Before Vanessa started preschool a couple of months after she turned two, I often wondered how she was going to survive for four hours surrounded solely by English. I worried that others would think she had no manners because even though she already understood the concept of “gracias” and “por favor,” she knew nothing about “thanks” and “please.” I explained the situation to her teachers and they reassured me everything would be fine. You see, up until then, her life had only revolved around Spanish.
To be honest, before she was born, we didn’t really give much thought to what method we’d use to raise our daughter bilingual. I mean, both my husband and I knew we were going to speak to her only in Spanish because she’d learn English in school. The same method had worked in the past with my husband’s son who is now a bilingual teenager. Truth be told, I didn’t even know there was a name for the method we were using…
Minority Language at Home (mL@H)
When I started doing research for SpanglishBaby, I found out it’s called the Minority Language at Home or mL@H. This method is self-explanatory, but it’s important to point out that neither you nor your partner have to be native speakers of the minority language you’ll be using exclusively at home. In other words, as long as you are both fluent in the minority language – which in this country is anything other than English – this method will work for you.
I have a bilingual (Spanish/English) friend who lives in the Northeast and has been using this method with her children aged 8 and 9 from the beginning. They are bilingual alright, but it has been a difficult road since they live in an area with virtually no Hispanic community. This means that the only Spanish her kids get is at home from her, her husband and the nanny. The result: even though her kids are bilingual, the truth is they speak English most of their waking hours. Her strategy has been to be as strict as possible about talking to them exclusively in Spanish. In fact, many times her kids will address her in English and she’ll respond by asking them to repeat it in Spanish.
One Parent – One Language (OPOL)
The most popular system in both Europe and Canada is the one in which one parent speaks one language and the other one speaks another. There are several combinations of this method. For example, each parent speaks their own native language which is a minority language and the majority language is learned outside the home. In this case, the child would grow up with three languages. Another option is that the father speaks the majority language and the mother the minority one. Based on absolutely no scientific evidence, but on my own observations of my daughter’s bilingual playgroup, it seems as if the latter example is the most common one.
Another friend of mine who has been using OPOL – although not exclusively – since her son was born two years ago, explains some of the problems she’s encountered with this method. “Ideally, I’d never speak to him in English, but for some reason, when my husband is home, I feel a little weird, as if I am excluding him from our conversation.” So, she ends up speaking in English. Actually this is a very common worry and a subject of which we’ll write about in entries to come.
Time and Place (T&P)
This type of method is what’s most often used at schools with bilingual programs. For example, the minority language is used in the morning and the majority language in the afternoon. Or, like in the bilingual school I attended, some subjects – such as math or science – are in the minority language one school year and in the majority language the next. This strategy refers less to family life than the other two.
From what I gather, none of these methods seem to be fail-proof and although consistency is important, flexibility is even more so. Even if you start with one method, who’s to say that a few months down the road you realize another method might work better for your family or for your current situation?
It’s Up to You
Whichever method you choose or comes naturally to your family, know that you can do a lot to promote early language learning with your kids through the activities you engage in. In the book The Bilingual Edge it is stressed over and over that language learning activities need to be:
- enjoyable and fun for all involved,
- fully integrated into everyday routines and interactions, and
- meaningful, interesting, and connected with real life.
What method do you use to raise your kids bilingual? What problems have you encountered with the method you’ve chosen?
Tell us, what are your reasons for teaching your child Spanish?
Encuentra este y más de nuestros artículos favoritos en español en el blog Mamás Latinas: Hijos Bilingües en Discovery Familia.
{photo by fiskfisk}
I really appreciate you talking here about the different methods for bilingual language acquisition. I read “Raising Bilingual Children” (don’t have the author right now) and it was a great resource for me. I think it’s probably a lot like “Raising a Bilingual Child”. Anyway, I believe it’s important to read something about the subject because, at least for me, it supported my ideas for what I’d been thinking while my first child was still in utero. So in our family, because I am the native Spanish speaker, we use the OPOL method mostly. My husband uses all the Spanish he can and he’s actually learned a lot in the last three years reading the children’s Spanish books to our babies. But he is still the English speaker and that is mostly what he and the children speak.
