Mother shares ‘genius’ parenting hack for teaching children second language

‘I’m going to do this for myself’

Mother shares hack for teaching children second language (TikTok /@teacher.wants.to.adopt)

A mother is being praised after sharing a parenting hack she uses to teach her young children a second language.

Serita, a teacher who goes by the username @teacher.wants.to.adopt on TikTok, uploaded a video last month in which her two young daughters could be seen lying on the floor and watching a tablet.

In the caption on the video, Serita revealed that all of the content her children watch on screens such as the TV or their tablets is in another language.

“Parenting hack from a teacher: Have all your kids’ screen time be in another language,” Serita wrote in a text caption on the video. “My kids only watch TV/tablets in Spanish.

“Now they both speak Spanish and my younger daughter is almost fluent.”

However, Serita did jokingly note that parents should know the second language, or learn it themselves, as otherwise their children can tell “each other secrets and you won’t understand them”.

The video, which has been viewed more than 176,000 times, has been met with gratitude from many of Serita’s followers, while others noted that the method has long been used to learn another language.

“I’m not gonna lie, that’s genius,” one person wrote, while another said: “Yes! It’s better for children to learn two languages at the same time if the goal is bilingualism! And introduce another language before the age of six!”

Someone else revealed that their own parents had employed the hack growing up, writing: “My mom did this for me!!”

In a comment of her own, Serita clarified that her children have been exposed to Spanish previously through music, and that they “understand what they are watching and love it”.

She also discussed how subtitles can be helpful, with the TikToker explaining that parents can choose to put the subtitles in their children’s first language or the language they want to help them learn.

“My older daughter is learning to read so I put the subtitles in Spanish and we talk about the difference between how to read in both languages,” she wrote.

According to one of the largest linguistics studies ever conducted, children are proficient at learning a new language up until the age of 18, which is older than previously thought as previous studies suggested the ability begins to close by the time children reach the five to seven window.

However, the study found that it is best to begin learning the language by age 10 if the goal is to “achieve the grammatical fluency of a native speaker,” according to Scientific American.