"Does Leyla say any words?" is a common question I'm encountering from friends and family, almost, I hate to admit, daily. Each time I'm asked this, I doubt my decision to raise my children bilingually more and more. One person even went so far as to imply that if I had only been speaking English to Leyla for the passed 16 months she would be saying more at this point!
It's intimidating enough when we are out in public in our monolingual society to consistently speak Spanish to Leyla but now I feel as if everyone is watching to see her development!
According to what I've read, a 15-month old should have a vocabulary of 3-6 words. Leyla's vocabulary consists of: gato (cat), agua (water), mama, dada, baba (which I think is supposed to be her pronunciation for "biberon" - bottle), mas (more), no and bye.
Consequently we have a total of 8 words; 3-4 Spanish, 2 universal ("mama"and "no") and 2 English ("dada" and "bye)". So really, she is ahead of the game with 8 words.
The bottom line is I'm not concerned about Leyla's language development, I'm concerned about Emily's. I can provide Leyla with a language rich environment each day by not only speaking to her but reading, singing and sometimes watching tele in Spanish. But I can't provide the same for Emily.
Why? Probably because Emily has no interest in singing "Brilla, Brilla, Estrelllita" (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star), nor does she want to read La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) or Buenas Noches, Luna (Goodnight, Moon) and she DEFINITELY does not want to watch El Plaza Sesamo (Sesame Street) in Spanish.
I'm also fairly certain Emily is not interested in Spanish b/c I overheard her ask her friend yesterday if she was taking German. When her friend replied, "yes", Emily retorted with, "I wish I was taking German it looks so fun! Spanish is so boring."
I could not believe my own flesh and blood would prefer to learn German over Spanish!!
After I pulled the dagger out of my heart I realized I had a very important and challenging task in front of me; motivating my eleven year-old to WANT to learn Spanish.
I hate to admit it but I fear she may have peaked over the summer. Now that we are back into our routine, I find myself using less and less Spanish with Emi and lazily falling back into English.
The task that lies ahead is a challenging one, but hey, I love a challenge! Achtung!
My fab family
A lesson I've learned is that kids generally think that mummy is very uncool at some point in their development. They go from loving to try and speak to you in your mother tongue, to thinking it's a bit embarassing or "boring". They want to be like their friends, not like you. If I speak to my daughter in French she says "What? What? I can't hear you when you speak French!"
ReplyDeleteExasperating, and it's tempting just to speak English and be done with it, but I think it's worth the effort to keep it up!
You could also try telling her the names of all the celebs you can think of who speak Spanish - (try Shakira & maybe get her a copy of Shakira's first album, which was all in spanish) and maybe she'll think it's cool again.
I wonder what would happen if she took German...
ReplyDeleteIt might help to have one more language. It would probably trigger stuff in her brains. Or it might even get her to the point where she sees it's easier for her than for others because she already has 2 languages and all the wiring is in place for acquiring more.
Hi came via raising babybilingual.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of the commenters above. From my experience, my parents always spoke to us (my sisters and I) in Spanish. I'm glad they did, although my spanish is more Spanglish..(I'm working on that)
Mum versus kids-that is a great idea re: celebs who speak Spanish, I'm going to give it a try!
ReplyDeleteJan-i hate to admit it but I think you have a point! So what if Emily started German? I can see more positives than negatives.
Croatian-latina-ThNks I won't give up!
It must be excruciating to hear your child profess not to want to speak the language you're sharing with her! I'm lucky that my toddler is still too young to care about what language he speaks with whom.
ReplyDeleteCan you help her find some Spanish-speaking tweens? What about watching her favorite movies on DVD with the Spanish soundtrack? Maybe a Spanish language camp over the summer?
Or how about bribery? If you present it as "Your sister really admires you and if you speak/read Spanish to her, she'll learn it faster and like it more," and then praise or reward her when she does....
And as Jan says, adding a third language into the mix might help after all!
Good luck.
I agree with the previous posts! Our daughter is 12 months old so still too young to know what's going on, but I know the time will come when she'll think it's uncool for her mama to speak Spanish in a French world. oh boy oh boy oh boy!
ReplyDeleteDoes she have Spanish classes in school? Maybe it would motivate her to know it's "easier" for her? Sorry if you have already talked about this before, I'm new here (came here through raisingbabybilingual, too!)
Sounds interesting. Looks like you are a specialist on this because you just made it so easy to be with you, motivated me to learn more on the subject!
ReplyDeleteRegards
Nursery School Franchisee
I gratefully acknowledge your blog. Excellent.
ReplyDelete