How We Raise Our Trilingual Children

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ON THIS VIDEO:
I share with you some very personal clips and all the strategies that we have been using the past four years.
→ Plenty of practical ideas
→ Clips with examples

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OTHER VIDEOS FOR YOU:

→ IS IT A GOOD IDEA TO RAISE MULTILINGUAL KIDS?

→ HOW WE RAISE OUR TRILINGUAL CHILDREN

→ HOW MANY LANGUAGES CAN A CHILD LEARN?

→ FIVE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD SING WITH YOUR MULTILINGUAL CHILD

→ SPEECH AND VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES FOR
MULTILINGUAL TODDLERS

→ MULTILINGUAL BABIES - SPEECH ACTIVITIES

→ HOW TO SPEAK MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE WITH YOUR CHILD

→ PASSIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING

→ CODE-SWITCHING

→ SHOULD I CORRECT MY CHILD'S SPEECH?

→ TRAVEL WITH YOUR BILINGUAL CHILD

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ABOUT ME:
Welcome to Multilingual Family, your space to discover how to raise multilingual kids successfully.

My name is Andrea Breitenmoser and I'm a teacher, specialized in languages. I was raised bilingual and now I'm raising my children trilingual. Let me share my experiences and know-how with you!

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DISCLOSURE

This video is not sponsored.

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[lucysour]

Me, a barely bilingual person with no kids: "Yep, let's watch this!"

[elisaarasa]

I misread the title as “how we raise our triangular children” 😂🤣😂

[lolacookie]

We were raised trilingual and it was such a gift that has served us so well throughout life. I can’t thank my parents enough! As a result we love languages, have gone on to learn more 😂 You can never speak too many languages! Best way to immediately connect with another human being is to be able to speak their language 🙏🌈

[svenjameiner]

Me, a 21 year old German, not even thinking about having kids and only being bilingual:
“YES. let’s watch a video about teaching my kids 3 languages”

[yckieh]

I’m multi-lingual. I will do everything in my power to make my kids at least be bilingual. Kids are so smart! Amazing job!

[miakarkkainen]

I grew up in Africa speaking 4 languages and our children are now fluent in 3 (Finnish, Swedish and English) as well as having a very strong knowledge of French and Spanish. It is the best feeling to travel and to be able to speak the language of the country you travel to🙏

[jameliaparnell]

your kids are so lucky, i wish my parents were multilingual.

[kimmontenegro]

Most important part, don't give up. My son stopped speaking Spanish after I got divorced. Then he told me he didn't want to learn French even though I used it with him often since birth. When he hit high school, he surprised me by doing four years of French. Then got a double major; one being French. Then he reaquired Spanish. And he is building on Hebrew. So proud of him!

[annk]

Your children are extremely lucky to be given so many 'languages' from their early years.... they are learning the languages in the very best way! Bravo!

[siriussemajo]

I was raised trilingual. Married into a 4th language (husband is bilingual). Kids are now bilingual as I didn’t know how to introduce a third language. We are about to move to Spain. so I’m excited for the kids to learn a 3rd language!

[soooonya]

My husband and I speak English to each other. I speak Russian to the kids, he speaks with them Swedish and they speak Hebrew at daycare and school... a salad of languages haha It’s a lot of fun actually ❤️ And we also sing a lot, it helps with speech development and learning languages more efficiently

[hanachong]

