Teaching Elliot Spanish -- Making it Up as I Go Along

Years ago, before Tim and I had even truly decided to adopt a baby -- and long before Elliot was a twinkle in anyone's eye -- I picked up a book at a second-hand bookstore called "Bringing up Baby Bilingual." I was fascinated by the author's experience in raising her children bilingually in a non-native language. And, I decided that if and when we decided to adopt a baby, I would share my love of Spanish -- studied in college and improved through living in Spain and the Dominican Republic --with him or her.

So, on the second day of Elliot's life, I decided to put my plan into motion. I can't remember the first thing I said to my baby boy. I do remember that it felt forced and very odd. But, I'd read enough about speaking a non-native tongue to realize it would seem strange, and enough about the benefits of exposing a child to two languages to want to continue.

And that's what I did. I spoke -- and for the past 13 months have continued to speak -- to Elliot every day in Spanish....by my best guesstimate, about a quarter of the time. Now, I know that many experts would say that's not enough. I know that many proponents of raising kids with multiple languages espouse one of two methods: either both parents speak the "minority" language at home (meaning not English in the U.S.), or each parent exclusively speaks one language to their child. But, neither works for me. Tim doesn't speak Spanish, and it would be awkward and extremely difficult for me to speak to Elliot exclusively in a language that's not my own...despite my love of it.

So, instead, I speak to him sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish. We have children's music in both languages, although the Spanish-language versions of classics like "London Bridge is Falling Down" are truly dreadful. I read to him in both languages, although the Spanish-language version of  "Are You My Mother?" is all he seems to want to hear right now. I try to say the same things to him in both languages so that he learns similar vocabulary, although I'm not always successful. I realized this recently when I discovered that Elliot could find his "ducky," but not his "patito" in the bathtub, but that he could find my feet (but not his own!) only in Spanish.

For now, it's extremely gratifying to see that my son understands things like "Where is your (giant stuffed) giraffe?"` in both English and Spanish. It's frustrating when I find that I don't know a word in Spanish (which happens on a daily basis), but that's why I keep a dictionary handy and am a frequent visitor to WordReference.com. And, it's encouraging to hear how others raise their children in more than one language on sites like MultilingualLiving.com.

I don't think that Elliot will emerge from my little experiment completely bilingual (after all, I'm not.) As he gets older, I plan to supplement the sound of my voice with classes (as long as they are not based on conjugating verbs as my first Spanish classes were!) and hopefully, exposure to native speakers. For now, I'm eagerly awaiting his first words -- both in English and in Spanish.

If you speak to your child in more than one language -- especially a non-native language -- I'd love to hear about your experiences. Gracias!

PS: This post is part of the October Bilingual Blogging Carnival on Multilingual Living.