Reality versus Idealism in Multilingual Parenting

On the one hand, I knew that once we started to homeschool our eldest, we would be depending on more English and that keeping up with exposure in Polish and Spanish would be more and more challenging.  On the other hand, I had naively hoped that homeschooling (verus delegating our kids' education to a school system) would allow us to use our native languages as part of the instruction.

Yeah, that sounded nice in theory.  In reality, it would take serious effort to gather materials in our native languages, not to mention added expense.  Especially as we depend a lot on our library, 95% of the materials we get are in English, the other five are ASL dvds and Spanish language books.  Zero Polish.  But even when we do find a book or video in the target language, I do not know sufficient vocabulary to explain concepts other than the very basic ones.

I'm better able to express myself in English.  Even though Polish still has an emotional effect on me, it is not my primary language.  I cannot fully be myself in Polish.  When speaking with my mom, it is usually 75% Polish and 25% English.

What concerns me is that we are starting to use more English than Polish or Spanish just in everyday conversation.  It's easier and faster not to have to translate for the other parent to grasp the gist of our interactions.

That's not to say that we're abandoning the goal of raising our kids multilingual.  But I do think it's important to keep our rather modest purpose in mind. It's not to send our kids to university abroad, where they can study in Polish or Spanish.  Or to find employment abroad.

We just want our kids to be able to understand the equivalent of the news in each language, to make themselves understood in the respecive communities, and to have basic literacy that they can build on if they so choose when they are older.  Also, just the mere exposure and use of the languages, however limited it may become, does wonders for brain development, creativity, perspective, musicality....  So I have to remember that fluency is not the goal, and that's ok.