This post was originally published in my newsletter This is Not Advice.
This is Not Advice (TINA) is weekly publication by me—Laura Freeland, blogger, soon-to-be-published-author, the world’s okayest mom, and avid plant eater—where I explore motherhood, the creative life, and other topics I know almost nothing about.
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In the name of honesty and vulnerability, I have a confession: it’s important to me that my close friends and family see how hard I work. My self-worth is tied to busting my butt in the name of family, food, and creativity. When people don’t see the work, it feels like they don’t see my value.
Sure, it’s super petty, but I hate it when someone eats a meal I’ve prepared or sees my fully potty trained kids and assumes it was easy for me. I plan celebratory meals weeks in advance, and I locked myself in a room for 8 hours a day for 5 days straight to potty train my kids. I had to do a load of pee-soaked towels a day that whole week! It wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but—believe you me—they did not come potty trained. I put in a lot of work. I still carry a toddler toilet in my trunk!
One of my toxic traits is I overshare how hard it has been to raise my kids on real food—how it’s not that easy to visit a friend at lunchtime or take a day trip because I have to figure out what the kids are going to eat. I focus on the challenges because I need people to see I’m not gifted at meal planning or toddler crafts or cake baking.
I learn, and I plan, and I ask my mommy for help to make our life happen the way it does.
I recently wrote about the cultural bias I have experienced when speaking to to my kids in Spanish. I shared that people I don’t even know have made passive aggressive comments about how hard I’m making the twins’ lives by confusing them with two languages.
When someone assumes that because I am choosing to raise Spanish speakers it must be easy or no big deal, it takes something away from me, which pisses me off, and usually inspires a rant.
Today, I had planned to rant about raising bilingual kids in the U.S., but in the wake of another national tragedy where six families lost their babies (three grown, and three still so small) to gun violence, I have no complaints.
I had the joy to wake up this morning to two toddlers who are very much alive, and it is a privilege to get to raise them—and even more of a privilege to do so however I want.
And so, with no further ado, I present to you my very favorite aspects of raising my bilingual babies.
- Hearing them master concepts, words, and sounds that don’t exist in English
I love hearing my kids use words in Spanish—or in English—that just don’t translate to the other language. And it’s amazing to hear them pronounce sounds like sh or ñ that exist in one language but not the other.
As a language nerd, my true delight, though, is watching them master grammatical concepts that differ between English and Spanish.
A reflexive verb is essentially a verb whose direct object is the same as the subject. When you say, “I love myself,” you are both the subject of the sentence and the direct object of the verb.
In Spanish, reflexive verbs are their own words. To wash (lavar) and to wash oneself (lavarse) are similar verbs with similar conjugations, but they are not the same. In English, the verb and its conjugation don’t change because it’s reflexive—we just stick a pronoun at the end of the sentence.
My three-year-olds don’t know what a reflexive verb is in either language, but they know how to use them properly in both.
They also have almost mastered the rule that adjectives go before noun in English (red car) and after the noun in Spanish (coche rojo). This is a super interesting concept because grammatical structure can change the emphasis of a sentence— prompting speakers of a language to focus on a certain part of the sentence, and therefore a certain part of the world.
Speaking English and Spanish means my kids get to see the world from multiple vantage points.
- They have double the vocabulary
At our last visit to the pediatrician, our physician asked me about the twins’ language skills. At three, I’m not counting how many words they are using, but rather I’m listening to the complexity of their sentences. I told him they can get a concept across in both languages, but they use more complex and proper sentences in Spanish.
He assured me the girls are doing great and explained that every word they know—be it in English or Spanish—counts as its own word. Meaning, if they use both water and agua, it counts as two separate words, giving them almost double the vocabulary of a monolingual toddler! How cool is that?
- Adaptability
It is a serious point of motherly pride to see how adaptable the girls are. They know who they need to speak English with and who they need to speak Spanish with. Even though their Spanish is still much better than their English, they are too young to be embarrassed or deterred, which gives them all the more opportunity to master English—making them that much more adaptable.
There are few things as wild as watching a baby turn into a toddler who can express themselves in full sentences. We commit to our values—bedtime stories and music hour—but in the end, the kids do the work. They show up. They always pay enough attention to learn something, even when it doesn’t seem like they do.
Kids are nuts, but they are a wonder.
In this damaged and damaging world, our focus can default to the challenges of maintaining a household, raising the kids, and paying the bills. My hope for you as we head into the weekend is that you find something wondrous to carry you through until you can flee the country or start homesteading—or whatever it’s going to take for you and yours to live joyfully.
xo,
LDF