Now, I feel really strongly that I only speak Spanish to the children. And I really don’t give a —– what anyone thinks. I am not being impolite or leaving you out if I am not talking to you. I am talking to my children. And don’t worry, I’m not talking about you behind your back–you’re really not that important.
I don’t feel like I am leaving my husband out of a conversation because I am not speaking to him. I will speak to him in English and I will speak to the children in Spanish.
I knew my daughter was truly bilingual when I told her in Spanish to tell her Papi what we’d done that day. She turned around and told him in perfect English! I was so proud.
Anyway, your friend’s comments grate on me because I feel like they’re buckling under false pressure. I know that children need consistency and I do not think it helps them for the OPOL parent to be switching back and forth.
And my final comment for the night: I read in “Raising Bilingual Children” that children will speak the language of the people they love. Since my Spanish speaking family does not live in the area, I decided I needed to build a Latino community where I lived so that my children had Spanish speakers to love.
I use mL@H.
I read the book Bilingual Edge a while ago. To be honest, most of the points made in the book are common sense. Things like, spend more time with the language, interact with native speakers, etc.
One interesting point: watching foreign TV won’t help much.
Edwin’s last blog post..Spelling in Spanish
Hi Roxana,
Here is my additional comment in reply to your comment on my blog.
Being a Hong Kong immigrant in Canada, I am facing the challenge of raising my daughter quadralingually (Cantonese, Mandarin, English, French), a task which I still think is tough, if not impossible. She is 3 and a half now, and she speaks 100% Cantonese. But we expect her to switch to English predominantly in a few years time.
I observe a lot of immigrant parents failed to raise their kids bilingually, even though they had worked so hard over the years. Some succeeded, and a lot of time it was based on luck (e.g. their kid met a boyfriend/girlfriend speaking the other language). Therefore I don’t have good faith in monolingual parents (1 language from both parents) raising bilingual children.
To me, the “language night” suggested by the author of the book (Bilingual Edge) seems to me some kind of fantasy, a bit like hoping the kids to learn Spanish by watching Dora the Explorer.
I do have a lot to say on this topic, and I hope to share with you more in the future.
Edwin’s last blog post..Spelling in Spanish
Well, I’m not yet embarked in the adventure of raising bilingual (or any other sort) of babies (other than my cat who seems to be a very adept poliglot) … and I was not raised as a bilingual baby.
Frankly, I am not sure IF my own children will be raised bi- or poli- lingual, because there is a strong chance that they may grow up in a primarily monolingual environment.
I can attest, however, to having practically lived in a household where the children were raised bilingual from the get-go during my college years. And certainly, the children always struck me as smarter than, well, than the children I grew up around (myself included). One thing that struck me significantly is that they were, for the most part, able to sidestep the whole “baby-speak” phase, because their parents got the idea early on that if exposed your bilingual children to too much baby-speak, that would confuse the hell out of them (how do you tell when one word is part of one language or another… why is this adult speaking to me in this way, and to everyone else differently).
These bilingual kids, whatever it was that they folks did, turned out fantastic. I am sure little Lucy eventually got over her little confusion between “give” and “dar” (she used to say “div”).
One final word… Jenny, my fiance, and I are having a totally different conversation about raising our children ‘bilingual’ . We are now exploring teaching them sign language from a very young age (6 months). It appears this reduces their frustration in not being able to communicate their needs… at least in that gap between 6 and 18 months old. I know it is a big digression from what you preciosas are working on here, but I thought you might enjoy looking at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snJvS3N_khY
Much luck and love in this endeavor. And thanks for the giveaway!!!!
Sergio (Garuda) Guillen’s last blog post..Simplicity! (the bane of our existence?)
As a child of immigrant parents that used ML@H instinctively and against everyone’s advice (mind you this was ahhh hummm 34 years ago), I think I can safely say this method works well most of the time… especially with the first born child. My parents ran a strict Spanish only household and would ignore my brother and I until we spoke in Spanish. The frequent visits and long summer vacations in Colombia were very helpful because they gave us no choice but to speak Spanish for long periods of time. Growing up, my brother’s Spanish was less than perfect. I think second born siblings may have a disadvantage because they tend communicate with the older sibling in the dominant language, which in my case was English.
