Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast: Raising Multilingual Children, Multicultural Living, Growing Up With Multiple Languages.

On this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast, we talk with Cordelia Newlin De Rojas. She is the founder of the blog, Multilingual Mama. Cordelia is a Franco-American mother of two girls, Pacifique and Claude. Both of her daughters were born in different countries – Pacifique (New York) and Claude (Singapore). She lives in Thailand with her daughters and her husband, who’s a Mexican.

We discuss how she was raised in a bilingual family, what she learned from traveling from a Western country to Southeast Asia, how she’s raising her daughters bilingual and her decision on homeschooling.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

• 00:30 Introduction to Cordelia and her blog, Multilingual Mama
• 1:30 Cordelia’s Family Language Portrait
• 3:55 Growing up in a Bilingual Family – Pros and Cons
• 7:00 What you can learn from traveling
• 7:56 Refusing to speak French when Cordelia was a kid
• 9:00 Learning how to speak French and studying in a French school
• 12:00 Learning Spanish and the challenges Cordelia encountered
• 15:11 Family Language Portrait and Language System she uses to teach her kids
• 22:40 Homeschooling: Reasons behind the decision
• 33:20 Challenges and Drawbacks of Homeschooling
• 34:20 Cordelia’s thoughts on homeschool language learning
• 37:00 Cordelia’s tips on raising Bilingual Kids
• 39:16 Discussing when a spouse is not fluent in the minority language
• 49:10 Cordelia’s advice for parents on kids precious first words – delayed language speaking
• 55:00 Second Sibling Syndrome
• 57:00 Majority Language Public Talking

Items Mentioned in this Episode:

Homeschooling on a Budget

Speech Development: Keep Calm, Your Toddler will Talk

Puppets as Linguistic Catalysts

Raising Multilingual Children

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Don’t you wish you would have found it sooner?
Well to help other parents find Bilingual Kids Rock and spread our positive message – please subscribe & consider leaving a review and rating on iTunes.
You see – your reviews and subscription information is how iTunes determines what’s good, what’s bad, and what they should share with new listeners.
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Then rate us – five stars being good – and let us know what you enjoyed about the show.
We’ll even highlight your reviews in future podcasts!
Again – thank you for helping us grow and reach more bilingual families JUST LIKE YOURS

On this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast, we talk with Annabelle Humanes, founder of the blog – Piri-Piri Lexicon. She’s a French language researcher married to a Portuguese and they reside in Germany with their daughter, LJ. They speak 4 languages at a daily basis and their aim is to raise their daughter to be a young global citizen.

Why Piri-Piri Lexicon? According to Annabelle, it sums up her family quite well. The lexicon part is because she spent 4 years of her student life researching bilingual children’s vocabulary development for a PhD and carried on further research on the topic of word acquisition. Piri-piri is a chilli brought to Africa by the Portuguese (aka a multicultural chilli!). It is used in a delicious and simple Portuguese dish (piri-piri chicken – a family favorite) and represents her family’s love for (spicy) food and P’s love for cooking.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

• 2:35 Annabelle’s Family Language Portrait and what language her family speaks
• 4:30 Annabelle talks about her daughter’s language learning and going to a Bilingual school.
• 6:30 Discussing the article “How much a child should be exposed to a minority language?”
• 10:10 Clues to see if a child gets enough exposure to another language
• 12:26 Developing Bilingual Lexicon
• 15:06 Language learning for the children
• 16:00 Language Delay for Bilingualism
• 17:15 Difference between Bilingual and Monolingual kids
• 20:30 Speech Theraphy and Specialists – Dealing with Difficulty in Language Learning
• 22:10 Annabelle’s Books on Amazon: Bilingual Lexicon and Research
• 23:00 Dealing with the difficulty of learning Portuguese for her daughter while her husband is traveling

Items mentioned in this episode include:

• The developing Bilingual Lexion
• www.thepiripirilexicon.com

In today’s episode I am answering the question that came from our reader Carol. She writes:

Hi,
I have a 21 month old baby girl, and she says almost nothing.
Some people say that she is late, but I want to think that is because she is hearing two languages.
Is it normal that she isn’t saying many words?
I’m a little worried.

The first question her to answer is bilingualism really causes language delays?
There is a very common idea that bilingual child is a late talker compared to monolingual child because she is processing two languages.

