Even before she was born and I carried her nestled in my
womb, I sang her Spanish lullabies. From the time that she was born and onward
I read her books in Spanish with the hopes that someday she would feel as
comfortable with the language as she would in English. It shouldn’t have
surprised me then when at 11 months her first word aside from mama and papa
was, you guessed it, in Spanish.
We were playing with her favorite puppet, a fluffy little
monkey that was dubbed SeƱor Mono at some point, when out of nowhere she hugged
him and very distinctly called him “mono”.
Since then I have caught her trying to repeat words back to me in
Spanish more and more. This morning? I am pretty sure she was trying to say “hola”
when she waved at me.
Her transformation towards becoming bilingual continues to
amaze me because it happens so effortlessly. It is an incredibly beautiful thing to me.
That's so awesome, and will put her at such a huge advantage as she gets older. I've read that kids that speak two languages before the age of seven have their brain hemispheres wired together differently than those who don't. I forget the medical terminology but I always thought that was really cool :)
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