010: Tatyana Leskowicz | How To Encourage Your Toddler to Speak Your Language

Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast: Raising Multilingual Children, Multicultural Living, Growing Up With Multiple Languages.

On this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock podcast, we talk with Tatyana Leskowicz. Tatyana is a U.S. resident who was born from Russian parents. She can speak Russian, English and a little bit of Swedish after her short stays in Sweden and Israel. Tatyana is married to an American and they have two daughters (ages 4 and 1). They follow the One Parent, One Language system in their home and she also let her daughters spend a week with her parents for a 100% Russian environment

We also discuss the “Thank you letter from a Bilingual child” that she wrote and published on Bilingual Monkeys and how she encouraged her daughters to speak in English and Russian.

In this episode you will hear:

0:33 Tatyana is childhood bilingual fluent in Russian and English

1:30 Thank you letter from a bilingual child

3:00 Reasons for learning another language

4:00 Losing the native language while growing up in the US

7:00 Correct pronunciations of Russian words

8:20 Learning how to speak Swedish

10:00 What Tanya’s parents did to preserve the heritage language

14:43 Did her parents use any tricks to preserve the language more

15:30 Finding books and materials in another language

17:45 Benefits of being a bilingual adult

22:55 What language Tatyana speaks with her sister

23:50 Tatyana’s family language portrait

24:50 Bilingual parenting

25:50 Dealing with bilingual speaking challenges

27:00 When did she started speaking Russian to her daughters

30:25 Spending time with the grandparents

31:00 Finding Russian communities

32:08 Playdates and switching languages

35:00 Reading, speaking and writing to preserve the heritage language

37:45 How did she encourage her daughter to speak in Russian more

40:00 Challenges of bilingual parenting and communication

45:00 What triggered her to speak Russian to her daughters

46:00 Immersion of her daughters in a 100% Russian environment

49:30 Advice for parents raising their kids bilingual

51:00 Developing a language in small children

Items Mentioned in this Episode:

Thank you letter from a Bilingual Child – posted in Bilingual Monkeys

Should parents push children to learn minority language

Code Switching vs. Borrowing in Bilingual Children

Setting the goals for your child’s bilingualism

How to find children book in your heritage language

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