It’s spring, which means it’s IEP season again. Time to get together with a team made up of my boys’ teachers, special education teacher, speech therapist, occupational therapist, the school psychologist and a school administrator or two and reevaluate the school year. We will talk about how much progress my sons have made in reaching the goals we set for them last year and decide on new ones for next year.

This year, only half an hour has been blocked off for each meeting, but when the boys transitioned into a regular-education setting in kindergarten, we were there for almost four hours. I’ve left some IEP meetings feeling pretty good about things; once, I had to pull the car over on the way home afterwards because I was crying too hard to see the road.

Either way, these meetings are intense. I’ve realized that I find them draining because really, the meetings are mostly spent discussing what are euphemistically called your child’s “areas of need.” This is logical: the areas in which your child needs support need to be broken down in detail in order for him or her to continue to receive the most appropriate services. There’s also a section called “present levels of performance,” in which the child’s strengths are listed.

But even when there’s so much good, even when you feel encouraged by how much progress your child has made, talking about your child’s needs in such detail can be exhausting. Especially when you add it to everything else that’s already going on — behavioral issues, emails to teachers, calls to see if the child psychiatrist has had any cancellations because you urgently need to see him.

Last week, I participated in a SpanglishBaby LIVE hangout on bilingualism and children with special needs. Paula Bendfeldt-Diaz, a fellow mother of a special-needs child, said something that particularly resonated with me because I’ve often thought the same thing: There are many reasons that I think learning Spanish is great for my children, but given the many challenges they face, one especially cool thing about it is that it gives them something at which they excel.

A few weeks ago, I picked the boys up at their Saturday Spanish school and their teacher wanted to speak to me. She was having a hard time keeping them busy, she explained. They finished their work quickly and she couldn’t get to them while she was busy helping other children. She wanted to move them up a grade. She had already spoken to the second-grade teacher and it was a done deal, if I agreed to it.

Read more: How to Raise Bilingual Kids with Special Needs

As I expected, my change-averse boys balked at the very idea at first. I tried to play it up, and even after I promised that they could go back if they didn’t like it after they’d tried it, they were skeptical. After the first class, though, they changed their tune.  They couldn’t get over the fact that in their regular school they were in first grade, but at Spanish school they were now in second grade. They loved their teacher and gleefully showed me the plastic figurines they’d used to learn about animals. And I was tickled when they bragged that they’d learned all of the pronombres personales, singular and plural, and proceeded to recite them to me. I never heard another word about wanting to go back to their old class.

As they get older, some things get tougher at school. Other children are increasingly aware of their quirks and when I visit the school they’re not shy about asking me about them. For now, they’re more curious than anything, but I worry about teasing or possible bullying to come. But also for now, Spanish school is their safe place, a place where there’s no pressure, no IEPs. And I love that, and am very grateful.

{Photo courtesy of Kim Lane}

Watch our SpanglishBaby LIVE Google+ Hangout on Bilingualism & Children with Special Needs:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atqgFndE53A

We’re getting everything ready for our third SpanglishBaby LIVE Google+ Hangout and we’d love for you to join us tomorrow. This time around we’re discussing bilingualism and children with special needs. For those of you who’ve never joined a Google+ Hangout, you should know that it’s just like hanging out with a bunch of friends, except that you’re not all in the same room.

In case you missed them, in our first Hangout we discussed dual language immersion programs and in our second one we talked about the very popular concern most parents raising bilingual children have at one point of their journey: the rebellion stage — when your kids refuse to speak to you in Spanish. Ana and I are loving how these are turning out and we’re looking forward to many more episodes to come!

WHAT: In our third Hangout we’ll be discussing whether or not it’s possible to raise bilingual children with special needs and we hope to dispel a few myths along the way.

WHEN: Tuesday, March. 12 at 1 p.m. EST.

WHO: Joining Ana and I will be Gabriela Simon-Cereijido, a bilingual speech-language pathologist at California State Universtiy, Los Angeles — and three moms of children with special needs:

Kim Lane, our regularly month contributor, who is the mother of 7-year-old twin boys, both of whom have special needs and are in full-time special education programs.

Eliana Tardio a mother of two children with Down syndrome who promotes bilingualism as a tool for stimulating learning and development in kids with special needs.

