Expat Parents Share Their Tips For Cultivating Multilingualism In Third Culture Kids

I grew up in a bilingual household so I know firsthand how beneficial it is to be able to communicate in more than one language. So when the kids came, it was only expected that we’ll do anything and everything to give this gift to them, too. Fast forward a few years, and the initial plan doesn’t seems so easily achievable anymore. It was way easier said than done.

So it got me thinking: The one thing we worry about as expat parents is how we can help our children get fluent in Chinese, a language that’s so difficult for adults to learn. We send them to fully-Chinese speaking kindergartens aiming for total immersion, hire ayis and other domestic helpers asking them to talk to our kids so they “absorb” the language faster. Because children are like little sponges, right? Right. And this usually works. So here we are, expat parents with our little Chinese speaking 3, 4, 7, 10 or 15-year-old third-culture kid who’s got lots of little local friends and they’re able to communicate with neighbors and follow classes and do almost all the things a local kid can do.

And then it’s time for the scheduled call with the family back home and suddenly, this at other times confident child becomes not so confident anymore. After the initial “Hello”, everything goes downhill. They start to stutter, looking at you asking for help, desperately browsing through their minds searching for the correct word.

So how do we avoid this from happening? How do we make sure our children become fluent in our native languages while spending most of their day time at school or with ayis? What strategies do we apply to provide them with enough exposure in our respective languages? With limited resources, especially when it comes to languages other than English, difficulties in having regular phone or video calls with family due to a time zone difference, being at work 8 to 5, how do we manage to keep our mother tongue and ties to the family and culture strong? We asked our fellow expat parents and here’s what they said:

“We send our son to an English language kindergarten. Even though the other kids are all Chinese, the lessons being in English means they learn it fast, while Chinese comes from grandparents and social activities (as the common language between kids is usually Chinese”, says Mark Pinner whose mother tongue is English.

But what happens if parents’ first language is not English? Or if parents speak different languages and have a third home language? There’s so many scenarios and even more paths that can be taken.

For Jackie, whose husband’s native tongue is Korean, it’s very important that her children speak the language as well, “I don’t speak Korean so most of my children’s Korean comes from my mother-in-law, who has around 3 online meet-ups with each kid per week, each time at least 1 hour each. My kids also attend Saturday Korean classes at the Korean school and they each have 1 hour with a Korean tutor during the weekend. For movie time, we sometimes watch movies in Korean. It might seem excessive, but when we eventually return to Korea our plan is to send them to a local school, so that’s why as early as now we need them at level where they can speak, understand and write the language well enough to attend a local school there”.

For Jean-Mare Kuipers, a South African mom of a 1-year-old girl, the plan is still in making: “This is still very new for us, so we’re still figuring out the right way to do this. I am hoping she will pick up Afrikaans through songs and music, we like to play the radio during the day. I’ve been also thinking about starting with the OPOL method, where one parent speaks one language. It just makes sense to me. We do speak with the grandparents a lot, but I don’t think it will be enough. But then again, even if she only masters English and we go back home, it will be fine since the whole education system there is also in English.”

When it comes to teaching her children her native language, Denisse focuses on reading: “Reading in my mother tongue, going to the library to choose books and preparing lectures for what we call our mini book club. It is a small group of children that meets once a month to play and read under the rule that we can only speak in our language. Sometimes dictation and spelling.”

Things get even more complicated when there is more than 1 language involved. Which and how many languages should be prioritized? We’ve been told that kids pick up languages quickest in the first three years of their lives, but how many is too many or is there such thing as “too many languages”?

Polina Gumbu feels pretty confident about her ways: “Our family speaks 4 languages, both of us have our own mother tongue, plus English and since we are in China – we speak Chinese. We mainly speak English and it became native to our daughter. Her second language is Chinese because of school and we teach her Russian and Shona, our native languages. She can speak with her grandparents, sometimes needing translation. But she finds ways to communicate without words. We make sure she knows and feels loved by her relatives”.

For Ausma Karkle, a mom of 2, things are pretty clear: “We don’t teach our native languages (Latvian and Portugese) because we’re in China, and we didn’t want our kids to have communication barriers once they start kindergarten. They hear us talk to their grandparents in our respective languages, but we don’t translate for them. We don’t mix languages and speak exclusively English to them. The communication with our family members is obviously limited, but I don’t think it will be a problem later on, because once we go back to Latvia or Brazil, it will be total language immersion for them and I’m sure they will pick up both languages quickly.”