Your piece also reminded me of the minority vs. language issue in bilingualism. My wife and I use the ml@H method precisely because we understand that Spanish is the minority language for us, despite us living here in Southern California. To nurture a genuine bilingualism for our children, we recognize we have to front load on the Spanish now to then hopefully later allow it to “survive” once English is introduced as we know it will clearly be the dominant language for our children as a result of environmental factors – media, friends, school, everything…. So we in a sense are taking a delayed bilingualism approach. The point is that we guard our children from English at this point in their life because we understand the seed to Speaking language, reading, and thinking in Spanish (proficiently at least) requires a strong beginning. In your case, things were inverted. You were in a Spanish dominant environment, despite your English speaking neighbors and contacts. As a matter of fact, my wife and I on occasion discuss that if we lived in Mexico, Spain or another Spanish speaking country we would actually speak English at home to keep a balance precisely because Spanish would be the dominant language – media, schools, etc… Your experience to a great degree seems to validate our method and approach to language acquisition. Thank you for sharing.