Paula Bendfeldt-Diaz whose daughter speaks in both English and Spanish and being diagnosed with autism has not stopped her from communicating in both languages. Paula is the founder of www.GrowingUpBilingual.com.

There are many ways for you to be part of this Google Hangout online.

1. First of all, RSVP on the event page.

2. Add the SpanglishBaby Google+ Page to your Circles.

3. On Tuesday, March 12, starting at 1 p.m. EST, the SpanglishBaby Live Hangout will go on air and you’ll be able to watch it on the event page and on our YouTube channel.

4. The hashtag for all our SpanglishBaby Live Hangouts is #BilingualKids and you can use it on Google+, Twitter or Instagram and we’ll find you!

5. Once the Hangout is over, a recording of it will be made available for all to view, share and/or embed on the SpanglishBaby YouTube channel.

If you’d like to have your question related to raising bilingual and/or bicultural kids answered by ourselves or one of our experts, please fill out this form. If you’re interested in participating in one of our SpanglishBaby Live Google+ Hangouts, you’ll be able to let us know in the form too.

If you want to learn more about Google+ Hangouts On Air, check out this page. Feel free to leave us any questions or suggestions in the comments area below, on the event page or our Google+ page and Community!

UPDATE

Below is the full Hangout. We learned a lot!

There’s so much floating around the internet about New Year’s Resolutions this time of year! I don’t tend to make resolutions, but I do love setting a few goals for myself and getting myself organized. As for my boys’ bilingualism, we’ve been chugging along the status quo has been working for us, but I thought I’d take stock of things this January and maybe formally set a few goals for myself in this area, too.

So here you have it, my list of resolutions for the year:

1. Number one is obvious:  keep talking to my boys in Spanish, all the time. They are 7 now, and I still speak to them — and they answer me — in Spanish.
2. Rule number one notwithstanding, I need to limit how much I speak to them in English. I do this in two specific kinds of situations. One, I’ll occasionally speak to them in English when we are around other English speakers in order to be polite, and I do so perhaps more than I should. This year I will try to be more mindful of this, because I’m aware of the fact that it can be a slippery slope and it isn’t always necessary. The second reason I sometimes speak to them in English is much more non-negotiable. My boys, like many autistic children, are often better prepared to deal with certain situations if they can use a script, or a stock question or answer. In the past year, I’ve often found it necessary to provide them with different scripts. I don’t want to leave any room for ambiguity by providing the answer in Spanish and letting them interpret it into English, I want to give them the exact words they should use. We often tweak our scripts together and they suggest good alternatives, but they’re always in English.
3. Keep up with Spanish school on Saturdays. This is an easy one, for now. They’re in their second year there, and still love it. They even think it’s special they have Spanish school and their other classmates don’t.
4. Keep speaking Spanish to the dog. A quirky Boston Terrier puppy is the newest addition to our family, and I speak to her in Spanish. Since I do, I’ve noticed the boys do, too…it’s funny hearing them use the same diminutives, commands and regañadas with her that I do. I don’t know that I’d recommend going to the extreme of getting a dog to motivate your children to speak a second language, but it’s a nice side benefit.
5. Keep my technology close. I’m hoping to find a few good, age-appropriate TV shows in Spanish, though the boys are much more into video games this year. The iPhone is still one of my closest allies. I have a great bilingual dictionary on it and look up vocabulary for my boys when they ask me how to say something in Spanish, several times a day. Their interests are becoming so specific that I often can’t come up with the words they are looking for — piranha shoal, pyroclastic flow — on my own.
6. Take advantage of more cultural events in our area. We’ll see how I do with this one — again, autism makes it kind of tricky. Last year I came home with a flier for a Hispanic Heritage Month festival and excitedly showed it to the boys. Music! Singing! Traditional foods and games! After I finished telling them about it, Secondo said, simply, “No quiero ir. Habrá mucha gente y demasiado ruido.” And when I think back to the days of speech delays and unexplained tantrums and remember feeling like I would give anything if only they could tell me what was wrong in any language, well, I’m just so blown away and happy that he can express himself so clearly that I respect his wishes. Sometimes they can be persuaded if I prepare them in advance (our recent ice skating outing, for example, was a huge hit), but I tend not to push the issue.
7. Find more good books in Spanish. We had such a wealth of wonderful picture books in Spanish when they were going through that stage, but they’re moving on to chapter books now, and though we have many translations of English classics, I’d love to find more books written in Spanish for older children. And although they’re really into nonfiction, I feel like none of the books we have in Spanish can compete with the many beautiful National Geographic books of facts and atlases we own.
8. Give myself some credit. We all should. I know it’s easy to think that I’m not doing enough, that there’s always something else I could do to ensure my boys bilingualism, that I know people who are doing more. But I’m doing what I can, and so far, so good.

