As a multicultural and biracial familia, I was pretty clear about wanting to raise a bilingual child. Ah yes! It would be simple! I would speak to our child in Spanish and my husband would speak to him in English. Sound familiar? Yes, we were going to use the OPOL (One Parent One Language) method. However, things are not always as easy as they seem, right? You see, I had the desire but not a plan. I fell into the comfort of just speaking to our baby in English from the day he was born. After all, everyone spoke in English too!

During our son’s 4-year-old annual check-up, his pediatrician excitedly asked, “Is he bilingual?” Those three words weighed heavily on me. Other than counting his numbers and the basic colors that he learned from Dora in Spanish, no, he wasn’t bilingual. That’s when reality hit me! I started to panic! Literally to panic! I felt that the precious years for my baby to learn another language from birth to 5 was quickly slipping through my fingers. What was I going to do? Was it too late?

I started to strategize and make a plan. I started slowly by using the Language Boundary method from the book 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child by Naomi Steiner. In this method, you use the target language during a specific situation, such as, time of day, location, or depending on an activity. I used this method during our bedtime story–speaking and reading to him in Spanish and then translating into English.

Then I had the opportunity to enroll him in a weekly preschool Spanish language immersion program. He was learning Spanish with other monolingual children his same age. He was excited and eager to learn Spanish. This is when I went into full Spanish-speaking mode with my child. At home, I started using the OPOL method. We read books, sang songs and played games, all in Spanish. I created opportunities for our child to speak Spanish, such as volunteering at his preschool summer camp a Spanish-language program and he was my little assistant. We also had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Puerto Rico during the summer immersed in a 100% Spanish environment.

Today I reflect on this past year and our journey into bilingualism. Looking back my only regret was not having started his language learning sooner. Nevertheless, speaking from my own personal experience, I can tell you that it’s never too late to start your child’s language learning.

My now 5-year-old speaks and understands Spanish very well. His language learning is still a work in progress, but if someone asks, “Is he bilingual?” I can happily respond, “Yes, he is!”

Frances is a part-time blogger, mommy and wife of a beautiful multicultural familia. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration with a certification in Human Resources. She blogs about heritage, culture, bilingualism, multicultural children’s books, and discovering the world through her son’s eyes. You can follow her at Discovering The World Through My Son’s Eyes.

{Photo by Que ma en}

Some parents stop speaking to their children in their second language when the child seems “confused” because they use both languages simultaneously. The fact of the matter is that this is the way languages evolve when they come into contact. In fact, I have been meaning to record my 3-year-old’s colorful use of two languages.

Just the other day she said, “Rafa (her older cousin), do you want to comer?” Another example is when she was asking me to buy her a ball and she said, “Mami, necesito ese (pointing to coins on counter) money para comprar una pelota.” Adults do it, too! The other day my very bilingual husband created a new word spontaneously when speaking to our daughter (Hija in Spanish):

Hija: ¡Voy a saltar! (from a table to the couch)!

Me: Sabrina, por favor no saltes, le puedes dar un owie a tu hermanita y a ti misma.

Hija: Quiero saltar, mami. ¡Voy a saltar!

Me: No, mi amor. No saltes ahí.

Hubby: Sabrina, por favor no jompes.

Me [laughing]

Hubby: Aaah, what am I saying? I know that word. Por favor no saltes, mi’jita.

Hija: Voy a saltar.

Translanguaging is the use of multiple languages simultaneously to communicate. That is to say, translanguaging is a form of flexible bilingualism. In our home we speak nearly 100% of the time in Spanish to our daughter, although we use Spanish and English all the time between my husband and I. Bilingual exchanges are a very natural occurrence in our home state of Texas. In fact, the closer you get to the Mexico/U.S border the more prevalent the use of Spanish & English becomes in communicating with others.

