Raising Multi-lingual kids – Vanitha’s journey which led her to establish Small Business

Few years later when my daughter was born, I realised that nothing had changed in this regard. Hence, I decided to produce my own high quality Tamil children’s books – and formed Vaaranam Children’s Books in 2017. It was (and still is) tough, but I have self-published 6 books to date, including books with interactive elements. I sell my books worldwide, with the help of my resellers. It has given me a sense of pride that I have found a way to contribute in a small way to pass on our beautiful language to the next generation and give back to the Tamil community.

The challenges in passing on the language and culture to my children are ongoing though. Firstly, despite Australia being a melting pot of cultures, it is still largely a monolingual country. Plus, with all of my family being back in Singapore, I do not have the support network to shoulder some of this massive responsibility.

Nevertheless, my kids have been going to Tamil language classes once a week for the last 3 years, even though it is a 45 minutes drive to and fro the school. It’s great for them to hear Tamil being spoken around them and to meet other Tamil children.

I try to speak with them in Tamil as much as possible, celebrate every single festival of ours and expose them to Tamil movies and music.

There have been some positives through all the effort. They both speak and understand the language to some extent. My son can read simple Tamil books (yes, mine as well) and can write basic Tamil. And my daughter is learning to read Tamil now.

This part of parenting is definitely not a walk in the park and quite often can feel like a lonely path. It does require commitment and (loads of) effort but I would urge other parents facing the same situation to keep going as in the end, at least we know that we tried.