{photo by Esparta}

Almost a month has passed since el quince de septiembre, Costa Rican Independence day. That weekend I set up a meeting point with a good friend, also a tica, gathered up my sons and our Metro cards and we trekked up to the Costa Rican Embassy in Washington, D.C. to check out the festivities, the third year in a row we’ve done so.

I can always bribe my children with a ride on the bus or the Metro, because there are few things they love as much as taking the Metro somewhere. So they were excited to go this year…but not as excited to stay. The embassy isn’t really big enough to accommodate the crowd that gathers every year. There were tons of people and no room to walk around. The music was loud. The line for the food was unbelievably long. For my two autistic boys, it was simply too much. Secondo spent most of the time we were in line humming to himself loudly in order to block out the noise. Primo dealt with it by occasionally sprawling out on the ground and staying there — and I let him.  We got our food, and I got my much-needed Imperial beer. We stayed long enough to sing the himno nacional and then headed back home.

I have many memories of my parents going to great lengths to make U.S. culture, history and politics come alive for my brother and me when we lived in Costa Rica back in the eighties. We often spent the Fourth of July at the U.S. Embassy, where we sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” ate hot dogs and ran sack races. We all got to break the No-TV-During-Dinner rule and watch CNN if a major story was breaking. My father — a staunch Democrat — dragged us out of school and took us to the embassy so that we could hear both George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle speak on official visits, because there was no way we were going to pass up the opportunity to hear the President and Vice President speak.

I’ve always dreamed about doing similar things with my boys. We are lucky to live in an area with such a wealth of cultures, where embassies hold all kinds of events and it seems like a festival is going on every weekend. And while I knew that doing these things would not be feasible at first, with two babies and a bulky double stroller, I looked forward to the day when we could do them.

Once the double stroller and diapers were history, we started going places…with mixed results. An afternoon at the Museum of Natural History ended with an epic meltdown within minutes of our arrival, so we played outside instead. And now the meltdowns are fewer because Primo and Secondo are increasingly able to express themselves more articulately. I recently showed Secondo a flyer advertising a Hispanic Heritage Month event. Music! Dancing! Typical foods! it proclaimed. Secondo looked at it for a moment. “No quiero ir,” he told me.  “There will be too many people and it will be too noisy.” I was shocked — for years I’ve struggled to guess what he’s thinking and what he wants, and this time his wishes were crystal clear. I’ve longed for communication like this more than just about anything. Needless to say, I respected his wishes. We bagged the Hispanic Heritage Month Festival.

I hope as they get older they will find these events more enjoyable. They may or may not. As for the embassy next year, although there was something I loved about singing the himno nacional together, I’ve decided we won’t go if they don’t want to. But I will dig out my old copy of Lo que se canta en Costa Rica and maybe we can learn the himno at home.

{photo by  thombo2}

“Secondo will maintain a topic of conversation with a peer for 3 conversational turns in 4/5 observed opportunities over a two-month period.” 

The IEPs are tucked away in a drawer at home. We are far away at my mother’s in Costa Rica, so I’m not sure that’s how the text reads exactly, but that’s the general idea. The many IEP goals are formal, measurable, and easy to forget unless I dig the papers out and read them once in a while.

I’ve long maintained that autism, special education, IEPs and all, anything my two boys can do in English, they can do in Spanish. And as I mentioned, I don’t exactly keep their formal speech goals in mind every minute of every day — mostly, we just plod along as best we can. The conversational turn-taking goal, though, I always remember. It comes so naturally even to the shyest of us, even if the conversation is purely superficial. Hey, what’s up? Not much. You?

