Hi Mommy! Hola Papi!

Before S was born, M and I agreed that we wanted to raise her bilingual since our roots are South American and we both have relatives living there. We decided it would be best to raise her speaking English and Spanish simultaneously, with M exclusively taking on the Spanish, and me the English.
by Patti

When she first started talking, she seemed a little confused, trying to learn two languages at once, but soon it clicked for her, and she began to separate them out. Even though M speaks English, he never spoke it to S (and still doesn't), and as English became the more dominant language for S, she found it more and more difficult to respond to him in Spanish.

When S started preschool, she was a little freaked out since she had never been with anybody other than M and me or my parents. M attempted to entice her into not being so scared by promising her that if she was brave and tried realllly hard not to cry, he would buy her these cool boots she’d had her eye on for quite some time.

That first day finally arrived, and M and I took her there together. We walked her down the long hallway, S dwarfed by her Scooby Doo backpack and 2-sizes too big overalls, and found her classroom. It was already hopping with activity; there were kids running around everywhere, grabbing books off the shelves and tossing things in the air, and others were sprawled out on the floor playing with dolls. S clutched her “sleeping buddy” and looked around skeptically, taking it all in. It looked fun, but she knew that fun came with a price: staying behind.

M guided her to a plastic rocking motorcycle and helped her on it while I snapped photos and held back tears. We made sure she was settled in, and then we made our exit. I looked back to see S’s chin quivering furiously; she was trying SO hard not to cry. Eye on the prize, eye on the prize, eye on the prize. She really wanted those boots!

Hours later, my phone rang at work. S’s voice filled my ear. “Mommy! Papi got me the boots!” She had survived her first day and M had picked her up from school with the promised present.

“Oh honey, that’s great! Did you say thank you to Papi?”

Her voice lowered, as if she didn’t want M to hear, and then she said in the most sympathetic, sorry tone, “Can you tell him? He doesn’t speak English.”