How many times did you think “I’m too tired, I will give up, this is not worth it”?

All those times your children speak back to you in English, get annoyed by you trying to make conversation in your language or even get bothered if you try that in public; all those books read in your mother tongue at night, hoping to spark an interest in your heritage language and still they will ask you to buy only English books; all those “Please daddy, can we watch it in English?”…

So now you know,  is not an easy job and most parents need to put time and effort into the process, children don’t just naturally grow up able to speak the family languages.

And we at Mother Tongues, always try to give parents as many tips and tricks as possible to try to make the most out of your time and effort, but sometimes this is not enough. Sometimes, you can still think “Oh well, when they grow up, if they want, they can study the language”, or “My mother tongue is not spoken in any other country, so at the end of the day, my child is not missing anything if they don’t speak it”.

In these challenging times – homeschooling, working from home, lockdown, you name it – we thought to give you another angle on this topic. Real testimonials of adults who grew up bilingual are a much stronger encouragement for those struggling to keep up the heritage language at home.