Although teaching and learning Croatian as a second or a foreign language is being researched increasingly, most of the studies involve adults and very few focus on teaching children. This topic should be paid more attention not only because of the large nummber of Croatian emigrants worldwide, but also due the fact that in Croatia, apart from Croats, live members of other ethnic groups whose children are not always bilingual. This paper focuses on problems of teaching Croatian to children who are members of the Hungarian national minority in baranja and attend Hungarian primary schools. Due to the differences in the cildren's level of Croatian ranging from no Croatian at all to balanced bilingualism and an inappropriate syllabus and textbook, these children have problems acquiring Croatian. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the initial difficulties involved in learning Croatian (lower grades of primary school) and discussee their causes. It also provides guidelines on how to overcome them- developing appropriate manuals and new syllabus, the content and structure of which is also discussed.