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4:56 pm
We started out with one parent, one language. (I have a master's in linguistics and it seemed to be the recommended way to go) but was also very impractical for us. I was the English parent but needed to speak Spanish at work and later druing the day wehn we moved to Mexico. (the same went for my husband when we moved back to the U.S). Also, it always seemd rude to me (esp. since my husband and I are both bilingual) to speak to the children when grandparents or other family is around who doen't have a clue to what is being said.
The short version-my older 2 (15 and 13) are pretty completely bilingual in English and Spanish. The 9 year old is a work in progress-he likes to pretend he doesn't know Spanish but definetely does (in fact with testing for K on paper he was proficient in Spanish but not English). My 3 1/2 is also truly bilingual at the 3 1/2 yr level but school changes things a bit.
The long version-we live on the border and have always kept an eye on developing both languages. My daughter went to preschool first in Spanish in Mexico and then in English in the US. (my oldest son had only English though). My 9 year old also went to preschool in Spanish and 6 mos in English. We also ran an intensive summer camp/school one year the oldest two attended in Spanish, along with family, trips, books, tv and movies.
Hi Julie!
It's inspirational and interesting to hear your story.
We also started with the thought of One Parent, One Language, but it has become more like Papi one language, Tia one language, and Mommy two languages depending on the situation. (I felt that our son was getting much weaker in Spanish, so I beefed up how much I interacted with him in Spanish, and it seems to have helped him a lot.) At the same time, we are not in a border area but here in Houston it's very normal for people to be bilingual; our son's getting a lot of interaction in both languages all the time from his older siblings & cousins who are all bilingual and some of the older ones even use "Spanglish" like yet another language. With people coming and going in our house no matter what method we used we could never be actually very strict with it.
I guess, like your story, it goes to show that each family can take the "method" as a starting point. It's nice to hear your older kids are strongly bilingual. I bet the 9-year-old will learn from that example.
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