Russian and German speaking parents and expecting parents in East London

[OPOLisnotenough]

Hello!

I am an expecting mother who just recently moved to Tower Hamlets, next to Victoria Park. I would love to meet other mothers with a long-term plan of using our meetings to expose babies to languages other than English in informal setting and to build some friendships along the way.

We speak English at home, I am a native Russian speaker and lived in Germany for 10 years before moving here.

Look forward to new connections!

Tatiana

Wow OP I'm also a native Russian speaker who lived in Germany for many years (my parents still live in Germany). But unfortunately I have a 15-year-old rather than a baby 😬 would have loved to expose her to some German though (she already speaks Russian as we speak it at home).

Just to add, my daughter was born here and has never been to Russia, but I have always had Russian-speaking nannies which is how she learned Russian (always a battle to get her to speak Russian rather than English to me but her Russian is very good and she's currently doing Russian GCSE). I would definitely recommend having foreign nannies.

Wow, that's interesting! Good luck to your daughter with her GCSE. Sounds like you did a great job keeping her engaged with and interested in Russian :)

I feel like it is going to be an uphill battle to speak Russian at home when the child is older because her dad does not speak Russian... but I hope that consistently exposing her to Russian phonetics in the first 18 months will make it easier for her to learn it in academic setting.

If you ever need it, I know two absolutely fantastic Russian teachers - one who runs the Sunday Russian school "Tsarskoe Selo" and one who lives in Greece but does online tuition. Both are very "old-school" proper Russian teachers who have helped my daughter enormously, not just to speak but also to read and write in Russian and learn about Russian history and literature.

Thank you, we will think about it later when the time comes!