The Multilingual Family Hub

🧠📖 Teaching Emotional Awareness Through Chinese Reading (And Expanding Vocab at the Same Time!)

This week’s Chinese reading session turned into something really special.

We were reading a story about a boy, 小飞, who desperately wanted to be the choir leader.

Then came this line:

👉 “心一下子跳得很快。”
(His heart suddenly started beating very fast.)

Instead of just moving on… I paused.

I asked my daughter:
💬 Why do you think his heart started beating faster?
💬 What do you think he’s feeling?

And suddenly, we weren’t just reading anymore.

We were exploring emotions.

Together, we unpacked words like:
🟡 担心 – worry
🟡 焦虑 – anxiety
🟡 嫉妒 – envy
🟡 紧张 – Nervousness
🟡 不安 – Insecurity

All from ONE sentence.

She even drew a little picture to represent Xiao Fei’s feeling… Maybe we can call it 百感交集 (loosely translated it as ‘having an overwhelming mix of emotions’） 🤣

This is what I love about reading in the target language. It’s not just vocabulary building. It’s:

✨ Emotional awareness
✨ Emotional regulation
✨ Perspective-taking
✨ Deeper comprehension
✨ Real-life language

When we go beyond “What happened?” and ask, “How do you think he felt?” – we’re building emotional intelligence alongside literacy.

And honestly?

In today’s world, knowledge alone isn’t enough.

Being able to recognise your feelings, name them, regulate them, and understand others? That’s a lifelong advantage – in friendships, in work, in leadership.

And the beautiful thing is…

You can teach it alongside formal language learning.

Right there during story time. 📚❤️

We had such a lovely reading and writing session that day.

—

🧧 If you’re celebrating, Happy Chinese New Year! 新年快乐 🎉

Because of work commitments and school holidays, I may not be able to publish my usual weekly video for the next two weeks – but I’ll be back very soon.

Thank you for being here. I’m so grateful for this community. 💛

Skip the Carousel

1 2 3

4 days ago | [YT] | 5

The Multilingual Family Hub

How do we turn the target language from CRINGE… to COOL? 🤔✨

This post was inspired by two completely unrelated moments that somehow clicked together in my head.

⸻

📰 Moment #1: China is having a moment

First – my stepfather handed me a newspaper article he’d cut out by hand (bless him 🥹) from The Times.

It was written by a Chinese journalist, talking about how Chinese culture is suddenly… COOL.

Think:

🥢 Chinese food


🧋 Bubble tea

📺 C-dramas

🎶 Mandopop

🌶️ Even the iconic Chinese chilli oil Laoganma

Apparently, China is having a real moment online.

And honestly? Ten years ago, who would’ve predicted that?

Back then, when it came to “cool” East Asian culture, it was all about 🇯🇵 Japan and 🇰🇷 Korea.

Now?
✨ Chinese culture is EVERYWHERE.

⸻

🗣️ Moment #2: When a language flips overnight

The second moment came from a conversation with another bilingual educator.

She told me how her son – now a teenager – used to be reluctant to speak English when he was younger.

Fast forward a few years…
➡️ English is now COOL.

So cool, in fact, that he’s started INSISTING on speaking to his mum only in English in front of his friends – even though Italian is the majority language where they live 🇮🇹

She joked that English had officially gone from CRINGE to COOL.

And it made me smile… because it’s also incredibly revealing.

⸻

🧠 Here’s the key takeaway

Kids’ language preferences are NOT fixed.

They shift.

They evolve.

They’re shaped by identity, culture, trends – and what feels socially “cool” at that moment in time.

⸻

📸 Which brings me to this photo…

👆 My son.
📦 A giant box of mochis (a souvenir from my mum’s recent trip to Taiwan 🇹🇼).
😍 His favourite Chinese snack.

For us, leaning into the culture behind the language has been powerful.

🥢 Chinese food he loves

🧋 Bubble tea

🍡 Mochis

Little things – but they create positive emotional associations.

⸻

💡 So maybe the real question isn’t:

“How do I force my child to speak the target language?”

But instead:

“How can I help them discover what’s cool about it?”

Because CRINGE today… might just be COOL tomorrow 😉✨

Skip the Carousel

1 2 3 4

1 week ago | [YT] | 6

The Multilingual Family Hub

Today’s reading session turned out to be one of the most meaningful moments I’ve had with my son since he was born…

Which is why I felt compelled to write this post.

