Bilingual Children Better at Math, Reading — In case you needed more proof that bilingual is better, a new study has found that bilingual kids “develop better working memory that holds and processes large chunks of information faster than monolinguals.”

“I Want to Be Bilingual” Letter from a Newborn Baby from Bilingual Monkeys — I love this letter written from the point of view of a baby talking to his parents. If your baby could talk, this is what she would tell you about wanting to grow up bilingual. Genius!

My Mother’s Tongue from Journal of a bilingual family — What happens when parents decide not to pass their mother tongue to their children? It happens all the time and, in this country, is the reason why heritage languages are lost by the third generation. A bilingual mom raising bilingual kids explores this topic in honor of Mother Tongue Day.

Bilinguals Have Faster, More Adaptive Brains When They Get Older, Study Finds from ABC News — More proof that the benefits of being bilingual last a lifetime. You can also read Ana’s take on this study on her Babble post.

Babies Seem to Pick Up Language in Utero from The New York Times — We knew babies learn to recognize their mother’s voice while in the womb. This study says they also learn to recognize and learn bits of their native language before they’re even born.

Humor in Bilingual Couples by Prof. François Grosjean from Psychology Today — If English is your second language, did you have a hard time finding humor in your partner’s jokes in English? I know some couples who have hilarious stories to tell related to humor when two languages are involved.

My Best Tips for Raising Bilingual Kids from Bilingual Monkeys — 30 tips you will absolutely love! I particularly like the one related to reading and writing.

{Image credit: courosa}

They say that once you learn to ride a bicycle, you never forget – but is it true? Do we actually retain all skills and knowledge once learned? The truth is a skill usually must be consistently practiced or it can be lost, at least partially. This is especially evident in school children who go on summer break. At the start of each school year, precious weeks are wasted in the classroom as teachers try to get the children back to where they left off the last school year.

Just How Much Do Students Lose Over The Summer?

Here are some statistics we learned from a new study put out by Rand Education:

• When students return to school after summer break, they perform, on average, one month behind where they left off in the spring.

• While all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer, low-income students lose more ground in reading, while their higher-income peers may even gain.

• Not all students experience ‘average’ losses. Summer learning loss disproportionately affects low-income students due to:

- Insufficient access to educational resources.
- Being part of school districts that are under-funded and/or under-staffed.
- Lack of transportation to programs.
- Inadequate parental support and involvement.

How Do Race and Ethnicity Play a Part?

“Due to the inequitable proportion of low-income minority students, similarly sized achievement gaps are found between white and black children in the United States, white and Hispanic children, and native speakers and English language learners.” – Rand Education.

Why does this happen and how can it be prevented?

Unless your brain is somehow clued in that the information you’re presenting to it is important, either by the emotion you’re feeling or through repetition, then it is designed to forget it. Forgetting what you don’t use is the brain’s way of working efficiently – much like a computer that deletes unused and temporary files.

So how can you make sure that what your children are learning is “downloaded” to the hard drive?

Repetition and consistency. According to the Rand Education study, “Summer learning programs can prevent the loss of knowledge and skills.”

Does it Matter Which Summer Program My Child Attends?

• Not just any summer program will do. Quality of the program and regular attendance are important.

• Also important:

- individualized instruction
- parental involvement
- small class sizes

Where Does Bilingual Education Play Into This?

While the Rand Education study did not look into whether there is an information retention difference between bilingual and monolingual children, other research exists to suggest that your bilingual/trilingual/multilingual child will fare better over the summer months.

A study done by Psychologist Ellen Bialystok found that bilinguals are more resistant to memory loss related illness, such as Alzheimer’s disease; whether this benefit can be applied to bilingual children who are out of school for the summer remains to be seen.

Conclusion

Bilingual or not, having your child involved in educational activities over the summer months will benefit them as they head back to school in the Fall. You can work one-on-one with your child at home, or enroll them in a class/program. Whatever you decide to do, keep their minds active!

