My father was Lithuanian, my mother Estonian, their lingua franca was French. I am Swedish citizen, born in Sweden (where my siblings still live now) but I grew up in Germany. My mother only used Estonian with me, my father Lithuanian, my siblings speak Swedish among themselves – but I use with them a mix based on Estonian-Swedish-German. Lately, Swedish has become a passive language rather than an active one; I am only using it for administrative purposes or with a few acquaintances.
I remember that my sisters had a hard time when they were pregnant for the first time – they felt that they would like to speak Estonian and Lithuanian with their kids but couldn’t decide between the two languages and finally chose Swedish. And now their children are quite upset about having grown up with only one language.
My husband is French (actually of Catalan origin, born in Brazil), we speak English with each other (happened to be the way we got introduced in an expat surrounding and we kept the language) and our two oldest children were born in the Netherlands, the younger one in Germany. So, my kids are raised with (1) French (Dad), )2) Estonian (although I’m already almost the second generation raised outside of Estonia, my mother was teenager when she had to leave the country), (3) formerly Dutch changed to German and (4) they hear English every day (without having formally learned it, the older ones are able to answer & demand things in English).
I never tried to introduce my kids to Swedish or Lithuanian. I partly regret it. I never thought it possible to speak more than one language with the children (considering that I have “rare” languages, not spoken by lots of people, it is more demanding to keep them up if you do no longer have a strong and large network of people speaking the language) – and it’s the way I grew up: one person one language.

I think OPOL was the right choice regarding my expectations: I wanted them to learn reading, writing. I had those really classical ideas about “pure” language use, to expand their language domains and vocabulary – but in the end there is no way to measure how well someone speaks a language and they have to work later with developing their language skills, if interested. I am still in favour of a basis of OPOL, which later may be enlarged to other languages, once that they are out of their typical toddlers’ and preschool phase of mixing languages. I was afraid I might be freaking out if they would not answer me in Estonian and drop the language, something I observed with other people. Although I am still allergic to typical utterances from my oldest daughter who thinks it is cool to mix Estonian, French, German and even English into one sentence when talking with me (- because I know that she speaks all languages and would be capable of expressing herself in just one language, which she did previously before getting into that pre-teenage age), I am getting a little more tolerant and allow myself to answer sometimes in only English or only German to her – which I still do not do with my younger ones (strictly Estonian). I guess I became more confident when I realised that my older children speak, understand, write and read in Estonian, so the basis is created, and I can help them to become more fluent in other languages as well…

I really like your blog and also the fact that you point out that there are European “TCK”, for whom TCK is not the right term. But except for multilingual, multicultural and (maybe) multinational, I have not come up with a better term.

Thank you very much for your very interesting comment! May I ask which languages you were raised with? And which one(s) you chose to talk to your children, and why? I’m really very interested in knowing how other multilingual parents solve this OPOL “problem”. We now agreed to talk different languages in different situations and days per week, which works quite well so far. I know that consistency should be one of the priorities while raising multilingual children, but in our case, I find it quite interesting to observe that my children develop different language preferences and if I can meet their needs, I’m very glad to do so. – I would really love to know more about your language situation with your children!

Thank you, Georgia. Yes, I’ve been very happy about this new turn in our linguistic journey. Reactivating a family language is actually much easier than some expect. I think the most important point is the mutual commitment between the child(ren) and the parents (or caregivers). We actually re-defined our family languages during these summer holidays and discussed everyone’s language preferences (I’ll write about this soon).
I’m very glad you like my blog and would love to know more about you.