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INFOGRAPHIC: Recipe for a Bilingual Child

This is my first infographic! (By clicking on the image, you can open a larger version in a new window.)

If you like it, would you please share it? And if you have a blog, feel free to embed this image on your own site by grabbing the code below. Thanks a lot!

Recipe for a Bilingual Child

Grab this code to share my first infographic on your site!

Click to view all my fun infographics about bilingual kids!

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15 Responses

    1. Jonathan and Galina, thanks to you both! I’m really glad you like it!

      My warm thanks, too, to everyone else who has shared my first infographic! (The response on my Facebook page has been incredible!)

  1. Your blog is wonderful and all the ideas you came up with are amazing and so useful.

    But looking at this cute picture, something comes to mind. From my experience many mixed couples living in a monolingual environment that doesn’t necessarily put much value on multilingualism (f.ex. Japan) miss their chance of using those first few years. Especially if the minority language is not used by the main caretaker, they miss the chance of exposing their child to it or don’t realize that language is not in the DNA and they will regret it at some point later. Because with a toddler and small kids, who can’t talk much anyway, many people don’t consider that this child will grow up fast into a teen and an adult. And suddenly you’re unable to talk to your own child in your native language and the child can’t talk to your family, which makes discussing the more difficult, complex things and troubles very complicated. Even more so, if the minority language parent is less than perfectly fluent in the majority language. Because baby-talk and real talk with f.ex. a teenager in the identity-finding stage is a completely different level.

    So I’d love to hear something about facing this challenge, of getting your child to at least understand and maybe talk the minority language later in life (from elementary school f.ex.). I only know about those of these kids that regretted not being able to speak the second language, once they outgrew this stage of “running with the majority, minority language is uncool” and then ended up studying it as adults or late in their teens, on their own, basically as any other foreign speaker. Which means a lot of work and maybe never getting this “feeling” of a native speaker.

    So, basically, what I’m asking is…when is it too late? Do you have any advice for parents who didn’t “stir vigorously during the first 3 years”?

    1. Hi Carina, I love your input and would really like to know the same. Not for my own kids but for others who keep asking me the same question on my website and to whom I have not been able to give a satisfactory answer. I hope Adam can enlighten us both 🙂

    2. Carina, thank you for your thoughtful comment. And Jana, I appreciate you seconding the question.

      This is clearly an important issue, and worthy of a full article, I think. If I could take a few days to organize my thoughts, I’ll then offer a blog post on the subject next week, hopefully on Tuesday.

      Thanks for raising the issue, and for your patience! :mrgreen:

  2. Great infographic btw. It’s amazing what new skills we acquire as webmasters, don’t you think? I have borrowed the code but translated the text into Czech to make it more accessible for my readers. Hope that’s ok. Kept your link of course.

    1. Jana, thanks! And that’s perfectly fine about translating the text into Czech!

      P.S. I enjoy the technical side of blogging, up to a point, but it can be maddening sometimes, too! Those are the times I don’t want my kids to absorb any language exposure from me!

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Welcome to Bilingual Monkeys!

Adam
I’m Adam Beck, the founder of this blog and The Bilingual Zoo, a lively worldwide forum for parents raising bilingual or multilingual kids. I’m also the author of the popular books Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability and Bilingual Success Stories Around the World. I’ve been an educator and writer in this field for 25 years as well as the parent of two bilingual children, now 19 and 16. I hope my work can help empower the success of your bilingual journey.

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