Although Primo and Secondo have made so much progress, this skill has been slow to develop. Often, by the time they’ve put a thought together, their peers have lost interest and moved on. (Their teachers give them “wait time.”) And when it comes to the ultimate exercise in conversational turn-taking, talking on the phone, well, forget it. We’ve tried to use Skype to connect with far-away family, and it always involves a fair amount of wrangling a boy who is trying his darndest to get as far from the computer as possible. They don’t even like talking to ME on the phone when I travel, I tell my relatives by way of explanation.

I had not, however, counted on my brother’s influence this year.

We spent a week with my brother and sister-in-law when we arrived. The boys and their tíos horsed around, went swimming, and played fútbol in the backyard. Tía provided them with an inexhaustible supply of snacks. In the evenings, they ate ice cream together and watched baseball on TV. Our days with the tíos left the boys — and the tíos — happy and exhausted.

When it was time to leave for my mother’s, my brother took them aside and gave them a slip of paper. It was his phone number, he explained, and he expected them to use it to call him. He would miss them and would want to know how they were, and if they called, they could tell him about all of the fun things they were doing. Good luck with that, was my reaction, though I don’t know if I said it out loud or kept it to myself.

Still, on our first day here I suggested they might want to call their tío. Primo still wants nothing to do with the phone. Secondo was willing to try — I think he was mainly intrigued by the novelty factor of actually dialing the phone number. The conversation was tentative, but it was a conversation. By the second day, he had the number memorized. By the third day, he was asking my brother if he could talk to his tía, too.

Now, a couple of weeks into it, Secondo calls the minute my brother gets home from work, and I get such joy from listening to his side of the conversations. There are descriptions of his day, of the pool, or what he had for lunch. I listen to him giggle as my sister-in-law tries to bribe him if he’ll eat his fruits and vegetables. On and on they talk, until Secondo is done, and sometimes until my brother cuts him off because he just won’t stop talking. The bonus is that all of it is in Spanish. Their tía is the closest member of our immediate family that doesn’t speak English, a fact I bring up when I explain to Primo and Secondo how important it is for them to speak Spanish. It occurred to me the other day that I don’t know if the boys even realize that their tío does, in fact, speak English.

We rely so much on high-tech tools for communicating with our families, and to make speaking other languages more fun or novel for our kids. And there’s no question that the iPad games and Skype are useful. But when I get home in a couple of weeks, I’m typing up a list. At the top will be the number and password for my international phone card. There will be a list of phone numbers — their Costa Rican relatives, their relatives in the Midwest, numbers for anyone else I can think of. I’ll post it next to the phone, and tell the boys they can use them whenever they want. And I hope to get to listen to many more one-sided conversations, in both English and Spanish, in the fall.

{Photo via eyeliam}

We all have such clear ideas about how we’ll raise our children, even before they’re born. Breast vs. bottle. Co-sleeping vs. crying it out. Homemade baby food. Screen time. And though in some areas I was able to stick to my guns, I was humbled by the fact that many things really didn’t work out the way I’d planned at all.

The same was true when it came to raising my children with two languages. I knew we’d probably use the one-parent, one-language method at home. And though I didn’t go so far as to research it when my boys were born, we live in a major metropolitan area. I knew there were Spanish immersion schools around, and I just figured I’d look into them when the time came.

Then came the early autism diagnoses for both of my boys, who fortunately thrived in a wonderful, full-time special education preschool—Primo was there for two years, Secondo for three. I trusted the teachers and staff there completely, and the idea of leaving the school and venturing into an LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) setting in a regular public school absolutely terrified me. When the time came to think about transitioning to kindergarten a year ago, it was a Very Big Deal.

And when that time came, one year ago, I thought again about looking into our local Spanish immersion schools, but it turned out our (monolingual) home school had an excellent reputation when it came to special education. And my priorities were completely shaken up, and I knew that there was absolutely no contest. I want my children to be bilingual, to be sure. But good special education services are crucial. Those services have made a world of difference in their lives, have helped them make such unbelievable progress early on, when it is so important.

I didn’t even look into the Spanish immersion schools.

