Dominican living in USA (FL)
Sept 5, 2017 12:03:46 GMT 9
Post by Laura L. on Sept 5, 2017 12:03:46 GMT 9
Hi!
My name is Laura and my husband and I are originally from Dominican Republic. We moved to USA when our first child was a toddler. We now have 3 children ages 5yo girl, 2.5yo boy and 1mo girl. We lived in south Florida until a couple of months ago, where we were surrounded by a lot of Hispanics in the community, not to mention family and friends who would only speak Spanish in our social interactions. We recently moved to Jacksonville, where our children are still exposed to Spanish with their grandparents -who barely speak English- and a few other friends here and there.
We plan to homeschool and our children haven't been in daycare or preschool, so their exposure to English has been somewhat limited, even more so because we started out with one language first, which was mostly a decision out of fear. Our friends and family adamantly suggested we that we stay away from English for the first few years "because they'd pick it up in school" and to be fair, their kids have very strong Spanish, so we figured maybe they were right. In hindsight, I believe we went against what we knew was best only out of fear of our children having poor Spanish in the future, which we have seen with other friends and family members. We've been trying to amend that in the past couple of years, but it has surprisingly been a lot harder than expected. Since we're homeschooling, we're in an uncommon position regarding minority vs majority language exposure. We do go out a lot and spend time immersed in the community, but until recently the community wasn't really a fair representation of the majority language.
I know my kids will eventually learn English, but in the meantime it's taking a significant toll in many, many ways people wouldn't imagine unless they were in our shoes. I'm sure if someone has an idea, it'll be other bilingual parents.
We're trying to "fast track" this process as best as we can, although life has been very busy with relocating, having another baby and other family/health issues. It's hard to be on top of each and every area, but this is very important for us.
We've had to make adjustments as we go as our previous strategies and attempts were bringing a lot of frustration to our oldest, to the point where she feels so helpless that she will suddenly act as a toddler...not surprisingly if you think about how a toddler will easily have a meltdown because they can't find their words: she can't, either, and worse, she's not even understanding. At one point she wasn't even interested in learning English at all, but I've been working on her mindset and she's currently very eager to learn.
We've tried MLaH and language blocks, with certain degrees of success. We're trying not to switch to OPOL because of what I stated above, or at least not until they have a better foundation to fill in the gaps for the rest.
We're happy to be here and hope to have good progress to report soon.
My name is Laura and my husband and I are originally from Dominican Republic. We moved to USA when our first child was a toddler. We now have 3 children ages 5yo girl, 2.5yo boy and 1mo girl. We lived in south Florida until a couple of months ago, where we were surrounded by a lot of Hispanics in the community, not to mention family and friends who would only speak Spanish in our social interactions. We recently moved to Jacksonville, where our children are still exposed to Spanish with their grandparents -who barely speak English- and a few other friends here and there.
We plan to homeschool and our children haven't been in daycare or preschool, so their exposure to English has been somewhat limited, even more so because we started out with one language first, which was mostly a decision out of fear. Our friends and family adamantly suggested we that we stay away from English for the first few years "because they'd pick it up in school" and to be fair, their kids have very strong Spanish, so we figured maybe they were right. In hindsight, I believe we went against what we knew was best only out of fear of our children having poor Spanish in the future, which we have seen with other friends and family members. We've been trying to amend that in the past couple of years, but it has surprisingly been a lot harder than expected. Since we're homeschooling, we're in an uncommon position regarding minority vs majority language exposure. We do go out a lot and spend time immersed in the community, but until recently the community wasn't really a fair representation of the majority language.
I know my kids will eventually learn English, but in the meantime it's taking a significant toll in many, many ways people wouldn't imagine unless they were in our shoes. I'm sure if someone has an idea, it'll be other bilingual parents.
We're trying to "fast track" this process as best as we can, although life has been very busy with relocating, having another baby and other family/health issues. It's hard to be on top of each and every area, but this is very important for us. We've had to make adjustments as we go as our previous strategies and attempts were bringing a lot of frustration to our oldest, to the point where she feels so helpless that she will suddenly act as a toddler...not surprisingly if you think about how a toddler will easily have a meltdown because they can't find their words: she can't, either, and worse, she's not even understanding. At one point she wasn't even interested in learning English at all, but I've been working on her mindset and she's currently very eager to learn.
We've tried MLaH and language blocks, with certain degrees of success. We're trying not to switch to OPOL because of what I stated above, or at least not until they have a better foundation to fill in the gaps for the rest.
We're happy to be here and hope to have good progress to report soon.
