Ana Miranda
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3 tips to travel light as a multilingual family

17/12/2021

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by Ute Limacher-Riebold and Ana Elisa Miranda

Have you ever packed a backpack in the wrong way? Made it too heavy, causing you back pain; brought the wrong or unnecessary things, making it difficult to reach what you actually needed, quickly enough? 


Or have you ever been on a hike where the pace was much faster than yours, so that you ended up exhausted, frustrated and didn’t enjoy the journey?

If we carry too much, the wrong items, or walk too fast, we can get out of breath, frustrated and are more prone to giving up, as we don’t enjoy the journey.

Raising children with multiple languages is a journey that starts before the children are born and never ends. 

Here are 3 tips on how to “travel light” on your multilingual journey: 

1. Define the journey

As parents of multilingual children, we are on some kind of international journey. We either live abroad in our partner’s country, or our partner is a foreigner in our country, or we live in a country where both of us are foreigners. 

Each parent brings his or her very own baggage. This is our cultural background, our attitudes, preferences, habits, patterns, ideas and expectations, our personal experiences, values, beliefs, assumptions, convictions, our way of doing things, as well as our way of communicating, our languages, our memories and more. Our baggage is determined by what we consider important, essential and “good to carry with us” on our life-journey.

When on a journey together, following the same goal and carrying what is necessary to reach it, makes the journey easier. You are less likely to become overwhelmed and to experience attrition. You should have enough energy to focus on what is really important.

  • Have you agreed and defined the multilingual journey of your family? 
  • What are the short and long term goals for you, your partner, your children?

2. Pack your baggage wisely

The art of packing a backpack is to think carefully about what we really need. Translated to our multilingual journey, this means:

Decide if judgments or expectations (of others as well as our own) are important for us or not. Do they support our short and long term goals?

We all have our very own assumptions, experiences and expectations. Some are relics from our childhood or earlier phases of our life, and we carry them like a safety blanket to give us comfort. 

  • Are your expectations aligned with your common goal or are they rather hindering you, your partner or your child? 
  • Are the expectations you have realistic and achievable? 

If our assumptions and expectations are realistic, we keep them, if some are not helpful right now, we can put them aside (in a mental drawer).

Have a survival kit. Items we must always bring on a hike are a water bottle, food, a first aid kit and our IDs (and with young children, everything we need to take care of them).

On our multilingual journey, these would be resources that “feed” our languages: books, music, games, podcasts, audiobooks, lessons, playgroups; websites and discussion groups that can give us the necessary support; a guide for parents of multilingual children, or our Toolbox for Multilingual Families, where you can find activities and games to foster your languages and enjoy communicating with your children. 

  • Do you know how to keep transmitting your language, in an engaging and motivating way for the whole family?
 
3. Adjust the pace

For a hike to be successful and enjoyable for every family member, it is important to distribute the weights wisely. We adults carry the heavier items, and our children carry the lighter ones. Our older children can also take over some tasks and roles, depending on their abilities and strengths.

During our journey, the pace of our walk should allow us to proceed and progress steadily. This means keeping the pace of the weakest or youngest person in the group, stopping when the youngest or weakest member is tired, because a group – or team – is only as strong and effective as its weakest member. This also means that the group will do their best to support each other to achieve the common goal.

One of our goals on our multilingual journey is to reach the milestones safely and with enough energy left to enjoy the landscape and celebrate the small steps.

  • Have you paused to consider the pace you are going? 
  • Is every member of the family feeling supported and enjoying the journey? 

We have created a journal prompt to help you reflect on your cultural baggage. Download it here.

Cultural baggage
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What makes children love reading?

1/10/2018

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When you request to join Raising Biliterate Children one of the questions is “What’s your biggest challenge with your child’s literacy?” Many parents say it is to find a balance between languages, others say they don’t know how to start teaching their child to read in the minority language. And many others say that they don’t know what to do to motivate their child to read more and to like reading.

So I’ve been meaning to create something to help you with that. I’m a teacher and one of the proudest moments of my days is to see children immersed in a book, recommending it to their friends and begging me to go to the library and choose a new one.

