A lot of people think it is easy for a bilingual parent to raise a bilingual child. I mean, it's just natural and all that stuff right? Well, yes and no. I thought it would be super easy, but as my child grows I begin to worry more about it. Right now we live in a Spanish-speaking community but (as much as I love you HP) I don't think we'll live here when he starts going to school. Also, it seems that he knows more Spanish than English. I say it seems because of his understanding of commands and questions, he doesn't speak much yet. He says "gracias" "no," and "ven." He knows animals sounds if asked in Spanish, and he sometimes sings a song called "Metete Tete" by Cri-Cri. It's funny because I can just hear him sing "tetete." So I don't know what part of the song he's singing. This has lead us to believe that he knows more Spanish. However, he's so young that anything goes really.
As the nerd I am, I started reading a couple of books:
The Bilingual Edge by Kendall King, Ph.D. and Alison Mckey, Ph.D.
7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child by Naomi Steiner, M.D., with Susan L. Hayes
In both of these books I read about a language growth spurt. Mainly, a bilingual child will not have an even growth spurt. Nesta will either show an advancement in his language development in English or in Spanish. Right now he's showing one in Spanish. This is how hopefully he will be until he gets to the point of acquiring academic English and Spanish. The authors recommend that bilingual children learn how to read in both languages at the same time. They also point out that bilingual children become better readers than monolingual children. In all the studies they did bilingual children seem to have better understanding of what they are reading. However, bilingual children may have a difficult time expressing themselves right away in writing. Their writing may be very basic without being able to explain the motives of a character, or what happened in the climax of a story. Yet, they will be able to explain it in great detail while speaking. I found that bit weird, but true. I can explain my self while talking, better than writing. I think it is because writing is such a difficult process. An idea starts in your brain, and then you have to go from your brain, to the muscles of your arm/hand and into the paper. If you are a bilingual child and the story started in your head in Polish, but the teacher is asking you to write in English then this adds to that process. Alas, things get lost in translation. They do say that if both languages are constantly supported then at some point children will be able to express themselves in writing in both languages with no problem. Key word-support. Just as a child may need tutoring in writing in English, he/she may need help in that other language.
Something else that these authors talked about was the need for a bilingual pre-school. Many children grow up speaking Greek, Spanish, Creole, Mandarin, etc and then they go to an English-only pre-school. They go home speaking English, and that's that. I've talked to a few people who remember speaking another language when they were kids and now they don't remember that language. That conversations with each of those adults scared me.
It scared me because, although I know a bilingual pre-school is necessary finding a good pre-school in general is hard enough. Now, I have to find an awesome bilingual pre-school. Ay!
Something to always keep in mind if you are raising your child bilingual is this: English is everywhere, it's on the street, at the grocery store, at the coffee shop, at the movie theatre, at the playground, at the indoor play-space, at your friend's house, on tv and in the radio. Do not think that your kid will not understand English because he or she is only around you and you only speak X language. I seldom allow Nesta to watch TV or DVDs, but when I do I let him watch "Pocoyo" because this show is also in Spanish. I'm sure he'll get plenty of TV in English when he's allowed to watch more of it, but trust me in this- I will try my hardest to make some of that TV watching in Spanish. Thank you Plaza Sesamo :)
A little update- I looked up bilingual pre-schools in Chicago and to my surprise there weren't many. The one that I liked the most according to reviews is way up on Wilson and Kedzie. Yay to morning traffic! If you live in Chicago and know of some awesome bilingual Spanish-English pre-schools I would love the info. Thank you.
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