My son was in daycare in English for almost a year before starting pre-K at a dual-language Spanish-English elementary. Even though all of us as a family typically stay in Spanish 90% of the time at home, when he started at the new school he suddenly was really begging me to speak to him in English. I think it was important for him to have Mommy not Mami just then, after starting “real school” with real schedules, a uniform, real homework, definite expectations from the teacher, etc. I’m the only one in the family who’s especially comfortable in English — the wanting me was the real thing, but it came out as wanting that language.

Just a few months before that, when we were visiting my family in my hometown (without Papi, unfortunately), there was no Spanish at all happening with anyone, and he begged me to speak to him in Spanish, and was calling me Má instead of Mommy.

Just goes to show how strong the emotions can be connected to the language — for the little ones too.

Her Spanish is like a native, not only by speaking to her in it from birth ( my husband has some Spanish, but his fully bilingual parents who only spoke Spanish until school in America, do not consider him a Spanish speaker nor did they ever speak it at home) but primarily from our time in Spain where she went to a local school for four winters.

Now, we are working on bringing her Mandarin up to the same level as her Spanish and English primarily through a Mandarin school here in Malaysia. http://www.soultravelers3.com/2012/05/global-citizens-spanish-and-mandarin-immersion.html

We didn’t want to do it in China because of the pollution and food safety issues, but soon will do a month in China where she will stay with a Chinese family and go to a Chinese school with their daughter. Even we will only be able to talk to her in Mandarin. She already knows a lot of Mandarin, but they say she can make a huge jump this way.

So it was great hearing about your own experience as a native speaker and how 6 weeks of total immersion even helped you. Hoping it will be a quick way for us to take a big jump!