Want to raise bilingual kids? First, let go of a common myth
toggle caption Photo illustration by Tsering Bista/NPR
When journalist Conz Preti brought her three children to visit family in Argentina in 2022, her four-year-old son did something surprising.
toggle caption Preti-Hefferen/Preti-Hefferen
"He just started fluently speaking in Spanish with my family, with no hesitation, no mistakes," Preti says.
In their house, she speaks to her children in Spanish and her husband speaks to them in English. But up until that point, her son "never, never talked to me in Spanish. Suddenly, it clicked," she says.
Raising bilingual kids can feel like a challenge — especially on top of so many other things parents worry about.
But with "consistency, exposure and practice, practice, practice," it's possible to successfully teach your child two or more languages, says Liliana Diaz , a bilingual speech-language pathologist who is raising her two kids to speak Spanish and English.
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