Somewhere on this blog I read about the perceived disadvantages of living in a monolingual community. I have some thoughts about that since I grew up in a English only town and my brother and I were probably the only brown kids in a 100 mile radius. I currently live in Miami and have come to the conclusion that Spanish is not properly spoken anywhere in South Florida, if not in the US, at a community level. Even though the name of your blog is cute, “Spanglish” for me has become quite a pet peeve. I actually feel that I had an advantage growing up in a monolingual community where I could hear both languages (one at home and one everywhere else) spoken properly and never mixed. Spanglish in Miami is so common that kids that grow up here rarely learn proper Spanish nor do they have the need to because everyone understands (notice I didn’t say “speaks”) both.
I have a 2 1/2 year-old son… we are trying to use the OPOL method to teach him Spanish and Portuguese; he is learning English at school. He speaks “Portuñol” (we can this and Spanglish code switching in Anthropology) and peppers it with English -we don’t encourage the mixing but also know that it takes time to sort out. In fact, he’s already separating the two languages much better than just a few months ago.
Annnnnnnyway, this post is already way too long! I look forward to reading other discussions!
Hola Roxana
Felicidades por el blog.
As a father of three, and a linguist (not a translator, but a graduate in Linguistics with some research experience in language acquisition), I would say that the best method is to expose the children to both languages as much as possible in as many of situations and cotexts as possible. This would be exactly the same processo as the acquisition of the first language. You learn by listening, the more you hear, the more you learn.
The main problem I see with “bilingual” kids nowadays is that they have limited vocabulary and limited experience in different contexts.
The kids learn very early to discern wich situation is appropiate for this or that language.
I’m tri-lingual, my parents are tri-lingual, my two brothers are tri-lingual, but my son — I’m embarrassed to say — only speaks English. How’d that happen … especially considering I was so intent on raising a fully tri-lingual child? I started out only speaking to my son in Portuguese. Now, 4 years later, the only way I can convince him to take (and participate) in his one-day-a-week Spanish class is by bribing him with a Monday afternoon tumbling class. It’s been 5 months now since he enrolled and Ms. Betty says he’s still interested in learning about “el gato rojo,” so let’s keep our fingers crossed. I’m 100% to blame. When his vocabulary started expanding, I just kept on speaking to him in English. It’s the language we speak at the dinner table (though my New Orleanian husband is totally supportive and would have been perfectly OK with Spanish had I insisted). Now, I find myself Tevoing “Handy Manny” in the hopes that he’ll wake up one morning and become a fan of the bi-lingual show. No luck … Spiderman is more his game. Anyway, I’ll write more next time about my search for dual language programs in Arizona. Who knew it would be such a challenge, especially in state with such a large, vibrant and active Latino community. Rox, as I said before, you rock Chica. I love this site!
Sergio:
I have two bilingual children and we also taught them ASL when they were younger. I believe ASL and learning Spanish and English are all complimentary. I figured it would help my husband, whose Spanish is limited. I think you should totally go for it.
Lucho: I would disagree with you that bilingual kids have limited vocab and limited experiences in different contexts. Could you elaborate?
Alessandra: You are to blame. You gave up too easily on your son. Your husband supported you, why did you get lazy?
Ines: If you know about anthropology, then you should also know that language is fluid and always changing. But I also understand what you’re saying, it can be annoying when one hears a lot of spanglish words and it seems that the root of the words has been forgotten. Also, I think the older children get, the less mixing they do if they know the vocabulary. My son at 19 months was speaking English words to me, but now at 21 months, he has “lost” some of that when speaking to me and will use the Spanish words.
“Lucho: I would disagree with you that bilingual kids have limited vocab and limited experiences in different contexts. Could you elaborate?”
Sorry , AnaGloria, I didn’t want to take too much space. I was talking about what we consider “bilingual kids” nowadays. You can hear parents talking about their bilingual children but they have a very limited vocabulary in two languages.
