Daily Blog

Editor’s note: This is the first in a week long series of essays for Father’s Day written by papás who are raising bilingual and bicultural children. We hope you come back to read the rest of the essays this week. If you missed anything, you can always go to the introductory post for links to the essays and to our awesome giveaway! Growing up in Miami, Spanish was everywhere. My Cuban mom spoke only Spanish to my brother and IRead More ...

We’re celebrating dads this whole week at SpanglishBaby in preparation for Father’s Day on Sunday, June 19th. We’ve asked several papás/bloggers/journalists, who happen to be raising their children bilingual, to share their experiences with us. If you’ve been a regular reader of SpanglishBaby, you probably know that we’ve always wished we had more of the male presence in our blog. We appreciate it when we hear the perspective of fathers who are raising bilingual and bicultural kids because, in manyRead More ...

I went to a British school back in Peru where I was taught the majority of my courses in English. The school has been around for a very long time (1938) and even my mother and her sisters went there when they were little. It has a great reputation and it’s undoubtedly responsible for my being bilingual since it was there where I learned English in a formal setting. When I attended the school in the 1980s, there used toRead More ...

Anyone that gets to know my little girl will notice that she is very observant. Yes, even at the tender age of eleven months the girl soaks up her surroundings before taking the plunge to interact. To watch her reactions on our first family vacation was, as cliché as this may sound, priceless! There are numerous stories about my time in Miami that replay in my mind each time I am about to visit the vibrant, colorful, Latino city! TheRead More ...

I struggled a lot in writing this post. Not because it was difficult really, but because this is my husband’s story and it’s one that I don’t take lightly. I really wanted to do justice to the challenges that he’s faced, and ones that we are now facing as a family. I know that we all have different stories to tell and I believe that we all need to be heard. With that in mind, I want to share partRead More ...

Sometimes it sounds like the ideal way to make absolutely sure that your children will grow up speaking Spanish: Hey, let’s move to Latin America. Spanish immersion!  Problem solved. Except, of course, it’s not a simple thing to do. There are jobs, families, schooling to consider. Not to mention the fact that if it’s a long-term move, then you shift to worrying about your children keeping up with their English. I can honestly say that it’s not an option forRead More ...

For months I’ve been trying to figure out how I would go about teaching my daughter, Vanessa, how to read in Spanish. I know she’s been ready to learn for at least six months, but I guess I’ve been the one who wasn’t ready. My original thought was that I’d teach her how to read in Spanish before she entered Kindergarten in the Fall. Once there, she’d just follow along with the rest of the kids in her class andRead More ...

“Back to basics” is at the core of everything I believe about teaching my children multiple languages; love is the essence. Here’s a list of seven basic virtues to help us get back to the basics in creating homemade multilingualism – with love! 1. Love My passion for languages begins with my love for my family whether in the USA, France, Mexico or Peru. I keep in touch with them through phone calls, letters, the Internet and visits. My childrenRead More ...