Raising Bilingual Kids with Mixed Results

Hello Meltingpot Readers,

I used to joke that the only reason I married el esposo was because I wanted my children to be bilingual. While that clearly wasn’t the only reason I married my husband, I was dead serious about wanting my children to speak Spanish fluently. Luckily, el esposo was just as committed as I was to making sure our kids would speak both Spanish and English like native speakers. He promised before our first child was even born that he would never, ever speak to our children in English and I can honestly say he has never broken that promise. But despite our best laid plans, all three children don’t exactly sound like native speakers in Spanish.

Let me explain.

OUR METHOD

There are many ways families can commit to teaching their children a second or even third language. In our household, el esposo and I decided to speak to our children in our own native language, so I was to speak to them in English and he in Spanish. That way, the language they learned from Papi would be perfect Spanish and English from Mom would also be “perfect.” In turn, the children had to speak to their father in Spanish and to me in English. El esposo was diligent in speaking only Spanish to our children, even though he and I speak mostly English to each other. When they were babies, he taught them songs from his childhood, he translated their English-language books into Spanish (Of course, we had books in Spanish as well.)and would even translate knock-knock jokes. He was so good at never lapsing into English that our sons were ages six and nine before they realized their father could speak English!

THE EXTRAS

In addition to having their father speak to them in Spanish, I always made sure to keep our home library stocked with Spanish picture books, we always rented/purchased movies with Spanish language versions, and off and on we would institute Spanish-only meal times, where we all spoke Spanish at the dinner table. Of course, the best thing we did to deepen the children’s language learning was going to Spain. Nobody in el esposo‘s immediate family speaks English fluently, so when we’re in Spain, only Spanish is spoken. It was always a thrill to see the kids’ vocabulary and fluency skyrocket after a visit to their motherland. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to go to Spain every year, so this wasn’t an option we could always take advantage of. Instead, we enrolled Son #1 and Son #2 into a Spanish immersion elementary school when it opened in Philadelphia. The older one stayed for two years, the younger one only lasted a year.

THE RESULTS
With three different children one would expect three different results with our bilingual experiment, even though our methodology has remained pretty consistent. What hasn’t been consistent however, is the ratio of Spanish to English each child is exposed to in our home. For son #1, he was getting a 50-50 split of Spanish to English and he had one-on-one time with each parent. Son #2 on the other hand, had two people speaking to him in English (me and his brother) and only one person speaking to him Spanish. By the time babygirl was born, she had three people speaking English and only one speaking Spanish and her one-on-one time with el esposo is severely limited simply because of how hectic our lives are these days. Not surprisingly, it is glaringly obvious that Son #1 is much more comfortable speaking Spanish than both of his younger siblings.

El esposo, who has spent the last several years studying language acquisition for his Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics, tells me that all three of our children are indeed bilingual because they understand and speak Spanish, the difference is in their level of fluency. All three children only speak to their father in Spanish, whether they are at home or in public. Son #1 can express himself perfectly in Spanish and rarely struggles to find the right word or phrase he needs. Son #2 can find a way to get his point across in Spanish but uses a lot of generic terms and facial gestures to supplement his lack of vocabulary. And babygirl just speaks a whole lot of Spanglish. El esposo doesn’t correct her as long as she’s trying. If she tries to speak to him in English, which she does every once in a while, he plays dumb and acts like he doesn’t understand until she attempts to find the words in Spanish. It’s pretty cute to watch. It was also cute to see babygirl come back from Spain last summer – which was her first time there – and speak Spanish not Spanglish. It only took her one month with her Spanish relatives to boost her fluency to the point where she no longer inserted English words into her sentences.

And that is why, despite my kids’ varying degrees of fluency, I’m happy to call them bilingual. I’m happy to know that their command of Spanish will always be better than mine. And I’m proud of el esposo and I for not giving up on our promise to give our kids the gift of a second language. And in the meantime, babygirl and I just downloaded the DuoLingo app on my phone and we’re going to practice our Spanish together all summer long!

What about you dear readers? Are any of you raising bilingual children? If so, what’s your method and has it been working? Feel free to share your tips and tricks, successes and failures. I’m totally listening.

Peace!