How a 74-Year-Old Retired Teacher From Ibadan Helped Me Teach My 5-Year-Old Daughter to Speak Yoruba — In Less Than 30 Days — Without Sending Her to Nigeria
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Let me ask you something honestly.
Have you ever sat at the dinner table and spoken to your child in Yoruba — and they just looked at you?
Not rude. Not defiant. Just... blank.
Like you're speaking a completely foreign language to a child who shares your blood.
Because to them — you are.
And then you switch to English, because that's the only way to get through. And somewhere inside you, something tightens. A quiet, familiar shame. The kind you don't really talk about.
Maybe you've told yourself it's fine. "She'll pick it up when she gets older." Maybe you've said it so many times you've started to believe it.
But deep down, you know.
You know that every day that passes is a day she grows further from the language. From the culture. From who she really is. From who you really are.
You call your mum back home and she tries to speak with your child over the phone — and the conversation dies in thirty seconds. Your mum goes quiet. That silence says more than any words could.
"If I die before this child learns our language..."
You've thought that sentence. Haven't you? Maybe you've even let yourself finish it.
You've tried things. You're not the kind of parent who just does nothing. You've searched on YouTube at midnight. You've downloaded apps. You've asked aunties for help. You might have even enrolled her in a Yoruba Saturday class that cost more than your gym membership.
But nothing has really stuck.
The videos are boring. The apps don't even have Yoruba. The Saturday school is inconsistent and she cries every time you try to drop her off. The phrases your mum sends on WhatsApp are too fast, too complex, and she tunes out after ten seconds.
And the longer this goes on, the worse you feel.
Because it's not just about Yoruba, is it?
It's about the fact that you grew up hearing this language and somehow still don't speak it properly yourself. It's about your own guilt. Your own disconnection. The version of yourself that got swallowed by the UK, or the US, or wherever life took you.
You want your child to have what you almost lost. But you don't even know where to start.
I know exactly how that feels. Because not so long ago, that was me.
So before you close this page — drop everything you are doing right now and listen to every word I'm about to say.
Because I'm about to share with you a simple 30-day family method that changed everything for me — and for my daughter Zara.
Our grandmothers never worried about this.
In Ibadan. In Lagos. In Abeokuta. In every Yoruba household two generations ago — the language was just there. In the air. In the kitchen smells. In the songs at naming ceremonies. In the way elders greeted you at the door and expected you to answer properly.
Children didn't learn Yoruba. They absorbed it. Naturally. Daily. Without effort.
But for those of us raising children in the diaspora — in South London, in Houston, in Manchester, in Atlanta — that environment doesn't exist anymore. We have to rebuild it deliberately. And most of us have no idea how.
Until I found the method I'm about to share with you.
Hi. My name is Ada.
And the first thing you should know about me is that I am not a language teacher. I'm not a linguist, a child development expert, or any kind of professional. I have no letters after my name. No qualifications to hang on a wall.
I'm a 34-year-old Nigerian-British woman who grew up in South London, born to a Yoruba mother from Ibadan and an Igbo father from Enugu. I work in NHS administration. I have a daughter named Zara who is five years old. I love jollof rice and I watch too many Nigerian films on Netflix.
That's it. That's my whole resumé for this conversation.
But I am someone who discovered something — almost by accident — that finally cracked the code on teaching Yoruba to a diaspora child. And I would feel genuinely terrible keeping it to myself.
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Let Me Tell You the Whole Story. The Embarrassing Parts Included.
Zara was born in October 2019. Perfect. Healthy. Big dark eyes that looked straight through you.
I remember lying in that hospital bed in Lewisham, holding her for the first time, and one of the first things I thought — not the first, but close — was: "She needs to speak Yoruba. She needs to know where she comes from."
I meant it. Deeply.
And then life happened. Sleepless nights. Maternity leave. Lockdown. Going back to work. The general exhaustion of raising a child in a flat in South London on two NHS salaries while sending money home every other month.
Yoruba stayed on my mental list of things to sort out. Right below "book that dentist appointment" and right above "finally watch those films everyone keeps mentioning."
The thing is — I wasn't totally helpless. I knew some Yoruba. I heard it constantly as a child visiting my mum's family in Ibadan. I understood probably 60% of what was said around me. But speaking? Confidently? Teaching it to another person?
That was a different thing entirely.
"You understand but you can't speak it," my aunt once told me, clicking her tongue. "That's the worst kind of lost. You're close enough to feel the pain of it."