Hello dear, thanks for your video it is really great. I personally had never heard of such strategies and methods designed by to raise trilingual children untill I came across your video. The awkward fact is that I think I've succeeded to raise 2 'quadrilingual' kids, I dare to say, spontaneously. My native language in mandarin chinese and my husband's native language is persian, we live in Dubai and only speak english to one another because we can't speak each other's languages. I had never thought about this multilingual education idea, though my husband and I only speak to our kids in our respective languages because it's more comfortable for us. In the first year of my kids (they're twins), I was only a stay at home mom, so, at first, mandarin chinese was their strongest language, moreover many of my husband's relatives live here, and guess, they have children too! As we frequently gathered together, I started noticing that my both kids were also developing persian speaking skills, this is also because their father also only spoke to then in persian. Furthermore, as my husband and I only speak english to each other, I started noticing that my both kids were over and over more likely to grasp english words and sentences, as we spend a lot of time together as a family on our days off, but I think that's also due to their exposure to english media such as children's TV shows and cartoons. When they were 3 y/o I enrolled them in a local kindergarten, and one day, when I went to pick them up, one of the teachers asked me how come they could speak english and arabic relatively well once these are none of their backgrounds, I was really shocked to know that my kids could speak arabic at that point, then I realised it was because when they were 1 y/o, I started to work again, then we hired a Syrian lady as a nanny to take care of them, as she spoke very little english, I am absolutely sure that she only had spoken to them in arabic. As Dubai is a very multicultural city, english is by far the most spoken language here despite not being official, nevertheless all government services are provided in both arabic and english. As my children started attending school, we enrolled them in a bilingual (english and arabic), so it would benefit their lives here. A few years ago, after my father died, my mother (who only speaks chinese) moved to live with us here in Dubai, thus she can take care of my kids whilst we're working, as she only speaks chinese and is also a retired chinese language elementary school teacher, she taught my kids to write and read chinese, which is definitely the trickiest part of learning mandarin.

Now my kids are 8 y/o and I can say that they're able to speak chinese, persian, english and arabic fluently, with some flaws here and there but nothing to worry about. Perhaps I can say that persian may has become their weakest language with the passing of the time, because as they're growing up they have been spending over and over less time with their Iranaian family, although they still only speak persian to their father.

I know my story took long, but I felt I definitely had to share it with you!

Best wishes with your kids education 🙂

[teamluckyfins]

i was raised multilingual I speak 9 languages today- my mom speaks 13. I am kinda worried that I won't be able to teach my children so I really appreciate these types of videos

[aneliaermoshkina]

You baby is super adorable and sweet! She is also lucky to have the opportunity to speak different languages from such an early age

[sara]

My boyfriend is italian and I am portuguese. Before I learned italian we spoke in english with each other for months, and often still do! We are planning on teaching the 3 languages to our future kids and this video was super helpful, a big thank you from italy! :)

[faisalalkhedhrawi]

child's brain is so elastic and adaptive in an impressive way. i lost my English language fluency when i started to learn Spanish , my brain said enough is enough.

[santao]

When i was growing up, my parents only spoke to me in one language (Latvian), even though they both were fluent in Russian, and my mum knew German very well. I really wish that they had also spoken to me in Russian (possibly even German), as it is very difficult for me to learn it now that I'm older. Moral of the story, if you are multilingual and are having kids- TEACH THEM MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE

[Lemonz]

Where I'm from we are required to learn 3 languages through school (Faroese, Danish and English), so most people from a certain age speak 3 languages pretty fluently. It just happens naturally there. It's interesting seeing how people have to actively choose and work so hard with getting their children to be multilingual in other countries. :)

[erichiseli]

Very interesting video. We also did the OPOL method without actually knowing it was called like that :) Our twins grew up with my wife speaking Korean, and me Swiss German in a Swiss German environment. That was until Kindergarten. Then they went to the French Kindergarten and picked up French (with which I am bilingual) very fast (like 3 months). From then on, their primary language was French, they used it to talk together and to me, but I continued speaking Swiss German to them.

Now they are 16 yrs old and they recently switched to Korean as their main language. They go to a bilingual high-school (German and French) where the students are either of German or French mother tongue. Their weakest language is Swiss German, as I was less present than my wife, and we were not actively making play dates with Swiss German speaking kids, most of the time they would play with their schoolmates.

English was no problem to learn at all. They already heard it from time to time at home when my wife and me discussed more complicated matters (otherwise my wife speaks Korean and German to me, and I speak German to her). Having an internet pen-pal in English helped them a lot and while not at a native level, they master English fluently.