Tomorrow check back with us as we’ll be sharing some of the great language learning summer camps and programs across the country, (and even a few outside our borders!)

Share: Are your children enrolled in any type of bilingual summer learning programs?

Sources:

NPR – Being Bilingual Boosts Brain Power

Rand Study – How Summer Programs Can Boost Children’s Learning

Stanford University/ScienceDaily.com – Forgetting Helps You Remember The Important Stuff

Photo by tabitum

In the past couple of weeks there have been two studies released related to Latina mamás which have been of particular interest to us here at SpanglishBaby for the insights they’ve revealed related to how ingrained our culture is in our daily lives regardless of our acculturation level.

Just this past Monday, BabyCenter released The Hispanic Moms Acculturation Study, which is part of their larger 21st Century Mom Insight Series. The study interviewed 2,479 Hispanic moms — from recent immigrants to native-born English speakers — and 1,472 non-Hispanic moms across both their English and Spanish language sites.

“With one in four babies in this country being Hispanic, and Hispanics representing 55% of the population growth in the United States, this study sheds new light on the behaviors of Latina moms as they go through the acculturation process and integrate elements of American culture with those of their own heritage.”

Here are the key findings:

The Culture of Food

• Mealtime is an important ways for us, Hispanic moms, to connect our families to our cultura. 36% of Hispanic moms say dinner is the best time of the day, compared to only 15% of non-Hispanic. This is true in my own household, at least during the week, for dinner is the only time we can all sit together and share our day with each other.
• Hispanic food — which most of us (not me!) cook from scratch — is part of the daily diet of 41% of us. The numbers change as we acculturate and look for shortcuts to make cooking easier, as in making black beans de lata and not from scratch (yes me!).

La Familia First

• A huge number of us, 68% in fact, are likely to eat at least one meal a week with our extended family. In my own family we don’t do it every week, but we try to make it happen as often as possible, and my children love it. (I do too!)
• We see all celebrations, including our niños’ birthday parties, as a chance to connect with our families. I found this finding particularly interesting, “Hispanics include extended family in these (children’s parties) celebrations regardless of age.” I had never stopped to think about that one, but it’s totally true. We invite los abuelos, los tíos, los padrinos and, as the study also points out, our parties also last much, much longer than the 2 1/2 hours alloted on the majority of birthday party invitations my daughter usually gets. Oh, and we spend more money on our parties than the general population…
• When it comes to aspirations, la familia continues to be número 1, even though professional success is seen as inspiring. The study found that “me” time is not engaging for Hispanic moms.

Our Language Our Heritage

• Those of us who are either native-born or bilingual, don’t consume much media in Spanish, yet we respond better to advertising in Spanish, according to the study. This is particularly true if the ads in Spanish feature “authentic cultural imagery.”
• Furthermore, the study found that ads in Spanish or Spanglish apparently create a cultural connection which we, Hispanic moms, embrace because we see it as an acknowledgement of our heritage.
• 50% of us would find a Spanish ad on an English website engaging or appealing. I know this is true of me too, as long as it’s translated correctly, of course. If not, it’s not only a total turn-off but it’s also disrespectful.

“While Hispanic moms are linguistically diverse, culture acts as a powerful force for uniting them.” — Isidra Mencos, editorial director of BabyCenter for the Americas and Spain.

We couldn’t agree more. In fact, SpanglishBaby was born two years ago because both Ana and I realized that, like us, the majority of Latina moms ( regardless of  level of acculturation) want to pass on our culture, heritage, language and traditions to our niños but we not always know how to. We like to think we’re putting nuestro granito de arena towards making that goal a reality.

BabyCenter has also added more content to its site’s section dedicated to Hispanic Families, which includes all of the articles I contributed related to raising bilingual children.