She wasn't wrong.
The Moment I Knew Something Had to Change
It was a Sunday evening in February 2023. Zara was three and a half.
My mum — Zara's grandmother, who she calls Mama Ibadan — was on a video call from Lagos. She started speaking to Zara in Yoruba. Asking her how she was. Asking if she had eaten. The usual grandmother things.
Zara stared at the screen. Then turned to me and said, "Mummy, what is Mama Ibadan saying? I can't understand her."
My mum's face.
I don't want to describe it in too much detail because even now it sits heavy in my chest. She didn't say anything. She just went quiet. And then she said something to me — not to Zara — in Yoruba, and then ended the call shortly after.
She said: "Ada, when I'm gone, who will this child talk to about where she came from?"
I cried for a long time after that call. Not the gentle, cinematic kind of crying. The ugly, hiccuping kind. Sitting on the bathroom floor so Zara wouldn't see.
Everything I Tried That Did Not Work
I want to be honest with you about this part because I know you've probably tried some of these things too.
First, I tried YouTube. I found a whole channel — quite well-produced actually — teaching Yoruba basics. Numbers. Colours. Common phrases. I sat Zara down and put it on the TV. She lasted four minutes before asking if she could watch Bluey instead. The videos were good. But they were designed like school. And Zara is a child. Children do not learn the way YouTube teaches.
Then I tried Duolingo. Opened the app, typed in "Yoruba," and discovered — there is no Yoruba on Duolingo. Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I closed the app and deleted it.
I enrolled Zara in a Saturday Yoruba school run out of a community centre in Peckham. £35 per session. She cried three Saturdays in a row. By the fourth Saturday, the teacher herself suggested we "take a break." I paid for eight sessions and we attended four. She retained approximately nothing.
I tried sending her WhatsApp voice notes from my mum and aunties. But my mum speaks fast, uses proverbs, and assumes a level of context Zara simply doesn't have. Zara would listen politely, nod, and then completely ignore the message.
I found a Yoruba tutor on a Facebook group — a lovely woman who offered online lessons via Zoom. We did three sessions. Then she cancelled twice in a row. Then she stopped responding to messages. I don't blame her. But I also couldn't depend on it.
I bought a Yoruba phrasebook from Amazon. Beautifully designed. Sat on my shelf for eight months. Opened twice. The problem with phrasebooks is they teach you to say things, not to actually speak to another person. There's no life in them.
By this point, almost two years had passed since that video call with my mum.
And Zara still could not speak a single Yoruba sentence.
The Day I Met Iya Bunmi
It was October 2023. A Nigerian community harvest thanksgiving at a church hall in Peckham — the kind of event where you go for the food and stay because the aunties won't let you leave.
I was standing near the food table, avoiding conversation and stacking my second plate of rice, when an older woman came and stood beside me. She was small. Maybe five feet tall. Printed adire blouse, reading glasses on a chain around her neck, the kind of slow, deliberate movement that tells you someone has lived long enough to stop rushing.
"This jollof is overcooked," she said, in Yoruba, without even looking at me. "But I'll still eat it because I didn't wake up at four in the morning to fast for nothing."
I laughed before I even thought about it.
Her name was Iya Bunmi. Seventy-four years old. Retired primary school teacher. She had taught Standard One and Two pupils in Ibadan for thirty-one years. She came to London two years ago to live with her son after her husband passed. She missed Ibadan every single day. "London is fine," she told me. "But it has no smell. You know? Every place should have a smell. London smells like rain and strangers."
We talked for two hours. I told her about Zara. About the video call. About my mother's face. About everything I'd tried and everything that had failed.
She listened without interrupting — which is rare, in my experience, with Nigerian women of a certain age.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment. Then she said something I will never forget.
"Ada, you've been trying to teach your daughter Yoruba the way English people teach their children French. As a subject. As a lesson. That is why it is not working. A language is not a subject. It is a life. You have to live it with her. A small amount, every day, in the middle of the life you are already living. That is how we all learned."
I stared at her.
"The grandmothers didn't sit children down and say, 'Now we will learn Yoruba.' They just... spoke. At bath time. At mealtime. During stories at night. They wove the language into the child's daily life until the child couldn't tell the difference between living and speaking Yoruba. That is what you must do. But you must do it with a structure. Because you don't have the grandmother's full environment — so you must replace it with a daily method."
