We all make mistakes, right? Especially along this journey of parenthood, we know that we constantly just don’t know and we try our best every single day. There really isn’t a single parenting manual that is a one-size-fits-all or that’s customized to your particular child and/or parenting journey.
But we do have each other. We have other parents that are open enough to share the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, and do it without giving or receiving judgement. We have our stories to tell so others can be inspired or realize that it’s not part of their own journey.
That’s precisely what we’ve done on SpanglishBaby for almost five years: share stories from many diverse voices on how we’re together creating a collective experience of the how-to and how-not-to raise bilingual and bicultural kids. We all know that we must expose our children to Spanish, or the target language, as young as possible. We know that we can’t force them to learn a language, but we can immerse them in ways that it will become part of their self. We know that we want to take this path for so many reasons, but most that have to do with the heart. Yet, the day-to-day is still full of surprises y curvas inesperadas.
I made one big mistake when raising my now 6-year-old girl as a bilingual child and I’ve been wanting to share this with you ever since I realized it. See, I’ve been obsessed with making sure we never, ever, ever spoke English to her and her exposure to English would be elsewhere and plentiful. I knew English would take over and I even called the stage a bilingual “rebellion,” implying my sort of battle at making sure her Spanish flourished beautifully. And that war is pretty much won.
So which battle did I lose? Where was I not strategic enough?
In her pronunciation in English.
In my obsession to make sure she spoke Spanish perfectly and since I had conditioned myself to never speak English to her, I would never correct her when she would mess up the pronunciation or tense of a word in English. I would just ignore it and repeat it en español. Turns out to not have been a very wise choice and I have no problem admitting it because I might not be the only one that made this decision.
Now that she’s in a dual immersion program and her Spanish skills are flourishing, I’m starting to notice more and more that while she’s completely bilingual (yet still in a really Spanglish/code-switching stage), she has so many more words in English that are used in the wrong tense or mispronounced because there hasn’t been a habit to correct her.
I’m not freaking out about this (yet) because I know she’s still developing her language skills overall and she’s really only in first grade, but I wonder if it would have made a difference if I would have not ignored her English completely.
Would love to know if this has happened to you, or if you also currently “ignore” your child’s mistakes in English or your country’s majority language? Please do share and let’s talk about this in the comments below.
I thought the mistake was going to me teaching them to read and write! My son and grandson both speak Spanish and English beautifully but cannot read or write it
I really can’t take credit for the writing or reading since she goes to a dual immersion school. I’m sure she would not be reading in Spanish if it was up to me because we have such a hard time with her learning academics at home.
Dear Ana, I also thought “the mistake” was not to read or write. My daughter now 7, is completely bilingual. When she started Kindergarten, I would repeat certain phrases back to her in English, but was worse that she had ‘my accent’. Now she is neutral in both. No harm…. just keep it up! Their world is all in English except for their ‘mamas’. Good luck!
Ana,
Thank you for sharing your insight and experience. I have followed you along the way in my short three year journey with my Diego. I’m afraid I was starting along the same path as you with your daughter. Going against certain family members and friend’s opinions, Diego is completely Spanish immersion right now, both at home and at daycare (early pre-school), yet he is already picking up English from his non-native Spanish speaking classmates. For anyone else reading this, THAT’S how easy it is for our children to absorb a second (or third) language. His first English words have been embraced and I follow it up always with the Spanish version and we use new sentences in Spanish, supporting just the English word. His mispronunciation is endearing because he is relatively a new talker in both languages. Thanks to your shared experience, I will make sure that I pay more attention to his English language development and will correct him as appropriate, just as I correct his every day Spanish pronunciation. Our plans are to continue along the Spanish immersion path, eventually transitioning to a dual-language program. Again, thanks for your guidance and experience… y suerte con la nena!
I’m so glad my journey, and our collective one here, has helped and/or inspired in every way. This is just one minor detail that might not seem so important, but if left unnoticed can become a problem later on.
Suerte a ti con Diego! Y do hope you find a dual immersion program!
I do not ignore either language but have a friend that does the same thing that you have done. Our girls are now in the second grade and I have noticed a difference between the ways they both speak English. English happens to be my first language and Spanish my husbands and so although my daughter is 100% bilingual with skills that far surpass mine at her age I have always felt it was important to correct her no matter what language she was speaking. Now that she is a little older I have started to correct her code-switching/Spanglish which I think may be a mistake and will have to re-evaluate.