My intent in sharing the way we communicate in our home is to provide readers a glimpse of what raising a bilingual child is like in an environment where languages aren’t strictly separated. It does not fall under the One parent, One Language (OPOL) method, nor does it fall under the Minority Language @ Home (ML@H) method. I am not quite sure our method has a name…. yet!

As I continue to help my daughter develop her bilingualism (and eventually trilingualism), I intend on proposing a name to the method we are using in raising her with multiple languages. I whole-heartedly believe that we don’t need to keep the use of Spanish and English because in the real world, languages, just like people, will meet and influence the very fabric of our existence.

Please share your thoughts! Especially if you think of a name to this “language contact” method I am using to raise my daughter with multiple languages. As I write this, I realize that maybe that’s the name I have been looking for: Language Contact Method (LCM).

{Image by  amslerPIX}

From the moment the test read “pregnant,” it didn’t take long before I was sitting on a plane reading about the OPOL method and other strategies for giving one’s child the gift of two languages.

Friends asked me about birth plans and attachment parenting, but I researched precious little of the topics concerning my other mama friends. I was fascinated by language development and raising a bicultural baby.

The only problem? I don’t speak Spanish. I was relying on my Guatemalan husband to make my bilingual baby dreams come true.

Maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to be monolingual in a multicultural world, but I highly valued passing on both Spanish and English to our daughter. With her nearing 2 and 1/2 and our second bicultural baby on the way, I realize I have learned a lot these past couple of years about what not to do as the monolingual parent in a bilingual home:

Badger the Bilingual

“Speak Spanish!” was my mantra to my hubby that first year… right after “Why are you crying?” which was directed to my new baby.

It’s lonely talking to a baby when they don’t understand or engage. Part of our sanity through the infant days was speaking on her behalf.

I realize now that my husband wanted me to understand what he was saying to her… when he was blessing her, sweet-talking her or mocking her. (Yeah, we’re all-star parents!) We were learning to be a parenting team, and my nagging him to dis-include me held no appeal.

Take Over  

This is a different manifestation of #1. But when I wanted to “subtly” remind my husband to speak to her in Spanish, I would get the ball rolling myself. This strategy was is ill-advised since I’m not fluent.

I had to provide my husband space to take ownership of our child’s Spanish language learning. As she has begun talking more, he enjoys hearing her repeat the Spanish words he teaches. Also, since she’s decidedly favoring English, he has a renewed sense of personal passion to teach her Spanish to communicate easily with family and connect to her culture.

Complain About Being Left Out

One of my worries from the very beginning of our bilingual journey was feeling like a stranger in my own home. I envisioned my husband and our teenagers sitting around the dinner table, joking in Spanish and laughing, while I pushed peas around my plate.

The other day my daughter spoke her first uncoaxed mixed-language sentence, and that fear resurfaced. For as passionate as I am about her becoming bilingual, I want so desperately to be involved.

So I’m working on my own Spanish. Hearing it more at home definitely helps, but I still know her fluency will quickly surpass mine.

Raising a bilingual, bicultural family is a joy I encourage anyone to undertake. Hope these tips help you make the best of your journey!

{Photo by basykes}

Sarah Quezada lives in Atlanta with her Guatemalan husband Billy and their daughter Gabriella. She blogs about cross-cultural marriage and family life, immigration, and multicultural identity at A Life with Subtitles. You can connect with her on Twitter (@SarahQuezada).

As I get ready to send my 5-year-old boy to kindergarten, I also get to start the journey over again….with a new baby! I’m currently 11 weeks pregnant (due right around Christmas!), and couldn’t be more excited to welcome a sweet SpanglishBaby into our home. This will be our fourth child in total, but our first child together.

I feel fully prepared for the pregnancy and birth itself, but as we all know, having a newborn in the house brings a different set of concerns altogether. Ironically, the part I’m most thrilled about is also strapping me with anxiety: making sure this child is also bilingual.

