Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

The Bilingual Baby

Tre is 21 months old and surprises me every day with something new that he’s learned.  The kid is like a sponge, just soaking up anything that comes his way and I couldn’t be happier.  For the past month or so, he has been working on mastering his ABC’s and numbers (up to 10) and he has them down pact, recently he learned his colors and can pick out any color block or crayon that you ask him to and tell you what that color is.  A few days ago when I came home, he read me a book.  This was a shocker, because for once I didn’t have to read the same book 20 million times in a row.  Instead he brought the book to me and said “readabook”, as I began reading he turned around, put his finger to his mouth and shhh’d me.  I was baffled so I just shut up & to my surprise, he took over.  Picking out a few words from each page and then saying the associated animal sound.  I was impressed to say the least, but his most recent educational endeavor is just down right scary.

The boy has taken it upon himself to learn Spanish.  Just let that sink in for a moment, I just said my 21 month old son has decided of his own free will to pick up a second language.  Neither Fefe, nor I speak Spanish nor does anyone else that Tre is immediately associated with, so this is quite shocking in my opinion.  The little guy doesn’t even know the English language well enough to form complete sentences and he’s already trying to learn another one?  There’s something strange with that picture, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Tre has several toys from Fisher Price and Leap Frog that are bilingual. You simply hit a switch and everything switches from English to Spanish.  The songs, numbers, dialog, I mean everything switches to Spanish.  So for the past few weeks, periodically we would hear his toys speaking in Spanish and just assume that either him or Ty mistakenly moved the switch.  We’d put it back and carry on.  Then one day while Ty was gone, I noticed that every freakin bilingual toy in the house was speaking Spanish. So I go to change them back and Tre is following right behind me undoing the language change that I was making to his toys.  I started thinking what in the world is going on with this kid?

I sat back and thought long and hard about what could be causing this recent interest in a new language and was coming up blank until an “ah ha” moment came.  It hit me like a truck; he’s trying to impress a girl.  About a month ago, Fefe had told me that there was this little girl in his “ready to learn” class that spoke Spanish.  She said that Tre would always go over to the little girl and just stare at her, but would run away when she tried to play with him.  Isn’t that sweet, he didn’t want to play with her until he was able to effectively communicate; what a gentlemen this guy is.  I guess he figured, the only way to have fun with this chic was to speak her language, so he set out on a quest to do so.

I don’t know if that’s the true reason that he’s been so interested in Spanish, but you have to admit the timing is almost impeccable.  He meets a Spanish speaking girl and a few days later his toys are all speaking Spanish to him.  The sad part about it, is that he’s actually learning it.  The other day we caught him singing the last few words of one of the songs in Spanish.  I figured that he was just copying what he heard, but yesterday we were having a conversation on his play phone and before he hung up he said “adios”.  WHAT? This little boy just said goodbye to me in Spanish and actually used it correctly?  That was a mind blower, and I still can’t get over it.  One things for sure, if he’s gonna be learning Spanish, I’m going to pick up a Rosetta Stone edition asap.  I’m not gonna have him cursing me out in another language that I can’t understand!