Abstract
In this article, through reference to the theories of multilingualism, we would like to outline issues pertaining to the bilingual upbringing of children in bicultural families and their education in Polish schools. Referring to research (interviews) with parents of bilingual children from Warsaw, we will point to strategies employed by parents who communicate with their children in two or three languages. We will also draw attention to difficulties connected with dominant and non-dominant languages (the case of grandparents). In the second section, we will discuss diverse school environments and language in schools where bilingual children function. We also explore the argumentation of both parents deciding to enrol their bilingual children in state schools with Polish as the language of instruction, and those opting for enrolment in private schools with English as the language of instruction or social schools. The research material was collected among parents of bicultural and bilingual children living in Poland, the Mazovian voivodship, including the capital city of Warsaw. The group presented consists of multinational families in which one parent (most frequently the father) comes from a country from the African continent.
 Keywords: multilingualism, bilingualism, the upbringing process in multinational families, school education, communication
Highlights
The benefits of being able to speak more than one language can be perceived as universal in today's world [1]
The research results identify a variety of communication strategies between children and parents, the parents' attentiveness to their children's relations with grandparents and more distant family members from the country of origin of the with a migrant background
The aim of this article was to show the situation of bilingual and multilingual families in Poland, based on the example of a group of mixed Polish parents and parents originating from African countries, with children born in Poland and with Polish citizenship
Summary
The benefits of being able to speak more than one language can be perceived as universal in today's world [1]. Multilingualism, i.e. the command of several languages, enables children to communicate with family members belonging to various nationalities and cultures [2]. It is especially important since the number of mixed and migrating marriages and families is on the rise. This situation result from a relatively low number of formal barriers that might inhibit engagement in formal relationships between representatives of various religious, ethnic and social groups (e.g. the possibility of entering into a civil marriage, as opposed to the situation still present in many countries of the world where only religious weddings are allowed). There can be differences both between the family home and the outside environment (in the case of migrant families whose original culture differs from the culture of the host country), and between parents (as can be the case with marriages mixed in terms of culture, religion or language)
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