This week, my boys will be done with kindergarten. Despite some significant challenges early on and a few adjustments, they have both done beautifully. At their last IEP (Individualized Education Program) meeting a couple of months ago, special education services for both of them were scaled back significantlly, and it was a move we all agreed with. I could not be happier with how well they’ve done in school, and though they face plenty of social challenges, they are in a good place, with good people and great support.

Where does this leave them when it comes to their Spanish? I am happy to say that even after a year in an all-English school (plus aftercare), they still easily default to speaking to me in Spanish. The day may come when they will rebel, but it hasn’t happened yet. I can tell that the gaps in their vocabulary in Spanish — about the solar system, the life cycle of a plant — are becoming more pronounced, due to all the English they get at school, but they constantly ask me how to say things in Spanish and we either look things up in the dictionary or find a book on the subject in Spanish. They go to a community Spanish school on Saturdays, and I teared up at the acto de clausura as they danced onstage to El condor pasa, a little lost in the choreography but willing to be led by the more tuned-in little girls in their class.

We received a survey from the school to fill out and return the other day. Primo, who leaves nothing unread, found it on the table. “What language is spoken in the home?” he read. Then he turned to me. Mama, ¡en casa hablamos inglés Y español! he proclaimed gleefully.

Proudly, I would say.

{Photo via: US Department of Education}

{Photo by: respre}

My son Secondo was diagnosed with autism in late 2008. There were unfamiliar doctors bearing clipboards, lots of tears and tissues, and I remember riding home from the hospital in a haze, feeling fragile and powerless to stop the bottom from falling out of my world. His diagnosis changed everything.

My son Primo was diagnosed with autism late last year. The appointment was more of a formality with a doctor we know and like, and we all shrugged our shoulders as we came to the conclusion that Primo was already receiving exactly the services he needed. On the way home, I was mostly fixated on the idea of stopping for banh mi at my favorite Vietnamese place—I was hungry. His diagnosis didn’t really change anything at all.

One diagnosis, two very different little boys. One loves airplanes, pretends he is an airplane, turns every inanimate object he comes across into an airplane. One is never far from his magnetic drawing board so that he can quiz me on equivalent fractions, and asks me about prime numbers immediately upon waking, bleary eyed, first thing in the morning.

Sometimes it’s hard to separate the autism from what is simply typical. When I talk about something like Secondo and the airplanes, invariably someone will say, “Oh, my kid does that all the time.” And sometimes, hearing that is a relief. It’s a little reality check, and it reminds me that it’s not always all about the autism. Other times that comment annoys me, because I just know it’s not the same—I feel like mostly, I can tell when my boys are displaying what is just average behavior for a 5-year-old and when autism is rearing its head. And sometimes I wonder and just feel like my grasp on things is tenuous at best, because both of my boys have autism and how would I even know what is typical and what isn’t?

Rigidity is one of the hallmarks of autism, and we’ve dealt with that in many forms. (I know, what parent hasn’t?) Primo has a particularly hard time with this. If he remembers at bedtime that he didn’t have a morning snack, he falls apart. If his teacher is supposed to arrive for a home visit at 8:15 and is two minutes late, it drives him to tears (and we work on learning the meaning of the word “approximately”). If I say we turn the computer off at five, we turn it off at five, on the dot.

I was not prepared to see this inflexibility affect his bilingualism, but lately, it has. We use the One-Parent, One-Language method at home, and while I’ve talked to him about the fact that he speaks Spanish with me and English with his father, it’s simply been a note of explanation. I’ve never laid down the law or refused to speak or read to him in English. But he is increasingly fascinated by rules. Yo hablo en español contigo y en inglés con Daddy. He’s taken to repeating our informal rule over and over. It comforts him, my little boy who likes it when there is order in the world.

But then I decide to say something like, “Hey, buddy, time to go inside,” when he is riding his scooter with the little boy who lives across the street—and he is distraught. Mama, ¿por qué hablaste en inglés? There is wailing, crying, and suddenly I have a full-fledged tantrum on my hands. And I simply provide him with another note of explanation. Sometimes we speak English to be polite, because we want our friends to be able to understand what we’re saying.

We go to Costa Rica, and his Spanish skills soar. But when we call his father back home, Primo refuses to talk to him. En Costa Rica, solo hablo español, no hablo inglés. He is so committed to this rule that indeed, he does not talk to his father for the entire month. I worry for a while that when we get back he will refuse to speak to me in Spanish on the grounds that he only speaks English in the United States, and am relieved when that doesn’t happen.

