Mami, hoy es January?
That’s my 5-year-old asking from the back seat.
I’m thrilled — finally the kids are getting the hang of time — the difference between seconds, minutes, days and months. But his question is also a harsh reminder.
He is learning most of these new concepts in school.
In school, they teach purely in English.
And now the corollary — my husband and I, their only Spanish teachers, will never be able to keep up.
We had recently given ourselves some real pats on the back. Congrats to us! Our twins are 5 and are still speaking Spanish! We “made it.” And yet, the more time goes by, the more I realize the quest to raise bilingual kids never, ever (ever, ever, you get the point) ends.
They grow, they learn — and they need to do both in two languages. Somehow, somewhere, between trying to raise well-mannered, confident, curious beings, between instilling a work ethic, love of books and a sense of spirituality and empathy — we’re talking basics here people, not Tiger Mom stuff — we still have to find time to ensure that their Spanish progresses.
I didn’t actually expect to reach this point now. About a month ago, I had decided that since the kids’ language skills were on solid footing, I’d dedicate 2013 to go a step further to teach them more about their Hispanic heritage. Over Christmas, I wrote up a whole plan, a timeline, links to all the books and projects we were going to tackle so that they could learn more about la madre patria, and Latin America and the Caribbean in general. But then came enero, and the questions from the back seat.
I am tired.
Last year, I wrote a post on six things I wish I’d known before I started raising bilingual kids.
I’ll add another: I wish I’d known this process was life long.
I wouldn’t have changed course, but I would have adjusted my expectations.
{Photo by popofatticus}
I know so well what you mean, hang in there!! It’s great what you’ve achieved – after all, the question was mostly in Spanish! My passion is to look for ways to reinforce the minority language (in our case French in Finland), but you’re right, we can never entirely keep up. It’s still worth it to do the best we can (and take a breather once in a while when we’re tired!) What I’ve found most helpful here is to look for newly arrived French expat families (through the embassy and the cultural center), organize play dates with them and hire their teenagers as babysitters (fantastic!). And my absolute favorite, one that I would not have lasted without: trips to the minority language country. I don’t want to be insensitive as this can be expensive ( = the reason we live in a small house and have only one car), but is in my opinion worth every penny. It’s the one place where I can relax as I know my children are immersed in the language with the grandparents, cousins and new friends and for once there is nothing that I need to do for their bilingualism. You can do it even if you don’t have family in the country, if you need ideas, contact me
Thanks so much, great ideas. I will ping you about travel ideas bc we are looking into it now for first time. Marika
Thanks Niki!
Parenting is a live long process, and it is hard work. I have two kids”4 and 2″ and it hard work. The problem that i am facing now is how mean my two yr old is to my four yr old. No two kids are the same that for sure. Hang in there on the spanish it will be a great help to your kids. Great posr
This is such a great post! My background: I speak Spanish to our kids and Spanish is my second language, but I am the only parent speaking Spanish in the OPOL method, while my husband speaks English. To reply to Ali and other similar situations: It was hard to keep up at first, but it wasn’t until I started speaking 100% Spanish to the kids that bilingual instruction started to become effective. On my part training myself, it took several months until it started feeling natural. Now I switch back and forth from talking to an English speaker and addressing my children and the Spanish just slides right out in time and it would be unnatural to speak English to them. In fact sometimes it feels like I should speak Spanish any time I am talking to a child
It did take discipline and encouragement from my husband to train myself to always speak in Spanish to the kids, but just like we expect to train them, we too are being trained or self-disciplined. It’s so wonderful if you have ANY family or friends or neighbors to speak with in Spanish! Enjoy the life-long journey!
I read your other post and learned that you are a non-native speaker of Spanish. Could you explain a little about your thought process when deciding to have both parents speak Spanish. I am beginning to think that maybe the method my husband and I will use when the time comes because of just how strong English is in the US. Even though I would prefer using OPOL (and speaking my native language – English) I am afraid that it may not be enough input with just my husband speaking Spanish.
Congrats on everything you have been doing!