Today, we had our usual morning Chinese reading and writing session before school. We were reading the final two pages of a book called 知了的一生 (The Life of a Cicada) – a book I’ve previously read with my daughter before, so I already knew that the ending was very poignant and would be deeply emotional for me.

The final page talks about the cicada’s final day on Earth from his perspective, as he reflects on his experience of life above ground – all the beauty of the world: the serene moonlight he so adores, and the regret he feels at not having had the chance to see the leaves turn red in autumn. It tells the story of how he moved from the small, dark home he had as a nymph to this glorious world above ground. In the last paragraph, the story ends with how, at the light of dawn, his body – light and dry as a dried leaf – falls to the ground.

As we finished reading this page, I could feel strong emotions welling up in both our hearts. I let the moment simply be… Resting my arm over his shoulder, we shared this moment of deep connection, each of us lost in our own internal emotional landscape, but nonetheless intensely connected by this shared experience of a fictional story of a cicada that also serves as a metaphor for life – the journey through life of every sentient being on this Earth.

But this was not all!

As we re-read the pages together to consolidate his vocabulary, we came across a sentence that read: 他的一生没有白过. He asked me, “What does 白过 mean?”

(This conversation took place in Chinese, but for the purpose of this post I’ll narrate everything in English.)

I clumsily explained to him that… well, imagine if you spend all day just eating, drinking, and scrolling on your phone, and then one day you get hit by a car and die – you might have 白过了一生 (loosely translated: wasted your life / lived your life in vain). But imagine if you work hard every day, look after your children, and then one day you get hit by a car and die… then, well, you haven’t lived your life in vain, because you’ve given life to your children and looked after them.

At this, my son – aged 9, a “cool-dude”-type pre-teen who doesn’t typically display very strong emotions, let alone talk about them – started tearing up.

I started tearing up.

His tears wouldn't stop – I could tell he was trying hard to hold them back, but he was so overcome with emotions that the tears just kept flowing down his cheeks as he reached for some tissues...

I hugged him close and told him it’s okay, that whatever he’s feeling, it’s okay – it’s okay if you’re feeling sad, or moved, or something else.

We held each other and simply sat with our feelings, enveloped by the profound emotional connection that held us together…

Somehow, a reading session turned into a conversation about life and death, and the purpose of our existence.

This was NOT expected.

We didn’t get to do any writing in the end, but what we gained was something far, far more precious. Something indelible in my memory. How often, in our busy lives, do we get to connect with our children in this way? How often do we get to confront our deepest human emotions?

Sometimes, it takes a beautiful story and some quiet time with a loved one to unlock this rich inner world.

Sorry, this is not my usual “5 tips for raising a bilingual kid”-type post, but I felt I had to share this personal story with you to illustrate the power of reading with your child.

It’s one of the most precious gifts we can give – not just to our children, but to ourselves as well.

Lots of love,

Ka Yee xxx

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 6

The Multilingual Family Hub

We’ve had Netflix for 21 days now… has it helped improve my kids’ Mandarin? Read on to find out 👀🇨🇳

Confession time.

I’ve always been a bit resistant to using TV as a language-learning tool.

I’m pretty old-school.
Books over screens.
Reading and writing over apps and TV.

That said… I’ve never believed TV is completely useless. I’ve always seen it as something that might play a supplementary role – if used intentionally.

Until recently though, we didn’t even have Netflix.

We tried it briefly years ago. Cancelled after a month!

Fast forward to a few weeks ago.

We decided to stop paying for a TV licence (we don’t watch the BBC at all) and thought… maybe we’ll give Netflix another go.

With one condition.

Some of what we watch has to be in Mandarin.

Enter: Mandarin Monday (yes, purely because Monday + Mandarin sounds nice 😄).

In reality, it’s not just Mondays.

Most evenings, the kids watch Netflix for half an hour or so – and at least some of that has to be in Mandarin.

We found two kids’ shows with Mandarin dubbing:

– Brainchild

– A show about a girl working at a koala sanctuary (saving koalas, big hit 🐨)

And honestly?

I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

What I’ve noticed so far 👇

1️⃣ Vocabulary growth
These shows use words we don’t normally use at home.
In Brainchild, the kids were exposed to words like “social media” in Mandarin – words I’d never naturally introduce in daily conversation.

2️⃣ Motivation through great content
The content is genuinely engaging.
So engaging that my kids are willing to “put up with” Mandarin just to watch it. That matters more than we sometimes realise.

