Hallo! Hola! Hello!

Parenting is hard work.

I've been blessed with unexpected rewards lately. Case in point, my 14-year old daughter came into my room the other day to thank me. Thank me for forcing her to study French grammar daily, for years and years, as I homeschooled her in French.

You read that right. She thanked me for French grammar lessons. Yep. See, she goes to a public school here in PA, so no such thing as native French in class. Since we left French-speaking Africa 7 years ago, I've been homeschooling her and her brother so they are absolutely native in French.

They grumbled. For years they grumbled. Grammar is not fun. They pulled every trick of the book to get out of French grammar lesson. But mama can be stubborn too.

So here she was, my beautiful 14-year-old, thanking me. She realized, she said, how her native fluency in another language had created in her a curiosity for world cultures and languages. She is more open minded, she says, because she swimmingly navigates French grammar. She even made this topic hers for her annual Oral Oratory speech at her Speech and Debate club at school. And she is the only in her high school who takes French AND German AND Spanish. As a Freshman. She and a friend are talking about learning Russian--or Chinese, they don't know yet. She wants to be a polyglot.

Proud mama.

How are YOU teaching someone else to embrace the world around them?