Hey Ali, thanks for writing. Honestly when we started this, we hadn’t read any books and didn’t really know about OPOL as an option. Early on, having us both speak Spanish was a good way to keep us on track and motivated to speak to kids in that language. It took awhile to get used to. That said, glad we are doing what we are doing because English is so prevalent and any last bit helps. Marika
Ali we started out OPOL because both sets of grandparents speak only their one language. Marco started out about 50/50 in his speaking vocabulary and understanding. But when he was about a year old his English started getting stronger and stronger & it wasn’t long before he still understood Spanish but refused to speak it to his father or anyone he suspected might understand any English at all. I started speaking to him more and more in Spanish even though it’s not my native tongue. When I didn’t feel like I could say something well in Spanish at all, I would use some English, and just try to stay in one language for one sentence at a time. Reading children’s books to him in Spanish really helped me feel more comfortable with pronouncing some long words out loud, and learning more kid-type vocabulary, myself. Mostly just my trying and trying to improve my Spanish I think helped him see that this was important. I really feel it helped him tremendously even though my Spanish is far from perfect. I would not go back and do it differently, because the fact is since we used OPOL for the first year and a half, he was always able to communicate directly with my parents, which wouldn’t have been possible if we’d tried to do ML@H. But I’m really glad that the whole family supported me switching mostly to Spanish when we did — because English was really taking over. I think that this “takeover” is what happens to a lot of people. My older daughter (monolingual in English) had friends in high school who only spoke Spanish at home until they went to kindergarten, but by high school their Spanish was so weak they struggled in Spanish class, even though they were smart kids.
Thanks Beth! I think that is a very interesting way to do it and I like it because I would prefer not to go through that early period where it may be hard for the child to communicate with the grandparents. (Both of our sets of parents are monolingual). Only worry I have is my ability to switch languages after developing the relationship in one. I guess that is my own development as a bilingual as I am currently trying to use more and more Spanish with my husband. We find it pretty difficult because TALKING is huge in our relationship and so far it doesnt feel the same as in English. I am trying and improving though.
Ali, when I switched to using a lot more Spanish with our son he did not llike it at first. He’d say “you have to talk to me in English” and I told him “te voy a hablar como yo quiera”. Sometimes he was having a bad day (or I was having a bad day) and it was pretty gradual at the beginning. But I didn’t give in, and found that my own skills improved, too. He’s never stopped asking me every so often again to speak to him in English. The first few weeks it was like screaming for a lollipop. But after the initial adjustment, I’ve found when he asks for it there is a reason. Since every other adult in our life speaks Spanish to him, English is a special Mommy thing. So snuggling up to read a story or having a little song in English is just perfect — and then we go right back into Spanish
I got a big surprise when we visited my family in Ohio last year. Papi couldn’t come and no Spanish was happening at all. After several days of this he said “Mommy quiero que tu me hables en español”!
Marika thank you for sharing the “tired” feeling. I hope everyone will be inspired to keep going because it really is a long-term project and there are times when you don’t even know if it’s working.
We’re super lucky that we could get our boys into a dual-language immersion elementary school. But I admit there are times when someone’s struggling with homework I feel frustrated and tired, because it’s often difficult for me to understand the homework in Spanish myself much less help. Then the kids start talking amongst themselves in English and resisting using Spanish with their aunts. Now we have my stepdaughter and a couple nephews in middle school and the
teenager Attitude / rebellion is sprouting… I can certainly understand how people could just give up. But if we did, we would kick ourselves later, and hopefully knowing that keeps us going. Through my work I know many bilingual or multilingual people and have never met anyone who thinks their parents did them a disservice… but I HAVE met people who do regret their parents could have made them bilingual and didn’t.
Thanks Beth! You’re so luck to have gotten into an immersion elementary. We hope to do the same eventually (two years away.) Marika
Marika, this is such a GOOD reminder….that raising bilingual kids is a life long process. My husband and I are expecting our first in June, and it’s easy to think oh, if I read the right books and do this or that then boom, we’ll have a bilingual child. But I know it takes much longer, and is not a linear process. Our situation is reversed. We live in Guatemala so Spanish will be spoken everywhere, but English may be more of a challenges to incorporate. Thanks for your tips!
it’s just like in parenting, you never get a break!!! I am cringing just thinking of the day when he will just want to speak in English and less so in Spanish and French, but we will keep at it, because we feel its such an important thing to be able to communicate with our family members that only speak those languages, and also of course, bikingual (or triligual) is better!
I completely understand your feelings. I am a Cuban living a Moscow. Although Spanish is my native language, it’s not so easy to maintain the bilingualism in my family.
On the positive side, when I once asked my daughter (she was 10 years at the time) if she would prefer me to switch to Russian, she said NO. She said she couldn’t imagine us communicating in Russian.
I just want to encourage other bilingual families with the idea that with time communication in Spanish becomes an important part of our children’s life and they won’t like to get rid of it.