We have become so used to speaking mostly English in our home, since my son gets his Spanish at his father’s house and my stepdaughters reinforce theirs at church, with their abuelos, and at school. It will be an adjustment to speak more Spanish in general, and especially to the degree of exposure that a new baby will require. My husband and I have discussed the many ways we could approach it, and have decided to try the One Parent One Language method — he will speak Spanish and I’ll speak English to the baby. Although I’m confident that this will be effective, I’m apprehensive about the new rules we’ll have to remember to follow.

In addition to sticking to one language each, we know that we need to have more Spanish in our house in general to compensate for the English our child will be hearing from his/her siblings. So, my husband and I are also going to try speaking exclusively Spanish to each other. This will be a 180-degree switch for us, since we currently only use Spanish with each other when we’re around Spanish-speaking friends and family. I guess it’s always been more comfortable for us to have our private conversations and daily exchanges in English, so it’s going to take some effort to change that.

Of course, a new life is always worth the sacrifices and changes we parents make! I anticipate that we’ll have to get a head start and try switching to Spanish in the coming weeks, because our Navidad baby will be here before we know it.

Perhaps the hardest part of the language transition will be stepping back a bit from Spanish myself. I know that it is best for a little one to hear native speakers, and since I’m a native English speaker and my husband is a native Spanish speaker, we need to stick to those languages, respectively. However, it bums me out a little that I won’t be able to exercise my Spanish skills with my child until we have established a pattern and decide it’s okay to deviate from that occasionally. I spoke only Spanish to my son for nearly three years, so it may be a tough reality to use English with my new bebé. My only exception is reading: I can’t see myself giving up Spanish bedtime stories with either of my kids!

Hopefully the strange mix of ages, language use and schedules in our home will only serve to make our busy life more fun.

Do you have any suggestions for making the switch to OPOL or speaking to your spouse in your second language?

 {Image by tommo4074 }

We dedicated all of last week to explore the topic of immersion travel and its amazing benefits in terms of your children’s bilingualism and biculturalism. But if traveling with your family for an extended period of time to a Spanish-speaking country is not an option for you right now, you can always send your kids to a language summer camp without having to travel too far.

Language summer camps are run the same way a regular summer camp is: a bunch of activities both in and outdoors so your kids don’t get bored during the long, lazy summer months, except that everything is done in a language other than English. In other words, not only will the kids be entertained, but they will also be immersed in Spanish or the target language you’re trying to teach them.

I was actually surprised with the amount of options out there and although they are not cheap, some of the programs offer financial assistance in the form of scholarships — particularly the ones where your kids get to sleep over. But maybe I should start by explaining the differences.

A day summer camp is exactly what the name implies. Your child attends camp daily for however many weeks you’re interested in (or you can afford.) Obviously, the longer your child attends, the better the end result. As far as I understand, the daily curriculum is taught in the target language, which depending on the program you choose, can range from Spanish to Arabic. Normally, age requirements are a bit more lax in this type of setting. A couple of summers ago, for example, I sent Vanessa to the language summer camp at Denver Montclair International School, which accept kids as young as 3. By the way, their Spanish program is so popular, it’s pretty much sold out for the entire summer!

Then, you have camps like Concordia Language Villages, which offers both options — day and regular summer camps — and it’s the kind of place that I would love for my kids to go to  when they get older. Concordia has been around for over 50 years, their curriculum is truly impressive and they firmly believe in immersion as the best method to learn a language.

“We communicate with the children almost exclusively in the target language,” according to Carl-Martin Nelson, the director of communications of the Minnesota program. ”There is very little translation going on.”

Children must be 7 years old to attend one of their summer camps in any of the 15 different languages they offer. Each camp can last anywhere from one to four weeks. This means your child is actually away from home for that period of time, just like the thousands of other summer camps that abound in this country, except that they spend their time immersed in the target language.

So how much can your child actually learn in one or two weeks? The truth is probably not much. But if you’re already raising bilingual children, it can be a great way to reinforce the second language— especially when kids get to the bilingual rebellion stage.