But that’s not true for every child. Some children just don’t love reading and it’s absolutely fine. They’d rather play a game, draw a picture, craft, be outdoors, watch a movie, chat with their friends, practice sports.

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But why don’t they enjoy a good book?

Maybe they haven’t found the right ones for them.
Maybe they’re struggling to read fluently.
Maybe it hasn’t been a habit.
Maybe they’re too distracted or too busy.
Or maybe they just don’t love it.

Did you love reading when you were their age? Do you now?

I love reading. I can’t go two days between books. I’ve been like that since I can remember. And it’s still hard for me to extricate myself from all of the busyness, tiredness, distractions. I need to actively carve time out of my days and add purpose to my reading.

Even if your children hate reading and you respect that, you’ll want to encourage them to read more.

Why?

It increases their vocabulary, knowledge and understanding.
It increases empathy, imagination and confidence.
It helps them navigate the world we live in.
It can help them cope with difficult moments and emotions.
It’s a calm and safe space.

How?

A quick Google search will show you many different versions of  “18 genius ways to make your kids love reading” as well as “8 ways parents discourage their kids from reading”. You’ll read them, nod all the way, finish your coffee and carry on with your day. Am I right?

No matter which tips you follow, remember this:

It’s about joy and wonder.
It’s a daily choice.
It’s about making space and time for it.
It’s about connecting.
It’s immersing ourselves in the world of stories. Spoken, written or otherwise recorded.

Oh, but I promised to create something to help you with that!

Here it is: an email challenge that’s doable, efficient and free!

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  • 7 emails
  • immediate action
  • 28 days
  • self-paced
  • support group
I'm in!
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Growth Mindset in your bi-literate home

7/3/2018

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If you’re like me and you love reading articles about how to best educate your children, you might have come across the concept of growth mindset.
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No idea what I’m talking about?
Growth Mindset in the bi-literate home

​Growth mindset is the belief that you can learn and improve your abilities through practice. People who have a growth mindset don’t see mistakes as failure but as an attempt at learning. They are resilient and they will try again, try harder or try a different way until they achieve a goal.

People with a fixed mindset on the other hand, believe that you’re either good or bad at something, that intelligence is something innate and can’t be changed. When they make mistakes they get discouraged and tend to give up.

Encouraging a growth mindset is especially important for school children, so that they understand that learning is a process and that everyone has their own rhythm.

If you’re trying to raise a bi-literate child you might have heard - or said it yourself:
“I’m bad at reading.”
“I’ll never be able to read as well in English as I do in…”
“Maybe reading is just not her thing.”
“I’ve never been a reader either.”
“Reading in a second language will just confuse him.”
“We’ll just stick with one language instead.”
“I’m not a teacher, I can’t do anything to help.”
“She struggles, so now she hates reading.”
“Teaching them to read in a second language is too much of a chore and they resist it.”

If you want to cultivate growth mindset in your home, start by adopting the mantra “Not yet”. Whenever your child says “I’m not good at this”, reply “Well, not yet, but you’re learning.”

When you think “This is not going well, I have no clue what I’m doing”, try thinking “How can I figure this out? Who can I ask for help?”

The way you praise them has tremendous impact on how they behave. “Oh, you’re so clever” or “You’re a natural, like daddy” tells them that they were just born like that, no effort involved. When they struggle and make mistakes they’ll feel like they’ve failed and that they’re not as clever as you thought.

Instead, praise their hard work, their improvement, creative thinking or willingness to try. Make sure they understand that their brains are growing and need time to make new connections. Talk about times when you learned to do something new and difficult. Talk about their favorite athlete or actor and how they had to overcome barriers.
​

Success comes with resilience and hard work. Reading and writing well (especially in more than one language) takes time and consistent practice.

Check out:
Mindset, by Carol Dweck and her TED talk on The Power of Believing That You Can Improve


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     I'm Ana - a teacher who loves reading, writing, traveling and nature. 

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