From Bilingual Family to a Multilingual environment. How to raise a smart kid within so many languages?

Globalization is something that changes our lives in a good or bad way, but all of us try to accept and survive in this kind of life. Nowadays it is very common, kids to grow in a multilingual environment, nothing to compare with almost 20 or 30 years ago, when a bilingual kid was seen as a kid who is not as smart as others, or not as capable as others. How I know? Simply, I am that kid that 20 years ago was struggling and demonstrating to all my teachers that to be from a bilingual family is a lot of fun, and I am smart, and maybe somewhere I understand the things easier than other kids, just because I have more words to express things or actions.

Now, my problem is not only to teach my toddler 2 languages, as did my parents. But, as well to teach him English, because it is one of the main spoken languages, and of course Spanish and Catalan, that are the languages of the place we have chosen to live in. It is taugh, but I always try to do my best on that, both of us, me and my husband, we try to develop the skill to understand as many languages as our toddler can. And when I go to a pediatrician, it is very frustrating to hear, that ¨your kid do not speak as much as he supposes to speak, you have to do these things (and there is a list of things to do) to develop his speaking skills¨. After this, I think ¨oh my God, have you ever tried to speak to a little kid at least 4 languages?¨

I knew that these kind of problems will occur during his growth, and I read a lot about this kind of difficulty. Now, I can hear my toddler to count the numbers till 3 in Russian, and from 4 in Catalan. Or every time when playing with the ball we mentioned this word in Russian, and then suddenly he told us that he wants to play with the ball, in Catalan language. In these moments you just want to scream as much as possible.... really?... no.... I am happy that he speaks anything, even if he has a chaos in his brain.

That is why, I want to share with you some steps to raising your own polyglot kid. Some tips are from my experience, others are taken from inspirational literature.

1. One person, one language. From the beginning we had a clear vision that we will speak him Russian, in the nursery Catalan, grandparents Romanian. Kids are very smart creatures who are quite capable to know a language if it is only spoken by one person.

2. DO extra activities for developing minority language at home. As our child spent more time in the nursery, his vocabulary is richer in Catalan than in Romanian or Russian. This kinds of activities can be: printables, reading books, cartoons in Russian languages.

3. Find a community with kids who speaks the same language. We haven´t attended yet, but we plan to find a group of mummies who are keen to meet and leave the kids to play together.

4. To travel to the country where the language is spoken as a first one.

5. Be PATIENT, all learning activities requires time and patience, the results will be seen shortly, don´t worry.

As you can see, there are just few tips to follow to see any results, the raising of multilingual children is a highly personal process. Your kid can learn any other languages at any time.