Bilingual By Choice: Raising Kids in Two (or more!) Languages - Tapa blanda

Virginie Raguenaud is bilingual by choice and wants her children to be so too. Bravo, Virginie, for showing us the way to helping our children retain their language heritage as they grow. -- Joshua A. Fishman, PhD, Professor Emeritus at Yeshiva University and Stanford University An amazing book-exactly what countless parents in our globalizing world have been looking for! As more and more bicultural and bilingual families form, the issues Virginie Raguenaud addresses become increasingly urgent. Not only does she dispel common anxiety-producing myths, but she also gives clear, practical ways for how parents can help their children develop fluency in each heritage language. -- Ruth E. Van Reken, co-author Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, co-founder Families in Global Transition conference

More and more people-hundreds of millions around the world-are living in bilingual homes. In the U.S. alone, more than 54 million people over the age of 5 speak a language other than English at home. Yet once children enter school, the pull toward one language becomes stronger and maintaining the bilingual advantage requires a serious family commitment-a bilingual choice. The good news is it's worth it. Research shows that bilingual children are known to have more social, cultural and economic opportunities as they grow to adulthood and that learning a second language from birth can even result in protection against Alzheimer's later in life. Bilingual By Choice provides families with specific activities, games and insights that will show them how to not only teach their kids more than one language but also to help their kids retain and develop those language skills. For parents, educators, immigrants and expatriates, Bilingual by Choice deals directly with the obstacles to sustaining a second language, including unsupportive relatives, issues at school, frequent relocations and discrimination, countering each one with the author's firsthand experience with both sides of the growing-up-bilingual journey, as a child and as a parent. Commit to the choice, and help your children become bilingual-for life.