Anonymous wrote:My kid is in an immersion Spanish school. It’s 100% immersion prek3 to K. Then in 1st it is 50% immersion and 50% English. They alternate days so the whole day is immersion and not back and forth.

We don’t speak any Spanish. So to supplement, he does do Spanish summer camp for 4 weeks. We are planning on starting 4 weeks Spanish camp abroad in the next 1-2 years. He also watches shows and movies in Spanish as recommended by the school.

His school has high expectations for the kids for Spanish. All the staff including admin is native speaking except for only 2 that I can think of. At school, you will hear staff speaking Spanish in the hallways and not English. The school has about 1/3rd native speaking students or students with families who are fluent in Spanish.

He started in K and just finished 5th grade. His accent is really good and he is doing well. He understands everything and his speaking and writing is pretty good as per feedback from his teachers. At 10, he took the seal of biliteracy test and scored intermediate. He will be starting a 6-12 school in the fall and will be able to continue with Spanish. We are hoping he is interested in earning the IB diploma.

It is hard to tell so early if a kid picks up languages easily but it seems like our kid is doing well. I agree that if fluency is the goal then you have to supplement if you are not native speaking. The families who are not Hispanic at our school who we know are fluent did peace corps abroad or study abroad or lived abroad, etc..

Anonymous wrote:No matter what route you go, you have to supplement outside of school if you are not speaking the language at home. We sent our daughter to camp where she had to have af least a B2 level of language learning and she will be doing homestays/ short-term exchanges abroad now that she is in her teens. It is a commitment of time and resources on the part of the parents.

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Anonymous wrote:If your goal is to raise a fluent child (vs. getting your DC into some academic program), you should enroll them in full immersion and expect to still have to invest significantl time & resources.

My DS and I have purposely hired only Spanish speaking nannies since our DC's were newborns, we enrolled them in Spanish immersion preschool and kindergarten, we have placed them in a 2 week summer camp in Mexico every single year since age 4, we have always required Netflix, Disney, and Hulu to play only in Spanish. They are now in middle school and the top Spanish speakers in their classes, but still barely fluent.

Honestly, if you are not 100% committed to your DC's becoming fluent, it's not worth it.

^^^this

DH and I don't speak Spanish but are committed to bilingual children. This is exactly what we have done.

We had immersion until 1st grade however.

Kids tested better in Spanish in ES than English.

We also had weekend tutors for reading and writing (just an hour) and their Spanish vocab is fantastic. They already read for fun in Spanish.

From what I hear from their Spanish teachers and our Spanish dominat friends, their Spanish is better than most Latino kids.

Their Spanish is better than kids whose parents only speak Spanish at home? I highly doubt that.

Not based on the parents education and if the parents don't make speaking Spanish a priority.

Most Latino kids don't get to attend immersion programs. It is very, very hard to keep the language when your school is all in English and you have no opportunities for full immersion. I am Latina and the only reason I am still fluent is because I would visit my native country for 2 months every summer and even then it was a struggle. I still lack confidence in the language and am missing a lot of vocabulary.

Shaming kids and families who "don't make speaking Spanish a priority" is so dumb and offensive to me.

Who said I'm shaming families who don't make it a priority. They might have other priorities and dual language isn't it. Also like you they might not feel confident in their Spanish so they don't want to teach their kids Spanish.

I have my basic Spanish from HS and have been told by my fluent friends to STOP because it's not helping my kids.

But my dual language friends aren't always able to send their kids to a dual language school. So their Latino kids speak Spanish but only have a home vocabulary not a history, science, math etc that you get with school.

I have friends who will tell me they are fluent in a language like a 5th grader or only know the kitchen versions of a language becuase that is the only time they spoke the language.

You said Latinos who don't speak Spanish have uneducated parents who didn't make the effort to teach their kids Spanish. I can tell you from personal experience that without the resources and opportunity to access Spanish immersion while living in the US, maintaining the language is very difficult, including for Latinos with very educated parents who prioritize speaking Spanish at home.

Rereading what I wrote I could see how it could be condescending.

I meant OR not AND. You can have Latino parents who speak Spanish only at home but they themselves don't have a HS degree so vocabulary is limited. This being similar to an English only speaking parent who won't have a high vocabulary in English because of their education. So the child is not exposed. For a bilingual child this will be an issue as they get older and should have a more robust vocabulary.

And then you have Latino parents who aren't confident in Spanish, think they are doing what worked for them or don't do the extras at home.

100% it is harder to make a fully bi-lingual child in the US but not impossible.

I have a friend with 3 Latino kids, the oldest is fluent and the other two can just understand. It gets harder the more the oldest child is immersed in the English world and then you have another English voice in the house.

I realize your intentions are good and I'm sure much of what you wrote is true but as a Latina I just find you incrediblly irritating. Why do you feel the need to opine about experiences you have never had? It seems like Latino families get dinged because we fail to learn English AND because we fail to teach our kids Spanish. Maybe recognize our families are navigating two different cultures and languages, often with fewer resources than you have, and stop talking about us without us.

I am the PP who mentioned hiring a Spanish-speaking nanny and putting DC's in a summer camp in Mexico every single year.
I'm Latino, I grew up in a Latino neighborhood in the U.S., and I didn't speak one word of English until I started school.

There is nothing irritating about the PP who pointed out the obvious - developing bilingualism in the U.S. is hard and requires commitment. Some people lack that commitment and rather prioritize other things.

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Anonymous wrote:My parents prioritized assimilation vs. bilingualism. And it really disabled my brain from learning any language let alone theirs. The amount of times I'm shamed for having bad pronunciation is epic.

I'm prioritizing bilingualism because I've seen how it helps my cousins as adults in so many ways.

My first job out of college was a crappy customer facing position at a big retail bank. But I automatically got a 4% raise because I spoke Spanish.

Anonymous wrote:My parents prioritized assimilation vs. bilingualism. And it really disabled my brain from learning any language let alone theirs. The amount of times I'm shamed for having bad pronunciation is epic.

I'm prioritizing bilingualism because I've seen how it helps my cousins as adults in so many ways.