Best of luck mamitas!
You bring up an interesting point, Monica, in that you’re using the OPOL (one parent one language) at home and I see how that could make a difference because you’re not ignoring either language at home. So, of course, since you speak English to her, she gets that input and corrections. Excellent point!!
How remarkable to have only made one mistake! I feel like I make many every day! We have an 18 year old in college now, and she is bilingual, but her English is much stronger than her Spanish. So in college I am hoping she can hone her skills. I am a native English speaker, but a Spanish teacher and my husband is from El Salvador. We mostly speak English at home. We have a two year old boy who we adopted and hope to raise him bilingual as well…but it is surely a battle! He is just starting to speak and we are hoping that both languages are going in!!
Oh, how I wished that was my ONLY mistake…not at all. But it is the one that it took me the longest to figure out I was making and to correct it. It took years and needed to share this because I’m sure many others are doing the same out of our passion of fully immersing them in the language.
Hopefully your daughter can find a way to take a semester abroad in Latin America or Spain, that would be a surefire way to get her comfortable speaking Spanish because it sounds like she just needs to use it more.
And good luck with your baby boy! How lucky is he??!
Thank you for this insight. I am not the Spanish speaker in the family, but I am the most insistent that our daughter be completely bilingual. I have noticed Isabel when speaking English will pronounce every letter, most often creating an additional syllable (that would be pronounce in Spanish, but not in English). For example: showed becomes ‘show-ed’. I just simply say the word correctly in English, not emphasizing that she was pronouncing it wrong, but reinforcing the correct pronunciation. As far as Spanish, but husband (who is Cuban and first language is Spanish) does the correcting Spanish and will provide an English translation if it’s obvious she did not understand what he said in Spanish initially. Isabel is in a dual language kindergarten immersion program in New York City.
It sounds like you’ve got it under control and especially since you use the one-parent-one-language method you can both correct each language.
Congrats on getting a spot at an immersion program in NYC. I’ve heard they are tough to get in!
Ana, thank you for sharing this because I think many parents will benefit from reading this.
While Enzo is too young, I do think about how I’m going to teach him proper English grammar and how school work is going to work if I only speak to him in Spanish. I guess I will have to adapt and at some point, I will have to focus on English a bit, especially when school work requires it. Your post is a great reminder that we must not forget about this!! Thank you for being so honest with your experiences!
At this age just stick with Spanish as much as possible. Of course, do find a way to correct his English pronunciation
Ana, she will catch up soon. My niece had the same problem but she is a 3rd grader now with excellent grades. My son also speaks very little English I just made sure to teach him the basics. I really want him to speak Portuguese also. She is just in first grade and by the end of the year you will see major progress. Thank you for sharing your experience!
Wish you the best,
Thanks for the words of encouragement, Tania! The thing is that she does speak a lot of English and she prefers it in some way. It just starts to worry me to hear her mispronounce so many words and I finally caught on to it.
But, yes, she’ll be fine!
Thank you for this. My two middle kids are in a Spanish Immersion school, which I love… and I find myself not correcting their English much, thinking it might confuse them somehow (both my husband and I are native English speakers). I will take your advice and start helping them from my end with their English. Thank you and thank you for all the wonderful information here at Spanglishbaby!
I’m glad this was helpful, Bethany!!
I honestly don’t feel like this is a mistake. I too am obsessed with teaching my son Spanish first. But I conscientiously know that he will learn English. He’s around my cousins who are as well bilingual, he’ll grow up in a mostly English speaking school. He’s only 2 yrs now but already knows 3 words in English, and I don’t even speak English with him. In my honest opinion, the child will eventually have a preference of “yes, i want to learn both languages” or “no, I don’t want to learn both languages”. Then after that there will come the choice of “I prefer to speak Spanish” and “I prefer to speak English”. In the learning stage, it will be a choice of preference and throughout their lives will stick to that preference and use the other when needed/necessary. Yes, it seems that there are quite a few people who tend to use the two “evenly”, however because the languages have their differences in parts of speech, that’s almost impossible. I think all in all she will know the two languages.. but will eventually choose one to use more. The fact that you gave her the opportunity to KNOW both gives her more opportunity than those who only are given the option to know one. You gave her that opportunity to learn English by being here in the U.S. The majority of American kids are not given the opportunity to be born in a Spanish speaking country, live and learn the life and culture. I see no mistake.
Thanks, Tianna!
