Series Introduction | The Real Work Behind Raising a Multilingual Child

By Jane Sonnenschein · July 5, 2026

Over the past few years, I have often come across posts on Xiaohongshu (a Chinese lifestyle and social media platform, often loosely compared to a mix of Instagram and Pinterest) about “trilingual kids,” “four-language kids,” even “five-language kids.”

A child can listen to English chapter books at a certain age, chat freely with foreign teachers at another, and switch naturally between several languages while still very young.

After seeing enough of this content, it is easy to get the impression that language learning is fairly straightforward: start early enough, provide enough resources, choose the right path, and a child will stay ahead while several languages simply grow on their own.

But anyone who has actually raised a multilingual child knows that language is never that simple.

Being able to speak a language does not mean being able to read it. Understanding it does not mean being able to write it accurately. Having a native-speaking parent does not mean a child automatically inherits that language. And getting a good start in early childhood does not mean parents can simply relax later.

Language is not a resource that can just sit in the home, nor is it a polished identity to display on social media.

It is more like a road that needs long-term maintenance.

A language without enough reading tends to remain shallow. A language without real use gradually becomes weaker. And if a language becomes associated only with assignments, tests and correction, a child may begin to resist it instinctively.

This series comes from the everyday observations of a trilingual family. I want to write about the parts of multilingual education that are less glamorous but much closer to real life: why multilingual children do not have it as easy as they may appear to, why language is not won at the starting line but maintained over years, and why being able to speak English does not automatically mean being able to do well on English exams in China—or teach English to a child.

In the end, language is not there to prove how impressive a child is.

It should be a way for a child to enter the world, understand other people and express herself.

And that road is much longer, and much more real, than it looks on social media.

Growing Up Multilingual Isn’t as Effortless as It Looks

By Jane Sonnenschein · July 5, 2026

Goethe once said, “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”

Over the past few years, I have often seen posts on Xiaohongshu about “trilingual kids,” “four-language kids,” and “five-language kids.”

A child can listen to early, intermediate or more advanced English chapter books at a certain age. She can chat freely with foreign teachers. She can switch between several languages with ease.

On video, it really does look impressive.

The child sits there with a natural accent and quick reactions. The parents seem to have a clear method. It can easily look as if, once you choose the right path, multilingual education will simply keep moving forward.

But anyone who has actually raised a multilingual child knows that real life is not quite that easy.

What social media usually shows is the most polished part: a child can speak, understand, read a passage, chat with a foreign teacher, or switch languages in front of a camera.

What it rarely shows is the other side.

A child may speak a language without being able to write it well.

Being able to read aloud does not mean the grammar is accurate.

Understanding a story does not mean being able to understand more complex texts.

And being perfectly capable of everyday conversation does not mean a child will stop losing points in school exams.

Language is not a simple matter of “can” or “cannot.”

There are many layers.

Understanding is one layer. Speaking is another. Reading is another. Writing accurately is yet another.

Beyond that, there is also the question of whether a child can use the language to learn new subjects, understand abstract ideas, write clearly and logically, and think through complicated problems.

A child may sound completely fluent in conversation, while problems slowly begin to appear in written expression, exam details and deeper reading comprehension.

My daughter is a very real example of this.

Alicia has grown up in Germany. German is the language of school and the language she uses with classmates.

She has no problem understanding or speaking German, and reading is not a problem either. Her teacher has even praised her reading during parent-teacher meetings.

But at the end of third grade this time, she received a 3 in German—in the German grading system, where 1 is the highest grade and 6 the lowest.

When her father and I first saw the grade, we were both quite upset.

Her German grade had usually been a 2, and she had always done particularly well in math. Seeing her results drop suddenly made us nervous.

But after a while, I began to understand that this was not really a problem with her ability to understand German.

Today I asked her to read one of the German essays on my website.

It was a long article, and it was not written for a nine-year-old. It included adult topics such as education, family, procrastination and writing.

She read through it.

Then I asked her what the article was roughly about, and she was able to give me several key ideas: education, family, and her mother writing about her own procrastination.

Of course she did not understand the entire article the way an adult would.

But at the very least, it showed that there was no fundamental problem with her German reading comprehension.

The problem was on another level:

written accuracy and consistency in exams.

German primary-school tests often have a total score of only twenty-something or thirty-something points.

One wrong letter may cost 0.5 points.

One incorrect article may cost another 0.5.

If a sentence contains two or three mistakes in capitalization, word endings, articles or grammatical case, the score can fall very quickly.

On a hundred-point test, losing three points still leaves you with 97.

But on a test worth only twenty-something points, a handful of small mistakes may be enough to move a child from a 1 to a 2, or even a 3. 

So Germany’s small-point tests may look simple, but in practice they demand a high level of consistency in tiny details.

They are not really asking, “Can you speak German?”

They are asking whether you can avoid mistakes in all those little places.

And this is exactly where multilingual children can be at a disadvantage.

Children growing up in German-speaking homes have heard der, die, das, dem, den, all kinds of endings and sentence patterns since birth.

They may not be able to explain the grammar rules, but they know what sounds right.

That instinct comes from tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of everyday exposures.

Alicia, however, hardly speaks German at home.