“We not only teach kids the language, we improve their attitude about learning the language,” says Nelson. “Our primary goal, our job, is to make it the coolest thing in the world to speak the target language.”

Nelson also brought up the fact that this type of program is perfect for families using the OPOL method because it helps to reinforce the language that the child may only get from one of the parents in a fun and completely different way. The same goes for children who already attend dual language schools. In other words, it’s a great way for them to brush up on their language skills in a non-school setting before the new school year because the emphasis is not only on the physical aspect, but also on the academic one.

“Our experience has been that these kids go back to the classroom excited and enthused about the language they’re learning,” Nelson says.

Sounds like a win-win situation, right?

If like mine, you’re children — or their parents — are not yet ready for sleeping-away camp, look around because in the last few years, we’ve seen an increase in the amount of language summer day camps available in cities across the nation. A great place to start searching for those options is in our bilingual education directory where you can find programs by city and state. If you know of a program that’s not in our directory, we’d really appreciate it if you include it as it’s user-generated. You can also check SpanglishBaby Playground in case anyone has posted about summer camps in their area.

{Photo by ScienceWorldCA}

It was a Monday afternoon, my husband and I were in the kitchen watching an episode of House Hunters International, we turned to look at each other and our eyes said it all, at that moment we decided to grab our children and go on an adventure.

From the moment we knew we were going to be parents, my husband and I knew that our children would be bilingual. But at that time we did not imagine how challenging it would be to live and nurture our children in a multicultural and bilingual environment.

The language that my children learned first was Spanish, obviously, as they were with me all the time, little by little we started using the  OPOL method by chance, everything was fine until my oldest son started school and decided he did not want to speak Spanish anymore. When my second child made his appearance, the favorite language to communicate between them was English.

I didn’t stop reading to them in Spanish, putting music in Spanish and introducing Spanish to them as it presented in our lives, however, despite my efforts, English was winning.

When my husband and I decided to launch into the adventure of living in another country for a few months, we did not hesitate, we decided to go to Mexico. I left my country in 2001 and had gone back to visit only for short periods of time, the idea of living with family, enjoy the food and immerse my children in Spanish was very tempting, so we opened our arms to the world and sent out our desire…

After nearly eight months in Mexico these are three things I have learned from this experience:

Every child is different: a relative of ours and bilingual educator as well said “in five months your kids will level with other children their age and in their grade.” Yes and no, my oldest son started speaking Spanish in only five weeks! It took my younger son 5 months.

You have to be patient and then more patient: My kids were happy the first week, when they saw family, enjoyed the delicious food (and pastries) and immersed in their new surroundings. The second week was more difficult, let alone the third, when they realized they would not return to California for a while, their reaction made me doubt our decision for a moment. Listening to Spanish all day long was tiring and they felt pushed aside, not understanding what was happening around them. But nothing lasts forever, and our patience paid off.

If opportunity knocks at your door, take it: I remember that when we shared our plans with my mom she told us, “Silvia, have you thought this through?” To which I replied “Of course not, Mom! If we think it through, we’d never do it. “And this is what I like to share the most. Sometimes you have to be courageous and take a leap of faith. If not, how would you know what will happen?

We also felt fear, doubt and uncertainty, and now that we’re only a few weeks from going back to California, all these feelings seem unfounded. This experience has given our children unbelievable memories, allowed them to experience first-hand their Latino heritage, their culture, their roots. They’ve eatenpan dulce, ice cream, tacos, tostadas, fresh orange juice, quesadillas with salsa verde to the max. This experience has made them feel they are part of a Mexican family, has exposed them to a lifestyle very different from the United States, but most of all, it has made them 100% bilingual. Every time I hear their beautiful voices speak to me in Spanish, my heart swells with pride.

¡Lo logramos!

