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Editor’s note: For a long time now, we’ve been hoping to bring the dad perspective to raising bilingual children. While we were in Miami in September for our Bilingual is Better book launch, we met Ryan Pontier, the author of the guest post below. We were immediately impressed by his commitment to bilingualism — particularly because Spanish is not his native tongue. Ryan, however, hasn’t allowed that to stop him in his journey to raise his baby girl Anna bilingual.Read More ...

Why Raise A Bilingual Child?   Two Languages, Many Methods   Spanish Not Your Native Language? You Can Still Raise Bilingual Kids!   5 Ways To Boost The Minority Language Outside The Home   Top 10 Books For Parents Raising Bilingual Children   Away With The Myths   What Is Bilingual Education?   OPOL Week: An In-depth Look at Most Popular Method of Raising Bilingual Kids   How to Create a ‘Perceived Need’ for the Minority Language   Why DoRead More ...

My husband and I are raising our four-year-old daughter bilingually using the OPOL method– he speaks to her in English, and I speak to her in French, which is my second language. She is fluent in both languages at this point; her French was stronger until she started preschool this year. Unfortunately, although she still speaks to me almost exclusively in French, she refuses to speak French to anyone else, even native French-speakers whom she has known for years. AnyRead More ...

We all have such clear ideas about how we’ll raise our children, even before they’re born. Breast vs. bottle. Co-sleeping vs. crying it out. Homemade baby food. Screen time. And though in some areas I was able to stick to my guns, I was humbled by the fact that many things really didn’t work out the way I’d planned at all. The same was true when it came to raising my children with two languages. I knew we’d probably useRead More ...

“I want my kids to be immersed in REAL Mexican culture”…and “San Miguel has just so many ex-pats”; “it’s not ‘authentic’ enough…”. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard comments like these. My children and I are currently on a six-month stay in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and before it’s done, we will have been here an entire year. Needless to say, my response to these sorts of comments has definitely done a 180°. Admittedly, IRead More ...

In the lasts months I´ve been buried in all types of research and studies regarding bilinguals because of all the material I  needed for the book we´re writing. Not that I need to be any more convinced about raising my daughter bilingually, it´s just fascinating to read about studies that basically take pictures of the brain, called neuroimaging, to clearly map out how the brains of bilinguals are different from monolinguals. They say a picture tells a thousand words, andRead More ...

Last week I shared with you that I was about to embark in an adventure of a lifetime with a group of bloggers and the women behind the Heart of Haiti and Fair Winds Trading. I am now here, in the heart of the Republic of Haiti, and I can attest that even though the heart is suffering, it is fiercely pulsating. We’ve now spent two full days here and the best word to describe them is intense. Intensity inRead More ...