EP 24: Multilingual Growth: Not Always Equal, But Always Evolving [Special Topic / feat. storycast clips from Andrea @familytongues]

Full Transcript

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Michelle (intro):
Welcome back to We Cultivate the Pod where we examine the intersections of language, communication, culture, and identity. I'm your host, Michelle, and today we are going to do something a little bit different. I know we're just kicking off this fall, but earlier this year I had the pleasure of sitting down with Andrea. She's the creator of Family Tongues and also our guest for episode 12. On the episode, she discussed a couple of very important things, including the impact of prestige on language, the fact that she was denied speaking her own heritage dialect and the importance of cultivating positive language identity in kids. She's also a mother, and so this is definitely a full circle kind of moment in making sure that her child has the opportunities to grow and explore this entire world of multilingualism. Now that sounds great, right? We are currently living, I'm recording this in 2025.

Michelle:
It's a time where we feel like yay languages, but I've said this before and I'll continue to say it. Multilingualism like every other subject in existence is not always neutral, nor is it always positive. There are many adults today who grew up like Andrea. Their parents were told by teachers or members around in the community that it was bad for children to be speaking or being raised in more than one language. And while I can't do anything about the way that humans behave and the world operates, I can create a space to make sure that certain stories are captured like Andrea's. So if you haven't heard her episode yet, make sure that you go back into episode 12 and take a listen. Now, if you follow Andrea on social media, you will see that she talks a lot about what multilingualism looks like in her family, for her daughter living in their family dynamic and society.
But you'll also hear her share things more on the language and linguistic side. Andrea does have this background, and so she kind of speaks from multiple angles. Now, a little bit ago, Andrea started recording short reflective audio stories directly into Instagram, something she calls her story cast. I love that name by the way, so it's perfect. And what I really appreciated while listening to her episodes was the fact that these were thoughtful, vulnerable, short, but densely powerful truths about the reality of raising multilingual kids. Now, the topic of parenting multilingual children has come up many times on social media and also in previous episodes, and they will continue to come into this space as I talk with more guests about how they are approaching this. But for today, what I wanted to do was weave together clips from her story cast with additional reflections of my own, because what looks very simple on the surface and is often presented as such is always more complicated than it seems. No matter if you're a parent, an educator, or just somebody who has always been curious about why some languages make it onto the next generation, why some kids who grew up in the same environment may not turn out the same way. Hopefully this will be our entry point for unpacking this together.

Andrea:
Hi everyone. I am starting what I'm calling a story cast, basically like a mini podcast, but in my Instagram stories, why? Well, I'll be honest, I'm not super comfortable on camera know what public speaking, but I really want to change that. So this story cast is my way of stepping out of my comfort zone and connecting with you. On a more personal level, I'd like to talk about multilingual parenting, not just the strategies for teaching kids multiple languages, but also the deeper stuff, the emotional side of raising a multilingual child, how to build a strong cultural connection to multiple heritages and the challenges and joys that come with this unique journey. So it's a space where I can share tips, some experiences, and maybe even a few laughs about the life in a multicultural family.

