In spite of the abundant literature on the critical place of the mother tongue in the learning of a second language countless teachers in our schools, including ECD specialists, discourage the use of mother tongue, punishing the users. This misplaced glorification of English and condemnation of mother tongues, with remarks like “Vernacular stinks”, is bound to suggest to the child that their home and all the experiences they have lived there, are useless. The result is often a dull and confused learner, a situation ironically often first recognised by the errant teacher. Educators and researchers need to exploit these mixed circumstances as a major opportunity for guiding teachers to recognise the gains of children’s successful learning and use of English as a result of mastery of their mother tongues. This paper illustrates the potential of changing teachers’ beliefs about and approaches to teaching English in multilingual contexts. Using two cases in Uganda it illustrates how teacher trainers capitalised on the growing confidence and self-esteem of learners in an early grade reading and writing programme in both mother tongue and English to shift teachers’ attitudes and classroom practices from those of insensitive disciplinarians despising the mother tongue to supportive teachers in love with multilingualism.