The Bilingual Edge

I have been searching around in wordpress and on the blogosphere for other parents who are raising their kids in more than one language.

Today I discovered Hobo Mama, and her blog hobomama.com. She has a toddler son, and is raising him in English and German despite being a self-proclaimed anglophone living in Seattle, with an anglophone Dad as well. She knows some German, and so is somewhat in a similar position to me in Chinese, though her German is probably better than Chinese. I first came to her blog through this post on Can a monolingual parent raise a bilingual baby?. There are tons of interesting links there, including in the comments.

I didn’t get to all of them yet, but I did take in her book review on The Bilingual Edge, which is the one bilingual parenting book I read when I was just starting out with Big Boy a couple years ago. I won’t redo her review here, you can read it yourself. But I wanted to agree with this statement of hers:

“This point is not about this book in particular, but I’ve found that reading books like this, and websites of other bilingual fans, and meeting the parents at my son’s school, helps me see myself as part of a larger population, instead of a lone linguistic freak.”

Well, yes, that is a large part of my reason for starting this blog: to not feel like a lone linguistic freak! And to talk to others who might be interested, about the experiences, products and discoveries I make, instead of boring my rather disinterested friends and neighbors.

Anyways, I do recommend this book, whether you are raising a child to be bilingual (or trilingual… not sure how one parent one language works for that unless you are into polyamory!) or whether you are just curious about “just what are those people doing anyways? Whatever are they thinking?”

You can find it under “Adults: language, adoption, parenting” in our astore to the right menu there.