She does know and speak both languages well and now that she’s in a dual immersion program and we’ve been traveling with her to visit family in Mexico and El Salvador, she’s starting to choose more Spanish at home. It used to be mostly English, and that’s why we would just ignore her English completely and just respond in Spanish.
The mistake was not only speaking to her in Spanish, I would NEVER regret that, it’s not correcting her mispronunciation of words in English that have now stuck to her and are more difficult to correct since she’s now used to saying things that way.
We don’t read to her a lot in English either, so that has to do with it too. But I know she’ll be fine!
This is so interested to read. My boyfriend is Chinese-America, and I’m a native Spanish speaker from El Salvador. We have been talking about raising a family and having children. One of our conversations have to do with raising our kids bilingual. I have already stated that when the children are with me, I will make the conscious decision to speak to them in Spanish. If the kids are with their father, he would speak to them in English. If the whole family is home, then English would be the main language. I wonder if this system would work. He doesn’t speak Chinese, which in a way maybe is better, otherwise it would make this language issue even more complex than what it already is! Has any of you used this system? What have been your results?
Bianca, what you describe is known as the OPOL method (One Parent One Language) and it’s widely used and extremely successful. You can search for it here because we’ve written a lot about it over the years and a few of our contributors use that method.
How cool that you’re already having these talks with your boyfriend!
Hello!
I truly believe it is not a mistake. You have been on a mission: Speaking Spanish at the house and to retain it no matter what. What’s coming in the next years is her English development at school and with her peers. Do not worry! I have a six year old as well. No immersion school but only Spanish at the house. My three year old a different story. I haven’t given up but she’s definitely in her rebellious stage!
Best of Luck,
Carola.
The rebellious stage feels so frustrating until we realize that we have to keep it light and fun for them too.
And you’re right, it’s not a mistake that can’t be reversed, but I would have definitely preferred to have started correcting her earlier. All in all, we’re still on a pretty great path
Why do the usually monolingual Americans make such in incredible fuss about learning a second, third, fourth etcetera language? Nothing special about speaking two or three languages fluently.
I haven’t read all the comments I this thread so I apologize if I’m repeating stuff, but here’s my take on it: My mum is from Argentina and I was brought up in a town in England. For reasons I still can’t quite understand she decided not to speak to me in Spanish. I picked up the odd bits here and there, but relatively couldn’t say much more than a few very basic things.
Now as an adult it pains me so much that I could barely speak to family when we visited there…mi abuela, primos etc. I actually feel like a part of me is missing.
Finally, at 30 years old, I’ve been really concentrating on improving what Spanish I have and am about what you could say is ‘intermediate’ level, getting there, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever be fluent.
I am trying to pass on what I know to my three children to keep the Latin link alive but it’s obviously very limited, and sometimes very incorrect grammar :/ So what I would say after all that, is I think raising bilingual children, without a doubt is an amazing thing. Even if one language is slightly slower on the uptake I’m sure that it will catch up. And when it does they will be fluent in two languages with ease which they will carry with them for the rest of their lives…it’s not so easy once you become an adult! If I could raise my children to be bilingual I would do it in a heart beat!
Hola!! I just read your post about language, and I too am raising two bilingual daughters. I have the added pressure of being a Spanish immersion teacher for grades k-8, so many people expect my children to speak Spanish all the time. My husband is a native speaker, and while he and I converse solely en castellano, our daughters speak to us in both languages and use English with each other. Their comprehension of Spanish is excellent, as is their spoken Spanish, but English is the preferred language, clearly. I do not correct their Spanish pronunciation, but I do work with them on oral reading, silent reading and writing in Spanish every single day. They sometime help me correct my middle school Spanish exams and I am always surprised at how much they can read and understand grammatically. I also wanted to suggest the game Kloo for reading comprehension en castellano. It is very fun. I think of being bilingual as a journey, not a race and there is certainly no “winner”. My girls are proficient at reading, writing and speaking in two languages, travel to Mexico and Peru often and enjoy the benefits of living in the bilingual and bicultural home. There really are no errors. If you are concerned that your daughter does not have native pronunciation in English, surround her with native English speakers and speak to her in English for a few days a week and then switch back to Spanish. Obviously, the more exposure she has to proper pronunciation, the better she will pronounce (this is true for any language).
Thanks for the tips! I hadn’t heard of Kloo, but will look it up.
