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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Hello heroes! Happy Monday. Today’s guest post is one I’m going to mention to my children. They don’t always believe me when I tell them that learning more than just English is a good idea.

If you want to give your children a really positive start in life then helping them take language lessons is one of the best things you can do for them.

There are many reasons for saying this and let’s look at a few of the most important ones:

  1. Employment opportunities. I remember my parents telling me when I was a kid that computers were the way forward and that I had to learn how to use them if I wanted to succeed. Just as they were uncannily accurate with their prediction I tell my own daughter that learning languages is the best method of having a lot of great work offers in the future. The world is quite simply becoming a smaller, more closely knit place and while English is a lingua franca in many fields there is no substitute for being able to converse with people from other countries in their own tongue.
  2. Global mobility. The idea of working abroad and living a more cosmopolitan life is a dream for a lot of workers, and yet the factor which most commonly stops them is the lack of good language skills. If your kid gets these then a lot more doors will open for them all over the globe.
  3. Traveling. A lot of parents dream of helping their children do what they themselves were unable to do. One of the top ideas in this field is seeing them jet off on an exciting yet safe trip abroad. As Spanish is so widely spoken in different parts of the world you can be sure that they will enjoy their traveling more with a sound grounding in the language and that they will be that bit safer and more confident too.
  4. Meet new friends. The huge number of Spanish speakers in New York means that finding people who speak this language is not a problem. New cultural activities with your child’s second language can really help expand their mind.
  5. Understand other cultures. This may be last point on the list but it actually might just be the most important one. There is no better way for someone to view the world through the eyes of someone else than by giving them the chance to learn the other person’s language. If you want your kid to grow up with a clear and open minded view of the world and its people than this is one of the best ways of doing it.

The author is a bilingual Spanish teacher who splits his time between giving Spanish lessons New York parents can send their children to and bringing up his equally bilingual daughter.

Earnest Parenting: advice for parents who want their children to learn more languages.

Photo courtesy of Velaia (ParisPeking) via Creative Common license.