Michelle:
Okay, now that you know why Andrea wanted to start her story cast, let me also explain some of the more technical behind the scenes. And these are terms that if you have been following language educators and other parents online for a while, you might understand, but just in case you don't, let's go through it again, okay. There are many different approaches that people take and some are particularly common. So there are three that come to mind. They are opal, which is one parent, one language, time and place, which means that you speak a language at a particular time and place. I mean, these are all very directly defined and minority language at home, which is MLAH. Of course you can mix and match, you can do a lot of different things and you will find people all over, and this is both professional and just general language enthusiasts who will start to aggressively advocate for one particular strategy.
So in a world where all variables are the same and language can just be language, and we don't have to think about all the other aspects of living in dynamic societies, you could make the case for a sort of template approach. But just like how there is no one best way for anyone to learn a language or to work on their communication, how much of those things need to be scaled to the individual situation? That same rule applies as well for parenting and across family dynamics. Children are not necessarily raised by parents who speak the same language and they don't necessarily all live in let's say the home, society or country of one of the parents as well. These are all individual variables that are often missed. And I have a couple other guests that will mention and go into more depth about this, but these nuances, these details actually are what shapes so much of each individual family's approach to raising their multilingual kids.
By the way I'm using multilingual, but could be bilingual. What we mean is more than one. What you'll see online a lot of the time is people saying, well, opal always works. Opal always will work. One parent, one language always works no matter the circumstances. That is not only untrue, but it completely negates the reality of so many families scattered across this world, millions of people in their own individual circumstances. It could work. And for that, you have to understand why opal might work in the first place, what it sort of means in terms of larger society, school environment, social environment and exposure. Also the kids' linguistic identity and whether that aligns culturally. So oftentimes you'll hear of parents who just take this kind of out of the box advice from those who are not at all in their same situation and they will follow what these parents say, and it could be experts also sharing what worked for them, and they will follow it as if it is supposed to work for their kids without ever thinking about the additional variables at play.
I actually once had a thread, I'm off threads now, but I had a thread go viral where I talked about the fact that my husband and I do not speak the same native language, but I also speak a different language with my family than he does with his on occasion. His kids are also with us in the home environment. I'm often asked what language we use at home, and I've never been asked this question so much in my life, but I think it comes from the sort of almost panic sometimes that happens when people realize that there's so many factors to consider. And while those factors are just a part of life, and so this thread goes viral, I have all these couples weighing in all of the diversity of different situations. It was such a beautiful thing to see, to be honest, because I love when I hear about different people's stories.
You all are getting to know a little bit of the flavor, the approach that I want for this podcast. And we have a holiday episode coming up that will go more into depth about how multicultural multilingual families manage large gatherings such as the holidays. But honestly, it was like this outpour or this flood of just all of these stories from everywhere, languages, backgrounds, degrees, even like my husband studied this and that's why he speaks Latin and Greek, but technically it's a part of our life and this is what happened with my kid. And then this is what with the kids that we had to watch for one summer. And it's wonderful to hear all these things because that's how we get to learn. We get to exchange information about what's worked for us, and then we get to kind of decide for ourselves how best to go with it.
And then I had a woman pop in who was probably the only person who was a little bit, let's call her the party pooper. All right, I'm trying to keep it pg. She goes, well, I have always instructed my family and my kids to speak one language at home, and I don't understand why one wouldn't do this. That is always, we do not mix languages and we do not allow for this and blah, blah, blah. Okay? So I couldn't hear what she was saying, but it was a little bit, I mean, it doesn't take much to get there. And I thought that was interesting because the way that she was writing this was as if it was law and as if it was fact and nothing. When it comes to the wide array of variables, again, we have to remember how many different factors play into each individual person's life.
I just find it astounding that there can be people who come online and say that this is the way it's supposed to be, and I would love to talk to her kids to hear what they thought about this type of parenting. I can tell you for sure that there are children who were raised this way, who really didn't like it, who really did not even acquire the language fully afterwards. And so what I'm trying to express here is that there is also this larger wave of shock sometimes that comes from parents who are supposedly doing everything and they read the blogs, they follow the right accounts, and in the end, their child does not emerge from the program as if you could code in open terminal and code in what you actually want for the kid without even just a moment's thought about the complexity of the situation and the fact that the kid is actually their own human as well.
So we're talking about an individual personality and different types of likes, dislikes, kind of that push and pull that comes with early childhood and overall human development. I want to say that I understand that parents are busy and that many times it can feel like you're not doing enough or doing the right thing could feel like you are just freaking out because what if it's the wrong decision? How do I know if it's the right decision? People are saying every single type of advice, everyone's giving different types of points all over the place. How do I know if what I'm doing is correct? And I mean I don't think you do personally, I don't think you do, but it's not totally random either. And the more that you educate yourself, this goes for everyone, our conceptual understanding of what should work or not when it comes to language acquisition, when it comes to multilingualism, when it comes to communication skills, all of these things fall in such a nuanced gray area, so dense with millions of different individual data points that we need to be collecting in order to integrate and synthesize on our own.
And so it's a massive reminder that children do not grow up in a vacuum. No single adult human that exists today was left inside a room and just given that one bare empty room to grow in. I mean, even that can't be a totally naturalistic setting because it's like even under experimental conditions. This is hardcore. Michelle once worked in a social development lab and has hardcore psych research inside of this take. But when you're trying to design an experiment, let's say, let's also remember that ethics is a thing, and so we have to do all those ethical checks, but also how do you make sure that there are no confounding variables? How do you make sure that what you're seeing in a research study is truly what is there the effect that can be actually kind of pulled out in studied to a greater extent?
These are the questions that scientists have to deal with, but in an everyday way, this is not real life. And that is something again that I will hopefully go into greater depth in the following seasons. And so if we look at children, and if we look at parents, parents are not in a vacuum either the array of different people that you contact. Think about how many people you or your kids go through talking to in a single day. Think about how many different environmental scenarios and situations you find yourself in a single day. Now imagine a lifetime, and it's why humans are not computers. Humans are not able to just execute whatever operating system or programming was kind of built in. It's so unrealistic actually, and I would say even dehumanizing to act as though there's an ethical consideration here about how you see kids, to see them truly as sort of these robots for you to program and then for you to carry out whatever your intention was.
And it just does not work that way. It does not work that way. We have consciousness, we don't exactly know where it comes from yet, but we know we have it, okay? And we theoretically have free will ish. And this whole idea of just thinking that in the same way that you program your oven to bake whatever cake, and even for baking, it doesn't work a hundred percent of the time, but just thinking about it like you're supposed to program in a recipe with some sort of structured approach and that on the other side the child will be complete and it'll work, and then you're surprised when it doesn't. This is why I feel like I needed to take what Andrea was saying and pull it out because so many people are overlooking this. It is not to criticize parents for not trying hard enough.
It's just to bring a little bit more of that nuance back into the conversation and a little bit more of that deeper grounded awareness. So language is always shifting, just like environments and dynamics are always shifting. And so language is shaped by this environment, but also by so many of these other variables. So there is no guaranteed formula. There are patterns, and that's fair, but there no recipe, there's no algorithm. There's no way for you to optimize your child as if your child was a machine. And so with that in mind, and also remembering that no matter how many languages you speak, that the entire early development of a child is not uniform either. We all went to school with different types of classmates. We had some who were very, very skilled in one thing and then others who bloomed a little bit later. But then at the same time we saw that it does not match a standard because humans cannot match a standard.
There might be trends, sure, but there's no ding. By the time you're seven, congratulations seventh birthday, you have now unlocked the next level. It doesn't work that way. And so I'm going to play a clip now from Andrea's story cast where she talks about how balanced multilingualism meaning whether or not your child speaks all of the languages to the same degree is actually extremely rare. And why that's okay, and I will touch on my own personal experience as someone who grew up bilingual and acquired another language later in life. I'll also talk about how I see this represented in my life. But first, here's Andrea.