{Photo by schlaeger}

Silvia Martinez is founder of award-winning Mamalatinatips.com, a Spanish-English bilingual blog, where she writes about kids, health, fashion, beauty, Disney and yummy Mexican food. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Disneylandiaaldia.com, the first Spanish-language blog in the United States covering the Disneyland Resort. Mom to two rambunctious, bilingual boys, Silvia’s recent adventures include taking close-ups of piñata smashing, photographing tostadas before they go soggy, celebrating Dia de Muertos in Mexico, and riding Toy Story Mania at Disney’s California Adventure…nine times in-a-row!

Things started out well. The day that the moving truck officially brought all of our furniture into the house, our next-door neighbors brought us freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Initially, everyone was so friendly, and there were days when the kids played together. Unfortunately, as time went on, I noticed that the new neighbors were not quite as sociable as they once had been. Initially, I just assumed that it was because everyone was busy, but then I started to think that perhaps there was a bit more to the change in their demeanor.

My husband and I are very consistent, perhaps even a bit obsessive compulsive in our following of the OPOL strategy. I have never spoken to my sons in English and neither has my husband. Even when others who do not speak Spanish are around, I still continue to use the minority language with my kids. One day I noticed that when my sons and I would use Spanish, the facial expressions and body language of my neighbors changed. It dawned on me that perhaps they weren’t so friendly with our family anymore because of the different languages. Language was alienating us from our new friends.

Our previous neighbors and good friends were from Indonesia. We never had any issues with different languages being used when we were together. I would continue use Spanish, my husband would use German, and they would speak to each other in Indonesian while English would be our common language. No one ever seemed uncomfortable with not understanding the different conversations all of the time. We rather enjoyed learning new phrases in each other’s languages, but more importantly, we were supportive of the effort involved in raising bilingual children.

The more I think about the situation in our new neighborhood, I am starting to wonder if people who only speak English are uncomfortable around other languages. Perhaps already being bilingual makes us less fearful or suspicious of ones that we do not know. I know that for me, this is the case. When I hear a new language, I want to learn new words and phrases. It also makes me especially happy to hear other parents speaking to their children in another language, since I know that they are giving their child the gift of bilingualism.

I realize with my new neighbors it is actually going to take a bit of effort and understanding on my part in order to develop a relationship. At Christmas, we took our neighbors chocolate and had a nice time visiting with them while the children played.  I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that the father in the one family is now even taking Spanish classes because his job requires him to go to Peru on a regular basis. His new need to learn Spanish emphasized for me the importance of raising bilingual children even in the face of many challenges. At the same time my neighbor has gained a deeper understanding of why my husband and I are so consistent in our efforts. Perhaps a friendship will develop after all.

{Photo by Mike Babiarz}

I began to learn Spanish a bit in grade school, and then in high school began the typical Spanish classes an hour a day. When I was a freshman, I traveled abroad for the first time to Peru with my dad to bring home my newly adopted brother and sister. This trip changed my life in uncountable ways: experiencing and living the language in bustling Lima and magical Cuzco cemented my love of Spanish and Latin culture.

In college, I changed my major to Spanish in part so that I could study abroad — not once, but twice (Spain and Ecuador). Most of my friends were Spanish-speaking, and I became very fluent. At the same time, I met my future husband — an exchange student from Mexico. I became a Spanish and ESL high school teacher, and we traveled frequently within Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Spain.

Evaluating my education and experiences, it would seem that raising bilingual kids would be a piece of cake. I am a huge advocate for multilingualism; I have multiple degrees in second language teaching and education; my Spanish is as near-native as it can be; I have many friends raising bilingual children; half of our family lives in Mexico and communicate almost exclusively in Spanish; plus, I love Spanish.

And yet… I still struggle. My kids answer me in English. And (voice dropping to a whisper) there are days that are so hectic and distracting that I admit I speak more English than Spanish. Much more. With my husband working long hours, using the OPOL (one parent one language) method cannot work for our family.

I have tried to step back and analyze what it is that inhibits me from communicating solely in Spanish. I enviously observe several successful friends in my exact situation who do an amazing job of maintaining a monolingual (Spanish) home environment, and I wonder why I am different?

