One Family´s Return Trip: Playing with Cousins

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We consider it a great blessing that our boys have cousins to play with in Colombia. Part of the joy of the trip is seeing them together. One sadness has been seeing my boys feeling afraid to speak Spanish. They understand what their cousins are saying -- for the most part -- but they just get so frustrated trying to speak back to them. It makes me sad. I had always hoped that the boys would be fluent in both languages. It makes me feel more determined to speak to them in Spanish. I hope that we will be able to find other Spanish speakers in our community so that they can have people to practice with.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I just wanted to add that over time Spanish will probably get easier for them, especially if they take it in school. My mom is Colombian and my dad is American and when I was little I was fluent (we were living in Central America and I spoke both languages at home), then it went away almost completely when we moved to Europe (but I could understand some), then I started taking it in middle school and continued all through high school (although it went down a bit when I moved to the US for a couple years because the US doesn't have as good foreign language programs as Europe, probably because it is such a large country and doesn't have a history of needing to interact frequently with foreign language speakers in the way that small countries in Europe do). Then it went down when I went to college for the first year because I was away from my family but later I made some Latina friends and joined a conversation group and now I'm fluent again. So have hope, just because your kids are having a tough time with it now doesn't mean they will lose their Spanish. And remember that the more practice they do the better they will get!
September 21, 2010 at 10:51 PM
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