5 Ways to Raise Bilingual Kids

Maybe you want your kids to learn Spanish or Mandarin. Perhaps it’s because it’s your heritage, or maybe you want your kids to be successful in an ever-changing global world. Whatever your reason for wanting to raise bilingual kids, you are not alone and you will likely find much support right in your own community. Here are five ways other families have done the same:

1. Travel internationally extensively - If you can afford it, take your kids to Spain, France, Italy, Greece or Portugal for a month this summer. Stay for as long as possible. Engage with the natives. If you have relatives overseas, convince them to take your kids for a summer holiday. Immersion in a new language helps greatly with acquisition.
2. Pay for language lessons - Less expensive than international travel but much less effective for language learners. Try to hire a tutor who is a native speaker of the new language your child is learning. Once weekly is not enough for exposure, learning and practice, so daily lessons are ideal, if at all possible, and must include regular conversation, vocabulary and grammar components.
3. Host a Cultural Exchange student - If you can’t go there, bring it home. High school kids love to learn from their peers, so if your kids are taking a language, consider hosting an exchange student from a country where that language is spoken. There is a cost associated and you are responsible for a high school senior in your home for several weeks, but it can be a valuable experience for all involved. Your kids will become instantly popular, too, as a side benefit.
4. Teach them at home - Parents are the first teachers, even if you don’t homeschool. If you are fluent in the language, teach your kids. On small cards or sticky notes, write words in English and the new language and place them everywhere. Use both languages when you speak to your kids. Make a game out of learning. Say it in one language and ask your child to translate what you said or reply in the second language.
5. Host an Au Pair - Get more for your buck with childcare and other childcare-related duties because your Au Pair can provide language immersion, daily conversation practice and genuine cultural exchange all in the comfort of your own home. You even get a babysitter up to 45 hours every week! This US DOS-overseen program truly is mutually beneficial. Many Au Pair Agencies are designated to sponsor Visas and handle all the logistics for a smooth process.

Investing in helping your kids become bilingual is worth every penny and all the effort. Create an environment at home that is conducive to learning and acceptance of new and different experiences. Provide bilingual books, toys and music. It’s true what they say about bilingual kids. They are smarter. They are more accepting of those with differences. They appreciate other cultures more. Don’t wait until high school to expose your kids to a second, or third language. Research has proven young kids, even babies, can handle it and will become more fluent if language learning is started sooner than high school. Go learn!