About My Little One And Me
I used to dream of having a baby and raising him or her to be bilingual or even trilingual. I would speak one language, English, Spanish, German or French and my partner would speak another.
Although things didn’t quite go to plan and I found myself going it alone with a baby girl in Spain. I still wanted to help her learn another language.
Unsure how to go about things, I looked into it.
Time and again I read that the best thing to do was to have a clear division of languages – in other words one person, one language. This was fine while we were in Spain: I thought I’d cracked it- I spoke in English at home and my daughter was exposed to Spanish by being out and about.
But when Lily was 2, we moved to Malaysia I found myself back at square one. I tried speaking in Spanish to her, but it felt weird. She wasn’t saying more than the odd word and I wasn’t sure how much she understood. What if I put her in danger because she didn’t understand an instruction I gave (e.g. don’t cross the road).
I started looking into Apps and other ways. There were a couple of good Apps, but otherwise I was stuck.
Time passed without making much progress.
Fast forward a year and we moved to the UK.
I have set up a business: ‘Languages to You’. As part of this, I have taught Spanish in nurseries to children of a similar age. This meant I could run lessons past my daughter because they are age relevant. Even though I had just one twenty minute session a week with the nursery children, they loved joining in; and made excellent progress- without hours of extra practice.
We are now making videos to help people at home. As a result, Lily is speaking more and more Spanish and I feel now I am at last achieving my goal.
Learning through interaction, songs and play, is a superb way for children to increase the confidence and Spanish speaking skills.
Why not build Spanish into playtime with your child – imagine how much you can learn together!