Challenge #8: Make This the Highest Priority You Can

How do you deal with this...when the ml is a really high priority and it could even conflict with ML activities or family visits? I kind of want to avoid traveling to visit my ML in-laws during the high ml exposure time I have with my daughter from now to January. I might keep this to myself, I don't want to offend my husband or them...but it is on my mind!

Don't, Joanna. Imagine it were the other way round, and your husband told you not to take Charlotte to see your family. This is not so much about language as it is about family. Charlotte should have both sides of her family, don't take that away from her (and from her other grandparents).

You still get to spend a lot of one-on-one ml time with her until January, don't alienate your daughter from your husband's family in these first months.

Thanks for your comments, and for not thinking I'm too crazy! I certainly wouldn't voice this to my husband or in-laws. My concern did stem from ML exposure, not conflict as they don't seem to be against our OPOL. I guess during our visits to them I could bring ml books and music.

They will learn more and more about OPOL, for now they are a bit naive...so visits to them might even be helpful!

Yes, definitely good luck to all of us!

Very high priority to my husband and I, with family harmony and happy well adjusted kids ranking higher.

If I face a bump today, I have to remember that the process takes precedence over the now.

I really appreciate this new challenge. It is making me think!

I am realizing that I highly DESIRE that my children speak our ml's French/Korean fluently. But it is my priority that is suffering because if it was as high as my desire, I would be moving mountains to ensure we are achieving better results. Instead, I let the busyness of our life, old habits, family conflicts and restrictions on usage of available resources to crowd out how much of a priority I make this dream a reality.

I need to figure out how to move from having a strong desire to making it a priority that we are living.

Adam, I'm curious about your post. You wrote that you would rate your priority at a 9 or 9.5. Would you say the same is true for yours and your children's Spanish learning?

Thanks Melissa

Ummmm, good food for thought, especially all your comments. When I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that depending on the area, it does have a very different priority for me.

For me, it has a high priority and a high desire that they speak and understand Spanish properly and that their vocabulary and expressions are rich. So I give it a 9. Many years ago, I met a Spanish lady who was living many years in the Netherlands and never made a priority of speaking Spanish to her kids. The kids were around 9, 10 and did not understand or speak Spanish. She told me that her mum did not want them to visit as it broke her heart to not be able to communicate with them so she enrolled the kids in Spanish lessons. I thought I did not want to have such a situation when I had kids. My mum also told me she would kill me if she could not talk with her grandkids, so that also helped. My family only speaks Spanish so they need to be able to understand and speak Spanish.

I am also very aware of two facts. First, that it is a drop by drop job but a job that needs to be done every single time I communicate with them. And secondly, it fully and absolutely depends on me as I am the only one speaking Spanish to them. Talking or visits to the family may help but the big job is mine and only mine. If I do not do it nobody will come to do it for me so I need to work on it. Me. Thinking that it's a drop by drop job and that it needs to be done every day, also keeps me on track; for example, reading out loud every day even when we are tired, it's late, Christmas. My kids do help me with that as they absolutely refuse to sleep unless I read out loud. And lately by even getting angry with me if by accident I talk Dutch to them. Also for me it was very important to realize, after reading a lot about being bilingual, that it is not as easy as everybody thinks, kids are not such a sponge...they need enough exposure and need to be able to actively be bilingual. This takes work, hard work every day and that that work is only mine.

Also, it keeps me going the fact that I am very aware that we have limited time and that every day when away is a day that will never come again. This thought is also very present in my way of bringing up my kids and for example takes me to turn off my PC, tablet, telephone...every time I am with them as I want to be there in that moment, present. Every word I say in Dutch is a word less I say in Spanish, every day we miss reading is an input we will never get anymore...BUT at the same time I do know that there are much more important things in life (like building up a good relationship with the kids, having a rich social life...) than being bilingual and also that there is limited time to do them. When they are 4-5 years old, they love to go to granny, but when they are 15, they probably will not. Trying to find the golden mid-path between both. As I told you a few days ago, we talk a lot afterwards in ml about everything we do in ML so it balances again the time we lost. Instead of turning on a movie in the car, or giving them a Nintendo to play...when we come back from a ML activity...we talk in ml. I also have the advantage that they communicate with each other (and yes they talk a lot with each other and also fight with each other in ml ) so the ball does keep on rolling even when I am not there. I am very lucky with that. At school they talk Dutch with each other or else the kids are asking what they say but as soon as they get out of school, they turn to Spanish.

Core activities for me in this area where I am so motivated are spending a lot of time together talking and doing things together, like playing games, cooking, story telling, crafting and reading out loud around 30 minutes a day. Also limited media mostly in Spanish (we don't have a TV so I can easily control what they watch and how long they watch).

