The Language Experiment
How do I raise a multilingual child? Will exposing my child to multiple languages confuse them? Will their speech be delayed? How can I give them enough exposure to my mother tongue? These were just some of the questions that Kaisa and Camillo had when they were expecting their first child. Originally from Finland and Brazil, now living in the French speaking part of Canada, the couple searched for answers, literature and resources about multilingual upbringing.
When their research turned out unfruitful, they agreed to do what felt most natural to them: practicing their own languages with their daughter while incorporating two local languages on top of that. The Language Experiment is a podcast where Kaisa and Camillo share their journey on multilingual parenting with hopes of helping and encouraging other parents who are looking to raise multilingual children. There will be interviews, practical tips and plenty of real life experiences and perspectives on multilingualism.
You’ll discover how they helped their daughter become quadrilingual before the age of three only by reading, singing, playing and spending time outdoors with her. You’ll learn to recognize and critically assess some of the myths surrounding multilingual parenting. You’ll also hear from other parents and learn what worked for them and what didn’t. If you are a parent raising or wanting to raise children with multiple languages, this podcast is a must-listen. Hit subscribe now and join the community!
The Language Experiment
Honest Insights: Tracking Our Language Milestones
#12 - Hey there, wonderful The Language Experiment community! In this episode, we're diving deep into a topic close to our hearts – our daughters' multilingual journey. From those first baby babbles to navigating a bilingual daycare during a pandemic, it's been a rollercoaster ride. We're sharing this not to show off but to keep it real. Multilingual parenting isn't always a straight line, and we're here to remind you that it's perfectly okay. Our two girls, in the same language-rich environment, are developing at their own pace, teaching us that every child's language journey is beautifully unique.
Join us for an episode that celebrates progress and offers a glimpse into the real, sometimes challenging, but always rewarding world of raising multilingual kids. Thank you for being amazing supporters of our journey!
Subscribe to our feed and follow us on all podcast platforms. Reach out to us with your questions and topic suggestions. Let's build a community together!
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Welcome to another episode of The Language Experiment. We've been a bit slow with putting out episodes recently due to vacations and our older daughter starting school, but we are slowly getting used to our new routine and have a bit more time to work on interesting content again. I hope all you listeners have also been able to take some time off and rewind.
Camillo:Yeah it's good to be back. And before we start with anything today, I would just like to take this time to say a big thanks to all of you out there that took your time to press the play button and listen to us. If you follow us on Instagram, you might have seen our latest post and earlier last week, we actually reached a. Amazing, milestone, of a thousand downloads on this podcast. Yeah, I know. It's okay, guys. Thank you. I, to us, this is amazing because when we're taking a look at the data, we could see that we've reached all continents and we have people from several different countries listening to us. This is amazing. That for sure gives us a lot of motivation to continue doing what we're doing.
Kaisa:Yeah. I also want to say big thank you to all of you listeners. It's been incredible to see all these downloads coming from all these different countries and to see all these messages, these emails and Instagram messages. It's really amazing, and we can't wait to connect with more of you and to make more episodes.
Camillo:Yeah, and speaking of more episodes, today we thought about bringing you an episode that is a bit different from our previous ones, where we want to give an honest update about the language milestones that our daughters have recently reached.
Kaisa:We thought this would be an interesting topic because we never really get into the details of our daughter's language development. We just say that our 5 year old can speak all the 4 languages. That she is exposed to and so on. This doesn't mean that she knows all the languages equally well and has an identical vocabulary in all of them. And that's why I wanted to call this episode a realistic update. I think it's important to sometimes go into the details a little bit more to show other parents that the language development process is not always linear and things are not perfect, which is the perception that someone might have when things are only talked about on a high level. Also
Camillo:we are not sharing this information because we want to compare our daughters to other kids. Or have other parents compare their kids to ours. As anyone who has listened to our previous episodes knows, it is a fact that many different factors influence language acquisition and learning. And all our children are completely unique with their unique circumstances and environments. We simply want to share this snapshot of our daughter's language development to celebrate their progress, to inform people about what different development states can look like. And also to show other parents that sometimes our kids can struggle and sometimes us parents also struggle, but sticking to your goal of exposing your children to multiple languages does pay off.
Kaisa:So let's start with our five year old. To give a little bit of background of her language development, she was an early talker as a baby. She said her first words at around 10 months, and by the time she was one, she was saying around 15 words, most of her very first words were in Finnish, and it's important to mention that we did travel to Finland for a month when she was almost 11 months old. I stayed at home with her for her first year on maternity leave and after her first birthday she started at a bilingual daycare where the language was French 80 percent of the time and English 20 percent of the time. At that point the daycare also had a weekly Spanish class but that's not the case anymore.
Camillo:Her Language development was pretty steady from the beginning and our pediatrician seemed to think that her language was developing fast for her age, especially considering that there were four languages in the mix. Then, when she was one year and nine months, the pandemic started, and she stayed home with us for around four to five months. We were both working and taking care of her, but Kaisa definitely spent more time with her during those months. That period was definitely stressful, but hindsight, we think it was nice for her to get more exposure to Portuguese and Finnish during that time.
