Greetings / Saludos from Lena
Jul 18, 2014 12:26:59 GMT 9
Post by Lena P on Jul 18, 2014 12:26:59 GMT 9
Hello everyone,
I am so excited to join this forum. What a great community.
My husband and I have an 18 month old son, Laszlo. We live in Colorado, USA, and are native English speakers. We speak Spanish as a second language, having both lived abroad (me as a student and Nate and I as Peace Corps volunteers) and used it in working with immigrants in the US. We are both language and book lovers, but I have long had a passion specifically for Spanish. It just makes me happy. I am a nurse with additional degrees in History and Spanish literature and Nate is a librarian with a computer science interest.
We never thought we could raise a bilingual child living in the States. But at our son's 6 month check-up our pediatrician, a Spaniard raising her children bilingual, said we should go for it and not worry so much about our errors and non-native accents. We decided to try and and we made it through our first year at the end of June! At 18 months Laszlo says about 100 English words and about 30 Spanish words. I don't think I ever thought he'd say ANY Spanish words, it still sounds like magic whenever he does.
We decided on One Parent One Language as our method. Since I am more fluent I speak Spanish and Nate sticks with English but can still interact and understand all I/we say.
Right now my big challenges are getting Laszlo enough Spanish input as we work full time and daycare is English-speaking. I'm also not sure about how much to push him to respond to me consistently in Spanish. He mixes both languages a lot and, for the moment, I'm ok with that.
My biggest helps are Spanish children's songs, picture books, and my Word Reference bilingual dictionary phone app.
Thanks for having me,
Lena
I am so excited to join this forum. What a great community.
My husband and I have an 18 month old son, Laszlo. We live in Colorado, USA, and are native English speakers. We speak Spanish as a second language, having both lived abroad (me as a student and Nate and I as Peace Corps volunteers) and used it in working with immigrants in the US. We are both language and book lovers, but I have long had a passion specifically for Spanish. It just makes me happy. I am a nurse with additional degrees in History and Spanish literature and Nate is a librarian with a computer science interest.
We never thought we could raise a bilingual child living in the States. But at our son's 6 month check-up our pediatrician, a Spaniard raising her children bilingual, said we should go for it and not worry so much about our errors and non-native accents. We decided to try and and we made it through our first year at the end of June! At 18 months Laszlo says about 100 English words and about 30 Spanish words. I don't think I ever thought he'd say ANY Spanish words, it still sounds like magic whenever he does.
We decided on One Parent One Language as our method. Since I am more fluent I speak Spanish and Nate sticks with English but can still interact and understand all I/we say.
Right now my big challenges are getting Laszlo enough Spanish input as we work full time and daycare is English-speaking. I'm also not sure about how much to push him to respond to me consistently in Spanish. He mixes both languages a lot and, for the moment, I'm ok with that.
My biggest helps are Spanish children's songs, picture books, and my Word Reference bilingual dictionary phone app.
Thanks for having me,
Lena
