Dear reader, I was surprised today, 5th October 2020, so I took this screen
shot so you can see the date. I have got two bilingual children. Now are a bit
grown up in High School. This, of course, does not mean I am an expert with
the subject. However, I will never recommend to any mum “go slow, as your
toddler will be learning English at the same time as Spanish, be careful to
avoid confusion” IS THIS A JOKE!!!
Sure, toddlers are toddlers; as much Spanish you can teach before they start the nursery, the better would be. Do not worry about any confusion, and I can tell you that soon will be gone if there is any! I am a bit confused about “the confusion” here. Of course, at some point, your child will use the wrong word! and … do not make the mistake of recriminating that, let them express. My children never had any problem talking with my Spanish parents, and sometimes they used to say English words to them. Is this a problem? From my point of view, the problem is to recriminate and try to correct all the time. This my advice is to opt to you!
Sacrifice
It is a huge sacrifice for one of the parents. If you want your child to become bilingual, you will need to talk to them in Spanish and do as much as you can in Spanish all the time. (remember, as much as you can now remember, as soon as your child starts school, the balance will go from 20% (Spanish) to 80%(English). Then you finish work, are tired, and do not realise the week is gone. Find the time and be tired.
Forget about confusion, confused it was the person that wrote that. I never had any complaints from any teacher telling us that our children were talking in Spanish. A bit quiet is expected as well; an average child sometimes is already quiet, so a bilingual child tends to be a bit quieter.
My advice
I will give you the opposite advice “try to teach Spanish, speak Spanish” as much as you can. If you have not got the baby yet, you can start already to talk to them in Spanish, play the songs, socialise with Spanish people, go to Spain or South America if you can, all these kinds of things will help a lot during the first few years. Remember as soon as your child goes to the nursery your work will increase. You must spend as much time with your child and keep alive the Spanish or any other foreign language you want to teach. It would be best if you were very consistent. Socialising your child with Spanish people will be important too. Find out if there are some other bilingual children, Skype, Zoom your Spanish friends, family, etc.
We used to do a dictionary, and it was a bit of a competition in between my wife (English) and myself (Spanish). Booth of the children acquired moreEnglish words than Spanish. This makes sense; we are in the UK, and the surrounding language and the sound are most of the times English.
Things were not easy
It was not as easy to get cartoons, songs, and good books when I was a child. Now there are many films that you can easily download, the same with the songs and a lot of online and I prefer typical books, so I used to read the story to them at night time in Spanish, perhaps confusing as we used to do it in English too. Many times it was the same story even if I had to translate it into Spanish myself.
Games as much as you can, this is one of the best ways to learn; however, do not get frustrated because they can get bored very quickly when they are toddlers. Always they like to explore and find new things.
It was confusing when one of them asked for “Teepou” I am afraid does not mean anything in Spanish or English. We found out that meant
“Tomatoe”.
Has this author played with toddlers!
Talking about “confusion”, I never played with my toddlers “Simon dice” 2 to 3 years old “Simon dice” no te hará ni caso! If you sing “Cabeza, hombros, piernas, pies” Head, shoulders, knees, and toes and do the actions will be much better.
Please Google update that page otherwise, parents are going to be confused. Parents remember it will not be easy, and you must be consistent with the “second language” and make strong foundations at an early age.
All the best
Dad of two teenagers, 16 and 18, both are bilingual.
Some more advice I wrote a while ago.