Kaisa:During the pandemic, we obviously didn't travel internationally, so the only exposure she had to our languages came from us reading books, watching kids shows, and talking to her grandparents from both sides. After she went back to daycare, we always got positive feedback about her language skills and the only thing they did mention was that she was very shy to speak French to the teachers at the daycare, but much less shy when speaking it to other kids. This year, in preparation for her starting school, we got her daycare teacher to do an evaluation on her skills. Language skills included, and we were prepared to hear that her French is good, but maybe she is still too shy to speak it, or maybe she isn't at an appropriate level with it. So this was what I was expecting, because although there is all this evidence that kids are amazing at learning languages, I guess I had a hard time believing that her French could be so good just from using it and learning it at daycare. As we have mentioned before, we never speak French to our girls, or at home, and we speak it a very limited amount in our circle of friends. So the only places where my girls get exposure are daycare, the community itself, and the occasional hobby that they might go to. I don't know why I felt like that, but deep down I often have these small doubts or insecurities due to the fact that we have taken such a different approach raising our children this way and the fact that they have to go to daycare and school using a language that we don't speak to them at all. It turned out that my fears were completely unfounded as she passed the language assessment with flying colors.
Camillo:It's Important to point out that while our daughter's French seems to be good enough for daycare and school, it doesn't necessarily mean that she speaks as well as one of her monolingual peers who speaks French at home, or even a bilingual peer who speaks French and English at home. Sometimes, when we read online discussions where people talk about raising multilingual or bilingual children, the advise and the overall views can sometimes be a bit simplistic. Such as, speak all the languages you want to them. They are sponges. They will absorb everything and become fluent in six languages.
Kaisa:Yeah, that's right. Sometimes I feel like people are implying that if your kid is exposed to a certain amount of languages, maybe one or two at home and another one at daycare or school, they will just automatically be equally fluent in all of them. blim Magic! of Course, this can happen. Well, oftentimes when kids are exposed to languages at different places, their vocabulary develops based on what they are exposed to in those different environments. In other words, some of their vocabularies might be more limited or highly specialized based on where they get their exposure to those languages. So just because our daughter has attended daycare, that's mostly in French, it doesn't automatically mean that she speaks French well or completely fluently. We have to manage our own expectations about it and keep monitoring the situation and also be there for our daughter if she were to struggle at some point.
Camillo:It is important to always ask for feedback. and updates from daycare and school when it comes to kids language development. But on the other hand, it is not something that you should obsess over. For these types of things, it is better not to worry or think about possible solutions until you actually have a problem. For us, it didn't seem like we had a problem with our five year old and her French. At least based on the daycare's assessment, she was good to start school. I think we still had some lingering feelings of worry because while at daycare, she was mostly speaking English with her friends, but at school she would be in a new environment with new kids that she didn't know, and the language would be French exclusively. Although she had gotten over most of her shyness in speaking French, we could still tell that she was more shy in speaking it to people than she was with her other languages.
Kaisa:Fast forward to today, which is the beginning of her second week at school, and she seems to be doing well there. She's excited about going to school every day, she likes her teacher a lot, and she has made some new friends already. She even got invited to someone's birthday party. When I drop her off and pick her up from school and see her interacting with her teacher, the staff at the school, and the other kids, I'm blown away. She is like a fish in water. To be able to witness this, my child successfully starting school and being at complete ease with the, with the language, it's just incredible. Clearly, this is a bigger transition for me and us than to her. To her, it's probably all just normal.
Camillo:We'll keep monitoring her progress and see how it goes. But for now, It seems that we can rest easy. As for our second daughter, who is now one year and seven months, the journey has been a bit different. She said her first word at age of six months, which was her big sister's name, but then stopped saying it and didn't actually say many words before she started daycare at age of one. After that, she has been slowly developing her vocabulary across the languages, mainly in Finnish, Portuguese, and French. She understands English as we speak it at home, but currently she doesn't say any English words.
Kaisa:As with our other daughter, I stayed at home with her for a year after which she started at the same bilingual daycare as our older daughter. When she was one year and three months, we traveled again to Finland for one month. So as you can see, linguistically speaking, we have somehow managed to keep the environment almost identical with both of our girls in terms of their exposure to the different languages and I guess how we communicate with them. And still, they are developing at a different pace. That just shows how genetics and other factors do affect the situation. And again, as fun as it is to compare them and their learning, it's not really that productive or helpful because everyone develops at their own pace. Our younger daughter now says a bit over 20 words and can make a couple of two word sentences.
Camillo:Last week she changed into a different group at daycare, which is the bigger kids group. And it seems that she has been experiencing, language explosions since then. We hear Her saying so many new words all the time. It is actually hard to keep track of all the words she's saying, partially because sometimes. We're not really sure what she's trying to say and in which language, but it is safe to say that she's developing and doing it at her own pace.
Kaisa:In our case, we haven't seen any signs of delays in either one of our daughters, and as many of you know, while there is no evidence that bilingualism or multilingualism cause speech delays, sometimes parents can perceive that their child's speech is delayed when there are multiple languages in the mix. This could be because they are only counting how many words their child knows per language instead of the total amount of words across all languages. Or alternatively, it could be because the child is a late speaker and they would have been that way even if they were monolingual. But just because exposing the child to multiple languages is the first thing that sticks out, it can easily become the Let's say the target of suspicions. I have seen parents online discussing the wildest theories about how multilingualism could be negatively affecting their child. And I can relate to that in many ways. When we are feeling anxious, it's easy to think about the things that we are doing differently from the majority of people and wondering if our choices are affecting our child negatively.
Camillo:If you suspect that your child might have a speech delay, it is always a good idea to consult a professional such as a pediatrician with experience working with bilingual and multilingual children or a speech pathologist. More often than not, what we think is a speech delay is actually nothing, and all in the range of normal speech development. And, that's it. That's our update today. What I would like people to take away from this episode is that it is normal to worry about a child's language development. We've all been there. Just keep your goals flexible and keep monitoring the situation and seeking feedback from professionals that spend time with your child. As always, we would like to thank you for your attention today. And see you in the next episode.
Kaisa:Thanks a lot, everyone. See you soon.
Camillo:Bye bye.
Kaisa:Bye.
