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    Raising Bilingual Children: A Practical Guide
    Raising Bilingual Children: A Practical Guide
    Raising Bilingual Children: A Practical Guide
    Ebook138 pages2 hours

    Raising Bilingual Children: A Practical Guide

    By Maritere Rodriguez Bellas

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    About this ebook

    For most immigrant parents in America today, raising bilingual children is not a choice or a decision, but rather a way of life. Yet teaching children their parents’ native language often comes second to ensuring they are proficient in English so they can thrive in school and later reach leadership positions in the workplace. In addition, the task of teaching two (or more) languages can be overwhelming, leaving many of us wondering where to start.

    Raising Bilingual Children is here to help with easy, practical steps for children of every age and stage in life. Author and parenting expert Mari Bellas provides answers to questions such as: What do I do when my five-year-old doesn’t want to speak Spanish at home? My husband doesn’t speak Korean, so how do we find common ground to raise our kids with two languages? My child is two years old and not speaking in either of the two languages we speak at home—should I be concerned?

    Whether your native language is Spanish, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, or French, it is natural to want our children to communicate in the language we were born with. Raising Bilingual Children is the ultimate guidebook for busy parents looking for advice and direction about the everyday challenges and joys of raising a bilingual child.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateSep 2, 2014
    ISBN9781476753256
    Raising Bilingual Children: A Practical Guide
    Author

    Maritere Rodriguez Bellas

    Maritere Rodriguez Bellas writes an influential parenting column for La Opinion, the largest Spanish language newspaper in the country, and she recently launched a similar column with Vista magazine. Her articles typically deal with the vast range of issues facing immigrant parents who seek to find a balance between the culture they left and the culture they adopted. Bellas is also the author of the forthcoming Arroz con Pollo and Apple Pie in which she offers immigrant parents a comprehensive guide for understanding their emotions, solving their problems, and finding joy in their multicultural reality.

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      Raising Bilingual Children - Maritere Rodriguez Bellas

      Introduction

      For most immigrant parents, raising bilingual children is not a choice or a decision, but rather a way of life. Whether our native language is Spanish, Filipino, Korean, Chinese, or French, we all want our children to communicate in the language we were born with and we all want to instill in them the love of our native language. After all, we want them to be able to travel back to our place of origin and speak with the family that stayed behind. We want them to know where we come from, and language is a big part of that knowledge. As writer Rita Mae Brown once said, Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going. For the immigrant parent, this is more than just a catchy saying. It becomes a fierce desire:

      I am from Spain but my husband and I are raising our children in California. As important as it has been for us that our children embrace the English language, it has been paramount that they are fluent in Spanish. My family back home, they don’t speak English. We want the children to be able to communicate with their grandparents and other family members.

      —Mireia, mother of three children

      But in today’s America, the desire to teach our children our native language is often secondary to making sure they are proficient in English so that they can thrive in school and reach leadership positions in the workplace. We want our children to knock down every barrier that might be in their way, and to succeed beyond measure—and we know that a command of English is a necessary foundation for this kind of success. What this means is that we have two competing desires, two deep wishes around language learning. But the task of teaching two (or more) languages at home can be so overwhelming that sometimes we are intimidated by what steps to take or even where to start.

      Raising Bilingual Children is an easy, user-friendly, how-to guidebook for the immigrant parent who is committed to raising children in two or more languages. It is designed to work with your busy life, offering a quick way to search for advice and direction about the everyday joys and challenges of raising a bilingual child. It will provide answers to questions such as:

      • What do I do when my five-year-old doesn’t want to speak Spanish at home?

      • My husband doesn’t speak Japanese, so how do we find common ground to raise our kids with two languages?

      • My child is two years old and not speaking in either of the two languages we speak at home. Should I be concerned?

      In addition to helping you find answers to your most immediate questions, Raising Bilingual Children also offers stories from parents, who share their ideas and experiences; interviews with the kids from these families, who give us insight into what it feels like to be in their shoes; opinions and suggestions from experts in the field; comments from renowned personalities who have benefited from being bilingual; and links and resources for finding out more information on a wide range of topics.

      I hope it inspires you to start and to continue the effort of raising a bilingual child. Language—with all of its magnificent complexity—is one of the greatest gifts we give our children, says Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, in an article published on Scholastic.com. Yet, we so often treat our verbal communication with children in a casual way. It is a misconception that children learn language passively. Language acquisition is a product of active, repetitive, and complex learning. The child’s brain is learning and changing more during language acquisition in the first six years of life than during any other cognitive ability he is working to acquire. How much easier this learning process can be for children when adults are active participants!

