As a multicultural and biracial familia, I was pretty clear about wanting to raise a bilingual child. Ah yes! It would be simple! I would speak to our child in Spanish and my husband would speak to him in English. Sound familiar? Yes, we were going to use the OPOL (One Parent One Language) method. However, things are not always as easy as they seem, right? You see, I had the desire but not a plan. I fell into the comfortRead More ...
Here’s Proof That It’s Never Too Late to Raise Bilingual Children
I’m Expecting Another SpanglishBaby
As I get ready to send my 5-year-old boy to kindergarten, I also get to start the journey over again….with a new baby! I’m currently 11 weeks pregnant (due right around Christmas!), and couldn’t be more excited to welcome a sweet SpanglishBaby into our home. This will be our fourth child in total, but our first child together. I feel fully prepared for the pregnancy and birth itself, but as we all know, having a newborn in the house bringsRead More ...
Send Your #BilingualKid to a Language Summer Camp
We dedicated all of last week to explore the topic of immersion travel and its amazing benefits in terms of your children’s bilingualism and biculturalism. But if traveling with your family for an extended period of time to a Spanish-speaking country is not an option for you right now, you can always send your kids to a language summer camp without having to travel too far. Language summer camps are run the same way a regular summer camp is: aRead More ...
Why We Moved Our Family to Mexico for One Year
It was a Monday afternoon, my husband and I were in the kitchen watching an episode of House Hunters International, we turned to look at each other and our eyes said it all, at that moment we decided to grab our children and go on an adventure. From the moment we knew we were going to be parents, my husband and I knew that our children would be bilingual. But at that time we did not imagine how challenging itRead More ...
Can Bilingualism Cause Alienation?
We moved into a new house last May. I was so excited since I knew that there were a lot of children in the neighborhood. There were boys the same ages as my sons living on either side of us. I envisioned my children having many fun afternoons playing with the other children in the community. Unfortunately, my visions of our new life in the neighborhood never came about. Things started out well. The day that the moving truck officiallyRead More ...
New Year’s Resolution: We Will Speak More Spanish at Home
I began to learn Spanish a bit in grade school, and then in high school began the typical Spanish classes an hour a day. When I was a freshman, I traveled abroad for the first time to Peru with my dad to bring home my newly adopted brother and sister. This trip changed my life in uncountable ways: experiencing and living the language in bustling Lima and magical Cuzco cemented my love of Spanish and Latin culture. In college, IRead More ...
Raising Bilingual Kids: What is the mL@H Method?
Last week, I posted a question to our Facebook page asking parents who use the mL@H method to raise their children bilingual to share some of the difficulties they’ve encountered with it. I wanted to write a post around those answers based on some of my own difficulties with the method. But then, one of the parents asked what mL@H stands for and I figured I needed to step back a bit. Inadvertently, I assumed everyone who’s raising bilingual childrenRead More ...