Raising Multilingual Kids: Real Life Family Stories From Around The World

Reading and researching about raising multilingual kids is extremely useful and can help parents with ideas and resources along your journey. But what’s even better, is reading about how real multilingual families are raising their bilingual or multilingual kids. Reading about their experiences, what worked and what didn’t in different situations.

Bilingual Kidspot hosts a Multilingual Families Series, you can find these articles below. If you would like to share your own family story about how you are raising multilingual kids please contact us and let us know. Your family could be featured next!

How one multilingual family speak four languages on a daily basis

Agnieszka and her family speak all four languages every day and her children speak them all quite well. This is how they make it work.

A multilingual family in a monolingual nation

A Spanish and French speaking family living in Australia. Read about their language strategy.

When adoption means changing a child’s birth language

A story about a little boy adopted from China, by an English/Italian family, and their quest to give him a multilingual future.

Raising multilingual kids as an expat family on the move

Moving from country to country every few years isn’t easy. Read how this multilingual family are keeping up with the languages.

A monolingual parent raising a multilingual child

One parent raising her child to speak English, Chinese, and Arabic even though she only speaks English herself. This is how she makes it work.

Raising bilingual twins, what it’s like and what to expect

A Swiss/New Zealand couple raising their bilingual twins. Read about the differences they have encountered when compared to raising one bilingual child or bilingual siblings.

A multilingual travel lesson, leading by example

How one family use travel to help their children’s’ language exposure

I taught my daughter 8 languages in 6 years. This is how we did it

Moving around from country to country is hard. This dipolomat family tell their story of how they keep up with the languages

How multilingualism led us to homeschool

This family chose homeschooling to help keep up with the languages. See how they did it.

Don’t be afraid to adapt your language plan

When one family’s language plan wasn’t working, they adapted it to make it work for them. Read more about how they changed strategies.

Raising a trilingual child when the community language changes

When you move country and the community language changes, the exposure changes. Read how one family dealt with moving from Malta to Norway.

Origami gave me hope in the darkness and helped me teach my child my language

A touching story about a mother finding a family tradition and keeping the language alive.

Raising bilingual kids as a non-native speaker

A Spanish speaking enthusiast, Jamie, writes about how she speaks Spanish with her kids even though its her second language.

Teaching my daughter Amharic and keeping our family heritage alive

A mothers quest to keep her heritage alive by speaking her native language to her child and creating her own resources.

Multilingual Families

One thing you will notice when reading these multilingual family stories, is that not every family is the same. There are many differences between the way others raise their children. These stories are for inspiration, to give you ideas on how you can make languages work within your own family.

Would you like to share your multilingual family story? We would love to hear from you. Please email bilingualkidspot@gmail.com.

Are you raising a bilingual child?  Subscribe for related articles. Follow Bilingual KidSpot on Facebook and join our private discussion group.