In 2014 the topic of bilingualism suddenly became relevant for me. That was the year my family moved to another country, and the children suddenly had to immerse themselves in a school environment not only with a completely different language but also with a different culture. And while one can still argue about the bilingualism of the children who moved with us (although for all of them English has already become more widely used than their original native Russian), with the younger ones, born in Cyprus, there is no question at all.
That is why, observing the development of all the children, I increasingly asked myself how we could help them in mastering several languages, what peculiarities there are, and whether we as parents are doing everything right. And then, at Sandermoen Publishing, a book by Lyudmila Zotova was released under the title How to Raise a Bilingual Child and Stay Sane. I was curious to look at another person’s experience and opinion and perhaps find answers to the questions that troubled me.
Lyudmila’s case is considerably more complicated than mine. She is married to an Italian, lives in France, but in a region near the German border, where the population also speaks German. In relation to her daughter one can already speak not of bilingualism but of tri- or even tetralingualism. However, while her daughter will easily learn the surrounding languages simply through immersion, with the mother’s native language there were peculiarities. And Lyudmila asked herself how to ensure that her daughter would know Russian.
She began to take an interest in the subject, asking other people how they managed to cope with this task, studying scientific and methodological sources, while layering all of it with her own experience as a child psychologist. The result was the book in question. In the first part, Lyudmila discusses the specifics of bilingualism in general and the problems and fears of those who decide to give their children the opportunity to speak several languages. And in the second part, she lays out concrete advice and approaches for developing a child’s language, broken down by specific age groups.
The first part is interesting as a kind of popular science reading on the topic of bilingualism. Here Lyudmila talks about fairly general issues regarding a child’s acquisition of several languages: why it may be useful, what approaches exist (depending on which parent speaks the chosen language, and in what linguistic environment the child is growing up). However, it seemed to me that throughout the hundred pages of this part of the book there runs like a red thread the main fear of many parents — is it really necessary to teach the child this language if none of their peers will speak it with them? How do I answer all those acquaintances who ask why I am doing this? And the constant comparisons of one’s own child with other people’s children. As you can see, the issue here is not so much bilingualism as the parent’s own hang-ups. Because to a child (especially a young one) such silly questions never even occur.
For myself I chose a very simple strategy: I want my children to know the language of their parents and grandparents, and also to understand the difference between cultures, since language is an integral and enormous part of any culture. In addition, an extra language actively helps in the development of language skills in general, the brain becomes more flexible, and it will be easier to acquire other languages in the future if needed. And simply knowing several very different languages is an excellent asset in today’s world.
But as Lyudmila also points out in her book, it is important not to infringe on the rights of other cultures. For a child, the environment in which they live is no less (and perhaps even more) important than the language of a parent. That is why it is crucial not to place one above the other, but to show their importance and equality, at least in everyday family life. At the same time, it is equally important to understand that your child will never know your native language at the same level as you do if they are living in a completely different culture: they simply will have no way to absorb all the knowledge you once took in while playing outside, watching television, going to school, and so on. This is a given, and it is something you just have to accept.
The second part of the book, as I already mentioned, is focused on methodological approaches to teaching a child. As a psychologist, Lyudmila Zotova divided her advice into several age groups, since at different ages a child develops in completely different ways, and therefore can and should be taught only what they are ready to absorb at that stage.
And the approaches described here are rather universal for a child’s development in any area, not only in learning a second language. However, Lyudmila, of course, focuses specifically on methods and materials for the development of a second language. That is precisely why, from the middle onward, the book became frankly boring for me. Because the stages of child development can be read about in many other books, and questions of child psychology are explained much better by Lyudmila Petranovskaya. Meanwhile, the materials and approaches of Lyudmila Zotova are highly subjective and are based on the methods she herself chose for teaching her daughter.
At the same time, she mixes second language learning with the formation of non-specific-language skills such as speech development, reading comprehension, and the ability to explain one’s thoughts or retell texts. Her daughter actively resisted this, and I understand why it was difficult and why the child did not want it. After all, the ability to explain texts does not have to be practiced in the “second” language. If a child learns this skill in their more native language, that ability will not disappear anywhere when using the second; what will differ there are more likely the turns of phrase.
And essentially this entire part amounts to: “you can do it this way, or that way, this is recommended, but bilingual kids can do it later.” And then an endless stream of examples drawn from her only daughter. At the end of the book she says she wanted “to share the experience of raising a bilingual child, both my own and that of other mothers.” Yet in reality there are only two or three notes about other mothers, against roughly a hundred similar notes about her own daughter. Not even two children in one family (though of course every family is different), but just a single child. As the meme goes, “an experienced mother of one child.”
And this is the main problem with the book and its entire methodological basis. Listing different approaches — yes, that is useful, so you know what exists. But promoting her own, which even in these examples barely seem to work, is far from the best solution. Back in the first part she even advises that if your bilingual child is behind compared to a child from another family, find out how their parents achieved this. What can I say? You can find out, but the benefit from it will almost certainly be zero. Because Lyudmila herself repeats again and again that all children are different. And I know for certain that in my case, with five children, they are all different. Two of them were born and raised outside a Russian-speaking environment, and they had completely different stages in the development of Russian speech and completely different problems. And yet our approaches were absolutely identical.
As for whether the book helped me with my questions — no, it did not help at all. Because in fact it turned out to be, while partly interesting, rather superficial in the first half and too dry in the second. That is, I did not learn almost anything from it that I did not already know simply at the level of common sense and personal experience of raising children. And as for the real problems of bilingual children, as she calls them, Lyudmila does not actually speak of them at all. Her book is more about the problems of the parents of these children — which is why it carries the subtitle “and Stay Sane.”
Therefore, despite the rather high ratings this book has on various platforms, I rated it very low. It was a quick read, but just as quickly forgotten. And I will not recommend it to other parents. Because the ordinary common-sense advice I can pass on in just a few phrases, and this book, to my regret (for I expected more), offers nothing beyond that.
My rating: 1.5/5
