Why now? Taking a cue from my son.

We have two sons now. One is three and one is six months old. When our older son was a little older than 2, he started watching Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go. For a few weeks, those were the ONLY shows he would watch and he would watch the same episodes over and over. While at the time, I wondered about long term effects to my sanity, I began noticing that through this repetition he was learning and retaining Spanish words! He started with some of the basics- "Gracias" and "De nada" being the first. Then he started filing away some commands. "Abre" and "Cierra" became part of a new favorite game. He would pretend that the nearest adult was a gate and would order the gate to open and close so he could go through. He became an excellent backseat driver as well, yelling "¡Para!" when we would come to a red light and "¡Vámanos !" when it turned green.

Around this same time, he also became more inquisitive. His favorite question became "What means _______ in Spanish?" Anything he saw or heard, he wanted me to tell him how to say in Spanish. I took all of this as a sign that NOW would be the time to begin. Now, while he is interested and reaching out for it would be the ideal time to introduce new activities and habits to our routine. So, I began researching everything I could find about raising bilingual children. There are several different theories and methods to consider and most of then are geared toward native speakers of the language. Being a non-native speaker, I searched hard for reassurance that 1) someone like me could be successful and 2) I would be able to find some useful suggestions and motivation out there instead of trying to re-invent the wheel so to speak. I was very excited and encouraged by what I found!  I will post more about the research I did and the articles that I found most helpful soon, but for now, suffice it to say I found a wealth of information to sort through and many ideas that I needed to evaluate for how well they would fit into our lifestyle.

More to come soon!