3️⃣ The moment that made me laugh out loud
One evening, I overheard Alexi responding out loud in Mandarin to a question asked by the presenter.
Then he turned to Alina and said:

“This show is making me speak Chinese.”

Imagine my surprise!!! 😱

But here’s the important bit – my takeaways 👇

🔹 TV alone will NOT create fluency
Passive watching doesn’t magically produce bilingual kids.
Fluency only happens when exposure AND need exist in everyday life.

🔹 TV works best as a supplement, not the main tool
If your child is going to watch TV anyway, switching some of it to the target language is a simple way to increase exposure.

🔹 Engaging content = motivation
And sustaining motivation in kids is half the battle.

🔹 Watch together when you can
Even occasionally.
Pause. Explain words. Talk about what’s happening. Make it interactive.

So no – Netflix isn’t a magic solution.

But used intentionally?

As part of a bigger system?

It can absolutely support language development.

Curious – have you tried TV or Netflix in your family’s minority language?

What’s worked (or totally failed) for you? 👇

Skip the Carousel

1 2 3

3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 9

The Multilingual Family Hub

📘 Teaching new vocabulary (and abstract concept) IN CONTEXT and APPLYING IT immediately

Yesterday, I was reading a book called 小丽做娃娃 from the excellent 小羊上山 graded reader series. We came across a new word:

乐观 (lè guān) → optimistic
Actually, she must have been exposed to this word in daily conversation before but it’s not a word we use a lot in real life (huh… maybe I need to ramp up my optimism 🤣🤣🤣), so she couldn’t recall its meaning.

My first reaction was to simply tranlsate it: 乐观 means “optimistic”!

But that seemed to draw a blank as well 😱

Maybe the concept itself is too abstract for a 7-year-old?

So I approached it differently…

I explained the word in context, and in the target language (Mandarin).

I linked it to something real and familiar and say:

👉 如果你是一个乐观的人，下雨了，你还是觉得明天会更好。
(If you’re an optimistic person. Even when it rains, you still think tomorrow will be better.)

And the next step is crucial: test understanding in context.

I follow up with a meaning-based question in Chinese:

👉 如果你是一个很乐观的人，你觉得明天会是美好的一天，还是很糟糕的一天？
(If you’re an optimistic person, do you think tomorrow will be a good day, or a terrible day?)

Alina answers immediately:

明天会是美好的一天。

(Tomorrow will be a good day.)

Phew.

That’s when I knew she actually UNDERSTOOD the true MEANING of the word.

⸻

💡 Takeaways you can use at home:

✅ Explain new words in context, not with definitions
Show what the word looks like in real life instead of translating it abstractly.

✅ Use one clear, relatable example sentence
Weather, school, emotions, everyday situations – anything your child already understands.

✅ Ask a follow-up question that tests meaning, not memory
If they can answer appropriately, they’ve understood.

✅ Keep it conversational
You’re not “teaching vocabulary” – you’re having a meaningful exchange in another language.

This is how vocabulary moves from passive knowledge to active language.

✨ What word are you introducing next?

1 month ago | [YT] | 5

The Multilingual Family Hub

First Monday back in 2026, first-ever MEDIA FEATURE for the Multilingual Family Hub!!!

I'm SUPER excited to share with you all that I've just been featured in a Bored Panda article titled
“36 Satisfying Stories Of Rude Gossips Who Did Not Know Their Victims Spoke The Language” 🐼✨: www.boredpanda.com/bilingual-people-stories-langua…

It's a real FUN READ for anyone from a multicultural and multilingual background!! You'll definitely be able to relate to some of these stories!

Huge thank you to Beverly Noronha, one of the co-authors, for reaching out – and even more mind-blowing… she found me on YouTube of all places 🤯

I’m genuinely so grateful for the opportunity to share my experience and be part of a piece celebrating the power of languages 💪💪

Here’s to creating more meaningful, fun, language-nerdy content in 2026 – and hopefully more collaborations with Beverly in the future 👀✨

Thank you, as always, for being here and supporting this little corner of the internet 💛

#boredpanda #multilingual #multilingualparenting #bilingual #bilingualkids #trilingual #languagelovers

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

The Multilingual Family Hub

Wishing all my viewers a WONDERFUL New Year ahead!!

