here we are for another Carnival. The family of bloggers involved is growing really nicely and this is really contributing to creating a debate on bilingualism and sharing ideas, doubts, tips and tricks. Most of all I think we can all feel less lonely on our journey, and that is of tremendous help when you need to find in yourself the motivation to stick to your plans and speak that language that nobody else around you is speaking, often enough not even your own children!

So let’s go for it once again, and feel free to join us. You can submit your own posts to the Carnival or you can host the Carnival yourself, you’ll find all the info here. Also, to be always up to date  with the Carnival, deadlines for submitting, new issues, etc please subscribe to the newsletter. You will receive only one or two emails per month, just for coordinating the carnival.

Here we go!

Sarah, from Bringing up Baby Bilingual, shares a truly inspiring story. Clarisse and her family are raising 28 months old Julia quadrilingual. What is really inspiring, and makes me feel slightly envious, is not the number of languages, but where they live, which languages they chose and how they are exposing the child to the languages. And the picture in the background too! This is just like a dream….

Sandra from bxlsprout is raising her child trilingual, which I understand is the bare minimum necessary to guarantee survival in Bruxelles, where they live (I’m kidding, but just a bit). Her point of view is very interesting and quite unusual. Contrary to most parents of bilingual children, who were raised monolingual, Sandra was raised as a bilingual child herself, so she’s looking at her child’s experience through the lens of her own experience.

Mamapoekie from Authentic parenting gives us a different view of Belgium and Brussels, and indeed the experience of living there is very different depending on whether you are a local or an expat. Why in such a multilingual country is bilingualism and cultural differences among the Flemish and the French “side” still considered an issue? Or is it really? Mamapokie reminds us that languages are often used and abused.

Melanie from Multilingualmania hosts Sandrine, who’s raising her children trilingual in a rather hostile environment. If you think raising a bilingual child is hard for you in your settings, try to imagine what it would be like to raise an autistic child trilingual. No I don’t think we can even begin to imagine, but we can read Sandrine’s story, admire her focus and determination and share similar stories on our blogs, because bilingualism is a gift for all children, also those with disabilities, but their parents all too often feel isolated and criticized for their efforts.

Smashedpea from intrepidlybilingual shares one of those moments when you finally  feel you’ve done something right. All your efforts, and doubts and wondering and trying and trying some more were worth it. As I’ve been reading her blog since she started on her journey I’m really happy for her, but also, I think we can learn a lot by sharing the journey with each other. Once you’ve achieved something everything looks obvious and easy, but to keep going when you don’t know where you are going, this is the tough part, let’s just be aware that applies to virtually everybody and let’s share the burden.

Janis from mumversuskids at times finds raising a bilingual child rather demanding, specifically when they start asking really specific questions, which by the way, most parents wouldn’t be able to answer anyway, no matter in which language!

Jan and Souad from babelkid made me laugh. Their child manages to speak Arabic with hardly a whole arabic word in the sentence, yet in her view she is speaking arabic! This is also an opportunity for parents to spend some thought on code mixing and code switching, it’s difficult to expect children not to mix if parents do it.

Maria from Fabmums has a brilliant idea! “Learn though play” and because the kind of game your bilingual child might not be ready available just make it yourself. There you go, really smart!

Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism (last minute entry, my fault) is packed with info and practical advice about traveling with children. It is indeed possible, and it can even be fun, really! all you have to do is make sure you have everything you need. This is a post I’ll go back to over and over in the future!

And finally there’s me, Letizia, here on Bilingual for Fun. I want to question your definition of a bilingual family. More and more families are raising bilingual children against all odds and with plenty of initiative and creativity and a pinch of risk taking. Who are these families? How do they do it? What do experts think of them?

I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading all these posts and getting to know the families behind them. Before I close I have a suggestion to make, I find Twitter a really powerful tool. It’s much more flexible than Facebook and it allows you to stay on top of what’s going on and to connect in a very effective way. I swear i receive no money whatsoever for saying this, it’s just that I’m looking for your blogs on Twitter so I can follow you there but most of you aren’t on Twitter please, give it a chance, try it. At first it’s rather awkward, but after few days you’ll get used and you’ll soon realize how effective it is. If you have questions feel free to ask, at bilinguepergioco AT yahoo DOT com. Or find me a bilingualforfun or bilinguexgioco.

Finally don’t forget to subscribe the newsletter, so you won’t miss any carnival, do it now, here. And please let us know if you’s like to host, here you’ll find schedule and info.

Next Carnival will be hosted at Mummy do that, those registered to the newsletter will receive a reminder, if not just email sbach AT cartside DOT co DOT uk.

Read, comment, share, think, laugh and try something new. In short have fun!

Image from A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. 5 ways to react when Bilingual Children mix languages
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Have a look!

