Bilingualism. Is your kid ready?

Nowadays all of us understand the importance that has knowledge of different languages for personal or professional reasons. Each mum wants her kid to know as many languages as he can.

A lot of parents are affraid of introducing more than a language to their kid, others are asking themselves if it is ok to introduce a second language to theirs' kiddo. The truth is that human brain has a lot of flexibility and is prepared not just for the second language but even more languages. I always thought that the easiest time to introduce a second language to our kid is till 3 years, but recently I found in other resources that it can be done till age of 8. So, go ahead, it is never too late.
To explain better the word bilinguism, it is to mention that it is considered a bilingual person, the person who is able to use 2 or more languages at the same level of understanding and does not make any difference by it's difficulty. And this happens due to the environment where kid is growing like family or community.

When baby hears 2 or more languages at the same time, baby accepts them both, the same way as another kid who hears only one language. The only difference between these babies can be, that the first baby who listens 2 or more languages begins to talk a little bit later, because he internalizes these languages before saying anything. After different studies on bilinguism, there have come to a conclusion that babies' brain who grew in a bilingual environment works as a traffic light. When he has to choose a word, he gives green light for the language that it is used at that moment. And this natural process of choosing the right language, becomes a good gymnastics for his brain.

Advantages of bilinguism.

1. Kids with bilinguism concentrate better and they are not upset by the noise of the class to make their works.

2. Brain of a bilingual person is much more flexible and in critical situations can find more solutions and even more quickly.

Age for bilinguism.

As I mentioned before, after looking for recent studies any kid till 8 years can be bilingual if the language is introduced as a natural second language. What about other ages? Of course, it is possible as well, but it comes to be more difficult. And always it is easier to have that environment of the language that we want to learn.

Good luck for those who want to be bilingual.

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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.

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