Natalia, thanks so much for sharing your story. Your experience is exactly what we tell parents now that can pass the language on to their kids, but for one reason or another decide not to. We tell them that we’ll bet them anything that one day their kids will ask them why they didn’t teach them the language they know.
And language is a bridge to heritage and to family. Don’t give up, use it as your drive and motivation to raise your kids bilingual!
I do not think it is a misake, either, Ana. You have to choose what is the priority to be correcting. You can’t be correcting everything. That would make all your interactions pretty negative a lot of the time.
I think by prioritizing her Spanish skills you have been putting her priorities in exactly the right place. Even though my son like your daughter is going to a dual language school, English inputs are still strong in the majority culture all around him. English will come.
My monolingual daughter used to say things like “pick up the me” and “I see the you”. My bilingual son uses “he” or “she” interchangeably with no relation to actual gender. My son’s little grammar flubs are continuing into a later age than my daughter’s did. I don’t see that as a shortcoming in him. If you look at the totality of grammar rules he has mastered, in both languages together, it’s quite impressive.
I never corrected my daughter’s funny little quirks and I never correct my son’s either. I am quite sure they will iron themselves out naturally.
Age 6 is too soon to make a judgement. Age 12 is even too soon. I don’t see any reason to think her pronunciation in English won’t be completely perfect when she is bit older. Until then, I say hold your head high and remember her total language ability is well on track.
What a great perspective, Beth! You’re right, not wanting to correct her all the time is also part of the reason why I kinda just let it be. I know she’s fine and it really doesn’t matter, but it’s interesting to observe the development of both languages depending on the type of exposure she’s getting.
I’m proposing a new strategy in raising bilingual children. I’m calling it the “language contact method” because it only makes sense. Plus it’s what my research is about in dual language classroom settings. I just now started helping my Nena out with her use of English. I think your daughter will be fine, Ana
Tell us more about it!!!
I’d write more but I’m sandwiched between two kids who are taking a nap plus I’m nursing one of them—full disclosure here lol
Hello/ Hola Everyone,
I am a trilingual kid, now 20. My mother spoke to me in English (always) my dad in Spanish (most of the time, but always when I was a kid) and I grew up in France. I only got the french when I started going to school. I speak all three and write all three fluently (except accents in spanish). I don’t have any accent except when I switch from one language to another, and people who know me start to notice that my accent changes, (sometimes, french, spanish etc…).
I went to a bilingual school in France, so my english, and french are the strongest. My spanish is weaker, I have less vocabulary but a couple of weeks there and I’m fine. People think I am a local in all three countries.
What I want to say is : RELAX. Children can take several languages, it’s FINE. In Sub-Saharan Africa most kids know at least four languages: their dialect, the two neighbouring dialects, and the colonizers language. So really don’t PANIC. Just speak to your kid in your language that you feel most comfortable in and everything will be fine. Put some dvds on in all languages.
However many languages your child can take it, trust me.
Thanks for sharing that!
I grew up with Spanish only until about the age of 4, when we came to the mainland and I started English pre-school. I don’t remember the process of learning English, but I speak it flawlessly / accentless. I’ve been trying to raise my daughter bilingual and struggle when she can’t roll her Rs in Spanish, but can’t make the TH sound in English. Then I make us both crazy sometimes with correcting her all the time (it’s tooth, not toof; no honey, not pelo – that means hair – say perro). Most recently I’ve decided to take a step back to work on my patience and tolerance instead of harping on correcting these minor errors constantly and remind myself that she’s only 5 and what I know about linguistic development will iron out all these variations in the long run.
Yes, patience, tons of them.
Without it we would make this unbearable for our kids, and we want them to become bilingual/multilingual without hating us in the end.
Remember: Shady Pines.
Yes, it takes so much patience!
My girl also has a hard time rolling her R’s, but I never seem to correct that either. It just seems like it’s so hard for her and I’m so happy she’s even speaking all this Spanish that I don’t want to jinx it! Ja!
I speak both languages to my kids all the time. When I hear them say a word incorrectly in either language I correct them. For the first 4-5 years of their lives they really had no idea that they were being spoken to in two different languages and when asked what language we spoke I always answer spanglish, because that’s truly what we do. I didn’t want them to hate speaking Spanish and I never force them. If they ask me something in English I answer in whatever language I’m in the mood for. I would say things like “Oh, look at the yellow bird; verdad que estan muy bonitas sus plumas?” So I really say full sentences in one language or the other, but I mix them up a bit. So far it’s worked, my kids can speak both languages and are in dual language programs in Kinder and 2nd grade. They obviously don’t have all the vocabulary in Spanish and they attempt to translate English words into Spanish, but that’s fine. I just want them to be able to understand now and have the ear for both languages. I know from my own experience vocabulary and grammar are technicalities and that comes with time and lots of reading over the years.
