I was taught Vietnamese growing up, and my parents barely spoke English so in order to communicate with them, I had to learn the language. My Vietnamese has never been perfect, I was born and raised in the United States and I would say my second language skill is that of a child. When I watch movies in Vietnamese, I get the gist but there are words I don't understand. If I listen to a sermon at a Catholic Church, I can't make out the moral. If someone speaks in a strong accent that I'm not used to hearing, I have them repeat things often. But having that second language to fall back on has always been something I've been proud of.

All of my siblings failed at teaching their kids a second language at an early age. It's challenging when it's not your first language, and especially if your partner/spouse does not speak the language. So, I made it my goal to teach my first child Vietnamese. I spoke to her as much as possible in Vietnamese, bought books, exposed her to my parents as often as possible. And, I failed.

Speaking in Vietnamese just doesn't come naturally for me, and my daughter was exposed to so much English (cartoons, youTube, other kids), that she just gravitated towards per primary language. But luckily, she is very interested in learning new languages, and at 2 years old, she seemed to pick up things very quickly. That's when I decided to immerse her in as many languages as possible. The goal is no longer fluency, I just want to expose her to the basics of different languages because she was linguistically advanced, and I wanted to teach her something she likely wouldn't learn in school, at least for a long time. And, it was fun to learn together.

Here's what I learned: