Dear Mija,

When your daddy and I got married we wrote our own vows. Vows are kind of like promises that are deeply personal, but you say in front of family and friends at a wedding. On that day in my white dress and lace veil, holding your dad’s hand, I told him:

I promise to respect your heritage and your culture and one day teach our children about the beauty found in our differences.

We made lots of promises that day and we’re learning what it means to live those out. But by far this is the promise that I sometimes struggle with. And now that you’re coming in a few months I often wonder how I will teach you about your two cultures and the beauty found in our differences.

I know that I will teach you how to make pancakes and ponche. And we will probably have wheat bread and tortillas on the table.

You will learn how to say con permiso before entering someone’s house and muchas gracias before leaving the table. I will probably always call you mija and ask you “¿que te pasó?” when your eyes fill up with tears because some words just sound better in Spanish.

I will teach you about playing with bubbles, baking chocolate chip cookies and reading bedtime stories. Your daddy will probably let you ride on the back of his motorcycle and show you how to play with fireworks.  I told him he has to at least wait until your 5, but kids in Guatemala get introduced to fireworks before they can walk.

I will teach you how to do puzzles and will probably make flashcards and fun games and sticker charts for you. Your daddy already imagines taking you to soccer games. He’s convinced you will wear a Messi jersey and always root for Barca, just like him.

I will do my best to teach you about George Washington and Justo Rufino Barrios. We will celebrate July 4^th and el 15 de Septiembre. You will learn about history from U.S. published textbooks, but also from the people; from Mayan men and women who lived through a horrible civil war that has not made it into many of the textbooks just yet.

I will show you how to dig for sand crabs at the beach and run barefoot through the sprinklers in the grass because those were some of my favorite memories when I was in a little girl in California. Your daddy tells me that he’s going to take you to work with him. He’ll teach you what a hammer is and what size clavos you have to use. And how you can mix cement without a fancy machine. He’ll show you how to work hard and sweat because that’s what his Dad showed him.

Our house will be filled with “te amo” and “please” and “¿por qué? Even though your daddy and I are going to try really hard to be consistent, many of our sentences come out in Spanglish. “Mi amor, hand me the pan porfa.” You will know when we’re angry because we usually argue in English, but Spanish is still the language of love.

I’m pretty sure your grandma will teach you how to make apple pie and your abuelita will teach you how to make tamalitos. I don’t know how to make either, but I can teach you how to make the best banana muffins with chocolate chips, of course. Your grandma will take you shopping at Nordstrom and probably buy you the cutest little outfit when we go to visit. Your abuelita will most likely make you a huipil and corte with beautiful hand-woven colors because that’s what Mayan Guatemalan girls wear.

Mija, our hope is that you will feel at home in two worlds and eventually with two languages. We live in a nice house in Guatemala with a computer, washing machine and enough igagdets for a small country. Once in a while we may go to fancy restaurants with cloth napkins and drinks that have little umbrellas resting on the glass. And we may visit beautiful hotels with big swimming pools and stunning views. Those are fun parts of life and we will enjoy them as a family. But we will also spend time with friends who have a dirt floor and a house made of dried corn stalks. We will sit on plastic bancos around a wooden table and probably eat caldo in the heat of the day. We will drink Pepsi and use the pila to wash our dishes when we’re done. We will do both because this is where we come from and who we are. And we believe there is beauty in both.

And you, my daughter will be both as well. Not either or. You will not be half-estadounidense and half-Guatemalan. And I don’t believe you will feel like a gringa living in Guatemala. No, you’ll be one-hundred percent, YOU.

As you grow and ask questions and develop your own identity, my hope is that you too will come to see the beauty in our differences.

And mija, may you come to know that you are a reflection of them both.

I can’t wait to meet you.

Love,

Momma

(Mija is a Spanish word that literally means “my daughter.” It’s actually written “mi hija.” But when said quickly together it sounds like “mija” and it is said with endearment, kind of like sweetie or sweetheart in English. Female teachers often use it with little girl students. Mijo being the equivalent for little boys.It happens to be one of my favorite Spanish words.)

{Photo by Dave Christenson}

Michelle is a born and raised California girl who now calls Guatemala home. She and her Guatemalan husband are expecting their first daughter in June. She writes about cross-culturally living, discovering bicultural identity and issues of social justice at www.simplycomplicated.me

Mami, hoy es January?

That’s my 5-year-old asking from the back seat.

I’m thrilled — finally the kids are getting the hang of time — the difference between seconds, minutes, days and months. But his question is also a harsh reminder.

He is learning most of these new concepts in school.

In school, they teach purely in English.

And now the corollary — my husband and I, their only Spanish teachers, will never be able to keep up.

We had recently given ourselves some real pats on the back. Congrats to us! Our twins are 5 and are still speaking Spanish! We “made it.” And yet, the more time goes by, the more I realize the quest to raise bilingual kids never, ever (ever, ever, you get the point) ends.

They grow, they learn — and they need to do both in two languages. Somehow, somewhere, between trying to raise well-mannered, confident, curious beings, between instilling a work ethic, love of books and a sense of spirituality and empathy — we’re talking basics here people, not Tiger Mom stuff — we still have to find time to ensure that their Spanish progresses.

I didn’t actually expect to reach this point now. About a month ago, I had decided that since the kids’ language skills were on solid footing, I’d dedicate 2013 to go a step further to teach them more about their Hispanic heritage. Over Christmas, I wrote up a whole plan, a timeline, links to all the books and projects we were going to tackle so that they could learn more  about la madre patria, and Latin America and the Caribbean in general.  But then came enero, and the questions from the back seat.

I am tired.

Last year, I wrote a post on six things I wish I’d known before I started raising bilingual kids.

I’ll add another: I wish I’d known this process was life long.

I wouldn’t have changed course, but I would have adjusted my expectations.

{Photo by popofatticus}

“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.

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