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I'm a native of NJ (bilingual) and my husband is from central Mexico (sort of bilingual) and we have a little girl who will be 1 in just about 2 weeks. She's not really talking at all yet, but we want her to be bilingual. I'm totally new at this and not sure what method is best or what to expect. She hears mostly Spanish during the day at daycare and I make an effort to speak all English to her, but sometimes I feel like I don't talk to her enough and I'm afraid she won't learn English at all. I'm looking forward to learning more about raising a bilingual child!
Hola profesora!
Thanks for stopping by and we hope you do find useful information here as you start your bilingual journey with your daughter.
Since I don't really have all the details, I'm going to assume that you're bilingual in English and Spanish and your husband's dominant language is Spanish. There are a couple of things I would suggest. You can try to raise your daughter bilingual using the popular method know as OPOL (one parent one language) which basically means you'd speak to your daughter only in English and your husband would only speak to her in Spanish. Essentially and in an ideal world, she'd learn both of them at the same time. Of course, that all depends on how much time each of you spends with her and how much exposure she'd get to either language. The fact that she already hear mostly Spanish at daycare is a plus. And using the OPOL method would ensure that she'd get enough exposure to English from you for you not to worry that she won't learn it at all. Which, by the way, is a very normal and common worry of parents (myself included) of parents raising bilingual children.
We've written extensively about the OPOL method (all you have to do is a quick search) and also about how unfounded my worries were about my daughter not learning English since we ONLY speak Spanish to her at home. Having said that, the other option your family has is to use the mL@H method, which means you'd use the minority language at home. I actually prefer this method because I've now realized how quickly my daughter learned English just by going to preschool three times a week for the last two years. She is 4 1/2. She'll be starting Kinder this fall and I know English will almost completely take over her life. So I'll have to work even harder at making sure we continue to speak to her only in Spanish, as this will be the only source of exposure she'll have to the minority language while she's not in school. In other words, the minority of her time!
I hope you continue to come back here for support from other parents who are going through the same stuff, and please feel free to send a question to one of our experts if you have any other questions or concerns!
Buena suerte!
¡Saludos, Profesora!
First, let me say you are on the right track! There is really a lot of good information available on Spanglishbaby.com and most importantly, support! I always wonder if I'm "doing it right" especially since there are so few examples from 35+ years of my "past life" before I married a Mexican :-)
I've been involved with my bilingual stepchildren, nieces & nephews for five years now, watching them grow. I can tell you with absolute certainty that not only will your child learn English perfectly well, your struggle will be keeping her Spanish skills working and growing. I'm not a native Spanish speaker but I feel comfortable speaking to my son a lot of the time in Spanish, and the more time goes on, I try to look for opportunities to do it, because I can already see very, very strongly in him the influence of PBS shows like Super Why and Word World, and older children speaking to him in English, and he is only 2-1/2!
Lately our thing is that at bedtime we read 1 book in English and 2 books in Spanish. But, even so I have a nagging feeling that double-the-Spanish is barely enough, against the flood of English I know is coming when he starts school.
Although it has made direct communication between my parents and my husband's family difficult, I am truly grateful that my sister-in-law (who cares for my son during the day) really only speaks Spanish. My husband has been known to say to our boy "Hablame en espanol cabroncito" and I scold him about that last word but I love that he is willing & able to be a rock of Spanish for him.
Keep the faith, Profesora, and keep reaching out for support.
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