When I had my first child a friend told me: “Speak Spanish with him all the time. Let your husband speak English and you just speak Spanish.” I sooooo wish I could have done that. I just was not quite prepared for it.
Adjusting to being a mom for the first time felt like enough.
Oh. And I was also newly married and figuring out how to be a wife.
Did I mention my husband also went back to school after our first was born?
Basically I was overwhelmed with life and hadn’t given much thought to passing on my second language (Spanish) to my child.
My friend was so wise and I wish I could have followed her advice. But life is like that sometimes and we just can’t do all the things. At least not at once.
So here I am with my fourth child. She’s ten months old, and she’s actually in the baby carrier, laying her head on my chest as I write. {These months go by so quickly.} Fourth time around I feel much more comfortable speaking Spanish with my baby. I have much more research under my belt, know so many bloggers that support and encourage me, and have had a little practice.
Just today in my email inbox I received an email with a huge list of baby vocab from a blog I found in those years between my first child and my fourth. That email reminded me of another blog post I read three years ago (when I was newly pregnant with my third) over at All Done Monkey–which I love because she explains so well how to use the words in context or how you might hear them used. All of this made me think…I should share this with people who might be looking for help with introducing Spanish to their babies.
Does that sound crazy to you? Introducing a foreign language to your baby. It’s not! I promise. Especially if you are like me and studied Spanish in college and have a dreamy idea that one day you will be able to teach your kids to speak it. I would say, start as early as you can. Each day I find more and more resources online to help us parents.
One last resource I want to mention is one I bought last month or so (with my own money, and of my own accord): the MamaLingua app. This app can be used with more than just babies. What I appreciate about it, is that it teaches phrases and has them spoken by a native speaker so you can learn the phrase with your child if you don’t already speak Spanish yourself, or if you want them to hear it in a native voice. They have a LITE version that is free. So go download it and poke around to see how it works. I have some pictures here to show you, but if you’re like me a hands-on experience is better to see whether or not you like it.
In addition to learning words and phrases to talk about “baby life,” it’s a great idea to learn lots of baby songs and finger plays in Spanish, and also to make sure you are getting lots of adult Spanish input to exercise your own Spanish brain muscles. But that is another post for another day! I can’t promise when I’ll get a chance to share my favorites in that category so be sure to subscribe to updates for this blog, or follow me on Instagram @fortheloveofspanish so you won’t miss it.
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| Click here for a list of baby vocab WITH AUDIO pronunciations recorded by a native speaker. |
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| Go here for a list of baby vocab with in-depth explanations on meaning and usage. |
