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Doubletalk
Raising a Bilingual Family
By Tara Swords
"When he started talking he would respond to me in English, but I kept talking to him in Spanish," says Conley of her son Tristan. "Everything he said to me in English, I repeated in Spanish. When he was almost 3, I started telling him that I didn't understand when he talked to me in English, that he needed to talk to me in Spanish."
| "You get more resistance here in the U.S., especially in communities where one of the languages doesn't have status and where people show hostility to people who speak that language," Olmedo says. "Once [children] are exposed to peers who speak the other language, they resist speaking their home language." |
When Conley told her son she only understood Spanish, he realized something didn't add up.
"At one point he was saying, 'How come you understand what Papi (Dad) is saying?' So I said, 'Yes, I understand, but I like when you speak to me in Spanish.'" From that moment on, her son has spoken to her only in Spanish.
Tristan also speaks Spanish with his mother's family in Mexico when he visits for about 3 weeks each year. But his Spanish education is missing one element that might have made helped his mother's efforts: regular exposure to the language outside the home.
"It's critical to have children in an environment where they have peers who aren't just speaking English," Olmedo says, noting that other parents sometimes have the same difficulty that Conley had. "It's very difficult to get the child to speak [the second language at home], but that doesn't mean that you should give up. Even if he's not actively using it, he's hearing it. The literature [says] that the parents should continue to use the language at home with the child."
