Looking for multilingual families | Raising Children in More Than One Language | Forum

Hello!

I am writing an eguide for multilingual families and would like to talk to families in different multilingual situations. In addition to families with two parents I'd love to hear from single parents, non-native speakers, expats changing countries regularly and parents of adopted children wishing to keep the heritage language going. I am especially interested in the everyday solutions that families have come up with and the advice they would give to others based on their own experience.  I have a list of questions, but you are free to write about anything you feel has been important in your situation.  I'd love to hear from you, please contact me at annika.jcicosmo@gmail.com. Thank you!

Hello, my name is Corinna. I am a native of Germany, but have lived in the US for 12 years, raising my 3 yo. bilingual w/ my husband (monolingual, English). We recently moved to the outskirts of Brussels, Belgium, where our son attends a bilingual preschool (French and German). His main language remains English, but more and more German finally creeps in (!!). I am working on my French as Brussels is mainly French, but we all live in a Flemish speaking community, so our day-to-day interactions require us to learn some along the way. We are still adjusting, but hope to have a concise plan soon.

Hello, I am a New Zealander (English speaker) and I live in Bolivia (7 years).  I and my husband speak English/Spanglish at home and Spanish with all our friends and workmates as we don't mix with ex-pats here.  We have two children who came with my husband and I and entered local schools and now are in University – they speak both English and Spanish like native languages.  We have two four year olds to whom we have always spoken both languages and they speak Spanish between them and with their friends and Spanglish with us.  Sometime this year we will shift to NZ and the girls will enter a local Kindy and we will see how their English develops as we attempt to make Spanish our home language.