2 Spaniards raising Eng-Spa bilingual children in Spain

That's cute, Carrie . It makes more sense than what my son says. After all, yesterday is "last day" and tomorrow is the "next day". Why bother learning new words when you can use logic?

As a parent of English ML children I just wanted to let you know that “had-ed” and “throwed” are completely normal English ML errors. Both my kids had them and throwed stuck around a lot longer than haded and goes. In fact I think my 7 year old still might use it on occasion. So your kids seem right on schedule.

It's been a while! But the situation with this awful pandemic and new responsibilities at work have kept me from coming. So this is our situation these days:

My husband keeps speaking Spanish to the kids. My daughter always answers back in Spanish, while my son sometimes responds in Spanish, sometimes in English, and sometimes in a mixture of both, mostly when he doesn't know a word in Spanish, he'll use the English one. My son hasn't gone to school yet, so he's spending lots of time in Spanish with his dad, which he really needed.

With me, both my kids keep speaking only English. There have been times when my son tried using a Spanish word with me, but seeing that I 'don't understand Spanish', gave up and used the equivalent English word *insert evil grin here*, hehe. Just kidding.

Reading in English:
Daughter: She now reads in English whenever she feels like it. I asked her to at least read twice a week, but I don't really keep tabs on her. She enjoys reading in English, so I know she'll read. At night, when I read to her a chapter of -lately- the A to Z Mysteries, she always reads the first page and I read the rest. Her Spanish reading keeps improving, but it still needs work.

Son: I started teaching my daughter to read when she was my son's age, at Christmas, so, this Christmas, I'm supposed to start with my son (yikes!) Did we really start when my daughter was this little? Finding time for it was hard enough back then, but now my daughter has homework too, so it'll be quite the challenge.

Little things:

My daughter corrected my pronunciation of "dough" a couple days ago. Oops! But it made me very proud.

I also had to ask her to repeat "megalodon" for me, because she pronounces it so much better than I do! I love that my kids have learned words by hearing them before they can spell them, so they don't think of the spelling when saying a word, like I do. I know this messes up my pronunciation.

Other than that, things keep going well, my kids keep playing only in English with each other. This pandemic has meant we can't have any native speakers come home, but it also means no after school activities, and not eating at school, so they spend more time with me, and their dad. Life has gotten scarier, but also more slow-paced, and I like the latter.

Hi Amy!! I'm still alive, haha. It's good to hear from you too. I hope you're all well.

If I waited for my son to have any interest in reading in English, he'd never learn. I want him to, especially since he has a sister who already reads. I think teaching only one of my kids would be terribly unfair, which is good, because it gives me the push I need to do it. Anyway, my son is enjoying reading in Spanish with my husband, so I hope he'll enjoy it in English too. We've started doing the dot-to-dots I did with my daughter, then writing what the shape he uncovers is, by sounding it out. I have to help him with most letters, but he already recognizes some. The other day, he surprised me by writing "TE" when the word was "tent" and I was distracted answering my daughter's question about her homework. Speaking of homework, I'm SO glad I taught her to read, because of how much easier it makes my life -and hers- with regards to homework. If only I had taught her to write too, I wouldn't have to worry at all about any of the subjects she has in English.

Thanks, Marta .

I just started to teach my son to read yesterday. It was the same with my daughter: I didn't plan on it, I just knew I wanted to do it soon and one day I decided that was the day. But that's where the similarities end. I remember I only did 1 page/day with my daughter, while with my son, I did 4! On the other hand, my daughter understood right away how to blend short sounds: CA, TA... but my son made two different sounds "C" and "A", or "T", then "A", making it hard for him to hear the whole word. If the word was "cat, for instance, he'd read "C", "AAAAT", so he concluded the word was "at". I used the same technique I did with my daughter: asking them to "say it fast" and using word examples, like "ice" "cream", now say it fast: "ice-cream", but that didn't help much. He was still saying "C" "A" as fast as he could, but with a silence in between. I need to find a way to make him see that the second sound begins as soon as the first one is released, without a pause.

Thanks for all those links, Amy ; you're very resourceful!! The main problem for my son was with letters you couldn't hold for long, stretching the sound like aaaa, mmmm. With C (as in cat), T or D, the moment you release the sound, it ends; you can't hold it. I finally told my son to shape his mouth as if he was about to say the sound, without saying it, and the moment he released it, to start saying the next sound, so that he could go: Caaaaat, or Toooooommmmm. It seemed to work. At some point, he just realized CA isn't CCCC+AAAA, but "ca" and so he's easily blending sounds now. He also recognizes some words, like "cat".

His newest problem is "th" as in "this". I think because his dad taught him to read "D" in Spanish as that "th" sound, so he initially wanted to read "D" as "TH". When I told him it was as in "dog", he quickly got it, but now that he has to learn that "TH" sound, he keeps saying "D". In Spanish, they're both spelled D, and, sometimes, even the same word is pronounced with a D or a TH depending on the sounds around it. A D sound between 2 vocalized sounds turns into TH, so I can see how this could make things more difficult for him, even though he pronounces English Ds and THs correctly. All the Spaniards I know think we only have one D sound, when in fact we have 2, until I ask them to say "dedo" (=finger) and see where their tongue is for each D sound (D-Eh-Th-Aw). Anyway, back on topic, I guess we'll have to practice that TH sound a bit more. Yesterday, I asked him to read every "the" in the book he chose before bed, so that he hopefully remembers. When he said "D", I asked him to "bite his tongue", so that he can remember what sound he's supposed to make. We're already on lesson 3, so he's learning fast. I'll need to see whether we need to slow down at some point. I'm enjoying this.

My daughter attends a so-called bilingual school, which means she has English class 4h/week, plus Natural and Social Science, Arts & Crafts and P.E. in English (5 h/week total). I wouln't call 9h/week, out of 25 all that bilingual, but it is what it is. Anyway, they have lots of vocabulary to learn for English, Natural and Social Science, that she either already knows or learns right away orally, but in writting, it's a different story. I would love to have the time to teach her to spell, but we don't have the time with all her homework. I'm hoping that by learning how to spell every individual word, she'll eventually learn to spell. As irregular as English spelling is, there are rules and patters. I recently got colored chalk pens and started writing the words she has trouble spelling on our dinosaur-shaped board, using the same color for same-sounding spellings: hair, chair, they, body... I run out of colors pretty quickly, though.

Raquel, you guys just keep baby-stepping forward, day by day. These sorts of difficulties will soon become small footnotes on the larger evolution of your children's bilingual journey. Big bilingual hugs to them both!

Raquel, I enjoyed reading your update! It sounds like both kids are continuing to make good progress in both languages. Whatever "weaknesses" they may have will surely grow stronger over time. It seems you're well on your way to achieving the greater goal of becoming a bilingual family, where all of you will finally use both languages very freely. Tell everyone I say hello/hola!