Voices en Español

That is the title of a heartbreaking column published this week in the parenting blog of the Newark Star-Ledger, a newspaper in the U.S.

In the article, Carmen Juri writes about how her 5-year-old daughter Natalie has already decided that speaking Spanish isn’t for her. After some relatives from Venezuela came to the U.S. for a visit, Natalie asked Carmen what Venezuela was like. Carmen told her that it was a beautiful place where the people spoke Spanish. Natalie’s response? “Oh, then forget it. I don’t want to go there.”

“Before I had kids, I would look disdainfully at bilingual parents whose kids couldn’t utter a syllable in Spanish,” Carmen writes. “Now, I know what they were up against.”

The reaction of Natalie is a normal and frequent response from a child living in a bilingual home, according to experts. Children desperately want to fit in and not be considered different from their peers. And if speaking a second language, makes a child feel self-conscious, they may decide they don’t want to speak it.

Also, children are sponges, they absorb whatever they see and hear in the home and in society. That means if the child comes to associate the second language as being inferior or less than in any way to the first language, they may decide they don’t want to use it.

Seattle mom Penny Lara talked about this in yesterday’s podcast. And tomorrow’s podcast will be with Alison Mackey, a linguistics expert, who is going to talk specifically about how to get past this rebellious stage.

If I could get a message to Carmen, I’d tell her to hang in there and not to give up. One day Natalie will thank her for not giving up on teaching her Spanish.

To read Carmen’s story, click here.