We use both Chinese and English in our family. Most of her German comes from school and classmates.

Of course she can speak and understand it.

But she does not get the same dense, steady stream of German family language at home.

This is one of the easiest things to misunderstand about multilingual children.

Someone hears Alicia speaking fluent German and assumes her German must be completely fine.

They hear that she speaks Chinese and assume her Chinese must be fine too.

Then they hear her speaking English and assume that English will somehow continue developing naturally as well.

But every language has its own maintenance cost.

Chinese requires character recognition, reading and writing.

German has to support school exams and accurate written expression.

English needs continued input and output.

If we want all three languages to develop beyond the surface level, none of them can simply be left alone.

And the three language systems are different from one another too.

Chinese is not an alphabetic language.

Once you learn a set of phonics rules, you cannot automatically read and write Chinese characters. A child learns characters by seeing them again and again, writing them again and again, and using them repeatedly.

A reasonable amount of copying is not simply outdated rote learning. It is partly a consequence of how the Chinese writing system itself works.

German is different.

The relationship between spelling and pronunciation is relatively regular. Once children understand the basic sound-letter patterns, they can read many words and often make a reasonable attempt at spelling them.

English is different again.

It uses an alphabetic system, but the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is much less predictable than in German.

So multilingual education is not simply a matter of putting several languages around a child and watching them grow on their own.

Parents have to keep adjusting.

At which stage can Chinese not be allowed to fade?

At which stage does German need more attention?

When is it enough for English simply to stay enjoyable?

When should the child read?

When should she write?

When should we ease off for a while?

And when is it necessary to strengthen something again?

These trade-offs happen constantly in real family life. 

I used to think that because Alicia went to school in Germany, her German would naturally be fine.

If we kept speaking Chinese at home, Chinese would be preserved.

And because her father spoke English, English would continue developing naturally too.

Later I realized that it was not that simple.

Being able to speak a language is only the first layer.

What makes a language grow deeper is reading, written expression and long-term use. It is repeatedly moving the language from everyday conversation into thinking and learning.

Many parents online show their four-year-olds listening to intermediate English chapter books.

That really is impressive, and the families may genuinely have invested a great deal of time.

If a child spends several hours a day with picture books, audio and lessons with foreign teachers, of course her listening ability can become very strong.

But language is not something you push to a high level in early childhood and then never have to worry about again.

Once children start school, time has to be redistributed.

Should they keep reading Chinese?

Do they need to work on math?

Does the school language need more attention?

How much sleep, sport, social life and free play should be protected?

Everything begins competing for time.

One of the harshest things about language is that it is not a savings account.

You cannot deposit enough in early childhood and assume it will simply remain there forever.

Language is more like muscle.

If you stop using it, it weakens.

If you leave it unused for a long time, it declines.

A strong start in English only means that the child got onto the road earlier. It does not mean she no longer has to keep walking.

Speaking Chinese as a small child does not mean she will automatically be able to read and write it later.

Being able to communicate in German at school does not mean she will stop losing points for articles and word endings.

Strong spoken English does not mean writing ability will naturally keep up.

So now, when I see those posts about “trilingual kids” and “four-language kids,” I look at them much more calmly.

It is not that I am no longer impressed.

And it is not that I want to deny how capable other children are.

I simply know that social media usually shows the result, not the long-term maintenance behind it.

Real multilingual families are not spending every day filming how effortlessly their children switch languages.

They are constantly running into problems, adjusting methods and rearranging time.

One language has slipped, so it needs attention.

A child has started resisting another language, so the approach has to change.

One language should not be pushed too hard for the moment.

Another cannot simply be ignored.

Thinking about it this way also made me feel much less hopeless about Alicia’s grades.

Her German is not bad.

She has simply reached the stage where German needs to move from “I can use it” to “I can write it accurately.”

She does not lack language ability.

She is a multilingual child approaching the later years of primary school and beginning to encounter more demanding, more precise expectations.

She can read a long German article and explain the general idea.

She can maintain spoken Chinese and some Chinese reading.

She can communicate in English.

That already tells me that her language foundation is not weak.

But we can no longer rely only on natural exposure.

We need to help her build a more regular reading rhythm so that written German gradually becomes more deeply internalized.

Chinese needs to maintain a basic foundation and cannot simply disappear because school becomes more demanding.

For now, English can stay focused on input and enjoyment. Not every language needs to be pushed harder at the same time.

It sounds beautiful to imagine three languages developing side by side at exactly the same pace.

Real life looks much more like constant balancing, patching weak spots and making choices.

Growing up multilingual is not as effortless as it looks.

Behind those polished moments of switching between languages are a great deal of invisible reading, repetition, persistence, resistance, adjustment—and parental anxiety.

Speaking is only the beginning.

Being able to read, write, take exams and think in a language is how that language truly begins to grow deeper.

That is why I increasingly feel that parents do not need to be intimidated by the “multilingual prodigy” content they see online.

Real children, real families and real language development naturally have ups and downs.

As long as we can see where the problem is, adjust the path, and keep the language in real use, it still has room to grow. 

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 多语娃没有看起来那么轻松

German version: Mehrsprachige Kinder haben es nicht so leicht, wie es aussieht