The Best Parenting Advice on Raising Bilingual Children Comes From Shakira
Shakira isn't afraid to try new things. The Colombian-born singer, who has been super busy promoting her new song (aptly titled "Try Everything") for Disney's Zootopia, just launched an innovative app for parents called Grow.
During a recent interview with POPSUGAR, Shakira opened up about what it's like to be a mom to Milan, 3, and Sasha, 1 — with her longtime love, FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué, by her side.
Since the famous duo lives in Spain and Gerard is a native Catalan speaker, they, like many parents around the world, are raising their kids bilingual. And judging by how adorably smart Milan is in their Facebook videos of at-home study sessions, challenging them to speak and understand multiple languages at a young age is paying off. Shakira elaborated:
"It helps if they are able to associate a person with a language at this early stage, to minimize language confusion. Their father, for example, always speaks to them in Catalan. I try to speak to them in mostly English, but if I switch, I try to not mix two languages in one sentence. Their first words were both 'mama.'"
Head over to POPSUGAR Moms to read the full interview!
— Additional reporting by Lauren Levy