Andrea:
So recently I was talking to one of my very good friends here in China who is also raising trilingual kids. She mentioned that she was worried about the level of one of her kids' languages, which she feels is much weaker compared to the other two. While her kids can understand everything and even speak the language, their skills just aren't as advanced as in the other two languages, and she was really being hard on herself because of this. So this is actually something many parents of multilingual kids worry about. So today I want to talk about why balanced bi multilingualism is quite rare and why that's completely okay and normal. When raising bilingual kids, it's completely normal for one language, usually the community language to become the strongest. This happens because the community language gets more exposure, interaction and reinforcement in daily life. Meanwhile, the minority language might naturally be weaker simply because there are fewer opportunities to use it and less diverse input from different people in situations.
But here's the amazing part, the strongest language can shift depending on your environment. For example, if you move to or spend a significant amount of time in a country where the minority language is spoken, it might quickly become the dominant language while the previous strong language could take a backseat. These shifts can happen multiple times throughout your child's life, influenced by where you live, schooling and social interactions, and this is why I always encourage parents to focus on progress in the minority language rather than perfection speaking to or more languages equally well is incredibly rare and it's not the goal. What really matters is creating consistent opportunities for your child to grow in their minority language one step at a time. Here's my tip, set clear goals for each language. And you might realize that not every language needs to be at an academic level. Probably one language might be used primarily to communicate with extended family while another might be more practical for traveling or something like that. So set your goals. Next tip, celebrate the small wins. Whether it's a new word, a phrase, or even just a moment when your child switches back to their minority language, every step forward counts, that takes a lot of pressure off you as a parent.

