Do you speak several languages in your house and raising multilingual children as a result of this?

If the answer is yes, welcome to my club.

If you yet to have children and wondering how it might look to be raising multilingual children this post is for you too.

I wanted to talk about it as people always ask me how many languages my kids can speak and how does this affect their everyday life.

I am of Polish nationality, and my husband was raised in India so we naturally speak those languages plus by living in the UK for over 15 years we also speak English.

English is the language we communicate with each other and also with our children when we are all together.

However, when I am home alone with my kids, I try as much as I can to speak Polish to them. Likewise, my husband too is teaching them his language whenever possible.

All of our 3 kids were born in the UK. They all go to the schools here as well so naturally, this is the language they have acquired as the main one.

Just a year ago, my parents used to live in the UK as well which has helped in passing the language skills to my children but since they have moved back to Poland my kids are no longer exposed to my language as much…

We are still in touch with them and talk every day, yet they tend to talk very short with the children and it’s more of a quick catch up call, as opposed to quality conversations face to face.

Unfortunately I can see this impacting my kid’s ability to speak my language, as they really do start to forget the vocabulary and some less common phases.

I do blame myself for it sometimes as I should speak my language more often to them, but to my defence, especially younger ones, don’t always understand me and we end up switching to English. It’s just easier.

I always have seen the benefits of having to speak many languages and even I have tried learning other languages and promised myself that I will resume my German learning one day. This was the language that I have been learning throughout my school years. I could write it and read it, I was not as good at speaking though. It is much easier to learn a foreign language when you get to live in that country. So I found it easy to learn English as I came to live in the UK and had no choice but to learn it in order to establish myself in the country. Since I never lived in Germany, it was much more difficult to learn it despite my young age.

Just an interesting thing I remember from my past that I want to share with you:

When Angeli (our firstborn) was still a little baby, my husband was so worried that she will not learn English that he has asked me to only speak English so that he can communicate with her when she grows up. I did explain to him that she will pick all of our languages with ease as kids are naturally very absorbent and would learn however many languages you teach them, so long they are spoken on a regular basis.

And of course, I was right. All of my kids can understand Polish and speak it too. As to writing and reading, that part might not be as well developed as I had not really pushed them to learn it. But I think for now it’s enough if they can at least speak it.

When it comes to my husband’s language they can speak and understand it but not in such extend as my language. Daddy usually spends less time with the kids to mummy hence he just did not have so many opportunities to teach them. Also, my inlaws are not present in our lives to teach the kids to speak Punjabi. I truly think that having my parents over did have a massive impact on my kid’s ability to speak Polish.

I must admit that my daughter has now got into this funny age where she’s almost embarrassed to speak my husband’s language and it is hard to encourage her to even try, but I know she does understand a lot, just too shy to speak it. This is not the case with my language and she freely speaks Polish, even sometimes reminds me to speak Polish to them (kids).

Did you know:

William James Sidis (1898–1944), an American child prodigy who knew eight languages (Latin, Greek, German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian) at eight years old and claimed to speak about forty languages shortly before his death. He also created his own constructed language, which was called Vendergood. Although Sidis was claimed to have an IQ between 250 and 300 measured through psychological analysis, this was never confirmed.^[104]

Interesting facts and benefit about raising multilingual children (and bilingual too):

 

It is known for centuries that speaking more than one language has many benefits and I just want to list a few. Some might be obvious some not so much.

A lot of people all over the world speaks more than one language

I have just found a website which lists 700! reasons to study languages if you are curious you can check it out here.

• Ability to solve problems as learning languages improves brains command centre. This was actually proven in the studies performed on children speaking more than one language
• Bilingual children academically outperform those of a one language speakers and also their overall school performance in terms of behaviour, attendance and social skills are better than monolingual children (same studies as above mentioned)
• The ease to bond with the extended family. Imagine if I was to take my kids to Poland and they could not understand my aunts or cousins… They would probably find it frustrating and my family too would be not able to fully embrace this time spent with them. This is more evident when we take them to India as they do not have enough of the skills to form full conversation, luckily a lot of people in India speaks English.
• Bilingual children are socially more emphatic and develop better communication skills
• Due to the exposure of foreign language, they tend to also learn about the culture of its country hence enhancing openmindedness and a strong sense of their own cultural identity
• Health benefits- from a lower risk of strokes and quicker recovery from it, to also lesser risk of developing dementia- a bit long term benefit yet worth knowing
• Last but not least, again looking into the future- the increased job opportunities. Employers value and are more likely to hire a person with more than one fluent language as compared to monolingual people

The only negative/ or rather downside in children being exposed to more than one language is that their expressive ability might suffer. This means that because they are sort of learning two or more languages, it might be more difficult for them to express their emotions. This is the only thing that my health visitor has told us when we raised this concern. However, I never noticed this being the case with my kids- I dread to think of what would it be like if there were indeed affected by this and how would they truly express themselves having to learn only one language…

So as you see it is so worth getting children exposed to foreign languages, even if they speak the most popular language in the world.

 

Websites and apps that I recommend for free language lessons for kids:

Just before I go onto listing the websites, one thing to consider is the child’s age.

When children are super young, the best way to teach them is to be using the multiple languages around them from the very start.

That is possible if you speak more than one language but if you don’t- there are still ways to expose them to a foreign language. Whenever you do let them watch telly or a tablet, set on YouTube and play the cartoons that start on the basics of the language you want them to learn. And you can play multiple languages just bear in mind the child does not watch enough of the telly to be able to learn several languages at the same time.

Once the child is older you could introduce some apps that will help them with learning the basic vocabulary and common phrases.

There are literally hundreds of good free mobile apps for kids to learn languages from so you really have plenty to choose from.

Here are some resources that you can utilise:

Duolingo– with 30+ different languages this free website and app is one of the most popular amongst children and adults too. My daughter has been using this website to learn Polish, Spanish and French.

The website is very interactive, engaging and fun to use which makes the whole learning experience so much more enjoyable.

It also allows the user to connect with other learners from all over the world which can further enhance the learning experience.

BBC Languages– you can learn over 30 languages though the free interactive website. I used to use this website when I first came to live in the UK as I spoke basically no English at all.

 

Busuu– this is another website and app with a free sign up that a lot of people talk about and recommend on YouTube. It offers only 12 languages but they are the most commonly learned languages such as English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, etc.

 

Little Pim– It is free to try the website for children that offers 12 languages design purely for kids age 0-6 so very tailored approach that has gained over 25 awards for leading language programs for kids.

 

There are so many others but mostly paid ones so I have only listed those free to use.

Although I think to invest in your child future should never be a hesitation, yet if there are free good resources available, why not give it a try first.

Related post:

30 Common Parenting Mistakes and how to avoid them.

 

The conclusion

 

Whether or not you can speak more than one language I hope you can now see how many benefits this ability would bring to your child/ren, hence I really encourage you to consider introducing a second language in their life.

If you already do, carry on, it is going to put your children ahead of others in the future and it will never be a waste of time or money.

 

I hope you have enjoyed this post where I have covered the topic of raising multilingual children.

Please let me know if you too have children that are exposed to different languages and how well they know it.

Thank you