      My Story

      My name is Maritere Rodriguez Bellas, but everyone calls me Mari. I was the parenting columnist at the newspaper La Opinión in Los Angeles for over ten years. For the last three years I have been writing a column for ImpreMedia’s magazine Vista. Vista is distributed in eight states nationwide and is published online in English and in Spanish. ImpreMedia is a national media company whose Hispanic portfolio includes newspapers, magazines, and websites. Over the years, my articles have ranged in topic from the challenges and rewards of raising children, specifically aimed at Latino immigrant parents raising children in the United States, to issues affecting children and adolescents. My Vista column is called Entre Amigas (Between Friends), and I get to write about topics impacting family life for today’s Latino parents, especially Latina moms.

      I am not a language expert, but I am in the enviable position of having raised two bilingual children. I say enviable because my kids are grown-ups and making their way in the world, and it is a joy to see them thriving. My son is twenty-four years old and a film producer with a business in Los Angeles. He enjoys speaking with his grandparents when we go to visit my family once a year. My daughter is twenty-one and a senior in college. She is planning to go to Spain for her semester abroad.

      I know without a doubt that the hard work of the early years is worth it. My husband is Greek and I am from Puerto Rico, and we raised our children in California. It was quite a mishmash of cultures! There were some years when we had turkey at Thanksgiving, arroz con pollo for Christmas, and stuffed grape leaves for New Year’s. At times I wasn’t sure what we were doing, but there was one moment when I knew that it was right.

      That confirming moment came during a family vacation to Puerto Rico. We were there to celebrate the Christmas holidays. I heard my daughter, who was three years of age at the time, run up and say to her cousin, Quieres jugar? (Do you want to play?). She knew even then that her cousin didn’t speak English, and she talked to her in Spanish! A few years later, my teenage son was talking to a new friend and I overhead him say, I am 50 percent Puerto Rican and 50 percent Greek. And I am proud to be an ethnic American! It brought tears to my eyes.

      I invite you to read along and discover ways that might help you and your family in your quest to raise bilingual children. Enjoy!

      CHAPTER ONE

      Getting Started with a Second Language

      To have another language is to possess a second soul.

      —Charlemagne

      Language is how we communicate. If we were born in another country and we want our children to speak our native language, it is up to us to make it happen. At home we must make the ultimate commitment, and sometimes sacrifice, to preserve the native language; it is in the home that a language is taught. Your child listens to the way you and the other people in your home speak, and mimics it. If you speak two or more languages at home, your child will hear that this is a natural way to communicate, and she will follow suit.

      Studies show that infants are great at learning languages. "Researchers who study language development in children know that babies are actually born to learn any language, be it Spanish or Swahili. But while babies are born with the capacity to pronounce all the sounds (called phonemes) in all languages, between six and twelve months of age this skill fades as the baby pays attention to the utterances, intonation, and diction of the languages used in his own home. Babies mimic the sounds they hear in their environments, thus strengthening their abilities to make the sounds they’ll need when they actually learn to talk," notes an article on infant brain development at Babyzone.com.

      For a wonderful demonstration of the linguistic genius of babies, watch this TED Talk from Patricia Kuhl. It is amazing and inspiring!

      Why Do It? A Case Study

      Most immigrant parents cite the importance of their heritage and of speaking to family back home. Mireia, for example, is from Spain and her husband is Argentine. She moved to the United States in 1992. She came here to work for a Spanish tourism company, never intending to stay in America—until, that is, she met her husband, Diego, who has lived in the States since he was young. Two years after they got married, they decided they wanted to live in Argentina, and they lived there from 1994 to 2002. During that time, they had three children. Like many other immigrant parents, Mireia and Diego decided to return to America in search of a better life and more opportunities for their children. At that time, their children were six, four and a half, and one year old. Looking back, that was a very difficult time, Mireia says. We had no family around us, the children spoke no English and had no friends, and my husband was working long hours. It was a lonely time, but we knew it would only be temporary.

      Why, during this difficult time, did Mireia go out of her way to make sure that her children continued to grow in their knowledge of Spanish? My grandmother doesn’t speak English, she explains. I wanted the kids to be able to talk to her and get to know her. Mireia also knew she would be traveling frequently to both Spain and Argentina to visit family. It was a practical concern that her children be able to manage in those countries.

      Also, Mireia talks about the pride she felt for her native language. It was that pride that propelled her to stay committed to the task of teaching Spanish to her kids, and she ended up passing that same pride along to them as well. In the beginning, her children were embarrassed to speak another language in front of their friends or native Spanish-speakers. It took them a while to feel pride instead of shyness about it, she says. "I just think they wanted to

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