“My husband and I are expecting our first child in May 2010. My husband’s native language is Spanish, while mine is English. We mix the two languages all the time at home–often in the same sentence. Although I speak Spanish and am fairly fluent, I think I would prefer communicating with my child mostly in English. I am a little worried though that our child would not hear enough Spanish if only my husband speaks in Spanish. Also, if we mix the languages at home, I wonder if that will confuse our child.

I’ve browsed the site and seen references to a few different types of models. Where are the best resources for beginning to educate ourselves as to these models and other relevant information?

Thanks for your help!

Jana”

Dear Jana,

Congratulations on thinking ahead! This is definitely the time to be educating yourselves. Your best resources for it are right here:  books like mine, Raising a Bilingual Child, to let you see a range of experiences, and a website like Spanglishbaby with timely advice and a way to hook yourself up with other parents with similar needs and interests.

With your language background, you have your choice of the major household strategies: You could do “one-parent-one-language.” You could continue to mix languages and both speak in both languages with your child.  Or you could both speak only Spanish at home. How will you decide what’s best for *your* family?

First let’s set aside your worry that your language mixing will confuse your child.  Mixing is probably the most widespread “system” in the world, and there is no evidence that it is confusing for children.  Your child will likely not mix more than you do, or if so, only for a short time.  So, a household with mixed languages is still in the running. On the other hand, you feel you’d rather speak mostly English with the child. So, you need to look for who else could help with the Spanish end of things if you don’t.

I think you need to look further than just you and your husband. In my book (pages 159-160), I present a questionnaire to help you evaluate *all* your language resources.  What other speakers will there be in your child’s life?  grandparents? friends and visitors? household help?  Are any of them monolingual (in Spanish)?  Are there any bilingual schools in your area?  Do you anticipate being able to travel or make long visits in another country? and so on.  Fill out the self-evaluation questionnaire and then see where you stand.

It will help your child choose to speak Spanish, if at least some of the time it’s the only choice.  So, find some monolinguals.  Even if you decide to join your husband in speaking Spanish with the child (my personal preference), you’ll still want to create a broader community for yourselves and your Spanish. Monolingual speakers will help you, too.

You could use the time now, even before the baby is born, to search out as many sources of Spanish as you can.  Sounds like fun to me.

Feel free to contact me if you want to throw around some more alternatives ….

Best wishes,

Barbara

Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph. D. – A bilingualism expert with over twenty years of research experience in the fields of bilingualism, linguistics, and communication disorders, Pearson is the author of the informative and extremely useful book Raising a Bilingual Child. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her pioneering work on bilingual learning by infants and children and on language assessment has been published in scholarly journals and in the book Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children. You can see her answers by going here and follow her work through her blog.

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“My husband and I are raising our sons to be trilingual–I speak to them in Spanish and he speaks to them in German. He will learn English since it is the majority language, and he understands it since my husband and I speak to each other in English. My oldest son, 22 months, has done very well with both languages, and easily moves between Spanish and German. The problem is, when he speaks, he almost always uses the second person singular form, the ‘tu’ form. Rather than saying ‘I want milk’ (‘quiero leche’), he says ‘you want milk’ (‘quieres leche’). My husband says that he makes the exact same error in German. I feel that with more exposure to the language, my son will correct this error on his own. My husband feels that we should tell him the correct way to say the sentence. I have tried my husband’s method, but my son continues to make the same error. Should we address his errors, and if so how?”

Dear Susan,

I think you and your husband are both right.  You’re right that your son will probably get his pronouns straight in a month or two by himself.  If he doesn’t, though, you may want to help him along, as your husband suggests.  But not by correcting him.

If we think about it, what the child has to learn is really pretty complicated.  When we call someone by name, the name doesn’t change. You are Susan whether you’re the speaker or the listener.  But the terms change when it’s “you” and “I.”  You are “I” when you’re the speaker, but you are “you” when your son is the speaker. You call your boy “you”—so he figures he’s “you.” (The other person may be “I.”) Many children go through this stage you describe, although most do it so briefly we don’t notice it.  They overhear others switching “you” and “I,” and get the idea that they need to do it, too. Others, like my grandson (!), stay in that stage almost a year.  My grandson E would say things like “Mommy, change your diaper!” (meaning his diaper, since his mother doesn’t wear them : ).  When he wanted someone not to play with his fire engine, he said “I can’t touch it.  I can’t touch it” in a distressed tone of voice.  The other kids couldn’t figure out that he meant “you” meaning “them,” so it was hard for them to cooperate with him.

