How to Raise Trilingual Children

Hey - Are you an international couple, planning to have (or already have!) multi-lingual children?

If so… Today:

I’ll share short clips of my children speaking Spanish, Estonian and Danish
I’ll share every detail of what my wife and I have been doing over the past four years
I’ll also give perspective, inspiration and ideas you can implement immediately

Key, also, is that everything I’ll tell you is surprisingly easy to do. Let’s go.

1. Use OPOL Method

There’s a method called “One Person, One Language” and it works. Totally.
In our case, this means:
- I’m from Argentina, native Spanish speaker, and I ONLY speak in Spanish to my children - I’m very strict about it, and I never switch. (So far, I never had to).
- It’s the same with my wife - she’s from Estonia and ONLY speaks Estonian to the boys.
- Then, we live in Denmark - and in day care and kindergarten the kids have to speak ONLY Danish. (Sometimes a girl or someone there might speak some Spanish, but it’s 99% Danish).
If you pay special attention to this and like never deviate, then the kids will get it. It will come naturally to them - even when they don’t know what a “language” is.
It’s fun, you can get into the situations that my son would talk with my wife and I simultaneously and turn left and say something in Spanish, talk, and then immediately turn right and speak Estonian.

Anyway, instead hearing it from me see it live:

Here add video of Milo talking to in both languages.

Just note, we decided to keep to three languages and not four. We used to speak English between my wife and I, but we gave it up now. (At least when in front of the kids).

While we saw friends pull it off with four languages as well, it’s not the priority for us now.

Also - We have some common words. My older son is into mushrooms now and I don’t know the name of any mushroom in Spanish, so we just use the Estonian names, for instance.

2. Speak A LOT

It helps to speak a lot. I do. In Denmark we’ve this work-life balance thing where there’s a ton of time to spend with the kids, so we use it well. Let’s see:

I read to the boys for at least 30 minutes a day, sometimes a lot more. This can be ANY type of books, whatever they’re into: planets, dinosaurs, animals, locations, Curious George, you name it. We’ve a ton of books at home.
We spend the 15-20 minutes before going to sleep talking about the day and I tell the big one three bed time stories per day, on top of all the reading. I normally make these up and make them quite interactive too.
We also play a lot of “question”-type games. This is like: “How many moons does Mars have?” “What are their names”, etc. We do that a lot, like competitions between the boys, etc.
Beyond these, we call the Spanish-speaking grandparents almost every day. That’s another 5 to 10 or more minutes of exclusively Spanish.

Then, on top of all this, just speak a lot. If you’re cooking, for instance, invite the kids to join you in the kitchen and go explaining what you’re doing. If you’re out in the park, explain the trees, sky, whatever. Be constantly talking. It helps.

3. Language-Specific Activities

Then, layer activities through the week that will be exclusively linked to one specific language. The vast majority of play dates will be in Danish, so for the other two languages what we’ll do is:

We’ve an Estonian babysitter coming two times per week. She takes our big boy out to the garden, or plays at home with him (always quite actively) and just of course only speaks Estonian with him. That’s another 5-6 hours a week where my big son gets of Estonian. It helps a lot, plus it’s great for us to get some time for ourselves as a bonus.
- So - If you can, try to find someone like that that will speak your language. If we can find someone that speaks Estonian I bet you’ll have an easier time with your own languages 😀.
For Spanish, we let the kids watch YouTube in their iPads but just in Spanish, and that’s all the usual suspects like Blippi, Peppa Pig, Bluey, Plim Plim, Pinkfong, Cocomelon, Little Angel. They’re all dubbed into Spanish. (There’s some in Estonian as well, but a lot less, so the boys watch a lot more in Spanish).
- Kids DO LEARN and A LOT by watching TV/iPads. Absolutely no doubt about it. We used to be wary but seeing the language progress in moderation it’s 100% the way to go.
- With TV, the kids have picked up a lot of “Mexican” Spanish words: fresa, “tu”, morado, etc. I don’t care. So long as they learn to speak, if they use some Mexican words it’s a non issue for me.

Last - We don’t take them to any “classes” or “Spanish School”, or anything like that. We didn’t find ourselves needing it yet.

4. Invest On It

If you can afford it, spend on what the kids are interested on.

We’ve bought already close to 100 books for the kids: some very small, some big. The kids love when we read to them, and that’s what you want: not the chore of us telling them that they need to read a book, but their intrinsic wish for you to read with them. The more books you’ve the easier it will be.
Then, an iPad is a big hit as well: the big boy learned all the numbers and all the letters plus a ton of words and more just with some simple games. We also use a device called Timio that the kids love as well and used to learn a bunch of words and concepts.

Then, invest your own time…

I mentioned the reading, etc., but on top of it, for instance, I learned to play children songs in the guitar so we then go and sing together those songs. (All in Spanish, obviously). I’m terrible but the kids don’t care.

5. Travel

If you can afford it, TRAVEL. It’s fun for everyone. I should soon make a video about traveling with two kids, but, for reference, my children have been to 30+ and 15+ countries each. They’re close to 4 and 1 respectively. Lots of mileage.

If you travel, that’s normally a lot of face-time with parents and thus a lot of speaking time. Always good.

But Also:

We go to Estonia at least a few times a year. It’s super close to us, so that’s easy.
While we don’t go to Argentina often, we have visited Spanish speaking countries often. Helps with that extra immersion.

Last - Just don’t keep a score. We have patience, flexibility, maintain a supportive environment. We obviously pay attention if we see issues but if not it’s fine.