to just leave the children in front of the screen. I find it important to participate in this activity at least by watching some parts together. My children often call me and ask me to stay to share their excitement with me. Also watching a program together it gives even more topics to discuss and, thus, promotes the conversation and the minority language development.

Some of the English languages nature documentaries we love to watch all together on weekends, and they become a rainy day savers, or we love to be in direct contact with nature otherwise :)
EarthFight series;
Frozen Planet series;
The Life of Birds series;
The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth  series.

Would love to hear about your family favorite documentaries and cartoons. You are welcome to check the list of our favorite cartoons in Russian language out.


You might also like:

How to prepare yourself to be a speaking model for your child. 
What language do multilingual siblings speak to each other?  
How to read to a baby?

Teaching the letter sounds before letter names.

When my son was 4 month old, his Russian grandmother gave him a lots of books. One of them was "Russian Alphabet for boys", a colorful book with letters and pictures with a rhythm next to each letter. That was the time when I started thinking: Should I teach my son letter sounds or  letter names?  Thinking that letter names can't really help one to learn reading and can wait a few years, I decided to go for letter-sound correspondence.

Starting with one book, I later added more alphabet books into my son's library. I followed my son's natural interest in learning letters and reading books. By 18 month he could recognize and read all of the letters without a mistake. He looked for Russian letters everywhere: on the labels of water bottles, boxes of cereals... I still remember when at the doctor's office he was scanning an info post for the letters he knew. He was so excited to read them out loud !

I was concerned that my son would get confused with the Italian and Russian alphabet . Some letters look similar, but they sound differently. The labels were written in Italian and I could not say it is Russian. Then I found a way to avoid the confusion. I was saying, "You are right! This Italian letter "p" looks like the Russian letter "r".
 
These days I try to read some simple words with my son, who is now 4 years old. He reads book's covers, chapter titles, short words. He still likes his wood letter cubes. I periodically use them to make a morning surprise for him. I lay out  several words different in length on the breakfast table as my good morning to him. He smiles seeing them and starts reading. I just love this moment!

This summer my son discovered how he could talk and keep things secret from his sister -- through word spelling! We started with some simple and short words such as "sok" which mean "juice" in English. I see the result, my son is eager to spell the words now more then ever before.

If your child has smaller siblings or relatives, you could show him the advantage of spelling words that the others children do not understand. This can motivate him to think more about the way words are build. Look at that special light in the child's eyes, when he discovers the power of spelling. I will never forget that light in my son's eyes!

All the above is of course comes from the Russian language perspective, since I teach it to my children; however, it could be applied to other languages as well. My experience shows that looking at the words from the letter sounds perspective and developing phonological awareness skill in your child early in life has its benefits.  Only recently I became aware of a methodology, where children with autism and other disabilities are taught letter-sound correspondence before the letter names were introduced to them; thus, a possible confusion is avoided.

If you teach your child Russian: please check the Russian book's list for Letters and Activity books.

You might also like reading:

7 principles to keep in mind while teaching your child to read. 

How to develop early phonemic awareness and reading readiness by using language play with kids from birth to preschool.

How to Read to a Toddler?

How much time do we have to influence a child's minority language development? 

Life story: A Journey to Multilingualism.

How can a person become bilingual, trilingual or multilingual?

This is an amazing story how a little American girl became first bilingual in English and French, then trilingual by adding German. Now she is mastering her fourth and fifth languages: Japanese and Hebrew. 
This "language spree" started thanks to her parents.

My name is Amalia and I am an Economics doctoral student from the US.  The area where I live is quite international, so I have had the opportunity to hear many languages here.  I spent three years in Germany and two years in France when I was young, and I have remained attached to those cultures.  Since I haven't been able to travel a lot recently, I've been trying to learn Japanese by reading books.  I'm reading a very helpful book of short stories where the translations of most words are written underneath the text.  I'm curious to find out about other people's experiences teaching their children multiple languages, and I'm looking forward to reading more about this on this blog.  

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My parents were always interested in foreign languages, and my mother started teaching me French when I was about one year old.  She used a lot of  music, for example songs by the singer Georges Brassens, and traditional French folk songs.  When I was 5 my father took a sabbatical year in Paris and I went to kindergarten there.  It was a wonderful and interesting experience.  The French kindergarten was very academic -- the teachers treated us like adults in some ways -- but also creative.  Children had already learned to read in nursery school, at the age of three or four (maybe that is why so many little French kids wear glasses).  We had to write dictees, where the teacher reads a story out loud and you have to write it down, getting points for using the right spelling.  But we also did a lot of art and played games. 

After a year in the US my family moved to Bonn, at the time the capital of West Germany, for two years.  Since my parents only knew a little German they couldn't teach it to me before going there.  I had a few lessons with a German exchange student but still understood almost nothing when we came to Germany.  The first week we were there, my mom took me to a pony-riding camp, where I spent a few days just listening to the other children, and gradually I could pick out some words.  Since we were playing games, it was easy to figure out what they were saying from the context.   I remember how exciting it was when the meaning of a new word became clear.  When school started, my German was still broken but I could communicate a little bit.  The school I went to had many immigrant students and everyone was used to welcoming those who didn't know German.  My classmates were not surprised to meet someone who didn't know their language and in fact were very curious and accepting of newcomers.  After school I attended an intensive German class, offered by the school for free, with some other foreign children.  By the first month or so I was pretty fluent.  Because we had a very inspiring teacher I became interested in learning as much vocabulary as possible and started to read a lot of German books.

When we returned to the US, I had a German accent in English and made mistakes in English grammar, though these quickly went away.  Even though I always spoke English with my parents in Germany, I was so integrated into German life that I kept a diary and thought in German.  In the US I kept up my German by writing letters to my friends and reading literature.  Of course, my German accent became worse over time and the grammar didn't come as naturally to me -- now I have to stop and think if I should use the dative or the accusative, or if a word is masculine, feminine or neutral.  I haven't kept up with colloquial expressions and would probably sound old-fashioned if I went back now.  

Because I had enjoyed learning French and German so much, I wanted to continue to learn other languages as I got older.  I studied Japanese with a private tutor and spent a year in a Hebrew day school.  Learning languages without being immersed in them has required much more work and concentration.  As an adult studying a language in a class, I have to use mnemonics to remember new words and have to consciously figure out grammatical structure.  It is a more intellectual process.  I would like to spend more time in these countries in order to get a better feeling for the subtle nuances of the languages.     

In many situations I have found it helpful to be multilingual.  Having an understanding of how expressions can vary across languages has helped me communicate better in English with foreigners here in the US.   I can usually get their meaning, even when they use a colorful metaphor that exists only in their mother tongue.  When traveling, I think it is important to make an effort to speak at least a few words in the local language, and learning languages at an early age has probably made it easier for me to do this.   And it is fun when you have several languages in common with someone and can switch back and forth depending on which language you think best expresses what you want to say.

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Please contact me, if you are interested to participate in the Life Story series and write about your experience as a bilingual or multilingual child and/or a parent.


You might also like reading:
Language Strategies 

Planting a language tree. Does passive language learning work?  

Life Story: Trilingual mama - trilingual kid. Why would it be any other way? 

What language should I speak to my child in public? - Multilingual parent dilemma.