She spent the next thirty minutes explaining her method to me. The daily rhythm. The fifteen-minute moments. The songs. The games. The way you introduce words through action, not translation. The specific activities she had refined over thirty years of teaching children whose first language was not Yoruba.
I wrote notes on my phone. Three pages of them.
"Don't trust your memory," she said, watching me type. "Memory forgets. Write it down. Do it every day. Do not skip. Children learn from repetition, not from perfection. You don't have to speak perfect Yoruba yourself — you just have to be consistent."
Before I left, I asked her: "But Iya Bunmi — what if I'm not fluent enough to do this properly?"
She gave me a look that felt like a gentle slap.
"You are the child's mother. That is enough. More than enough. Start. Don't wait until you are ready. You will be ready when you start."
The First Two Weeks — And Why I Almost Quit
I started the method the following Monday.
To be completely honest with you: the first five days, I didn't believe it was working.
Zara repeated words when I asked her to. She copied phrases. She laughed when I got pronunciations wrong and tried to correct me. But at the end of each day, I thought: Is this sticking? Is any of this actually going in?
By Day 7, I was close to writing it off as another failed experiment.
And then Day 9 happened.
I was in the kitchen making egusi soup — distracted, not even thinking about Yoruba — when Zara walked in and said, completely unprompted:
"Mummy, mo fẹ́ jẹ spaghetti."
I want you to understand what that sentence is. In Yoruba, it means: "Mummy, I want to eat spaghetti."
She didn't repeat it after me. She wasn't prompted. She didn't look to check if she'd said it right. She just... said it. As naturally as if she'd said it a hundred times before.
I stood at that stove and I could not move for about ten seconds.
Then I turned around, picked her up, and swung her around the kitchen while she screamed with laughter and the egusi started to catch on the bottom of the pot.
That was the moment.
By Day 30 — I Called My Mum
I didn't tell my mum what I was doing. I didn't want to set expectations. I just wanted to show her.
So at the end of the thirty days, I set up a video call. I put Zara in front of the phone. And I said, in Yoruba, very simply: "Zara, sọ fún Mama Ibadan bí o ṣe rí." (Zara, tell Mama Ibadan how you are.)
And my daughter — my five-year-old daughter who just months earlier had stared blankly at her grandmother on a video call — looked at the screen and said:
"Mama Ibadan, mo wà dáadáa. Mo fẹ́ wá rí yín. Mo nífẹ̀ẹ́ yín."
"Mama Ibadan, I am fine. I want to come and see you. I love you."
My mother — who is not a woman who cries easily — cried.
I cried.
Zara looked at both of us with the satisfied expression of a child who knows she has done something extraordinary.
Others Tried It Too
After that phone call, I shared Iya Bunmi's method — and my thirty-day experience — with three other Nigerian mums in my circle.
Funmi, who lives in Manchester, has a seven-year-old son named Tobi. She tried the method. By day twenty-two, Tobi was greeting neighbours in Yoruba and correcting his dad's pronunciation.
Yetunde in Houston tried it with her twin girls — four years old. She messaged me after three weeks: "Ada please what did you do to my children? They are arguing in Yoruba now. ARGUING. In Yoruba."
And Bimpe — whose daughter is eight and had what Bimpe called "complete Yoruba shutdown" — got her daughter to sing a complete Yoruba song at their church's children's programme after twenty-eight days.
That's when I understood this wasn't just my story.
And that's when I knew I had to package it properly and share it.
After those results, my phone didn't stop. Every Nigerian mum I told wanted the exact details. The steps. The daily structure. The specific activities. The songs. Which words to introduce first. How to handle a child who resists.
I was sending the same voice notes and messages over and over again. Copying and pasting. Re-explaining.
So I did what Iya Bunmi told me to do the first time we met: I wrote it down.
I put everything inside one simple, clear guide. The full 30-day daily method. The word lists. The games and activities. The songs. What to say at breakfast, at bath time, at bedtime. How to handle the days your child refuses. How to keep going when you feel like you're speaking into the void. Everything.
And then I had it designed properly. Laid out clearly. With audio companion materials so neither you nor your child ever has to guess at pronunciation.
Introducing...
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Cover title: "Speak Yoruba With Your Child in 30 Days"
Design suggestion: Deep green background with adire pattern accents and gold typography.