What an interesting way to pass along the language. I always say I’m most comfortable speaking Spanglish…maybe that’s just what I should be teaching my girl
My experience comes from being raised in a Spanish-only household and learning English only outside the home. I would not give this a second thought. My exposure to English was only through tv and then in school. Was I a little behind my first year or two in elementary? According to my parents, I was not. But I was always an honor student and always excelled, throughout elementary, high school, college an graduate and now in my career. MY regret now is that I didn’t do the same with my son.
We speak a LOT of english at home, and honestly, my kids even say words in English incorrectly. We do correct them, but they still say words wrong! Just the other day I was arguing with Effie because she kept saying she “Brang” and i told her the word was “Brought” but she refused to change it! Haha… English is difficult! I am POSITIVE that she’ll outgrow the little mistakes.
Yes, they get so necias too! Jajaja!
Speaking of my own experience, by the age of 12 I spoke 5 languages. 4 of which I learned before the age of 6. Spanish, Swedish,German and Quechua, the first three mentioned were spoken by my parents, and neither of them spoke only “their” language with me, but sometimes in one language and sometimes in another. Quechua was only spoken to me by my grandmother and since I moved away from her at 5, that language is my weakest as I haven’t had any practice. But it worked well for me, I think children can distinguish between different languages very well. It shouldn’t be a problem speaking in either language, just at that age is when the children learn the best and that will stick, even thought they might not have much practice later, but they will always remember the basics and it is much easier than starting from scratch…..my opinion.
We all make mistakes, in the great scheme of things yours is not that bad.
My mother was a teacher (now retired), so I was raised at home with the philosophy of “learn how to speak correctly at home, then go on and butcher the language elsewhere if you wish”.
I know this may sound a little too strict, but I don’t let errors go uncorrected. If she makes a mistake I correct her and make sure that she understand where the error is. Since neither my husband nor I speak Spanish to her, it would be easy to neglect these things and having them become ingrained. I prefer to nip it in the bud, correct it and switch back to English when we’re done. As of right now it’s working, no guarantee she will not rebel one of these days .
That nipping in the bud attitude is the one I’m adopting now. Correcting and switching without stressing about it
I know is not fun to deal with mistakes but as you say, there is no one single manual that can help us avoid those little bumps as we go through motherhood. Feel very accomplished as what you have done for your daughter is far grater. Thank you for sharing the good and the bad and all in between. I have learned a lot from SB and I will for sure keep this in mind.
Funny how this little confession might be like a little voice in your head when you hear your girl make mistakes in English and you think about not correcting her! Jajaa! Sorry about that!!
Don’t worry about it. Most monolingual first graders cant get the tenses right. She is processing two languages and grammar. It’s hard. Sigues adelante sin preocupacion.
Mil gracias! I kinda needed to read that
Hi Ana! Thanks for sharing. I see you have a lot of messages here but hope you can help me too! First of all congrats! You are doing fantastic. I really believe in being conscious of our daily deeds with our children is so important. Mistakes or not, you guiding your daughter through this method is so awesome.
So, my thing…I feel that I don’t correct Diego (1st grade) enough in Spanish for fear of shaming him, embarrassing or discouraging. He constantly makes the same mistake with the pronouns and I don’t know why, I ‘m afraid he’ll throw his hands up and say, “Forget it!!” if I keep correcting him.
What to do?
The same thing happens with Camila in Spanish and she also switches back and forth a lot. I don’t worry about the switching because I know that will (and is) sort itself out.
What I do is just repeat what she said and say it correctly. I don’t make her repeat it correctly, I just hope that by her hearing me say it the correct way over and over again she’ll eventually get it.
I also think that once they start reading more fluidly they’ll grasp many of these mistakes and make the corrections themselves.
Hope that helps!!