Regarding reading and writing, clearly in there my desire is much higher than my priority or my efforts, so I give myself a 1 here. My kids are already reading in Dutch (one much better than the other) but I am not yet making any effort for them to read or write in Spanish. My effort in this area is purely reading out loud to them and that is not really literacy but I believe it does really help to prepare the soil for the seeds to grow later on. They can manage to decode Spanish reading and they did a lot in our last visit reading everywhere and make little notes for my mum to send to her but I am not yet making any work of it and I doubt I am going to do it in the next years. Especially A, the one reading worse in Dutch needs to work everyday on his Dutch reading a few minutes, so for him it will probably be even later as at the moment (his own words) "I hate reading, I just want to build robots when I grow up." I don't want to put more stress on it by introducing daily reading and writing in Spanish.

I do deeply admire Adam with his daily homework routine but I just simply cannot. Here kids don't have homework until they are 11 or so, so we don't have any kind of homework routine at home. I am also lazy and I prefer to play a game with them, paint or craft in the time we are together (in ml of course. So I think the literacy will be behind for a while longer but I am okay with it and don't plan much more efforts for the time being. I think speaking and building up a rich vocabulary is much more important for now and there we put plenty of time and effort on it. They can always start writing and reading in ml later on. Although Spanish and Dutch are very different, D. can manage to read most Spanish by using the same phonetic system he learned at school to read Dutch. He needs to learn the exceptions but it will not be a big deal.

I was greatly inspired by the posts from Serina about the activities she does with her kids and I think once we start with literacy, we will use activities as she does but not on a daily basis.

If I look at the priority of giving my kids my traditions and culture, there my desire is higher than my priority or efforts. The culture is going okay, especially music, food and knowledge of Spain, but I could do muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch more regarding the Spanish traditions that I mostly don't keep (so here I do give myself a 1). I find it, for example, a big fuss to prepare a big Christmas dinner on 24th December (as it is done in Spain) while here we have big dinners on 25th and 26th. The result is, 24th is just a normal day although that is not the case in any Spanish home. I have lived almost 20 years outside of Spain and I have never been very kind in going on with the traditions I grew up with once I moved here, but I do see it would be good to have some more effort put in there. I think I need to do some work on it so I will think what I can do to improve it. Back to it in a few days.

Joanna, I understand your thought, but believe me, the love of grandpa and grandma even in French is the best present you can give to your girl. Maybe you should not look at the "loss" of ml moments when you visit them. From a positive point of view, there is the "increase" of feeling loved by her family and that at the end is what matters for a human being. It's also maybe a good motivation for you to work harder on it when you are together just the two of you as you are aware of the time you "lost" and that could be a good motivation for not letting normal life take you away from your path. Take it easy, this is a veeeeery long term race.

May all our dreams come true.

Thank you so much, Adam! Your words of wisdom will really change my attitude and re-energize my language plan!

Reina, your mindfulness is so finely-tuned. I really admire your attitude and approach.

As for literacy in your minority language, don't let this be a concern. My sense is that your children's ability in Spanish is so well grounded, that, when the time is right, they will develop good reading and writing skills without difficulty.

Wow this thread is great! Thanks everyone!

I give my efforts an 8. I provide the primary exposure for my two girls (2 and 6) to English, although the 6 year old now goes to a bilingual school, which is wonderful both for her overall education and for helping me out with her English exposure. This also removes the pressure from me for teaching a stubborn 6 year old how to read in English. She's far more willing to be patient and learn from her teachers than she is to learn from her mom.

As a rather direct result of this stubbornness, all "home teaching" with her needs to be indirect. 95% of her books are in English. All our conversations are in English. Songs we listen to in the car are in English. And we actively expose her to people who don't speak Italian (her ML). It's been working.

On the other hand, I admit to laziness. We sometimes turn on the TV (in Italian). My kids hear me speaking Italian with their teachers, doctors, friends, friend's parents, etc.

My biggest laziness is that I don't "require" the 2 year old to speak to me in English. I do a lot of re-phrasing her Italian into English. Sometimes she'll repeat the key English word back to me. Sometimes she'll just say "si", meaning "yes, Mom, that's what I said". But I let her use any words that she has (which are admittedly *few* for a 2-year old) to communicate. It makes my life easier, but it's probably not the best way to build her English skills.

So, like I said, I'm at an 8...maybe a 7 if I'm honest. But that's where I want to be.

Thanks to all! This site is a wonderful resource... especially for ideas for indirect teaching!