Following up on my last post about our multilingual household rules, I’d like to share how differently our two children are developing their language skills in our Korean-Polish family.
As a quick recap, our home setup looks like this: I speak Korean, my husband speaks Polish, and we speak English between ourselves. From day one, our children have naturally been immersed in all three languages.
What fascinates me, though, is how differently our first and second children have progressed, despite growing up under the exact same roof and hearing the same languages.
My eldest was quite an early talker. My second child, on the other hand, could barely say a few words even after turning 24 months old. Raising my firstborn, I never really worried about language development. But with my second, I learned for the first time what it truly feels like to “wait” for a child to speak. It made me realize that even in identical environments, every child grows at their own unique pace.
1. Firstborn: Reciting Poetry at 22 Months
By around 22 months, my firstborn was already speaking quite well. He could combine two words to say things like “Love grandma” and could even recite a rhyme he learned at daycare from memory. Of course, rather than fully understanding the meaning, he was probably just repeating the sounds and sequence he’d heard from his teachers. Still, he had no trouble imitating what he heard and picked up words quickly through repetition.
Back then, I naively assumed, “I guess this is just the normal pace.” Only after raising my second child did I realize in hindsight how fortunate that was.
Around age two and a half, my eldest started switching languages depending on who he was speaking to—Korean with me, and Polish with his dad.
Seeing how well he grasped concepts, I tried introducing honorifics (polite forms of speech in Korean) around his third birthday. Since honorifics don’t really exist in Polish or English, he got quite confused. He asked me, “Why do I have to use polite words with Mommy when Mommy doesn’t use them with me?” Seeing his confusion, I decided to hit pause on honorifics for a while.
At age four, he started attending a Korean weekend school. He loved going so much that he always looked forward to Saturdays. Before long, he naturally started using honorifics on his own. It seemed he had learned that polite speech is appropriate in specific settings, like between a teacher and a student.
When he was five, we spent two weeks in Korea. While his overall fluency didn’t dramatically jump, I noticed a clear improvement in his pronunciation.
feel so proud watching him speak Polish like a native while steadily building his Korean. However, as his thoughts become deeper and more complex, he sometimes struggles to find the right Korean words to express something.
Then, our conversations usually flow with him explaining something in Polish, me translating it into Korean, and him repeating the Korean back to me. Fortunately, I can still understand the Polish he uses well enough to help him out. Occasionally, though, he drops a Polish word I don’t know. At first, I looked them up in a dictionary. Lately, I’ve started asking him, “What does that word mean?” Sweetly enough, he tries his best to break it down and explain it to me in simple terms.
In our multilingual home, my child’s language development and my own Polish learning happen hand in hand.
2. Second Child: A Late Bloomer
Having watched my firstborn acquire language so quickly, I assumed my second would follow a similar path. But even past 24 months, my second child had very few spoken words. He mostly relied on onomatopoeia and mimetic words, and though he clearly had things to say, we often couldn’t understand him.
Naturally, worries began to creep in:
- Is his speech delayed?
- Is it because of our three-language environment?
- Should we see a speech therapist?
I brought my concerns to his daycare teacher. Fortunately, she reassured me that there were no worrying signs across his developmental milestones. Given that he was growing up in a multilingual setting, she suggested waiting and observing a bit longer. If there was no progress down the road, she recommended consulting the speech therapist (logopeda) affiliated with the daycare.
Every daycare is different, but at ours, a speech therapist periodically visits the classroom during play activities to observe the children and check for potential issues.
When I opened up about my worries to other parents, I heard stories from several families who had tried speech therapy. One Polish couple shared that both their son and daughter spoke only about three words total until age two and a half, which was when they started speech therapy. Shortly after turning three, both siblings suddenly burst into full, complex sentences.
What surprised me most was what speech therapy actually involved. I used to think it was just about teaching words or correcting pronunciation, but they explained that it included oral-motor exercises—like brushing teeth with the tongue or puckering and relaxing the lips. The parents practiced these exercises with their children at home every day.
My Second Child’s Unique Adjustment: “Moo” and “Pichu”
Before his speech really took off, there were a few bittersweet, funny moments that highlighted his frustration with communication.
Our former daycare teacher for my eldest now works as a part-time nanny for our second child. Whenever my second son was thirsty, he would say “Moo” (short for Mul, the Korean word for water). One day, he asked the nanny for “Moo”, and she gently asked, “Moo? Like a cow?” Frustrated, he insisted, “Nie! Moo!” (Nie meaning “No” in Polish). I stepped in to clarify that “Mul” means water in Korean. The nanny immediately jotted it down so she could share it with his daycare teachers.
That moment really hit me. Speech delay wasn’t just a matter of “he can’t talk yet.” He clearly had needs and things he wanted to say, but he lacked the words to convey them to his teachers. I realized just how frustrating daycare must have been for him at times.
A little while later, he came home from daycare saying “Pichu!” At first, I asked, “Pizza? Pikachu?” But it turned out he was asking for water. Since the Polish word for water (Woda) was hard for him to pronounce, he had cleverly invented his own term derived from the Polish verb “to drink” (Pić). It was his adorable little survival strategy.
Sure enough, with a bit more patience, he began repeating words around 26 months. Now at 29 months, his vocabulary is exploding every single day, and he’s combining two to three words into full sentences!
3. Mom’s Shift: Parallel Language Support
What I do to expose my kids to Korean remains the same: putting on cartoons, reading books, and playing songs in Korean. But one big thing changed while raising my second child—my own Polish improved! (Laughs)
When my eldest was small, I only knew very basic Polish. So we strictly adhered to the simple rule: Mom speaks Korean, Dad speaks Polish. Because my firstborn talked early and picked up Polish quickly, my sole focus was maxing out his Korean exposure.
With my second child, however, I’ve adopted a slightly different strategy. While speaking Korean, I also pair useful words with their Polish equivalents so he can use them at daycare. Since he mostly communicated through onomatopoeia and sound-symbolic words, I started giving him the Polish versions of those words as well.
It became a practical way for me to help him communicate more easily both at home and at daycare.
Final Thoughts
Raised by the same parents, exposed to the same languages, and nurtured in the same way—yet their language growth has been completely distinct. And it’s not just language. While my first was an early talker, my second started walking on his own at just 10 months old. Their interests couldn’t be more different either: robots and superheroes for the first, animals and fire trucks for the second.
Every child truly grows at their own pace and in their own direction.
Raising children in a multilingual environment often comes with moments of impatience and doubt. It’s easy to wonder, “Is this happening because of our multilingual setup?” Whenever those thoughts creep in, I remind myself that each child is a unique individual—different from me, different from my husband, and different from their siblings. I’m already curious to see what kind of personality and developmental journey our 7-month-old will have!
To all the multilingual parents walking step-by-step at their children’s own pace today—I’m cheering you on! 🙂
