Daily Blog

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” — Mark Twain One of the main purposes of SpanglishBaby’s existence is to share with our readers the kind of useful information that can make the journey to raising bilingual children a bit less daunting. Education is not a new topic to this blog. We write about it often and, in fact, we’ve even dedicated a whole week to exploring the topic of bilingual education. If you’d like your childrenRead More ...

“He’s confused.” This seems to be the refrain of my interactions with monolinguals these days. Talking is the big milestone for two-year-olds and would be the topic of conversation even if I weren’t speaking Spanish with my son. Because I am, though, it feels like a rather contentious subject. SpanglishBaby readers are already familiar with the debate over code-switching and its role in fluency. We know that experts confirm that mixing languages is a sophisticated linguistic skill, not a signRead More ...

Since I have made the deliberate decision to raise a trilingual baby so many realizations have blossomed especially as I near the end of my pregnancy. So, as a result, what did I do? I did what aspiring doctoral students do best: research about trilingualism and parenting. In fact, I found a way to combine this interest with one of my graduate courses and am in the process of creating an annotated bibliography about trilingualism, which I am more thanRead More ...

A few days ago I went to the parent-teacher conference at my daughter’s preschool. I can’t believe she’s nearing the end of her first full year in preschool. Besides the fact that I was told a few things I already knew and expected—Vanessa knows what she wants and she’ll try everything until she succeeds—other things were a bit of a surprise for me. I should start by saying that we use the mL@H method, so the only English she’s exposedRead More ...

Due to both my location (the wonderfully diverse Washington, D.C. area) and my occupation (Spanish interpreter), I have many friends who are also raising bilingual children. They are my support group, and when we get together the conversation invariably turns to our children’s bilingualism, our experiences and challenges. I was chatting with one such friend and we started discussing the deluge of English in schools, how it will be hard to keep the Spanish going at home, how we’ll haveRead More ...

Although we know it’s never too late to learn a new language, we are firm believers that the earlier you start, the better it is. Did you know that for the most part U.S. students begin studying a second language at age 14? Meanwhile the majority of the top 25 industrialized nations begin the study of world languages in grades K-5. It’s not surprising then that 80% of students in Europe speak at least two languages while only 14% ofRead More ...

The following is a guest post by Carolina Gomez founder of 1-2-3 Spanish Together. We are a bicultural family living in Boston, MA. My husband is from the United States, and I am originally from Colombia where I grew up and lived for the first two-thirds of my life. We are both bilingual, and although we learned our second languages as adults, without the opportunity to learn or being exposed to a second language as children, we understand each other’sRead More ...

I really thought my daughter was too young to watch this Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel movie, and she probably really is.  However, we received a screening copy of the movie to review exactly on a day I was getting tired of the princess movies she favors these days. So, I convinced her she wanted to watch singing ardillas and help me do my blogging homework.  Of course, she was trapped by the chipmunks, the squeaking, the silly pranks,Read More ...