Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on May 26, 2010. “Hello, I was born and raised in Norwalk, CT. Both my parents are from Costa Rica. I met my husband in South Florida. He is American-born and raised in California. We got married and had our first baby girl on May 6th, 2009. Now he and I are arguing about what language to speak to her in. I suggested I speak in Spanish, and he in English, but he’sRead More ...
“My personal story is the following: our daughter, Sofia, is 33 months old and her use of “understandable” words is extremely limited – maybe a handful of words and no phrases. She does speak all day in her “own language” – blabbering and using intonation. She does understand some of what we say to her (acknowledging with a smile or a frown/cry or following a request), and she uses mainly her language and some body language to communicate with usRead More ...
“I am a bilingual mother of a 32 month old little girl who has been spoken to in both languages (Spanish and English) since birth. We live in the US and since English is the dominant language we are making a concerted effort to speak and use Spanish at home as much as possible but I can’t say that we are following any specific model like OPOL or ML@H because the reality is that I speak mostly English with myRead More ...
Editor´s note: This article was originally published on January 27, 2010. Today we welcome a new and amazing expert to our already great Ask an Expert panel. We count ourselves lucky to be able to wrangle Dr. Naomi Steiner, most well known as the author of the very useful book 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child. To find out more about Naomi Steiner and to send her, or any of our experts, your questions please click here. Today´s questionRead More ...
“My son is enrolled in a Spanish immersion elementary school. This is our first year and he is in first grade. Prior to this, he had very limited Spanish language exposure. He is loving it and we are happy with his acceptance with the new environment and routine. Neither my husband or I speak or read Spanish. How can we foster his learning to read Spanish at home? I go to the library and am overwhelmed with all the choicesRead More ...
“Hola! My husband and I have only spoken in Spanish to our 3 year old daughter Carolina. She is used to only watching Spanish media (TV, videos, books, music, etc.) and is spoken to only in Spanish by all family members. To date, she does not speak or understand English but is very articulate in Spanish. I’ve submitted questions to the experts before which have been fortunately answered and their responses have encouraged me to continue to speak only inRead More ...
The following question was sent by Liz Guzman. You can also send your question to the Experts by clicking here. My son has had speech therapy since he was 3 and was recently “diagnosed” by the school psychologist as having PDD-NOS. He was accepted in a dual language program and is mostly an English speaker. My question is, being in this program would it be beneficial or detrimental to his learning? I was told like most people that I wasRead More ...
This post was originally published on Aug. 31, 2009. This week’s Ask an Expert question was sent by Donna, mother of three. “I have 3 children. The older 2 who are 12 and 9 mostly speak and understand English. We are trying to speak only Spanish to the baby who is 2 months old. What can we do to be sure that the baby speaks only Spanish first if her siblings are speaking to her in English?” Dear Donna, IfRead More ...
