Teaching 2 languages at once?

[GuavaGirl]

My baby is only 6 months old and I've just started teaching some ASL signs. It got me thinking that it's neat that it might give him a head start to learning sign language...and then I was thinking that it might be neat to give him a head start in Spanish. I know kids pick up languages quicker when they're younger and I speak Spanish (lived in Mexico for bit) but I'm wondering how you do it? The obvious answers seems to speak both languages to him, but I'm concerned about confusing him, or him speaking too much Spanglish. Heck, I know I even struggled with that when I got back from Mexico. Obviously, there are many that grew up in bi-lingual homes. I wonder if they ever struggled in school or with their speech, because of it. How do Europeans do it? Multiple languages are so common there.

This is really interesting to me. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks!

[SundayCrepes]

I've heard kids can learn to speak up to 3 or 4 languages at the same time. They do not get confused. What I've heard that has helped some families is to choose a place or time to speak each language. So, at home you could only speak Spanish while out in the world you could speak English. Or, you could alternate days, or you could speak one language in the morning and one later in the day.

I do not speak Spanish yet, but am in the process of learning. We have a Spanish playgroup that meets twice a week. In between I randomly use what little Spanish I know. My son is also watching dvds--Little Pim and Whistlefritz. I don't expect him to learn the language from those programs, but he is picking up vocabulary. Your little on is too young for TV and you speak the language so you're ahead of us. All you need to do is talk and he'll figure it out.

[Marimami]

I had such great hopes, and I haven't done a great job. My speciality in college/grad school was language development, particularly second language learning so I feel particularly annoyed at myself.

I'm fluent in Spanish but it's not my first language so it has always felt awkward speaking it to DD casually. Also, we adopted DD from Guatemala where she had heard only Spanish for the first 7 months. This may sound weird, but I always felt like she was a bit sad when I spoke Spanish to her in the early days. I was probably projecting my sense of her loss, but maybe not. In any case, it made me extremely reluctant to speak Spanish to her. She switched to English so quickly that I just never was great about going back to Spanish.

One thing that we did that I'm so glad... Spanish kids music all the time. Jose Luis Orozco is one of our true loves around here! Over the years I have collected tons and tons of Spanish kids music. She has learned so much just from listening to the songs.

I also picked up on a couple songs that she seemed to like a lot early on and those became the songs I sang to her at bedtime. To this day, those few songs are like a magical switch for her. They calm her down like nothing else. They saved us from some tragic hospital experiences this past Spring!

She is almost 6 now and I've picked things up a lot more lately. She has an amazing accent--it's so natural to her so I was so relieved about that. Reading Spanish is so much easier than English--she loves the comparison between the two languages in writing. We've started doing some video-based Spanish lessons together (through Discovery Education), and she seems to enjoy that.

She has always zoomed in on people who speak Spanish whenever we're out in public so I feel like it's still there inside her, and now I am really working hard to help her achieve all that she can.

I'm also trying to start a Spanish group, but my work schedule is making it more difficult than I had hoped to accomplish this.

Holli