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism

Raising bilingual children is seldom as straightforward as one would think, or hope, and it can be a bit lonely if you live in a monolingual society, however we also came to realise that the experience of raising a bilingual child has some common aspects no matter where one lives and which languages one speaks. So by sharing our views, doubts and tricks we all grow wiser, stronger, more motivated, which implies that growing up bilingual should be a better experience for our own children (conditional in not an optional here, those little things can be sneaky!).

Every month the Carnival is hosted at a different blog, here you can find the schedule and book your turn for hosting (next available slot seems to be March, so if you’re interested you should let us know as soon as possible). If you’d like to be updated about future issues, know when and how to submit your posts to the carnival, or just make sure you won’t miss any, please sign up to this newsletter, which will be used only for the bare minimum of communication needed to get the Carnival going, normally 2 emails per month, nothing else.

Excellent let’s start! Today we have a rich Carnival!

0. Well, It’s not quite 10 bloggers, but 10+1, because I managed to leave one out by mistake. How silly… And the point is that this is a VERY GOOD post, and it touches a point that is often overlooked but can be really tricky. What if your child’s second language is taught also in school and your child has a better command of the language than the teacher? It’s very common, and difficult to handle.  Kathryn from ourprivateblog talks about her experience with a her boy speaking a better, although less formal, English than his English teacher. Sorry Kathryn.

1. Laura from Bububooks with her post gave us much more info than she thought, I believe. The really astonishing piece on information is that in Illinois there are publicly funded Bilingual Parents Advisory Councils, where parents go to receive advice on raising their children bilingual. The second very valuable piece of information is that they also publish tip sheets, like the one Laura is posting.  It’s simple but effective advice and it shows a real committment to bilingualism.
2. Maria from Fabmums talks of a really tough problem that sooner or later will hit all bilingual families: ok we kind of manage the understanding and talking bit, but how about literacy? When and how should a child learn to read and write in the minority language? Maria got her answer sorted.
3. Eve from Blogging on Bilingualism made a list of all the things they do to support French, the minority language. Now that’s a really interesting idea! Just by going through the list you realize how diversified is their approach, how much effort and thinking they put into raising their children bilingual, and how this results in their kids having a rich exposure to the language, both in terms of quantity and quality. A good food for thought.  
4. Jan and Souad from Babelkid tell us quite an amazing story. Their little girl managed to form a 4 words long sentence using 4 different languages (that’d make the One Word One Language approach, wouldn’t it?) AND, here comes the really interesting bit, without breaking any grammatical rule in any of the 4 languages. Isn’t that something? Go here for the most impressive 4 words sentence ever.
5. Than there’s my post here at Bilingual For Fun. I want to challenge your assumptions. Raising a bilingual child can only be done if your mothetoungue is different from the majority language? Who said so?  As a matter of fact many non native speaker parents are raising bilingual children, and here are 8 reasons why anybody could raise a bilingual child (providing they want it hard enough).
6. Steffi at Mummy do that! went home, like back home, for 4 days. Now 4 days aren’t that long, but when you go back home and bring your child with you and are seeing your family and and and… then those 4 days expand, grow  and become a really important experience, for language developmenttoo, among other things…   
7. Deanna from Bilingual Readers touches on a point that is as important as widely underestimated: the powerful impact of playing pretend. She brings to us reasearch that shows how playing pretend, using imagination and storytelling are really important for the linguistic development of a child, on top of being fun and etertaining that is.
8. Smashedpea from Intrepidly Bilingual has a lot of thinking going… Choosing the schooling system and the actual school for a bilingual child can be really difficult, there are lot’s of criteria to take into consideration and way too many questions for which there isn’t a clear cut answer. I’m sure that reading this post many families will recognize their own dilemmas.
9. Ana from Spanglishbaby has a really important message, no matter how much effort you put into raising a child bilingual at home, that’s not enough, you need to give the child opportunities to speak the language also outside the house and manage carefully the child’s perception of the language status (or coolness).
10. Sylke from Sylkeweb seems to be pretty sorted, for once. Bilingualism works just fine in their family but they also allowed time for things to develop.

Before you leave make sure you register  sign up to the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism  newsletter, so that’s you’ll know about next issues and will be able to contribute if you wish. The schedule is here, next Carnival will be November 30th at Babelkid, so make sure you don’t miss it!

Please ReTweet the carnival, you can find me @bilingualforfun.

Image by A Journey Round My Skull

Related posts:

1. Second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism
2. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
3. January’s Carnival on Bilingualism!

The second Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism went live today, hosted at Blogging on Bilingualism. I think this is a great resource for all bilingual parents, as Blogging on Bilingualism beautifully pointed out “the commonality of the bilingual journey ties us together”.

Enjoy the Carnival! And if you are a blogger join us, you can submit your post to the future Carnival or host it yourself in the future. Next session will take place here, on Bilingual For Fun. You can always check the schedule here, or you can receive all the new issues as well as call for submitting your posts here.

Picture by A Journey Round my Skull

Related posts:

1. Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism, April
2. 10 bloggers and a Carnival, on Bilingualism
3. January’s Carnival on Bilingualism!