Children’s early literacy experiences at home and in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) positively influence their language development and early literacy skills (Skibbe et al., 2011). Nevertheless, literacy experiences in ECEC tend to be short and seldom include children’s home languages (Michel & Kuiken, 2014). Furthermore, practitioners rarely encourage translanguaging although it facilitates communication, meaning-making and learning (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2019). One way of supporting the use of home languages in ECEC is to collaborate with parents and organise “joint literacy events”. Such events have been documented in multilingual Luxembourg where two-thirds of the young children speak more than two languages at home. To address language diversity, the Education Ministry introduced in 2017 a multilingual programme in ECEC that requires practitioners in non-formal education sectors to familiarize children with Luxembourgish and French and value their linguistic and cultural resources, as well as collaborate with families and engage in networking activities. In the project “Collaboration with parents and multiliteracies in ECEC” we have analysed joint literacy activities and the actors’ use of one or multiple languages (Aleksić et al., 2024; Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin, 2023). This presentation zooms in on two private ECEC centres, one Luxembourgish, one French, with different pedagogical approaches. We investigate, firstly children’s use of their linguistic repertoire in joint literacy activities and, secondly, the roles of two- to three-year-olds when interacting with peers and adults during these special moments. Data stem from nine video-recorded joint events of two hours in which parents communicated in their home language(s). The data were subjected to a conversation analysis (Seedhouse, 2005). The findings show that the languages in these activities were either strictly separated or used dynamically. In the former events, the children whose parents were present behaved like guests. They showed strong emotions, closed in on their parents and participated less than in the daily ECEC activities where parents were absent. In the latter situations, the children translanguaged, thereby encouraging participation and mediating between peers and adults. We concluded that parental involvement in literacy activities can have different outcomes depending on the pedagogy of the educators. Furthermore, the findings confirm that translanguaging can be transformative and contribute to well-being (Kleyn & García, 2019) as well as stimulate children’s language-based agency (Kirsch & Mortini, 2021). We conclude with implications for professionals.

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