When raising our kids we always want what is best, that doesn’t change when wanting to look for the best approach for teaching our little ones how to speak, read and write in a bilingual household.

There are certainly proven methods out there, however, when looking into them none of them worked for our family.

I was born in Venezuela (a Spanish speaking country) and my husband was born here in the USA, so we researched the different methods out there:

• One Person One Language (OPOL) where each parent would speak their own native language to their little one.
• Time and Place (T&P) where you pick a place and or a time when you would only speak a certain language to your little one.
• Minority Language at Home (ML@H) both parents use the minority language at home only to provide extra support.

In or case, my husband is not fluent in Spanish, so we couldn’t go with the OPOL approach, otherwise, he would never know what I was telling our daughter (something that might be beneficial sometimes… hahaha just kidding!!!)  So we decided to go for a different method that is working great for us (so far), whenever my little one and I are together (or around other Spanish speaking people) we will ONLY speak Spanish, and whenever we are with any other people we will ONLY speak English. This works for us because my husband and I have split work schedules, and there are a lot of times that we get to spend individually with her, so she is exposed to both languages often.  We were afraid at first to introduce another language to the already chaotic scenario of raising your first child hahaha, lots of myths out there of slowing down speech development, creating confusion, etc, but like I said it has worked so far, and whatever method you go with or tweak to make your own stick to it, that would be the only way you won’t generate confusion. Be consistent! Because the benefits, in the long run, will be great. Take the time now, you meet lots of people out there that say “Oh I wish I knew Spanish, my parents were from Latin America but they never took the time to teach me Spanish”  If you are lucky enough to speak another language, why not exposing your child to it at a young age? Use music, books, whatever resource you find. It sure will be cheaper that way too than to take an online course later down the road 😉