My 22 MO absolutely loves books. I love English literature, and reading together started as a way to share that with her. She caught on a little too well 😂 We now have an amazing time reading dozens of books every day and talking about them.

She speaks in sentences, recognises letters and numbers, and knows the names of obscure animals, dinosaurs, sea creatures, and even some countries. She seems quite far along in communication and comprehension, and she’s now interested in letters and learning to read.

But this is all in English. All her media is in English too (audiobooks, songs, Tonies etc) - simply because that is the language we her parents understand best. We live in Germany, she currently attends daycare, and my German isn’t good enough to confidently support her in the same way.

We are Indian, my husband speaks our mothertongue with her (which she understands and speaks a bit) and I speak in English, so that we can pass on both languages to her. We’re leaving her to pick up German from the community and Krippe (daycare).

I’d love to follow her interest with English phonics and more books. I want her to have strong English and share this love of reading, but I worry about her German not being strong enough when she gets to Kindergarten and eventually Grundschule.

Maybe “wasted” is the wrong word, but will all this knowledge carry over if she only has the English words for it? Could learning English letter sounds first make learning to read in German confusing?
I’m not pushing early reading - she’s driving the interest, and I’m trying to figure out how best to support her.

How have other bi/trilingual families handled this? Did you keep reading and introducing phonics in English at home and rely on Kita for German, or actively support both?
Or should we enroll our daughter in a bilingual school so that her knowledge is not wasted?

Any resources or experiences would be lovely!

Hi!

My twins are four months old and I'm trying to find a set-up that works for us. I'm a single parent, there is no other caregiver at all and we spend most of our time alone, just the three of us.

Language A (community language, but they won't start daycare until they are two years old so they need to pick it up at home before then to be able to communicate with friends and family, also my native language)

Language B - English (not a community language and not my native language, I'm fluent, though I do have an accent when speaking which has been getting worse since I've been on maternity leave with fewer people to talk to)

Language C (not a priority but I would like to at least introduce it in some way)

I was speaking to them in language A because it felt most natural to me, and easiest to bond with them since it's my native language. The problem is that they absolutely NEED to know English, we're around too many people who don't understand language A.

I've recently switched to speaking English when we are alone and A when we are around other people, except the people who don't understand A. Is that a reasonable way to split the languages long-term? It's not exactly intuitive...

I'm so lost. I don't even want to think about language C. I just want these kids to be able to understand family and friends when they talk to them. :')

My husband and I are considering sending our son to WJLS when he is kindergarten age. He’s currently in preschool (3 going on 4) and gets some exposure to the language when my husband speaks to him. He’s inconsistent with speaking Japanese with our son because he’s worried it’s a heavy language and that our son will get confused and frustrated. We tried one parent, one language for a day and our son was pretty frustrated really quickly. Regardless we are going to continue doing it until it sticks and we are hoping if we are consistent enough he will be fluent enough to be eligible to go to this school. Assuming that’s the case we are looking for input on anyone’s experience with this school. It’s a Saturday on school but he’d be there 8:30-4:30 so I’m hoping that’s enough exposure to really get his fluency up. Any thoughts and pointers on our method or the school is greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone! I’m the creator of Munira’s Tales, a new YouTube channel sharing calm bedtime stories in simple Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha).

There are three stories so far, including Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Stone Soup, each around 11–16 minutes long.

If you’re looking for more Arabic listening material to share with your children, you can find them here: https://www.youtube.com/@muniratales

I’d especially appreciate feedback from families using Arabic as a minority language: can your child follow the vocabulary, and does the pacing hold their attention?

Thanks for taking a look!