The Best of Both Worlds

I never thought it would be easy; I just did not know how difficult it would be. Though we lived in the southern jungles of Colombia without benefits of running water and electricity––and without the last 20 years of bilingual research and discovery––I was a very determined parent.

My children would grow and develop with all the tools. From birth through their adult lives they would be able to use both English and Spanish––with equal expertise––for communication, for investigation, and even for fun.
And they weren’t even born yet!

But as soon as we were parents, we knew that we had to be involved.
My husband Anastacio and I were a missionary family. Living, working, and teaching amongst Colombian farmers on the Caquetá River, we had the benefit of highly experienced and very caring teachers both in pre-school and primary levels. Misión de Cristo children attended schools staffed by both English- and Spanish-speaking missionary teachers; classes were assigned according to each child’s principal home language. Most children spoke both languages to one degree or another, but we were determined. Our children would have full command of both tools.

Now, 25 years later, our daughter María has recently returned from a ministry trip to the northern coast of Colombia, where she interpreted for her husband David as he spoke to Spanish-speaking listeners. Both she and her older sister, Ana, interpreted continuously in both languages even as they were growing up. They were well able to think, dream, laugh, and love in "whichever one I want".

The road traveled by us as parents as we led our children toward equal mastery of both sets of language tools was full of unexpected bumps and curves, but eventually brought us to our desired goal. "Parents don’t need to be scared that their kids are going to become confused," admonishes María, "It’s just not going to happen. They need to make the effort, they need to be a support. Parents are not doing it for their own benefit, they’re doing it for the child’s benefit, because it pays off in the end," she continues. "What matters is how invested parents are in their children."
She and David plan to start raising their family within the next few years, and both are determined to raise them bilingually. "I really want my children to be capable in both English and Spanish," explains David, and that means I’m going to have to learn Spanish. Since it is available and we can give it, I just can’t see not providing our children that tool. It will put them in a much better life situation."

Both David and María understand––at least the concept––of continual and consistant parental involvement in their children’s education, if a full spectrum of language tools is to be available to their children. After having worked diligently to provide our first daughter with experiences and opportunities in both languages during her first five years, the time arrived for our first major choice. She was to begin a year of pre-school training in either Spanish or English. It was our call.

Her father spoke 90 per cent Spanish in the home. I was a bilingual interpreter and spoke both. At home, my first and most natural choice as response language was English, which I used more often than Spanish. Outside our home, Spanish was generally the language of choice, since all who spoke English spoke some Spanish, but not all who spoke Spanish spoke English. We were, after all, living in a Spanish-speaking country.
So, I chose to start her in English-speaking pre-school. Thereafter we continued her schooling in classes using English for academic instruction.

However, by the time Ana was to start first grade, I noticed a significant leaning toward English in all her responses. When I spoke to her in Spanish, she answered me in English. She even preferred answering her father in what was fast becoming her language of first choice. This was not working, as he spoke very little English. Though she lived in a predominately Spanish-speaking atmosphere, including now her home––I had changed language of preference to increase her Spanish––she was thinking in English.

My determination was being tested.

Meanwhile, it was time to place María, her one-year-younger sister, in pre-school. Yes, this decision was not difficult. She went into Spanish pre-school. My first language was English, María needed a balance. So, I had to remember to speak more English to her at home, since within her school atmosphere and general surroundings, Spanish was her tool. Therefore, I had two daughters only 17 months apart, raised in the same environment, with the same parents and friends. One leaned more toward English, the other toward Spanish.

I was still determined.

At home, Anastacio was working on English, and we tried to remember to speak English to María. If Ana spoke to us in English, we attempted to turn the conversation into Spanish. Did we have confused children?
"Absolutely not," declares outspoken María, currently finishing her training as a registered nurse. "A lot of people say you shouldn’t teach your children both languages at once, that they will get confused. "That is a bunch of garbage. To think that a kid will get confused over learning two languages…No, no! You don’t get confused. You might cross over some words now and then, but you don’t get confused. It’s not like an identity crisis.

"I can’t remember which language I thought in when I was a kid, but I invariably thought it was neat that when people showed up who needed English, I could talk to them. I could also talk in Spanish, so that was cool.
"But to me English has always been weird," she laughed. "Especially its spelling. I used to spell "fun" as "phun". Letters have so many sounds, it’s not straight forward. Sometimes I misspell, but that’s not to say that I’m confused."
She asked on her last trip to Colombia if, in her Spanish language, Colombians heard a foreign accent, and was repeatedly told "absolutamente no." In her English, neither her husband nor I notice any accent at all. However, there are times during conversations which turn to past experiences that someone present will mention having noticed an "accent", though they never guess it to be Spanish. María thinks in Spanish "whenever she feels like it," and can go back and forth. Spanish seems to be the "tool of choice" when she is excited, or when having recently heard Spanish in her surroundings. English has always been harder for her than Spanish, whereas Ana mentioned during high school that she found Spanish harder to "get into" than English.

During our flight home to the United States after experiencing an unexpected and quick exit from Colombia, 13-year-old Ana was delighted as she heard English around her and realized she was on her way to the United States.
Twelve-year-old María placed her head on my lap and sobbed, thinking of leaving her friends and her language behind. At that moment, neither Ana nor I could comfort her. And she determinedly spoke Spanish to anyone who would listen. A dozen years later, one of her favorite, most inspiring pieces of music continues to be the Star Spangled Banner, and she can still sing several stanzas of the long, multi-verse Himno Nacional de Colombia. Due to an interruption in formal schooling caused by civil unrest in the country, both girls arrived in the United States having not been "in school" for the major part of two years. During that time, I turned into a book scavenger, feeding both of my "avid-reader girls" as many books as I could find in both languages.

Ready to enroll them in school, I was extremely nervous as we prepared to test them, to thereby gather information as to their current achievement levels in all academic subjects, as well as their proficiency in English.
I was a nervous mother; Anastacio was a concerned father.
Our worry was for naught. Both girls tested two years beyond their age level in all subjects. As Ana studied to finish her nursing course, she stayed available to provide language help to the Sheriff's department, and to any in her hospital environment who used Spanish to communicate.

As María prepares to graduate this spring as a registered nurse, she frequently finds herself privileged to assist others with various levels of communication. She no longer says "chicken" for "kitchen", or "cocholate" for "chocolate", and maintains that she is not, and has never been, confused––even though in English both she and Ana used to call their little toes, "little fingers."

"I want to make one suggestion to parents and educators," María adds. "If you’re going to make the effort to get your children bilingual, be sure they are taught the grammatical structure of both languages. Don’t get focused on teaching them the language they are learning, and forget about nurturing the language they have learned––the first language, the language everybody around them speaks.

"If you worry about your children being confused as they learn two languages at once, you’d better teach your own kids," she laughs.