Michelle:
So when we talk about multilingualism personally, what I find is that many people will think that balanced multilingualism is somehow the intrinsic standard. And as Andrea just described, not only is it extremely rare, but for sure if you're looking at a child's development, whether or not that all happens at the same time, I don't know a single person who could say that about anything, let alone language. We don't acquire the same skills and knowledge and abilities all at the same level. Again, we cannot be calibrated like we're a machine. And I suppose this can be a learning journey also for parents, especially those who weren't raised by or multilingual or perhaps were not even conscious of how it happened because chasing balanced multilingualism as if it's the goal can often provide a sort of sense of shame if you don't reach it. And I just want to touch on something that I see reflected in Andrea's words, which is that clarity might actually be what's needed, clarity in the why, clarity in what each language represents for each kid, because this may not be the same either.
For instance, I needed to speak in Mandarin in order to communicate with my grandparents. Why? Because they didn't speak English, not enough. At least they were in the middle of learning. It's kind of how I got my start with translating so much. The kind of funny thing is I didn't know that this wasn't normal, and for sure my family did not intentionally think, wow, what would be great is if she could be a balanced bilingual kid, so we're going to make sure she does X, Y, Z. We're going to program her this way. I turned out this way because of the fact that my communication needs were so high. My grandparents were raising me. They were new to the country. I was new to life, I mean literally child, child, and I needed to speak to them. But then at the same time, I wanted to connect with them.
And so I sort of built this channel. And it wasn't until they passed that I realized, and I talk about this in my episode with Andrea too, I didn't realize how much I reserved the Chinese language of Mandarin to be my connection language with them, and how after their passing, it just became so hard for me to actually speak because it almost, I couldn't put it in words, but I only realized it later. It's because that was my language of connection. Doesn't mean I didn't speak Chinese with other people. It meant that so long as they were alive and they were maintaining that channel with me, that I was able to feel that part of myself. And so now I have a journey of course, to go continue to figure out what it means to reconfigure my Mandarin speaking identity because since they're no longer here, that doesn't mean I'm not going to speak the language anymore.
It means that I have a lot of internal clarity. Obviously this is different because I'm not my own child, and we're talking about this in the context of parenting, but I really enjoy that Andrea gives a lot of this grace for this figuring it out process and for this kind of recognizing that these cookie cutter methods are not guaranteed to work. And that if you take an intentional approach, if you contextualize what each language represents and what it does and how it can be used, then that can actually be the space in which kids can grow their different language identities without this unnecessary pressure of memorizing X number of words and then matching it on the other side and then trying to construct the most complex sentences. Because at the core of language and communication is a word that we often forget. Relationships. We forget that everything is in relationship to each other.
It doesn't matter if it's person to person, person to society, person to entity, whatever it may be. Everything is in some sort of relational capacity. There is this dance aspect to it that everyone keeps forgetting when they talk about it in these brute terms. And so I encourage you to follow Andrea at Family Tongues if you want to know more about what she has to say. There are also a number of other people who will come on the podcast to address this topic. And just remember, no matter how hard it feels, it was arguably harder for the previous generation. I'm so sorry that this is not more positive, but this is honestly how I see it. It was harder for people before we had tools and technology and resources to help us have conversations about this. And so don't forget to have conversations. Don't forget, instead of focusing on trying to find what's going to be best and just work to again, shove your child into some sort of framework, just take a step back, give yourself some space, give yourself some grace, and just really think about how can you deepen your conversations on these topics.
And by way of that, deepen your understanding as well, because even experts do not have everything figured out. Whatever your family needs is going to be specific to your family. Whatever a kid needs is specific to that kid. We were all kids once. And so I think if you remember that you are your own person, just like your kid is their own person, maybe there can be a little bit more grace in the process. And if I can leave you with one more sentence that I have written and I like a lot, so I want to say it why this company is called We Cultivate. It's because I really like the plant analogy, even though I can't keep one alive, you are planting seeds, you are cultivating whatever is being planted, whether it be for you or for your kid. These are seeds, but they do not bloom just because you have a schedule.
Plants don't grow just because you want them to or just because you order them to. They certainly don't bloom, and they certainly don't thrive that way either. And so for children, this is a particularly sensitive topic because as a parent you are supposed to theoretically care about their wellbeing. So how do you do that? How do you make sure to create that space without being so lax that nothing happens? And so this is our entry point, this is our opening for this topic. Just like how people I know go to their gardens every day to water and to take care and to nurture and manage their different plants. It's that sort of same daily exercise. The relationship that you create in the process to the language or to the people who you use the language with, that is such a big part of what it means to be a speaker of multiple languages, especially if one is a heritage language.

And so thank you so much for listening to this special topic episode. We'll have a couple more of these coming up this year. Do feel free to reach out to either myself or Andrea if you want to talk more about these things, and I will see you next time.

Michelle (outro):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of We Cultivate the Pod. Make sure to subscribe here and wherever you get your podcasts so you can catch new episodes as they become available. I also share after the mic reflections on Substack, the place where I dive into the themes that stay with me long after recording beginning in 2026. You can also find additional bonus content from guests and other, we cultivate extras, subscribe for free to the communication shift on substack. The link is in the show notes and in this description. Thank you so much for joining us this time and I will see you in the next episode.