Along similar lines, two weeks ago,  Todobebé released the findings of polls they conducted on their site throughout 2010.  This study sheds an interesting light on the preferences Latina moms and moms-to-be have regarding childbirth and child-rearing during the critical infant stage. Another interesting insight into how our culture shapes our beliefs.

Here’s a summary of the key findings:

• If they were able to pick, 77% of Todobebé users would choose a vaginal birth. Only 18% would choose a C-section.
• Latinas prefer to be young moms. 62% stated the ideal age to become a mom is before 30, while 19% said there is no “ideal age”. Ana actually wrote about this last week on Blogs de Mamás because, like me, she doesn’t belong to the majority of this group.
• Only 9% believes vaccines cause autism. The majority, 56%, said they don’t. However, 34% did not know what to believe.
• 64% took folic acid before pregnancy.
• 48% of respondents always allow their children to sleep in their beds, 26% only in case of nightmares or illness and 24% said they don’t allow it ever.
• 51% stated the best age to wean baby from the bottle is 1 year of age, 34% after 2 years and 14%, after 3 years.
• 67% of respondents said their baby’s father was or planned to be in the delivery room during childbirth. Only 23% said the father would not be present.

What are your thoughts on the insights revealed by these studies? Do you agree? Disagree? Do you see yourself reflected in these findings?

Photo by cooljinny

We’re back!!! I know we’ve been kind of sketchy with our weekly Yo Quiero Links posts, but it’s been a pretty busy summer. Actually, TOMORROW you’ll get to find out what has kept us so busy lately. We can’t wait to share our latest news with you, so we hope you don’t miss our BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

In the meantime, here are some pretty cool links we’d like to share with you:

1) Webwire.com: Study Shows Bilingual are Unable to ‘turn off’ a Language Completely – “According to a recent study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, it appears humans are not actually capable of “turning off” another language entirely. Psychologists Eva Van Assche, Wouter Duyck, Robert Hartsuiker and Kevin Diependaele from Ghent University found that knowledge of a second language actually has a continuous impact on native-language reading.”

2) Bilingual Readers: Emotional Bilingualism – “Most of us would agree that there is a strong link between language and emotions. We use words to help us express our emotions, but those very same words also help us to define what we’re feeling. This is true for monolinguals, but those of us who speak more than one language know that different languages often allow us to define our feelings in a different way based on the specific nuances each language has to offer.”

3) Multilingual Mania: Social Networking and Virtual Multilingual Communities – “It’s easy to feel isolated when you are working in the field of bilingual or multilingual education. Bilingual teachers are often the minority in schools, considering the fact that the majority of English learners in the public school system are placed in English settings. Bilingual teachers grow accustomed to attending staff development that is primarily geared towards teachers in English settings. The lack of school, district and community support systems for bilingual teachers is astounding and can be emotionally and professionally grueling to dedicated bilingual teachers.”

4) Wanna Jugar with Migo?: John De Mado Interview – “I learned a lot by interviewing John De Mado. It helped me understand the language acquisition process better. It made me feel better about teaching my children Spanish and the mistakes I make. He talked about how we think language is “fossilized” like set in stone and never changes, whereas, it is constantly changing. If my children or I make a mistake, it doesn’t mean they can’t change it later.”

5) MyLatinoNews.com: CNN Presents Latino in America Anchored by Soledad O’Brien – “CNN will extend its acclaimed “…in America” series of documentaries with a two-night, four-hour event, Latino in America, this October. Reported by anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien, the ambitious documentary initiative examines the growing diversity of America, revealing insight into a changing nation on the eve of the U.S. census that is expected to officially confirm that Latino Americans are the largest minority group within the country.”

TWO CONTESTS WORTH ENTERING!!

