April 2008 - Posts

• Progress!!!

  Lana Privitera is the proud Mom of a fun-loving, bilingual "chatterboy" that likes to spice his speeches in English with long-winded Spanish words. Her goal for 2008 is to pack also some French and Italian in his very expandable 3.5 year old brain. Lana still qualifies as a SAHM but uses her "spare" time working as a watercolor artist and Spanish/art teacher. I’m so, so proud of my son! His Spanish is progressing now at kangaroo jumps  as opposed to the leaping frog pace of past months ‐I’m spending more time teaching  him and that’s really shows.  Every sentence he has uttered the last 7 days has one or more Spanish words in it: “Mama, I like gusanitos. We can buy them una casa grande and they’ll turn into mariposas.” (That was after watching a commercial where they sell caterpillars that turn into butterflies)  He’s also starting to talk to himself in Spanish when playing alone. He either sings the alphabet or counts to 20 while jumping on the couch, or makes his cars talk to each other: “Para, para! You abajo! No, you arriba!” No need to say that I’m totally thrilled!  But the best of all is that he’s actually starting to ask me for new words in Spanish so he can use them in his sentences.  My son thrives in praise so I make sure he gets plenty of it when he uses Spanish voluntarily. He even gets an occasional Jelly Bean after a specially difficult word combination  (I was able to completely potty‐train him at 30 months because of his love for Jelly beans).  For him they are as priceless as free time is for me. Not two kids are alike and parents might have to use different techniques with each of their offspring.   Posted Apr 29 2008, 04:43 PM by Webmaster with no comments

• Our Bilingual Family

  Lana Privitera is the proud Mom of a fun-loving, bilingual "chatterboy" that likes to spice his speeches in English with long-winded Spanish words. Her goal for 2008 is to pack also some French and Italian in his very expandable 3.5 year old brain. Lana still qualifies as a SAHM but uses her "spare" time working as a watercolor artist and Spanish/art teacher. I’ve always regretted that my Croatian Dad didn’t bother to teach me more of his native language when I was little. It could have made learning other languages much easier for me, not to mention the missed job opportunities as a bilingual adult. But I almost followed my Dad’s example and made the same mistake: I took the easy road and started speaking to my newborn son in the language I share with my husband and the community: English….and left Spanish, my native language, waiting in the sidelines. My excuses for not starting to speak Spanish to my son from day one were multiple and similar to those of other misinformed multicultural families: 1 – My husband didn’t know more than 10 words in Spanish and I was afraid he was going to feel like an outsider in his own home. 2- I’d been thinking and dreaming in English for about 15 years and my Spanish came out all choppy. 3– I was afraid of confusing my son and delaying his speech –and afraid of provoking horrendous tantrums because of that. 4- And, finally, the one excuse that carried the most weight: my fear of speaking Spanish in public because of potential ugly looks. And then, when my son was about 15 months old, I found a couple of great websites created by and for multilingual parents that helped me to get in gear. These days I firmly believe in the amazing benefits of bilingualism and the need to start your family’s Bilingual Journey from Day One –or as soon as you can- so this is my present for you today, to get you motivated. Better late than never! http://www.multilingualchildren.org/index.html http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilingualmunchkin/?yguid=228980480 Posted Apr 11 2008, 09:25 PM by Webmaster with no comments

• A Multilingual Journey

  Lana Privitera is the proud Mom of a fun-loving, bilingual "chatterboy" that likes to spice his speeches in English with long-winded Spanish words. Her goal for 2008 is to pack also some French and Italian in his very expandable 3.5 year old brain. Lana still qualifies as a SAHM but uses her "spare" time working as a watercolor artist and Spanish/art teacher.   One apple a day keeps the doctor away…and one word a day in a non-local language will help to make your child multilingual. I just started exposing my son, Nickey, to his third language. I was lucky to find the adorable “Trotro, l’ane” on YouTube and that jumpstarted our French adventure. Originally I had planned to introduce French after he had mastered Spanish but then I realized that there was no need to wait. One word a day is all it takes. When I started teaching him Spanish he was already 21 months old and speaking in sentences in English. I introduced a new Spanish word every morning and I would use it repeatedly throughout the day. (ie: “Nickey, please, sientate. Sit down, Nickey. Sientate.“) In a couple days that word was etched in his brain and it had equal meaning to the English equivalent. I could then add more Spanish words to the sentence. (ie: “Please, sientate. Nickey, sientate, por favor”) I had heard of children rejecting the new language when parents switched suddenly so I went quite slowly at first. It really worked for us. For my son “red” and “rojo” mean the same thing today. No translating in his head. He’s 3.5 now and his Spanish vocabulary is almost par with his English. Tip of the day: Check out these websites on Multilingualism. You’ll learn about all the wonderful pros and the very few and lame cons in this matter. http://www.multilingualchildren.org/index.html http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilingualmunchkin/?yguid=228980480 Posted Apr 06 2008, 05:44 PM by Webmaster with 1 comment(s) Filed under: spanish, multilingual