# Raising a multilingual child



## escapenow30

Hey guys, wondering if you are cross-culture parents, do you have any troubles including your native language and culture in your children's lives? And what are the methods and materials you're using to teach languages to your children?

One of my closest friends recently became a dad with a just 3-week old baby. While his excitement is palpable, he and his wife are also fixated on raising the baby with English, plus their native Spanish and Vietnamese, so the baby can communicate with their families. They settled on the one parent, one language method but good reading materials are scarce. Being trilingual ourselves, we are perplexed that not enough attention is being paid to toddlers—when it's proven they can soak in languages faster than we can.

I'm interested in hearing everyone's take on this.


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## NathalieM

There are huge benefits to knowing multiple languages so would definitely encourage learning! 

I think if you talk to your child normally in both your mother tongue and another language, the child will learn like they would normally with one language. There are ways like nurseries in the UK that can teach a second language, but more common ones like French and Spanish. My friend has a little one who she and her husband have raise multilingual just through constantly communicating in both languages, English and Spanish. 

The more little ones can learn about different cultures, it can open so many doors later in life from creating amazing friendships to better career prospects!


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