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It occurred to me last night that our family is actually using something of a "Time & Place" method.

We started out strictly OPOL, that is, One Parent, One Language. My husband, a native of Mexico, spoke to our son all in Spanish. I am from Ohio in the USA and I spoke to our son all in English.

Additionally, I returned to work full-time when my son was 8 weeks old, and he stays during the day with my sister-in-law who only speaks Spanish.

Marco is almost 2 now and really he is developing just about equally in both Spanish and English. Lately in the last few months, after discovering Spanglishbaby.com, I've realized that the biggest challenge we will probably face in the future is that English, the majority language where we live, could drown out the Spanish. Now that I am noticing, I see this already happening to my stepchildren, nieces and nephews (range in age from 6 to 13). 

So I'm trying to beef up my son's Spanish as much as possible by consciously preferring Spanish for the music and tv in his environment, and speaking to him sometimes in Spanish myself. Although I'm fluent I am not a native speaker, so I don't always know how to say everything I need to say in the heat of a moment for a very active almost 2-year-old! Also, I do want to preserve his ability to communicate directly with his family on my side in English, although none of them live close by us enough to see him often, so I will continue speaking to him in English some.

But, in the end, I hope to have the same effect as a Time & Place method. I am shooting for eventually using Spanish with my son about 80% of the time. I am not there yet, but am trying to read for pleasure in Spanish in order to strenghten my own mental muscles in Spanish. And it is not on a strict schedule. English ends up being used exclusively if Mom is having a really rough day! When I use Spanish, I want it to be a natural language not incorrect or stilted, so I have to be a little flexible with myself!