Surrounding ourselves with Spanish-speaking friends

by Ana L. Flores http://SpanglishBaby.com
(Los Angeles, CA)

We are lucky in the sense that both my husband and ourselves are perfectly bilingual and biliterate in Spanish and English and we naturally speak Spanish at home.

My daughter, now 2, receives probably 80% of her daily communication in Spanish. We also read to her in Spanish and make sure that she watches DVDs with the Spanish-language track on.
Even so, we know it will not be a given that once she enters Kindergarten she´ll still want to speak in Spanish to us.

We are completely aware that it´s very important to make the language fun and relevant in their day-to-day life. Sure, she´ll have a blast using Spanish to rebel with us one day, but she probably won´t do it with friends she likes and share her language.

We´ve also been lucky to live in Los Angeles and have a great group of friends who are also raising their children bilingually. We make a point to meet every Monday and share important occasions together. These kids are her best friends and I hope they will continue to be so. And, I hope they will all love speaking Spanish to each other as a special thing between them.

We also take her to a Heritage Language school for a couple of hours on Sundays where she gets to sing, dance, do arts and crafts, learn about her culture and traditions and make more amazing friends...all in español.

These are my families strategies for now. We know raising bilingual children requires commitment, but also flexibility.