When this cute little boy was little and I was a young mom, I decided that my boy would be bilingual Try and stop me! I spoke nothing by Spanish to him all day. I bought Dr. Seuss books in Spanish. I named everything in the house only in Spanish. He would point to the sky at only 12 months and say "Avion!"
Then tragedy struck. My in-laws were in a terrible car accident and came to live with us while recovering. When my baby, now 2, discovered that everyone else around us spoke another language and they were enjoying it, he put his foot down. He threw his Corre, Perro, Corre! at me when I picked it up to read. "Plan, mom, it's a PLANE!" he'd shout, avoiding my attempts to maintain the language that I had so carefully planted in his cabeza. I was devastated, and finally after months, I gave up.
Well, payback came. He is now in Kansas working volunteer missionary work with Mexican immigrants. He speaks only Spanish. And from what I understand, he picked up the language extremely quickly and with a beautiful accent. I was not surprised. I had read when he was in utero that if I spoke to him in Spanish that he would develop a part of the brain that would be more mature and developed and pick up the language later in life even if he did not continue with the Spanish.
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| With his friends from Peru and Ecuador
I give a great deal of credit to grandma, who, after the accident when she was confined to bed for a year, read to him for hours, literally HOURS every day, at age 2-3. He was incredibly bright and "listo", all of his teachers and friends would comment on his alertness, curiosity, and bright-eyed-ness. Grandma was a teacher and she knew what she was doing (I thought she was just giving me a break so I could make dinner). But to myself, I credit for following my hunch and introducing him to the Spanish language at his young age, and sticking it out as long as I could. I kept telling myself that his brain was developing and would come back to him one day...and I was right.
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