Bicultural Vida

They’re much milder now, but my boys’ speech delays were so very pervasive for the longest time. We went from no speech to echolalia (our own speech parroted back to us) to practicing simple requests over and over and over.  I was always somewhat amazed by other children their age when I heard them speaking on the playground, stringing together such complex thoughts so effortlessly. A friend of mine, whose daughter is two years younger than my sons, once askedRead More ...

My husband, the only Latino in the group of prospective parents, stood next to the only African-American in the group, a mother. They watched a group of adorable elementary school students sing a song in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. As the lyrics, “we shall overcome” sang through the air, my husband realized that all of the students were either Anglo or Asian. He stayed through the rest of the tour and information session at the amazing schoolRead More ...

Yes, I am so, so, so nervous about this! As you know, we’re in the process of applying to dual language immersion programs in our area and we’ve got our heart set in our girl being accepted into the Spanish dual immersion program at Franklin Magnet School, aka International Foreign Language Academy of Glendale. Today is the day the public lottery is held and we’ll know if our girl’s name gets drawn to be amongst the 24 or so childrenRead More ...

Raising bilingual children in the United States can be challenging, but having a plan in place, significantly increases your chance for success. If you are not lucky enough to have a bilingual school to support you, creativity and effort are necessary to help your child acquire Spanish. In my head there was always an informal idea on how I would raise my children to speak Spanish, but now that they are in preschool, I am re-evaluating my action plan. ToRead More ...

Last week we had lots of fun asking the SpanglishBaby Familia on Facebook to share with us their favorite dichos. You know, those proverbial and poetic phrases full of wisdom you heard again and again from your abuela, tías, mamá y papá and now you find yourself repeating (and preaching!) to your kids at any given moment. You suddenly realize you inherited more from your mami than only her good skin and laugh. The other beauty about dichos is thatRead More ...

There is one thing I have noticed about SpanglishBaby’s (and other parenting blogs’) readership that I don’t like: very few fathers are represented! This is nothing new; moms have historically been the ones attending playdates and talking about the trends in diaper bags. Still, fatherhood has changed considerably and, when it comes to maintaining a home culture and language, the presence of Papi is just as important as that of Mami. Since my significant other is one of the mostRead More ...

It’s hard to believe that in just seven months my girl will be starting a whole new stage in life: kindergarten. That means that we are now deep in the process of touring dual language immersion programs, applications and crossing fingers to get a spot in one of our top choices. Just three years ago when we launched this blog, I visited what was then Benjamin Franklin Elementary school in the Glendale Unified District in California. We wrote a seriesRead More ...

Every time I think about it, I can’t stop laughing. Not the “making-fun-of” kind of laughter, more like the “that’s unbelievable” one. A couple of days ago, a colleague of mine told me our office assistant was going to make an order for office supplies and she wanted to know what we all needed. He said, “So, if you need any supplies like staples, tape, file folders o tal vez unos biromes, just let her know.” — ¿Unos qué?, I blurtedRead More ...