Anyone raising their children multilingual? What’s your approach?

Im Polish 🇵🇱 my boyfriend is English 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 when it’s just me and baby I speak only polish to her, and when we’re together with my partner I mostly speak English but mix in some polish too 😊 my partner is learning polish so he can understand more

Unfortunately, we aren't fluent in other languages, so we are looking at immersion school and trying context ourselves, then language as much as possible to help him practice at home.

My partner speaks 5 ish languages. We’re thinking about splitting our time between Italy, Argentina, and the US so our kiddo will be raised multilingual

We both are Latvians, so we speak latvian with the kids. We have a rule, that we speak only latvian at home unless we have English speaking friends around. We listen to latvian music and watch movies in latvian. Never kids had problem to learn English as that's what's at nursery and school and they learn it very quickly anyway 🥰

I speak English at home and my husband speaks Brazilian Portuguese. My 3yo daughter understands 100% both languages. She naturally uses more English, but responds in both depending on the situation and location.

I’m Cambodian and my husband is Hispanic. I speak my language (Khmer) more than my husband speaks Spanish. So, ultimately they’ll know more Khmer than anything besides English.

My husband has been speaking Spanish with our son, he'll be one next week. He's hoping that when he starts talking that he'll just catch on. 😆

Yes my husband is Romanian and I am Italian. We live in the UK. We do the one parent one language and he learns English in childcare. He’ll switch language according to what language he’s spoken to.

I speak English to him and my partner in Dutch. I am not fluent in Dutch so he will hear more English as this is our main language when communicating with each other however he definitely understands both languages equally so far and says words in both as well :)

We’re in the inverse situation with me speaking Dutch and my husband speaking English (though I also speak English on alternate days) My mother only speaks Dutch to him and he hears Dutch at nursery. I think he understands both equally but my husband suspects he understands more Dutch.

It's so hard to tell isn't it! To be honest my son might understand more English (hears it at nursery) but he responds just as well to his Papa and his Grandparents who only speak Flemish.
I'm just pleased that he is picking up both and am sure he will be fluent in both. I think we're lucky that English and Dutch have a lot of common words and origins which can only help him :) Then again, there are also the confusing ones which have different meanings (heart and hert, deer and dier for example) 😂 Goodness knows how he is sorting it out in his little mind!

We’re exactly the same as

this is by far the best approach if both parents speak the same language

@Dina At least our parents can speak to our children without us being around ❤️ Also we had neighbours-dad Italian, mom Lithuanian, child was 3yo and spoke those +English 😀 every parent spoke their language to child and English to each other 💪😀

We are both Viet hubby and I so only Viet at home for 3yrs and then they learn English very quickly I might add, in their first term of 3yr old kinder.

My niece is trilingual. Viet at home. Chinese when she’s at her paternal Gmas which is a lot, 2-3* a week, and English at kinder/school. It’s great that her Gma that is not Viet like us, speaks to her in her mother tongue when she’s there. As a couple if you don’t speak the same first language then just speak separate languages to the kids.

I’m multilingual myself. I speak French, Haitian Creole and English. My husband speaks Jamaican patois and English. We speak all of them to our kids at home. My 1year old and 3 year old is fluent in 2 of them but they both understand them all

My husband is fluent in his tribal language and French so he is teaching her, and I know some Spanish so I'm teaching her that.

We have been learning swahili, Spanish, French, and sign language......for the past 4 years

I speak German and Mandarin to my baby, those are my native languages. My husband and the rest of the world speak English to him.

My toddler watches YouTube Videos with various languages, does that count? 😂

Partner and I are both Brazilian, most our family lives there so they don’t speak English. We speak to him mostly in Portuguese because English we will definitely learn here, most music we play/ whatever screen time is usually Portuguese except for Paddington bear because that’s his favourite cartoon