Bilingual Baby

Abuelita Marisol and Tia Yazmin with Felix and me.

Before my niece was born, I made her a onesie that said “Bilingual baby: I cry in English and Spanish.” It seemed like a joke at the time, but I’ve since learned that babies’ earliest sounds really do mimic what they hear from us. Lately I’ve noticed that Felix’s coos and cries often match my tone of voice. If he’s upset and I coo back at him, he’ll match my pitch.

It’s pretty cute and funny, but it also reminded me that we need to get on this Spanish stuff right away since he’ll be 3 months old next week (but not old enough for the bilingual immersion daycare till next winter.) It turns out our brains can completely lose the ability to make certain sounds if we’re not exposed to them before 6 months of age…perhaps why Americans have such a hard time sounding fluent in other languages, no matter how hard they study. And maybe why Spanish speakers have a hard time with all our vowel sounds. Some of my Mexican friends had the hardest time with certain words all coming out the same: bird, bear and beer all sounded like beer. Her, hair and here all sounded like here. (Spanish, as you may know, has just one sound per vowel.)

So in addition to ordering a set of 14 kids’ Spanish books for Felix, I ordered 3 DVDs from Amazon today. Two are Plaza Sesamo, aka Sesame Street, and the other goes over 60 words and phrases related to manners, greetings and everyday objects. Now before anyone gets all worked up about me putting Felix in front of the TV, I’m only going to play them as background noise to start. It’ll expose him to the sounds and prompt me to speak more Spanish around the house, since I often switch to it when I hear it.

This weekend, my sister-in-law’s mother visited from Utah. Her first language is Spanish and it was really cute watching Felix study her as she spoke to him. I don’t know if Felix’s birth mom or half-siblings speak Spanish, but if they ever meet one day (and I’m sort of assuming they will), I sure don’t want him to feel left out of an entire culture because of a language barrier.

Something else to remember: bilingual babies often speak a little later than their peers, but they have better comprehension overall. So there’s no need to fear they’re getting confused or overwhelmed with all the info. Their little brains are just amazing.