The only answer I can provide is that as our family has grown and taken on more activities, and a fuller schedule, I have very slowly gotten out of the habit of sticking to Spanish. This is the first challenge: when I am in a hurry, or trying to do 10 things at once, or disciplining… what naturally comes out of my mouth is English.

My second challenge has to do with my own feelings of ineptness. When they were babies, I would play, and sing, and read to my kids in Spanish— but in the presence of anyone that spoke English I would switch. As our lives became more “social,” I found myself speaking more and more English. I then became hesitant to speak Spanish with the kids in front of anyone Latino. No one has ever said anything to me, but I have this tiny worry that I may use the wrong grammar or pronounce something wrong, or forget a word and have to mutter in Spanglish… I guess I worry that people will judge me?

With chagrin, dismay and deep-rooted guilt, I am admitting that I have put my own anxiety in front of my children’s need to hear more spoken Spanish.

I don’t mean to appear pessimistic. We are still a bilingual family. We still practice reading in Spanish, watch movies in Spanish, are spending the summer in Mexico, play with Spanish-speaking families, and my daughter loves to text my husband in Spanish. They really do understand 99%, and when they are with Spanish-speaking relatives, they participate in the conversation and play with their cousins.

The reason for this confession is to soundly proclaim (if only to myself) my New Year’s resolution. I am determined to turn a corner in our language journey, and adhere to a Spanish-majority home environment. My goal for 2013 is to help my 4 children develop oral proficiency by being a proper role model. How can I ask them to speak Spanish, when I am modeling English? Henry Ford once said “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” I think I can — I know I can — and I will do my best to speak Spanish with my kids this year. This is going to be the year that I transform our family language system from OPOL (one parent one language) to mL@H (minority language at home).  Who’s with me?

{photo by  SanShoot}

Last week, I posted a question to our Facebook page asking parents who use the mL@H method to raise their children bilingual to share some of the difficulties they’ve encountered with it. I wanted to write a post around those answers based on some of my own difficulties with the method. But then, one of the parents asked what mL@H stands for and I figured I needed to step back a bit.

Inadvertently, I assumed everyone who’s raising bilingual children knows what acronyms like mL@H, OPOL (one parent/one language) and T&P (time and place) stand for. Maybe it’s because we throw them around here all the time or because I’m so used to them ever since we started this journey nearly four years ago. But the truth is that it’s always good to go back to the basics.

If you’re new here, you might find this information useful. If you’re not, then maybe you can share your experiences using the particular method you use to raise your kids bilingual.

Minority Language at Home (mL@H)

It’s no secret that when I embarked in the journey of raising bilingual kids, I had no idea that the “method” I planned to use had a name. Making sure my children spoke both Spanish and English was not something I decided to do once I became a mom. No. For my husband and I, there was no other option but to raise our kids bilingual because we need to ensure they grow up speaking Spanish. Since Spanish is our first language, it seemed completely logical to us that we’d be speaking Spanish at home and we’d let them learn English in school.

In essence, that’s the definition of the mL@H method. Parents speak the minority language — the one that the community at large doesn’t speak — at home while their kids learn the majority language (in our case English) elsewhere, usually in school. The interesting thing about this method is that although it says that we use the minority language at home, the reality is that we actually use it everywhere whenever we are with our kids. In other words, it’s really has nothing to do with the place where you use the minority language.

Another amusing observation, at least in my case, is that because my kids spent the first three years of their lives strictly at home — as opposed to at a daycare setting — Spanish was actually their majority language until they were introduced to English in preschool.

Read: 3 Methods to Raise Bilingual Children

Either way, the mL@H method has worked extremely well for my family… so far. At 6 years old, Vanessa is bilingual and is doing great in her non-bilingual school. She has no problems going from one language to the other, but it seems to me like she has a preference for Spanish. At 3 years old, Santiago is just starting his bilingual journey and I see him following his sister’s progress.

