My stepson learned English from his older sister & mom, and also watching tv, enough that he was placed into all-English classes starting with pre-k (he is now in 1st grade). Unfortunately he is not with his dad speaking to him in Spanish, enough of the time, to counteract this fully. So my stepson is not able to really converse with someone who only speaks Spanish. Also his mom speaks to him primarily in very broken English. He’s not able to speak well enough in English to be understood by someone who speaks only English, either. Really, only people who know “Spanglish” can understand him speaking.
However, his older sister (now in 4th grade) does not have this problem. Her English is somewhat limited but growing all the time and what she says, she says well enough to be understood by someone who speaks English only. And although she does have some tendency to mix English or Spanglish words into Spanish, it’s rare — and when it happens she is able to think about it and come up with the actual Spanish word or another way of saying it, in Spanish.
My stepson frequently gets his sister to translate for him when he wants to communicate with a monolingual person– in either Spanish, or English.
The difference is that she was 5 years old before anybody talked to her in English or she even watched tv in English at all. Before that, pretty much her entire world was Spanish. When she started school, it was in an all-Spanish class that gradually moved into English over several years.

I think you will be shocked at how little English exposure is required before English becomes like a highly invasive weed in your nice garden.
It seems to me like it’s extremely important to provide a strong foundation in the minority language and keep providing constant reinforcement with people / situations in purely that language.
My stepson will straighten out eventually but he has a much more difficult and long path, because of not having enough reinforcement of Spanish at home, early on.

My Gym is out of our league..but I took her to a few free trial classes and she seemed to adjust fine…she was super confident (especially being the only girl among 10 English speaking boys) and was able to follow directions and even answer basic questions like “what is your mommie’s name.” When I heard her answer, I was surprised.

So..I have no idea! We haven’t changed anything yet. I’ve just started to let her watch more english TV as opposed to only spanish all the time. She seems to understand that is going on because she tells me about it in spanish. Once in a while she tries to have “English” conversations when she plays on her own or with her 2 year old brother. “it’s my turn”, “I got it”, etc.

I don’t think this topic can get any more confusing Looking forward to hearing about Vanessa. I am so thankful for this website.

In terms of your daughter, I’m curious to know if she explained why she didn’t want to stay at either the preschool or the tap lessons. What reason did she give you? Do you know for a fact that it had something to do with the fact that English was spoken there?

It sounds like your daughter is extremely bright and imaginative. I truly thinks she is going to be okay. Todavía está chiquita. I’m not sure that switching to the OPOL method would fix everything because I’m wondering how your daughter would react to that. Do you guys do any other activities like storytime or My Gym type places? While I don’t talk to Vanessa in English, she’s always been exposed to the majority language just because all these activities are only available in English.

In the end, I think you have to go with what you’re comfortable. While you can receive advice from different people, no one really knows all the details of your family/household dynamics, right?

Bueno, I’d also love to know how things continue to develop with your daughter and you know that I’ll be keeping you all posted regarding Vanessa’s progress.

I will say that I’m not totally thrilled with her lead teacher. There’s nothing wrong with her or with her way of teaching, but I’ve never really been able to “click” with her. So, who knows, there might be some of that there too!

When I first started sending my daughter to the parents day out program at the same preschool she goes to, she didn’t speak ONE word of English. She was about 2 1/2 and I saw with my own two eyes how much she learned a month into the program just by going there once a week! So I know she’ll be okay, but after talking to her teacher, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I should’ve helped her expand her vocab in English.

But, you’re totally right, I need to stick to what I’ve been doing and everything will be alright.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Gracias por tu comentario!