News and tips for multilingual families including a meet the expert session

[ 0 ] 23/04/2020 | liza

Dear friends,

I wish that you, your family, and friends are all healthy and safe. The kindergartens and primary schools (1st-4th grade) are going to open here in Norway on Monday and both my kids will have their first day ‘back to school’. They’re super excited and I really hope everything will be OK. At least the sun is shining bright the last couple of days and we can feel grateful for the nice weather. How are things in your part of the world and how are the kids responding to the current situation? If you have anything funny and positive to share, please send me your thoughts. I would love to spread joyful messages and pictures with our community in the newsletter/blog/social media (they can be shared as anon).

INTERVIEW
A couple of days ago I was approached by Niki from Raising A Legacy who raises mixed-race children, to discuss multiculturalism, minority cultures, bilingualism, and much more. You can read the interview here.

FROM THE ARCHIVES
Here’s a blog post I wrote a while back, titled My husband speaks a language I don’t understand with our children and it’s OK.

FROM THE WEB
An interesting article about language mixing by Dr. Shana Poplack.

FREE ZOOM MEETING MEET THE EXPERT
Many families like ours face some very particular challenges. One of them is raising bi- or multilingual children. Delftmama invited Dr. Ute Limacher-Riebold for a Q&A session on Tuesday, 28 April 2020 at 19:00 CET. You can send her questions in advance at info@UtesInternationalLounge.com with the subject: DelftMama online event and she will address them during the live event.

FACEBOOK GROUP HIGHLIGHT
Some beautiful pictures from around the world during the lockdown in the group View from my window.

GRANDPARENTS GETTING CREATIVE

-Rita Rosenback from Multilingual Parenting creates daily “Find it!” pictures for her 4-year-old grandson like the one seen here where he needs to find Iron Man. Sometimes he needs a bit of help, so then he sends her a voice message asking for hints, which she responds to with a voice message.

-My father recorded himself on video narrating my personal childhood fairytale of his to share with his grandkids at bedtime.

-Claire Annette Noland, a children’s librarian, reading specialist, and author, buys and reads children’s books to her grandkids live on camera in an attempt to shorten the distance between USA and Nicaragua. Here you can see her reading to them Where am I from? She also wrote a book review here.

WHERE AM I FROM? – 40% DISCOUNT

Thank you for sharing photos with your children reading the book, it warms my heart <3. My publisher is semi-operating during the pandemic and just announced a 40% discount offer on all their titles till the end of May. Simply add the coupon code SPRING at checkout (do expect postage delays outside of Malta). You might also be able to request a signed copy – I believe there are a few left in stock. You can order it here.

HELP NEEDED
If you’ve already purchased/read Where am I from? and How to Raise Confident Multicultural Children, I’d like to say THANK YOU! I know that my feelings should not be involved in this, but a particular someone, who has been bullying online one of the guide’s contributors for quite a while, left several 1-star reviews from different fake profiles on Goodreads and 1 on Amazon in an attempt to cause damage. I’ve reported all of them, the majority got removed, but the Amazon.co.uk one remains. Can you help me, please? If you found value in any of my books, I’d be so grateful if you’d help make the remaining 1-star reviews from this guy have less of an impact. Kindly locate my books on any of the Amazon websites where you have an account (.com, .de, .co.uk, etc. – you must have spent a min. of 50 USD within the last year to be eligible to leave reviews), and on Goodreads – Where am I from?, How to Raise Confident Multicultural Children and share your honest review. If you don’t have an account on any of these, you can also send it to me via email. I appreciate it.

LIGHT FORM OF EXERCISE
I am not very sporty, and quite busy these days as so many of us. If you’re looking for some short, simple, slow-paced walking exercises to do at home, I found the “Walk at home” Youtube videos very helpful.

WE ARE NOT ALL IN THE SAME BOAT
I’d like to close this newsletter with these lovely thoughts by an anon writer.

“I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it’s not like that. We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat. Your ship could be shipwrecked and mine might not be. Or vice versa.

For some, quarantine is optimal. A moment of reflection, of re-connection, easy in flip flops, with a cocktail or coffee. For others, this is a desperate financial & family crisis.

For some that live alone, they’re facing endless loneliness. While for others it is peace, rest & time with their mother, father, sons & daughters.
With the $600 weekly increase in unemployment, some are bringing in more money to their households than they were working. Others are working more hours for less money due to pay cuts or loss in sales.
Some families of 4 just received $3400 from the stimulus while other families of 4 saw $0.

Some were concerned about getting a certain candy for Easter while others were concerned if there would be enough bread, milk, and eggs for the weekend.

Some want to go back to work because they don’t qualify for unemployment and are running out of money. Others want to kill those who break the quarantine.

Some are home spending 2-3 hours/day helping their child with online schooling while others are spending 2-3 hours/day to educate their children on top of a 10-12 hour workday.

Some have experienced the near-death of the virus, some have already lost someone from it and some are not sure if their loved ones are going to make it. Others don’t believe this is a big deal.

Some have faith in God and expect miracles during this 2020. Others say the worst is yet to come.

So, friends, we are not in the same boat. We are going through a time when our perceptions and needs are completely different.

Each of us will emerge, in our own way, from this storm. It is very important to see beyond what is seen at first glance. Not just looking, actually seeing.

We are all on different ships during this storm experiencing a very different journey.”

Stay safe, keep reading.

I wish you a lovely rest of the day and am looking forward to hearing from you.

With my warmest regards,
//Elisavet Arkolaki