Hello, all!
I'm fairly new and have just been reading, not posting, for a few
weeks now. All your postings have been very motivational and
informative -- thanks!
I'm a native Eng. speaking American, my husband is Peruvian, and we
met, married and lived in Japan until our son turned 2. We've always
done opol: me English, dh Spanish. (We didn't bother much teaching
him Japanese since we knew we'd be leaving before he got too old to
use it.) When we left Japan, he was just starting to talk and had a
few words in Spanish but many more in English. We're spending a year
in Peru now (starting last March) and ds speaks FANTASTIC Spanish
now. It's been amazing watching him pick up so easily all these
crazy verb conjugations that I still haven't figured out myself!
I speak to him in English except when I need whoever's helping me
take care of him at the time to understand what I want him to do,
etc., in which case I usually just say it in Spanish instead of
telling him 1st in English -- I know, not perfect but much more
practical! He understands me perfectly, except of course when it's a
new word or something he doesn't understand the concept of.
The problem is that he always responds to me in Spanish! He does say
some words in English, but isolated words and not full phrases or
sentences (or any verbs at all, for that matter). Now we're getting
ready to move to the States in 2 months and I need him to start
speaking English (for the monolingual grandparents). But since he
knows I understand him when he speaks Spanish, he doesn't want to
bother saying things in English. He does understand now the
difference and knows that he's going to have to speak English with
his grannie because she doesn't understand Spanish. And I'm sure
he'll be fine within a few weeks of arrival, but how can I get him
to start responding to me in English now? Any tips would be
appreciated.
While I'm at it, any ammo I can get for convincing my parents that
he really *will* talk well soon in English and that it will all be
SO worth it once he's totally bilingual would be useful. I'm sure
they're going to rail on me when he can't talk to them, so I want to
be ready!
Thanks in advance.
Shannon Morales in Peru
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