Inside This Guide, You'll Discover:
- The 30-Day Daily Rhythm Plan — the exact schedule of fifteen-minute daily activities that builds Yoruba into your child's normal routine, not as a lesson but as a way of living. — Pg. 4 | The Foundation Method
- The "First 50 Words" sequence — the specific Yoruba words every diaspora child should learn first, in the exact order that makes new words easier to absorb, with tonal pronunciation guidance for each one. — Pg. 12 | Words That Stick
- The Daily Life Scripts — what to say to your child at breakfast, during the school run, at bath time, and at bedtime — so you are building Yoruba all day long without sitting down for a single "lesson." — Pg. 22 | Speaking Into Their Day
- The Resistance Method — exactly what to do when your child refuses, goes quiet, or says "I don't want to speak Yoruba today" — the specific responses that turn resistance into curiosity without a single argument. — Pg. 34 | When They Push Back
- The "Even If You're Not Fluent" Section — a dedicated guide for parents who understand Yoruba but can't speak it confidently, showing you how to teach what you half-know and grow alongside your child. — Pg. 40 | The Imperfect Parent's Guide
- The Milestone Tracker — how to know when your child has truly absorbed a word or phrase (not just repeated it), and how to build from single words to full conversations in thirty days. — Pg. 46 | Tracking Real Progress
- The Grandparent Bridge — how to use this method to deepen your child's relationship with grandparents and elders back home, including suggested call activities and what to practise before each video call. — Pg. 52 | Connecting Across Continents
And the best part? You don't need to be Yoruba-fluent. You don't need to hire a tutor or find a Saturday school. You don't need to send your child to Nigeria. It's the same simple daily method that worked for me, and has now worked for over 140 diaspora parents I've quietly shared it with — from South London to Houston to Toronto.
My twin girls are 4 and the Saturday school here was not doing anything. I bought this guide and honestly I was sceptical — but the method makes so much sense when you think about it. You are not teaching them Yoruba, you are helping them LIVE in Yoruba. By week two they were arguing with each other in Yoruba! ARGUING! Ada please what did you put in this guide? 😂 The resistance section alone is worth the price because oh my God do these children resist. 10/10 no question.
My daughter is 8 and I thought it was too late — she had what I used to call "complete Yoruba shutdown." The moment you spoke Yoruba to her she would switch off. After 28 days with this guide she sang a full Yoruba children's song at our church programme. The whole congregation was in shock because this same child was forming "I don't understand" for years. Ada abeg just know you have done something serious with this work. Thanking God for that harvest event where you met Iya Bunmi!
I bought this for my sister in Atlanta but I ended up reading it myself first. Even as someone living in Nigeria I had started to notice my children were responding to me in English even when I spoke Yoruba first. The Daily Life Scripts changed our whole home atmosphere. Now we have a Yoruba breakfast time every morning — my husband thought I was joking at first but now he joins in. Highly recommend for ANY Yoruba parent not just diaspora.
I have been in Atlanta for 12 years and my children (6 and 9) speak zero Yoruba. I was so ashamed I didn't even want to admit it. This guide gave me a path that actually respected where I am — the "Even if you're not fluent" section had me emotional because it was like Ada wrote it just for me. I'm doing the method with them AND improving my own Yoruba at the same time. 30 days later my 9-year-old had a full conversation with her grandfather on the phone. I cannot explain to you what that meant to me and to him.
I didn't just sit down and type this out in a weekend. Here is exactly what I spent to build this properly:
- Professional content writer and Yoruba language consultant — to make sure every phrase, every word, every instruction is accurate and properly toned: ₦62,000
- Yoruba tonal notation review and audio script preparation — every word in this guide comes with correct tonal markings so you never mispronounce and teach your child the wrong thing: ₦38,000
- Professional layout and ebook design — so the guide is beautiful and easy to follow, not a wall of confusing text: ₦34,000
- User testing with 12 diaspora families across the UK, US, and Canada — before I released this publicly, real families tested the method and gave feedback that shaped the final version: ₦42,000
- Website, platform fees, and digital delivery setup — so you receive the guide instantly and securely: ₦11,500
Now, I am not going to charge you ₦187,500.
I won't even charge you half of that — ₦93,000.
Not even ₦50,000.
Not even ₦25,000.
A fair price for everything in this guide would easily be ₦14,999. And that's what I considered charging.
₦25,000 ₦9,800One-time payment. Instant digital delivery. Yours to keep forever.
Also available at £7.97 (UK) or $9.97 (US) at checkout.
