Raising Multilingual Children: Disrupting Myths and Navigating Parenthood in Multiple Languages

Name: Raising Multilingual Children: Disrupting Myths and Navigating Parenthood in Multiple Languages
Start: 2026-01-25T10:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-01-25T12:00:00+00:00
Location: Boston Manor House, Boston Manor Road, TW8 9JX Hounslow, United Kingdom

Schedule

Sun Jan 25 2026 at 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

Boston Manor House, Boston Manor Road, TW8 9JX Hounslow, United Kingdom | Isleworth, EN

In this workshop Malwina Gudowska, writer, author and linguist, joins us to share her expertise on raising multilingual and multicultural children.
Malwina will focus on common myths around bilingualism and share key insights from her book, Mother Tongue Tied while also exploring the emotional landscape of raising multilingual children. Malwina will discuss what we can all do to support multilingualism and heritage languages in the home, how we can encourage our children to love multilingualism and to use our heritage languages, while acknowledging that multilingual parenting is emotional and physical labour.
'Ask a Linguist’: This workshop is interactive and practical and there will be a Q&A session with the opportunity for parents and caregivers to ask questions, connect and share experiences.
Malwina Gudowska is the author of Mother Tongue Tied: On Language, Motherhood & Multilingualism – Disrupting Myths & Finding Meaning (Footnote Press 2024). A National Magazine Award winner, her writing has appeared in Vogue, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail and in several anthologies. In her newsletter Motherlingual, she examines the intersection of language and motherhood, and her PhD research focuses on the emotions of mothers raising multilingual children. She lives in London with her partner and two multilingual children.

Children are very welcome, though we ask that they are supervised by a parent at all times.
Refreshments will be available.
Malwina's book, Mother Tongue Tied will be available to purchase at the event. It sheds light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language. Mother Tongue Tied explores the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home.

What other authors are saying about Mother Tongue Tied:
"A thoughtful, brilliant and necessary immersion into the worlds we pass along with language. Let me say this one in Spanish: maravilloso."― Jazmina Barrera, author of Linea Nigra
"Edifying and enlivening" ― Kate Baer, 3x New York Times bestselling author of And Yet and What Kind of Woman
"Gudowska writes with eloquence and tenderness from within the daily, sometimes heroic, often dishevelled realities of multilingual mothering" ― Julie Sedivy, author of Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self