Autism is very much a part of my life. Some aspects of it can be excruciatingly hard to deal with. In many ways, it has changed my life—for the better. Mostly, it is simply a part of who my boys are and it’s impossible for me to imagine a life without it. One of my favorite quotes is by Dr. Hans Asperger, who said, “It seems that for success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential.” It’s not essential for learning a second language, I’m sure. But right now, Primo’s autism seems to be offering him a slight advantage. And if that’s the case, hey, I’ll take it.

Photo by rahego

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 have to find a way to teach our children literacy skills in Spanish. And I made a comment, I don’t remember exactly how I put it, but it was something like, “Well, of course I want my kids to be able to read and write in Spanish, but if they don’t learn to do it all that well, I’ll be okay with that.”

“Not me,” my friend replied. “I’m going to make sure my daughter learns well enough that she can go to college in Latin America if she wants to.” Her response was so immediate and unequivocal that it took me by surprise.

That conversation took place a while ago, but it’s stuck with me. I remember going home afterward and doing a lot of soul searching. I was so impressed by my friend’s conviction—and I have no doubt she will succeed either—but it made me ask myself, shouldn’t my convictions be that firm, too? After all, I’m not in this halfheartedly, and I sure am trying my darnest to teach my boys Spanish. Why did I make such a wishy-washy comment? What are my goals, exactly, and how do we reach them?

Part of it, I realized, was that I remember very clearly what it was like learning Spanish as a child in the U.S. Or rather, I remember when I started to rebel against it. My friends didn’t speak it, it made me stand out, I had an accent and often couldn’t come up with the words I needed. Sometimes I wonder how well I would speak Spanish if my parents hadn’t packed up and moved us to Costa Rica when I was eight, and I wonder what my boys’ rebellion will look like when they reach that age. Right now, they’re four and I’m doing everything I can to make Spanish fun and enjoyable, but I also wonder how much I’m prepared to force the issue when they’re older.

Part of it is that I can be disorganized and I’m not much of a planner. Often, I’m just fine with winging it or going with the flow. I don’t think it had even occurred to me to set any goals.

And part of it is more complicated than that. Secondo has autism, and I’m constantly trying to strike a difficult balance because, as his mother, my job is to believe that he can do anything and help him along the way. And I do. But autism is a part of our reality. I refuse to believe that it limits him, but it’s been a game-changer, for sure. I need to be optimistic, but I need to be realistic, though being realistic cannot be synonymous with having lowered expectations. And all of it can mess with my mind sometimes.

What it boils down to for me is that I can’t think too far ahead. As cliché as it sounds, I need to take it one day at a time. When it comes to Secondo, I have way too little information I can use to make decisions about things that lie too far in the future. Right now I’m only thinking as far as meetings at school next week to talk about what his situation will be in September.

Which, in a way, is very liberating. At first, whenever I worried too much about the future, it paralyzed me completely (which it can still do, if I let myself dwell on things). But somehow, my perspective changed along the way. I’ve discovered I quite like being grounded in the present—for one thing, I can enjoy the present so much more.

I read about all kinds of wonderful Spanish immersion schools (often on this site), enrolling my children in such a program would have been a no-brainer before. In fact, I had my heart set on it, and I was prepared to convince or confront my husband about it if I needed to. Now I have no idea if that will be an option. That thought truly saddened me not too long ago, but now, it’s easy to shrug my shoulders about the whole thing. The only thing that matters is that Secondo is in the right school for him. Whether or not it’s an immersion program is not even important.

My new philosophy does not, however, mean that I will stop giving it all I’ve got when it comes to teaching him Spanish, but I will focus on today. Today, Secondo and I read stories in Spanish. Today, he played Juguemos en el bosque with his Abuelita, requested macarrones con queso for dinner and said ¡NO QUIERO! ¡NO QUIERO! ¡NO QUIERO! when I tried to make him take a bath. Today, Secondo sounded out a three-letter word—in English. And I really do believe he will be sounding out words in Spanish, too. It won’t be today, though—but maybe tomorrow.