I hope I’m not repeating, but we’ve found that even though our son is in a Spanish immersion program and we speak Spanish at home with him, that just the Sundays at my parent’s house in English has given him a sweet little southern twang of an accent and my mother’s occaisonal corrections are taken well by him, even though if I correct his English he acts as if he doesn’t hear me. He actually parrots back to me that in our house we speak Spanish, even though his speaking English started the encounter….lol I guess it is good that he moves between the two with out noticing, but I do credit my parents as his primary English influences. Do you have anyone who can serve as a close adult who only speaks English with your daughter? A friend or relative who maybe is a teacher (like my mom) or who simply has excellent grammar and diction?
interesting thread. i have two comments that might make for interesting posts-by-experts in linguistics:
1) why are we afraid to correct? i have this fear too, that “correcting” will make my son shut down. but you know what? our son is 5 and we correct him all the time. my husband prefers the “repeat after me” strategy and i simply re-state. lately we’ve been talking about how grammar works. it doesn’t matter if it’s beyond his level or not, he enjoys the conversation and he hasn’t shut down yet. i suspect that–esp. for young kids–our fear of correction is OURS, not theirs…
2) i agree that it’s not a mistake. my husband and i were not raised bilingually from birth so i have really had to shift my framework about language learning since my son is acquiring language in a radically different way. it’s a different process. some research i’ve read states that bilingual children don’t pull it all together until age 8. so obsessing about grammar/pronunciation at a young age is premature and inappropriate. i’ve read that milestones for bilingual children may happen later in childhood.
Hola ! My husband is from Hungary, I’m from Colombia and we have 3 children born here in the UK. From the very beginning we used that technique OPOL, even though I’ve just realised it exists by reading this blog! lol. At home we mainly speak Spanish (hubby learnt it). My oldest son is 7 now, he speaks the 3 languages and it’s interesting how he switches from one language to another, although I’d say he’s not 100% fluent in any of them yet (but that’s nothing that really worries me at the moment). My second son is nearly 4 and he speaks Spanish relatively good, he knows more hungarian than me in 9 years of marriage and he’s started to learn some English. My baby girl is only 1 but she already knows there are 3 different ways to say hello. Whenever I hear they say something wrong either in English or Spanish I tell them straight away, although in English I try not to say much about pronunciation so they can have a lovely English accent or at least a neutral one. I’m not afraid to tell them and they haven’t shut down, I think we all learn a lot more from mistakes than anything else. What I do have noticed though is that because they don’t get the chance to practice their languages with other relatives or native people more often, their vocabulary and usage of language is more limited if we’d compared them to children with only one language. (espero me entiendan lo que quiero decir!) However, whenever we meet their hungarian relatives on holidays, hungarian speaking improves so quicky even with an accent. I think eventually, as someone said before, they’ll be using one language more than the other, also depending on where they’ll choose to live but as long as they can speak enough of each language we are and will always be happy and proud of them. Important thing is to make it always natural, fun, enjoyable for them; in our case we aren’t expecting them to get a master in each language, so the social and cultural bits are more important to us
And I also agree with someone who said that it’s better to teach them something as kids rather than having to start from scratch as an adults. So true, I still stragle with English!
You see! it was “struggle”… sorry lol!
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I did the exact same thing you did. I assumed the English would have to turn out since she has so many proper English speaking role models so I only ever corrected her by repeating in Spanish. When my daughter was four we took her to the speech pathologist because her speech was often incomprehensible and she quickly pointed out how past-due our corrections were and how most kids say this or that sound correctly years ago, but everyone just kept telling us “she’s bilingual. It’ll work itself out.” As a kindergartener she’s been on an IEP for almost a year now. My daughter almost never uses past tense, nor does the add S to show plural or 3rd person (which she maybe picked up from all of our aspirating the S in Spanish at home?) She’s still young but I definitely feel like I’m in the stage where I’ve failed her in both languages. All husband and I ever speak at home is Spanish (all 6 years of her life) and she can still hardly string together a complete sentence all in Spanish! I’m sp glad I stumbled across your website to at least feel like I’m not a lone failure.
My now 6 year old speaks and reads three languages, although she has two favorites (Spanish and English). I am trying to let her use all three equal, although it is very difficult for her to speak Dutch while living in Mexico. I am a native Dutch, but I teach English here in Mexico.
I try to have a particular time for each language. Spanish is spoken in school, so I don´t focus too much on that. Her dad tends to speak only English to her, even though he is Mexican, and I try to speak English and Dutch with her as much as possible. I guess over time everything will work out, especialy as we are planning for her to do junior high and high school in the Netherlands.
All I can say it is a struggle, but telling your child you don´t understand them in any other language than allowed during that time really works. It forces them to use the language, instead of only understanding it.
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