As long as the kids find themselves in situations where they have to use the other language to get what they want, they usually make the effort to find the words. My 3-year-old will come and ask me for something and I’ll send her to her abuela and she’ll ask abuela for the same thing in English. When she gets the blank stare from grandma she knows she has to try something else so she uses Spanish. There’s nothing better than a monlingual grandparent to help with language acquisition.
I have enjoyed reading all the other comments of how people are teaching their children Spanish. We use a unique method. My husband and I are gringos but we both lived in Latin America for 2+ years (I went to a school in Spanish there). I guess we use Time & Place method. We only speak Spanish to our kids all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I wasn’t willing to speak only Spanish to my children all the time, but I can do this. So far, there is great success. My 4 year old can speak to me about 85% of the time only in Spanish. My 2 year old understands everything, but is not speaking. I hope that this also works because I plan on homeschooling. I have heard many children when they go to school stop speaking the language. Well, my kids won’t have that option! They will have to speak! I know some might be skeptical of this method, but it is really working for us.
Thank you for all of the great information! I will check this site often!!
Tati’s last blog post..Mi Casa Blanca
Ines and Lucho, I think Amy’s post has the key. My daughter has gone to middle school and high school here in Houston, Texas where she’s had many Hispanic friends. I think there’s an incredible variety of Spanish fluency — or not. There are some who arrived in the USA when they were already school age and were exposed to zero English before then, but then at some point they stopped actually speaking Spanish, and never learned to read and write it correctly. There are others who were born in the USA but are fully bilingual and would be ready if they want to go to college in Spain and study literature. The difference from what I’ve seen was not the school or the neighborhood, but rather the family.
As a parent and a bilingual educator these ideas are definitely close to my heart. Both my husband and I are Spanish speakers (his first language, my second language) and were determined to bring up our daughters bilingually, and did. When the older one turned 4 and went to school in English (we opted for a public Montessori school without bilingual education but were committed to Spanish at home) she came back telling her stories in English, we stuck to Spanish. By the time the second daughter went to school (2 years later) we were starting to drift into English more and more. What we decided to do was step up the opportunities in Spanish in our home and travels, rather than feel like we were forcing something. Now my older daughter is in college and younger is a junior in HS. They are both bilingual, although the older one is less fluent (surprising to me!). We’ve tried to maintain the opportunities for them. For example, travelling only to Spanish speaking countries (Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador) and we started a “family band” that plays Venezuelan folk music, etc. It’s worked pretty well for us, I know they both have enough Spanish that if an opportunity comes in life for them to strengthen it (a bilingual job, overseas work experience) they will flourish.
In my work with low income families I have often had to explain to parents that they are in no way hurting their child by speaking exclusively in their native language to them. I guarantee them that their child will learn English in school, and will be much readier for that transition and success in school if they enter with strong native language skills. We always give them the option to do our program http://www.unt.edu/hippy in English or Spanish and it’s always painful to see a parent choose English when their own English is not strong enough to make it successful. We give them the opportunity to experience that on their own though, refer them to ESL classes and just support them in any way we can.
Thanks for the great discussion and blog!
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I found Spanglish baby a few weeks ago and I’m so glad I did. I have two boys, a 7 year-old and a 10 month-old, and I want them both to be bilingual. My husband is American and doesn’t speak Spanish. This a great site to come for advice and tips. Looking forward to reading more!
So glad you found us and definitely looking forward to connecting more and sharing our experiences. ¡Bienvenida a la familia!