May 2026 bring you…


More language success for yourself or your kids
More meaningful time with your loved ones
More moments of joy and contentment

I can’t wait to create more helpful content for you all next year! 🙏❤️❤️❤️

1 month ago | [YT] | 7

The Multilingual Family Hub

🇯🇵✨ CULTURE SHOCK, LANGUAGE LOLs & LIFE UPDATES from JAPAN!🇯🇵 ✨

Writing this on our last day in Japan – flying back to cold, rainy England tomorrow ☔️🇬🇧

A few days ago, we celebrated my sister’s wedding, and honestly… it was one of the most memorable days of my life 💍❤️

By far the best wedding I’ve ever been to

(Yes, even better than my own – though ours might’ve been livelier thanks to the copious amounts of vodka🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺 consumed by our guests 😂).


But the culture shock took us by surprise 😳

For starters: my mum and I were stunned to see my brother-in-law’s family all dressed in black!

In Chinese🇨🇳 culture, that’s the colour of mourning – *totally* taboo for weddings.

We later googled it and discovered that in Japan🇯🇵, black is actually the most respectable colour for formal occasions, while RED (the colour of choice at Chinese weddings!) is considered inappropriate.

🤯 Mind blown!!!

Even though it’s not my first time in Japan, I noticed so many subtle cultural differences this time around – not just between East and West, but between Japanese and Chinese customs, despite the countries being so close geographically. 🌏

(Let me know in the comments below if you'd like me to make a video about this!)👇👇👇

I also caught up with old school friends and my half-brothers from Hong Kong – and had a few hilarious language mix-up moments along the way 😅

(Wrote a blog post about it here if you’re curious)

👉 www.kayeemecktranslation.com/post/lost-in-translat…

We’ve had the most incredible time here, but I’m honestly ready to be home and to start creating again! 🎥

Coming soon on the channel:


💡 5 Lies You’ve Been Told About Raising Multilingual Kids (exact title TBC)
🐱 More fun Cantonese content

Can’t wait to share everything with you guys soon ❤️



#TravelReflections #JapanCulture #MultilingualParenting #LanguageLearning

Skip the Carousel

1 2 3

3 months ago | [YT] | 6

The Multilingual Family Hub

📚🐾 DAILY HABITS don’t always look exciting… but they WORK.

For years now, we’ve kept up our daily Chinese reading + writing routine. Some might call it boring — but this “boring” consistency has been the engine behind my kids’ progress.

✨ It expands their Chinese vocabulary.


✨ It strengthens fine motor skills.


✨ It trains their brain (the Chinese writing system is a whole different beast compared to English or Russian!).


✨ And it builds perseverance + concentration — life skills that go way beyond language learning.

Meanwhile… Milly sits by like the ultimate polyglot boss 👑 supervising every stroke. (The polyglot who refuses to answer us in anything other than meows 🐱😂).

So here’s your reminder:

Sometimes "SUCCESS" is just SHOWING UP every day and doing the “boring” thing.

The results sneak up on you over time. 🌱

In case you haven't watched it yet, check out a video I made last year where I share our tried-and-tested reading & writing routine! https://youtu.be/HfQX0WFT6hs

👉 Do you have a small daily habit that’s making a big difference in your life (or your kids’)?

Share it below — I’d love to hear!

Skip the Carousel

1 2 3

4 months ago | [YT] | 10

The Multilingual Family Hub

🎉🎂 Our boy just turned 9!

We celebrated with a scrumptious Dubai chocolate cake… and of course, Milly the cat demanded her own rival version: a “cascading chicken gravy cake.” 🐱🍗 Because why should humans have all the fun, right!?

As I look back, here are 3 big reflections as he hits this milestone:

1️⃣ Language acquisition is NOT one-and-done. Progress still happens month by month — with the occasional funny setback. (Case in point: he read 生日 as 牛日… so yes, we had to sing “祝你牛日快乐!” 🤣)

2️⃣ Balancing academics + languages is real. Year 4 means the 11+ is looming. We’re figuring out how to keep up the language journey while making space for schoolwork too.

3️⃣ Childhood is heartbreakingly fleeting. I got teary scrolling through baby pictures this week. The tiny baby we once worried Milly might squash (seriously, our baby was 3.98 kg at birth, versus Milly's 5-kg body!!!) is suddenly 9 years old! At the end of the day, languages are wonderful — but what truly matters is TOGETHERNESS, JOY, and LOVE. 💕

To all parents out there: enjoy your kids. Don't wish this time away.

They are – truly – the greatest gift of all. xxx

Skip the Carousel

1 2 3 4 5

4 months ago | [YT] | 8