This is so interesting. I am super jealous because poor Anjali has failed to learn like three languages now, or at least failed to retain them after the schooling stopped. I have a couple friends who grew up speaking other languages, and it's fascinating because I almost never hear one of them speak in her native tongue to her parents, while the other one slips in and out of Mandarin and English much as you described above.

Obviously, the monolingualism in the US is also partially a factor of political considerations ("English as the National Language! We are scared of these Immigrants Taking Over!"). However, I just spent several months babysitting for a toddler, and it was astounding to me (in a good way) how many children's shows today are devoted to teaching another language (Dora the Explorer, Diego, there's another one that teaches Chinese).

Of course, there are parents, especially educated upper-middle class parents, tend to view learning languages as another way to get their kids ahead in life. But one can only hope that a by-product of this is that we end up producing a new generation of kids for whom multiculturalism isn't so Foreign and Scary after all.