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Traditional and contemporary Yoruba children's songs — complete with lyrics written out phonetically, English translations, and a pronunciation guide for each song. Perfect for the car, for bedtime, for the kitchen. Music is the fastest way into a child's language memory — and this bonus gives you 30 ready-to-use songs, so you never have to figure out what to sing.
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200 practical Yoruba phrases organised by the moments of your day — morning routines, mealtimes, the school run, playtime, bath time, bedtime. Print them, stick them on the fridge, keep one in your bag. These are the exact phrases that build language without a single formal lesson. You'll be speaking Yoruba into your child's life from the very first morning.
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🔥 23 people have already secured their copy at the discounted price — and only 7 spots remain.
Bear in mind, you are not the only one reading this page right now.
🔒 Instant access after payment · First 30 buyers only at ₦9,800
Here is my promise to you, in plain language: follow this method for 30 days with your child — genuinely follow it, daily, as the guide instructs — and if your child has not learned at least 20 Yoruba words and 5 complete sentences by the end of those 30 days, I will refund every naira (or pound, or dollar) you paid. No forms. No questions. No awkwardness. Just send me a message.
I am that confident in this method. Because I have seen what it does. And because I believe that any parent who genuinely commits to those fifteen minutes a day will see results that move them to tears — just like I did on that phone call with my mum.
30-day money-back guarantee · No questions asked · Full refund if your child doesn't show measurable progress
👉 I'm Ready — Get My Copy NowMy son is 9 and I honestly thought we had missed the window. People always say children learn languages easily under 5 and I thought we had wasted those years. Ada's guide proved me wrong. The method works at any age — it's about daily exposure in the right way, not age. My son now greets my mother in proper Yoruba every Sunday and she's so proud she tells everyone in our family about it. Worth every penny and more.
As a dad I felt embarrassed that I didn't even know where to start with teaching Yoruba. My wife is Jamaican so the whole responsibility fell on me. I bought this guide without telling anyone because I wasn't sure if it would work. After 30 days I played a voice note of my daughter speaking Yoruba to my father in Ibadan. He didn't speak for almost a minute. Then he said "Idowu, you have done well." That's all he said. That's all I needed. Thank you Ada.
I know what you're thinking — "why does someone in Nigeria need a Yoruba guide?" Because my children go to an international school and their English is stronger than their Yoruba and it was breaking my heart. This guide is not just for diaspora people. The Daily Life Scripts changed everything in our home. Now Yoruba is our morning language and English is everything else. My children's Yoruba is sharper than many of their cousins already.
We are in Toronto and finding any Yoruba resources here is almost impossible. This guide was the answer to what I have been looking for for FIVE years. Five years! The bonus songs alone are everything — my 3-year-old now requests Yoruba songs at bedtime. She used to cry if I even spoke Yoruba to her. 30 days is not an exaggeration. Follow the method and trust the process. Ada has given us a real gift here.
I bought this for my niece in London because she was struggling the same way Ada described. My niece messaged me after Week 3 saying her daughter counted to ten in Yoruba at dinner and the whole table went silent then erupted. She said she cried in the kitchen afterwards where no one could see. Ada I don't know you but I feel like you understood exactly what diaspora parents are carrying and you built exactly what we needed. God bless you.
You Have Two Choices Right Now.
You take action today. You get the guide, you start the method, and thirty days from now your child greets their grandmother in Yoruba and the call doesn't go silent anymore. The language lives on. The connection is real. And you know — in your bones — that you did not let this be the generation where it stopped.
You close this page. You go back to the YouTube videos that bore them and the apps that don't have Yoruba and the Saturday school that makes them cry. You keep meaning to sort it out. You keep telling yourself there's time. And maybe there is. But the grandmother's hair gets greyer. The visits get shorter. And one day your child is thirty years old and cannot speak a single sentence of the language of their blood — and you remember the day you saw this page and did nothing.
⏳ The clock is ticking. Only 7 spots remain at ₦9,800.
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Questions? Email hello@thenaijamumabroad.com
The Naija Mum Abroad is an independent blog. Results may vary. The 30-day guarantee covers cases where the full daily method was followed as instructed.
Ada this guide is not a joke o. I started with my son Tobi (7 years) three weeks ago. Yesterday he came to me and said "Mummy, mo fẹ́ oúnjẹ" — completely by himself. I had to call my mother immediately. She was crying on the phone. We have been trying for three years and THIS is what finally worked. The daily scripts are everything — I didn't realise how much of the teaching could happen just in normal conversation. Buy it. Do not think about it.