First of all, there is no scientific evidence that bilingualism causes language delays.
And there were numerous studies that covered this topic.
For example, Psycho linguist Dr. Kimbrough Oller compared language development of babies on babbling stage. Both of the groups -bilingual and monolingual babies- started repetitive babbling (like ba-ba-ba) in the same age. In other words, it did not take bilingual babies to reproduce sounds because there were exposed to two languages.

As we see the idea that bilingualism is the reason for language delay is a myth and is not supported by any research.

Now, is your daughter really late talker or she is on the far edge of normal development?

Now that we know, that bilingual and monolingual children develop in the same pace lets see what 21 month old should say in her age.

Barbara Zurer Pearson in her book Raising A Bilingual Child gives us the following guideline for 18 to 24 month:

“First words come on average between 10 and 18 month. Average expressive vocabulary for boys – 75, with range from 13 to to 420 words.
Average expressive vocabulary for girls at 18 month : 112, ranging from 17 to 475.
We do not worry if the child does not have any words until after 18 month. It is more of a concern if a child does not understand any words at that age.

The next speech milestone comes around 24 month when toddlers should put together simple 2 word phrases.”

American Speech Language Hearing Association developed the guidelines on what should be normal speech development. Let see when they suggest to ring alarms: So, the child:

• Does not smile or interact with others (birth and older)
• Does not babble (4-7 months)
• Makes only a few sounds or gestures, like pointing (7-12 months)
• Does not understand what others say (7 months-2 years)
• Says only a few words (12-18 months)
• Words are not easily understood (18 months-2 years)
• Does not put words together to make sentences (1.5-3 years)
• Has trouble playing and talking with other children (2-3 years)
• Has trouble with early reading and writing skills (2.5-3 years)

So what a parent of a late bilingual speaker should do?

Carol, you mention that your daughter says almost nothing. My understanding she still says several words. My advice, record the words she is saying in a daily log for about a week, sometimes parents don’t even realize that their babies say more words then they think. Count even words that no one except you understands, but your daughter uses them consistently referring to to something.

Pearson also makes stress that it is even more important that your 18 to 24 month old toddler understands what she has been told.

Lets check if your daughter has a good understanding. Try this activities for a week. Intentionally give your daughter simple directions, like bring me your shoes, or throw it in the garbage (kids love to clean when they are little and then this love vanishes somehow:) and then see if she can easily understand what you are asking for.
Also, the good game to play would be this one. Choose several object or toys, put them next to each other and ask her to bring you one of the toys. Another one, ask you child to identify body parts – hers and yours. Fro example: Where is your nose? Where is mommy’s nose?

Here is my personal experience: from this guidelines, I should say I had to ring alarms with all of my children . Well 3 of them, because the fourth one is only 10 month. It is especially true for my son. His first and single word “no” in Ukrainian came at around 24 month. And only by age three he started to produce understandable two-word phrases.

Now, after you recorded your daughter’s speech abilities, what next?
The chance for children (monolingual and bilingua...

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Today’s question is the most popular in my blogging experience.

It is been asked by so many parents of different languages, family circumstances and kids’ ages.

But the core of the question remains the same:

Why my bilingual child does not respond back in minority language.

It certainly could be frustrating: you were always speaking the target language with your child and maybe he/she even spoke it to you back as a little kid but eventually started to use more majority language with you and finally completely switched to it.

No I boiled down all possible reasons into 4 major groups, and I would like to share them with you.

The NEED to speak the language is essential.

I started to learn English in middle school. Not to brag, but I was an A student in most of my classes, including English. But when I met my husband, I could not speak it at all. Surprise!

The real language learning began when I had to explain him what I do in my life. I simply had no other choice, but work hard to make myself clear.

It is no different for children. Our little ones have to connect regularly with people who do not speak their majority language. Here are some ideas how to do it:

• Travel to the countries of your minority language
• Meet with people who do not speak child’s majority language
• Host an Au-pair
• Sign up for full immersion languages classes
• Organize Skype lessons in target language (it does not have to be focused on language itself – your child can has singing, drawing, guitar, craft and other lessons with native speaker)
• Try summer language camps
• Hire a nanny
• Create family rules, for example: only minority language in the house; regular reading in the second language; all media only in your mother tongue; pretend that you don’t understand (works good with small children) etc.

