Has this happened to anyone out there? When will she catch up with the other kids?

Denise

As a writer/journalist, it is imperative that my kids not only speak, but also read and write in Spanish proficiently. I guess I should worry more about that than the issue I wrote about here.

Congratulations on raising a bilingual child… especially since Spanish is not your first language! I’m sure it’s not easy, but it’s a tremendous gift your giving your baby!

I do plan on talking to Vanessa’s teacher, although just like you, I think I would’ve already heard from her if there were any issues whatsoever.

Thanks so much for your words of encouragement. Just goes to show that we all need a little support and help sometimes. Gracias de verdad!

In terms of first grade being her first year of school, over here, Kinder is actually the first year. So her first experience with a full day of school was last year at the same elementary school. As I said on the post, she did wonderfully and is doing great in first grade, but I was just confused about what happened during the assessment.

I love hearing from others’ experiences!

We have a 13 month old so we are far off from your stage, just doing flash cards in English and Spanish and describing objects in both languages. We don’t have the fortune of being native Spanish speakers but are fairly fluent from our studies and travels abroad. I’d say be thankful you can teach her to speak Spanish fluently, as she won’t get that in school. Just make sure she continues to learn proper grammar and writing in Spanish. I found in my AP classes and college courses that I had far superior reading and writing skills to the native speakers who had spoken Spanish all their lives but never spent a lot of time formally learning the grammar and rules as we did. What was harder for me was speaking and listening, that didn’t come until I lived and studied abroad in a native environment.

Good luck and thanks again for posting this!