We hope that you have found some useful advice in this book. You will have noticed that there are many strategies on how to introduce multilingualism into your family, and involve many family members with their language and cultural backgrounds. Language knowledge develops over time, over a lifetime, and you will see the best results with consistent exposure, quality and quantity of input, interaction with the family and peers as conversation partners, and making language learning fun by providing a variety of situations for input, and occasions to experience and use the languages as well as time to process them.

We used our own stories as illustrations of the complex phenomenon of multilingual first language acquisition. We acknowledge that while general principles can be extracted from individual experiences, there are no ready-made, one-fit-for-all solutions for all families. We are aware, for example, that we are in a position of privilege with our own children. With our PhDs in linguistics, we could easily brush aside the unfounded objections of people in our environment on our decision to bring up our children as multilinguals. We hope that through this book you will be able to do the same thing!

Another aspect is that our children speak languages that are generally appreciated in the environment in which they grew up. In other words, they were never mocked or ridiculed for using a language that some may have considered hostile or stupid. Moreover, as parents we convinced our children that their languages and the cultures they represent are an asset, something to be proud of. While all of us should be equally proud of our cultural and linguistic heritage, it can be harder for immigrants, or for their children, should they be faced with prejudice about their backgrounds. A British politician commented during the last election campaign how uncomfortable he felt on the train out of London not hearing any English-speaking individuals around him. Had he had the power, he would have forced everybody to speak English only.