I confess I was worried because for some children, this failure to change the point of view in their sentences may be associated with autism. When my grandson was 3, he was speaking a lot and had a tremendous memory, but was still not reversing his pronouns.  So, I’d say, “Oh look, E says, Please Grandma, will you push me in the swing. Can you say that?”  Or, “E says, Grandma, I want you to hug me.  Now you say it.”  (And of course, then I got to hug him.)  For a while, he just repeated my sentences like a parrot, but after a few months, he would hesitate like he noticed something was different, but didn’t know what. I didn’t say, “No, you’re wrong.  Do it like this.”  I just gave him the correct model and tried to make sure he was attending to it.

Eventually, E changed.  We don’t know when. We just noticed that he was reversing the “you” and “I” like everyone else.  Of course, we have no way of knowing whether my little tricks worked or whether he just finally grew out of it. In any event, since we made it like a game, no harm was done.

After a few months, if your son hasn’t changed or if you are worried, you should consult a speech-language therapist.  This isn’t an issue of bilingualism, but it would be good to find an SLT who is familiar with bi- or trilinguals, so he or she doesn’t automatically say the problem comes from hearing too many languages—as often happens.

It is so interesting that your son does this in two languages, and it makes perfect sense.  If I had spoken with you before I wrote my book, I would have asked you if I could put your example in it.  Let me know how it goes.

Best wishes,

Barbara Zurer Pearson

Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph. D. - A bilingualism expert with over twenty years of research experience in the fields of bilingualism, linguistics, and communication disorders, Pearson is the author of the informative and extremely useful book Raising a Bilingual Child. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her pioneering work on bilingual learning by infants and children and on language assessment has been published in scholarly journals and in the book Language and Literacy in Bilingual Children. As Project Manager, she contributed to the creation of the innovative DELV tests, culture-fair assessments of language development published by The Psychological Corporation. You can see her answers by going here.

As always, feel free to leave your thoughts or advice about this in the comments below.

We invite you to visit our new sister site, SpanglishBabyFinds, where we review the coolest products made with Latino and/or bilingual kids in mind.

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During the past weeks we’ve been dedicating some time to the topic of reading to bilingual kids.  Last week we launched our new monthly series ReadMe where we’ll showcase a bilingual/Spanish children’s book and author.  We also posted an article sent to us by Deanna Lyles (www.BilingualReaders.com) titled “Raising Bilingual Readers:  The Art of Reading to Children in a Bilingual Home.” We highly recommend reading to your children as a language motivator and we’ll continue to explore this topic with you.

Today’s Ask an Expert question was sent by Silvia from Mamá Latina Tips.  She digs deeper in to the topic of reading by exploring when is the right time to teach a child to read in a second language.

To answer this question we’ve invited one of the excellent experts in our panel, Barbara Pearson, Ph. D., respected researcher and author of the informative and extremely useful book Raising a Bilingual Child.

This is the book that got Roxana and me started and we highly recommend to you, as we stated in this post: Top 10 Books For Parents Raising Bilingual Children.

When Should My Child Learn to Read in Spanish?

“My son is five years old.  He is reading in English and making a lot of effort to read in Spanish (which I think is easier, I tell him this every day! I think he is getting it though).  He is also writing in English and he will start kindergarten in the Fall. So my question for the expert is: At what age or school grade should I start working at home with him to improve his writing and reading skills in Spanish?”

Dear Silvia,

You have discovered on your own what our study of 1000 children in Miami revealed. It is easier to learn to read in Spanish than English.In our study, children who learned to read in Spanish and English at the same time read quicker and better than those taught in English only. I have heard people insisting that you should not start a child reading in two languages at the same time, but we found that it worked very well.

You are right that it is very important for your son to go beyond speaking in Spanish. Just because people can speak, doesn’t mean they can write in it.His knowledge of the language will be so much deeper, if he can read it and write it, too.

I would just caution you to make sure your Spanish sessions are enjoyable for the boy and that he doesn’t see them as a chore.You want him to have only positive feelings about your language. Make sure he feels he’s getting special attention from you—and he doesn’t feel he’s missing out on something else to do Spanish.

We invite you to click on the Ask an Expert tab in the navigation menu to meet the panel, to learn more about their area of expertise and to send us your question.

Have any tips to share on how and when to teach your child to read in a second language? We´d love to read them!