Integration should never mean leaving part of yourself behind

By Mary Cantwell, Migrant Adult Education Guidance Counsellor at ​LCETB

I want to invite you, just for a moment, to imagine being five years old again. Imagine walking into a classroom where everyone seems to understand the rules of belonging, except you. You open your mouth to speak, and before your words even land, you see it: the puzzled look, the raised eyebrow, the small laugh that wasn’t meant to hurt but somehow does.

For many multilingual children, this can be part of their daily experience.

We often celebrate multilingualism as a superpower, and it is. But what we don’t always talk about is the quiet pressure that can come with it. These children carry more than one language, more than one culture, sometimes more than one sense of home. And yet too often they are made to feel that one of those languages must be left behind in order to belong.

A few years ago, a migrant parent I work with was advised to stop speaking their home language at home because it might delay their child learning English. Hearing that really stayed with me and made me feel the need to do something about it.

Thankfully, that parent trusted her instincts and continued speaking her language with her child. But it made me think: what about the parents who receive this advice and feel they have no choice but to follow it?

This is not the first time I have heard this message. Before working in this role, I spent many years working abroad with families raising multilingual children. While living and working in Spain, I heard the same advice given again and again; parents being told to stop speaking their native language so their children would learn the majority language faster.

But we know from research and experience that this simply isn’t true.

And I say this not only as someone who has worked with many multilingual families, but also as a parent raising bilingual children myself.

Language is so much more than words. It is identity, culture, connection and belonging. When children are supported to keep their home language while learning English, they are not being held back, they are being given a stronger foundation to grow, learn and feel confident in who they are.

That is why we started the SMILE project. It began with a simple idea: inviting a speech therapist to speak with a group of migrant parents about language development and bilingualism. The interest and engagement from parents was incredible, and from there we were able to secure funding through the Adult Literacy for Life strategy to develop the resources for parents and educators.

These resources are designed to support both parents and early years educators, helping to bust myths around multilingualism and provide practical guidance for supporting children growing up with more than one language.

Because when we value a child’s language, we are also valuing their family, their culture, and their sense of belonging. 

And when children are allowed to bring their whole selves into a room, something extraordinary happens: they stop trying to belong, and they start becoming.