Hola! I have just found this fantastic site, I am a mother of two, a 4 year old boy and a 2 year old girl soon to be mum of 3. We live in Australia and as you can imagine the exposure to spanish here is zero to none. I have been living in australia now for 20 years so even if spanish is my first language and I speak it perfectly I have really struggled to teach it to my kids it just doesn’t seem to come natural to me anymore. my husband can say a few words 50 or so and is really encouraging but my main issue now is my family back in peru can’t communicate with the kids. I always felt they would pick up bits and pieces from trips over there but its not enough. the kids can say a few words count to 10 and the basic animals, family members. my main issue is I can’t really find any information on how start pushing spanish more now for older kids, i try sometimes like i might say “porfavor cierra la puerta” and my four year old is like whats that! I know I’ve left it late but I guess never late than never just not sure if there is any information on slowly introducing a minority language at home for children over 2. there is no school, kindy or anything relating to spanish here in perth, you can’t even study spanish in high school as an elective which I think is really sad. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, I know I have created this problem by not starting sooner but I am willing to try now.
I am a mother of a bilingual 5 year old child, and I am a bilingual educator. The method we chose at home was ML@H it has really worked. My husband was born and raised in the US and although his first language was Spanish, he is definitely more fluent and dominant in English. Actually, he will switch from Spanish to English without even noticing. I strongly agree with Roxana on her point that bilingualism for Latinos is not only about linguistic development or giving our kids a competitive advantage in the a global economy. I believe it is more importantly a issue of identity and culture, of familia, which is at the heart of who we are. I want to make sure that my child can communicate with everyone in his large extended family, across languages, countries, and generations.
It is hard work to consistently speak in Spanish at home, especially when we were used to speaking ot each other in English . Also, I had many monolingual people question our decision and ask me why as a educator I would want my child to be an English Language Learner (as if that were a bad, bad disease to have). Others would say, “this is America, he should speak English, not Spanish.” Even worse was when and cousins started speaking to my child in broken English, because they assume 3rd generation Latino kids don’t speak Spanish anymore!
I am glad to say we have stuck through it, and I don’t feel guilty addressing my child in Spanish everywhere I go. The only time I actually speak to him in English is when I read to him. Why? Because about 1 year ago he figured out the text (in Engl.) and what I was “reading” (my Spanish transtion) didn’t match. So now , I will read the book in language it is written and guess what….he has started to read in both English and Spanish!
Wow you guys are awesome! Reading this post, and the one of “Why Raise Bilingual Children?”, I feel like you are describing me and my husbands thoughts!
I am Dominicana and he is Puertoriqueño, and we have a 2 1/2 year old “Dominiriqueña”, and we have been living in Ohio for the last year and a half. Her first 20 months were spent at home with us, so she was in a Spanish “bubble”. Our goal has always been to give her the same advantage we have in speaking 2 languages. Our method, described here as “Minority Language at Home” (this is the first time I hear it actually has a name!), has been that, the rule is that we only speak Spanish at home or outside with her. Our relatives all know this rule, and have been explained that she can only be spoken to in Spanish.
The first few months in day care she seamed very lost, but we started noticing that for the past month her English has increased so much! She has now started speaking more and more, and will sometimes now say phrases in English at home. So far I have been repeating what she says in English and then in Spanish, and ask her to repeat it in Spanish.
I am so happy I found this site! It makes me feel like we are not alone at all! So many parents out there wanting to give their children a BIG advantage in life!
Thanks a lot, you have a HUGE fan in me now
Bastante interesante tu articulo Roxana, totalmente de acuerdo contigo, cualquier metodo es efectivo, mientras sea repetitivo, constante, los niños van ha aprender. Exitos amigas.
Claudia I.
This blog is very interesting. I also really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments/experiences.
My husband and I are expecting a baby this year and have recently started the conversations regarding language. My husband is Spanish and I am Canadian. While living in Spain, we spoke only in Spanish to each other but since moving to Canada (a few years ago) we now speak almost sole in English.
It would be a big effort to switch back to Spanish but we both feel that we could do it (we’ve already done it when moving to Canada to improve his English and it was a definite struggle at first but we stuck with it).
I would much prefer to adopt the OPOL method but I fear that it would not allow enough immersion in Spanish as my husband works full-time and he would be the only Spanish speaker in the child’s life. I’m wondering if anyone has used the OPOL method but speak the minority language as a family. Would that be confusing to the child if I spoke English with them but Spanish to their father?
I definitely want to speak to our children in my own language though I worry that with only their father speaking Spanish, it won’t be enough.
Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.
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