6) MielPura.org: Miel a mi Manera – “Para animar a padres y niños de todas partes a probar y descubrir los múltiples usos de la miel, especialmente en los que se relacionan con el regreso a la escuela, National Honey Board se ha unido con la revista Ser Padres, la fuente principal de información para padres Hispanos en los Estados Unidos, para presentar el concurso “Miel a mi Manera”. Los consumidores pueden enviar su receta preferida con miel en dos categorías: (1) una receta de una comida o snack para niños o (2) su receta favorita con el uso creativo de la miel (por ejemplo, para el dolor de garganta, para bebidas deportivas, etc.). El ganador de recetas de comidas/snacks para niños ganará $1,000 y el ganador de usos creativos recibirá $500.”

7) Baskin Robbins: Ice Cream & Cake Dance Contest – “Shake your moneymaker and show us how you do the Ice Cream & Cake Dance. Watch the demo video to see the basic steps, then download the Ice Cream & Cake song and create your own version in 90 seconds or less. Come back and click on the “Enter” tab to register and submit your video. You could win $10,000.”

Don’t forget to check out our big announcement tomorrow. We know you’re going to LOVE it!!

Photo by Aaron Escobar

Not lots to share with you this first Sunday of June… Although both Ana and I are very excited about a new website related to bilingualism and reading. It’s called Bilingual Readers and it’s actually a “publishing company which provides bilingual resources for families and communities.” Go over there whenever you get a chance and check it out! We can’t tell you how happy we are that more and more sites related to bilingualism are appearing all the time…

1) From LBBC–Father’s Day: Celebrate Dads and Reading – Links to different book lists that celebrate fathers and grandfathers and includes a number of heartwarming books from different cultures and ethnic traditions, including some bilingual English/Spanish books. All these are definitely worth checking out!

2) From Time Magazine: Study: TV May Inhibit Babies’ Language Development – “As most parents of small children will reluctantly admit, nothing can occupy a child quite like television. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence suggests that using the boob tube as a babysitter has its price: the more time babies spend sitting in front of the screen, the more their social, cognitive and language development may suffer. Recent studies show that TV-viewing tends to decrease babies’ likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others.” Vanessa doesn’t really watch a lot of TV. We don’t have cable and apart from V-me and PBS, there’s not a lot of “quality” programming out there anyway. However, she does watch movies and I often feel guilty about that because she truly loves them and it keeps her entertained for at least a good hour… Now I feel even more guilty. Great.

3) From Bilingual Readers: Want to Help Your Baby’s Language Development Along? Read Together! – “While banning television from your home forever is neither practical nor necessary (thank God), the bottom line is crystal clear: babies learn language best through direct interaction with their parents and other caregivers. This conclusion is even more important for families who are trying to raise their children in more than one language. Of course there are many ways for parents to interact directly with their children, but we at Bilingual Readers believe that one of the most effective ways is through shared parent-child reading.” Thank God Vanessa has picked up my love for reading. I don’t feel so guilty about the movie thing I mentioned above anymore… At least we’re doing something right!

4)  From PRWeb: Bilingual Tots Total Immersion Language Schools Success Leads to National Expansion, Hiring Thousands of Teachers – “Bilingual Tots – based in Boulder, Colorado – offers total immersion in the target language with native teachers in order to help them capture the authentic accent and sound system of the language they’re learning. Parents of children 0 to 3 must be present during class, and all parents are given materials that help reinforce the language learning at home. Each 50-minute Bilingual Tots class is limited to no more than six children so that each teacher can devote time to one-on-one interaction in addition to group activities that center on play and simple interaction with the native-speaker teachers.” In my neck of the woods and I didn’t even know about it. I’ll have to check them out and get back to you…

5) From NPR: Weighing Ethnicity When Picking a Spouse – “As the old saying goes: “Love is blind.” But for the American-born children of immigrants, it’s sometimes impossible not to look at ethnicity when picking a partner.” Another great read – or listen – from NPR’s series: Immigrants’ Children. I know how I feel about this one, but I would love to hear what you all think, though! I wonder how Vanessa  – who is the American-born child of immigrants – will feel about this topic? Luckily, we won’t have to deal with this one for many, many years to come. Ha!

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