Won't Your Spanish Hurt Their English?

Another story telling how difficult it is for parents to keep their native language alive in their children. If they succeed, their children will be bilingual and have a huge advantage over unilingual people. DP

Spanish, of all languages, is nearly missing from the landscape of heritage language schools around the city, writes a Los Angeles parent struggling to bring up bilingual children.

By Rey M. Rodríguez

lalamag.ucla.edu: I was standing in line at a grocery store in Pasadena with my two boys, who were restless and causing a little havoc. I told them to settle down. Diego and Pablo ignored me, but I did get the attention of a woman standing in line. She was concerned not about my boys' behavior, but about my speaking to them in Spanish.

Wouldn't it affect their English? she asked.

I never worry about my children's English because it is too prevalent in their lives for them to lose it. Diego, our first, communicated with my wife, Vivian, and me only in Spanish until he was two, and his first word was agua instead of water. He still understands the language easily. But since starting preschool, he's battled with us to speak or write it.

Spanish is a part of our home life. We have books and watch TV shows in Spanish and only speak Spanish at home. We've also gone on trips to Mexico and Spain so that Diego would realize that in some places people only speak Spanish. But he still was unwilling to use it, and by the age of five he clearly preferred to speak English.
Be sure to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.