The Longest Shortest Time

EPISODE #30: When Mommy Means Everything

Rimi and Baptiste dreamed of opening a French pastry shop. They’re French, so that was a step in the right direction. Problem was, they were living in Paris, where there’s a French pastry shop on every corner. They wanted to open their cafe in a place not known for its French pastries. So they picked New Jersey. They packed up their stuff and their 18-month-old daughter Elyne, who had just started to speak (in French), and moved to America to realize their dream.

In 2011, they opened Le Petit Parisien in Montclair, NJ.

The business was everything that Rimi and Baptiste had hoped for. Except, in their fantasy, their daughter didn’t experience culture shock and stop talking, retaining only a single word: Mommy.

Resources for Bilingual Families
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has a lot of tips and resources for raising bilingual kids. Here’s one of their blog posts about what to do when your home language differs from your community’s language.

Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley has a nice list of links for science and research about bilingual children.

Colorin Colorado is a bilingual literacy site with resources for parents and teachers.

SpanglishBaby, Multilingual Living, and Bilingual Monkeys are blogs by bilingual parents who are in the trenches just like you.

Naomi Steiner’s 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child is a simple strategic guide to being a bilingual family.

And, finally, a tip from my sister-in-law’s sister Sanae, who moved to the United States from Japan when she was twenty-seven and spoke a limited amount of English. She says that one of her favorite ways to get her kids interested in learning Japanese is to turn on a Japanese TV show. Her kids get to see her laughing out loud in a way that she never does when she watches American TV, and they want to know what all the fuss is about.

Raising a Bilingual Child?
Tell us YOUR unique challenges in the comments.