How to raise a bilingual without going crazy

Lyudmila Zotova was born in Russia. She received her first education, psychological and pedagogical, in Moscow and worked for several years as a psychologist in kindergarten and school. Lyudmila received her second diploma as a specialist in audio prosthetics in Italy. For three years she had a daily practice in a hospital, where she worked with children, including those with hearing problems.

Lyudmila is a two-time emigrant. First, in 2007, she moved to Italy to live with her future husband, and then, in 2015, the three of them, together with her husband and daughter, moved to France. In France, their family settled in Alsace, on the very border of three countries: France, Switzerland and Germany.

The multilingual environment, encounters with different cultures and mentalities greatly influenced the evolution of the author’s personal worldview. My views on raising children have changed: both on expectations from a child and on expectations from myself as a parent.

"After moving to France, I started blogging on Instagram, where I talked about life in exile, about oddities, about family. However, initially I started a blog in order to share successes and failures regarding my daughter’s bilingualism. It seemed important to me to openly tell other mothers not only about successes, but also about that anything can happen, and not everything always goes according to plan. As a mother of a multilingual child, I wanted to share my discoveries.

I decided to combine all my knowledge and write a book that would help parents of bilingual children."