The last point could be considered “made-up” need – not real – because parents who need family rules usually speak community language very well. Some parents don’t feel comfortable pretending that they don’t understand the child; or imposing strict language policies. The tactics mentined above definitely need “to agree” with you as a parent. Nevertheless, family rules can become life-savers that keep the language alive until real need will appear.

When you enroll your daughter in piano class or sign up your son for a basketball team, it is very unlikely that they will be learning those skills by passively watching their teachers perform. No. Your daughter will have to practice her scales everyday to master piano. Your son will have to shoot hundreds hoops to become a good player.

It is no different with second language.

In order to actively use the language, your child will need to practice speaking it.

As opposed to monolingual peers, bilingual children have a choice in which language to speak. It is especially true for families, where parents speak majority language. As a result, they absorb the language and understand it very well, but they don’t want to practice speaking it.

Note, that understanding the language is a very valuable skill. But if your goal for your child is active language use, you will need to work on building vocabulary with her.

Here are some practical suggestions on how you can be improving children’s fluency on a daily basis:

• Interactive reading: ask a lot of questions; stop and discuss whats happening in the book; dramatize the story; ask your child what is going to happen next etc.
• Ask your child to repeat after you. I literally ask my kids to repeat the words after me in Russian or Ukrainian. After several times they are able to use them on their own.
• Practice hand writing
• Learn poems and rhymes
• Sing songs with them
• Teach them jokes in minority language
• Take turns telling stories before bedtime
• Do what ever possible to make them SAY it. In a very loving way, of course.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Aristotle.

When we were picked up from the airport in Ukraine by my relatives, they were so surprised that our two older children buckled up in the car without any reminder from my side. I actually was surprised that they were surprised!

But then I saw the reason why it was eyeopening for them.

A lot of Ukrainian kids don’t use seat belts consistently. They are given a choice to roam free in the car if parents don’t drive too far, or take back roads, or if they don’t d...

Olga Mecking is the founder of European Mama – a blog that focuses on expat life and raising trilingual children. Olga blogs about her experiences on her site and sometimes contribute articles to other websites as well. She is a Polish mother living in the Netherlands with her German husband and three children. She also works as a translator and communicator in intercultural communication.

We talk about how she was raised as a bilingual by her parents, their family language portrait, and how she raises her trilingual kids. She also shares with us what system she uses on her kids when it comes to language learning. We also talk about the importance of quality time and giving more input when it comes to teaching your kids another language.

In this episode, here’s what we’ll cover:

00:21 Introduction Olga Mecking – founder of European Mama

2:00 Olga’s family language portrait – how she was raised as a bilingual

4:10 Switching languages – was it hard to speak Polish and German?

6:00 Olga on learning how to speak English

9:15 Learning more languages like Hebrew and Dutch.

11:56 Her family language portrait now – her kids on trilingual learning

13:00 Olga on miscommunications of language speaking and translating between her and her husband

15:00 Polish community and immersion schools

17:50 Difference between Polish and Ukrainian language

19:00 Quality time and input with language learning

22:36 Multilingual learning plan isn’t working?

25:20 Discussing the one parent, one language system

26:39 Tracking the time a child spends on listening and learning the language

30:19 What language does her children speak to each other?

34:00 Keeping the heritage language and translations

35:17 Culture differences in living in different countries

37:41 Multicultural cooking with Olga

42:45 Challenges of raising multilingual kids

46:20 Olga’s advice on raising a multilingual child

Items mentioned in this episode:

The multilingual parenting dilemma

Always speak your mother tongue with your child

The importance of quality time in multilingual families – and my struggles with it

Who can be bi- or multilingual?

How does it feel like to raise multilingual children

Was this information useful?

Don’t you wish you would have found it sooner?

Well to help other parents find Bilingual Kids Rock and spread our positive message – please subscribe & consider leaving a review and rating on iTunes.

You see – your reviews and subscription information is how iTunes determines what’s good, what’s bad, and what they should share with new listeners.

We REALLY appreciate your help – we can’t grow without your support.

To leave a review, login to iTunes, go to the BilingualKidsRock Podcast, and click the Ratings and Reviews tab.

Then rate us – five stars being good – and let us know what you enjoyed about the show.

We’ll even highlight your reviews in future podcasts!

Again – thank you for helping us grow and reach more bilingual families JUST LIKE YOURS