It’s important to point out that neither you nor your partner have to be native speakers of the minority language you’ll be using to raise your children bilingual. In other words, as long as you are both fluent in the minority language – which in this country is anything other than English – this method will work for you.

Now that I’ve explained what the mL@H method is, soon I’ll be sharing some of the disadvantages or difficulties I’ve encountered with it. Can you share some of yours?

Editor’s note: For a long time now, we’ve been hoping to bring the dad perspective to raising bilingual children. While we were in Miami in September for our Bilingual is Better book launch, we met Ryan Pontier, the author of the guest post below. We were immediately impressed by his commitment to bilingualism — particularly because Spanish is not his native tongue. Ryan, however, hasn’t allowed that to stop him in his journey to raise his baby girl Anna bilingual. ¡Bravo!

I love to take my daughter grocery shopping with me because I find it to be an excellent opportunity to use language. I tell her what aisle we’re on, where we’re headed, and how I plan on using each of the ingredients we are searching for in a future recipe. As I approached the cashier last week, I made sure to carefully place each of the items in my cart on the conveyor belt, briefly discussing each one in an effort to narrate the experience for my 8-month-old daughter Anna. “Éstas son las zanahorias — largas, de color naranja y crujientes. Luego ésta es la espinaca. Es verde, es una hoja y la usamos en la ensalada.” The charade continued this way until I had neatly ordered all of the groceries while simultaneously balancing Anna in the Baby Bjorn. Because I noticed that the two women in line in front of me were engaged in a conversation in Spanish with the cashier — and because I am the Spanish language model with Anna —I greeted her informally in Spanish. She glanced quickly at me and proceeded to respond to me in English. This situation is one that I experience at least twice weekly here in Miami.

I love Miami for its culture and its languages, but I feel that I constantly have to prove to others that I speak Spanish. Although I may not seem it at first glance, I am, in fact, a fluent Spanish speaker. I am a white male who grew up in a rural, monolingual English town, but Spanish became my second language and my passion as soon as I was allowed to take a foreign language in seventh grade. My interest grew until college, when I had the opportunity to study in Madrid, Spain for an entire academic year and live with a host family. After graduating, I moved to the Texas-Mexico border and taught reading and language arts in Spanish at a bilingual elementary school. Two years later, I moved to Miami to be closer to my [now] wife. We have been here together for six years, and we are proud to be raising our daughter here.

My wife and I have decided to use the one-parent/one-language (OPOL) approach to raise our daughter bilingually. This means that I am the Spanish language model. As such, I am responsible for providing her with rich and varied language experiences that invite and allow her to hear and practice using Spanish, my second language. This is a daunting task at times since I am the only Spanish speaker on both sides of my family. Also, because I use English for social and academic purposes, I am admittedly more proficient in English. Luckily, my neighbors are friendly, I have great dictionaries, the internet is a pure blessing, and I know I can simply use an English word or phrase as a placeholder until I learn to say what I need to in Spanish. I am always learning, and it has yet to be too stressful, because I know that I am giving my daughter a gift by raising her bilingually.

So, after glossing over the conventional pleasantries of interacting with the cashier, I enjoy making a comment about the weather, the amount of people in the store, or something about Anna to show that my Spanish abilities go beyond the few stock phrases that most of us learned in Spanish class in middle and high school. This way, I demonstrate the value of Spanish for Anna, provide her another context in which to hear (and eventually use) Spanish, and self-indulgently prove to the world that I am a proud and capable Spanish speaker.

{photograph courtesy of Ryan Pontier}

Ryan W. Pontier is the proud papi of a curious and babblingly loquacious 8-month old bilingual daughter. He grew up in Central New Jersey as an English speaker and excitedly learned Spanish as a second language after years of classroom foreign language study and a life-changing year in Madrid, Spain. A former bilingual elementary school teacher, Ryan is currently a Ph.D. student studying language and literacy learning in multilingual settings.