Multilingual Mamas

In this episode we interviewed Anna Attal, a native English speaker who attended a dual immersion school in Spanish. She tells us about her experience learning Spanish as well as the other benefits of early exposure to other languages and cultures. Overall, she highly recommends the program and says it made her more confident, open-minded, and passionate about learning languages.

In this episode, we interview María Elena Gutiérrez, daughter of a Spanish dad and American mother, who grew up in the US, went to UT Austin, became a dual immersion teacher, and is raising two bilingual daughters. Given that our children have similar profiles, we allow ourselves to imagine that our children will be just as bilingual and confident as Maria Elena is! We discuss her dad’s quizzing methods, maintaining Spanish traditions in the US, learning to read and write, using (peninsular) Spanish in public, visiting Madrid, family language practices, teaching at a bilingual school, and so much more in this jam-packed episode.

In this episode we sit down with the two adult daughters of Spaniards, Mili and Pedro, who we interviewed in our last episode of season 3. Sofia and Paula grew up between Germany, the United States, and Hungary, and have now decided to study in the Netherlands. They reflect back on their international upbringing and how it shaped their worldview and identities. Despite having their lives uprooted several times during their adolescence, both appreciate the experiences their parents provided for them and express their desire to continue to travel and explore different countries in their future careers as an international lawyer and physician. Sofia and Paula mention the city of Maastricht, and the university there several times as a haven for international students. Learn more about it here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht

We wrap season 3 of multilingual mamas reflecting back on the diverse selection of interviews we conducted this season. This time around, we learned about testing practices in US public schools, the bilingual parenting mental load, and how raising bilingual children in a country where two languages or more share a co-official language status looks very different. As usual, in this episode we share where we are in our bilingual parenting journey, including specific information about the challenges we faced this years as well as the wins we celebrated. Make sure to listen all the way to the end of the episode, we have a little surprise in store for you.

Lina Mueller, the daughter of two Americans who was born and raised in Guatemala, discusses what it was like to grow up speaking Spanish without it being a part of her familial heritage, the confusion some express when they hear a Guatemalan accent come out of a blonde who also speaks perfect English, how her mom created an international school in Antigua, what her identity as a white, English-speaking woman has meant for her experience with bilingualism and biculturalism, and how immersion in another culture has allowed her to overcome the ethnocentrism that plagues many Americans.

En este episodio hablamos con Mili Paredes y su marido Pedro, una pareja española que emigró a Alemania y que ha criado a sus hijas en tres países diferentes: Alemania, EE .UU . y Hungría. Nos hablan de los factores que tuvieron en cuenta a la hora de mudarse, las ventajas y desventajas de su estilo de vida, y de que es importante abrirse a nuevas experiencias y no quedarse anclado en echar de menos la patria. También nos hablan de sus hijas, donde viven ahora y de cómo su estilo de vida les ha abierto muchas puertas a nivel profesional y personal.

In this episode we chat with the Mayers, a family of two non-native speakers of Spanish raising their two children bilingual in Spanish and English using an unconventional method. Instead of the more common, one parent-one language method, they would speak in Spanish Monday through Friday and English on the weekends as an entire family. We discuss the benefits of this method such as familial cohesion, cross-linguistic skill transfer, and space for a break from the minority language. It just goes to show, there’s no one right way to raise bilingual children!

In this episode we sit down with Dr. Kim Potowski, professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and one of the leading experts on dual immersion and Spanish heritage speakers in the United States. She discusses not only the lessons she’s learned from working with Hispanic families trying to raise bilingual children, but also her own experiences raising her two children bilingual in Spanish and English. She has created a treasure trove of materials for parents and teachers that can be found on her website here: https://www.potowski.org/

In this episode we talk with Diandra Morse, a social worker and founder of Bilingual Playdate, an Instagram account and online platform that advocates for multilingualism and serves as a resource for bilingual families. Diandra discusses many topics in this interview including their family’s decision to have her non-native Spanish-speaking husband use only Spanish at home, the mental load of bilingual parenting, obstacles to multilingualism in the US, and how race and language intersect to shape her and her biracial children’s experiences with bilingualism. Check out her IG account here: https://www.instagram.com/bilingualplaydate/?hl=en

When Veronica Benavides decided to reclaim her Spanish, a language she was discouraged from speaking as a child in Texas, and raise her children in her heritage language, she realized that most bilingual parenting resources for non-dominant parents were geared towards second language speakers. Given the unique emotional and linguistic experience with heritage languages and the lack of existing resources for these families, Dr. Benavides founded the Language Preservation Project (https://thelanguageproject.co), which guides families through the process of reclaiming their family languages, discarding harmful deficit-oriented framing of language proficiencies, and focusing on connection as the heart of bilingualism.