Teaching English To My Baby?

Don't teach any other language to your child before she can talk in her native language well. This will not help her. It will just confuse her. The sooner is better but this is not valid in yor case. You are not living in a country where English is the native language so there is no need for this.

If you want it to so much, start teaching her when she is 5 or 6.

Hi Ana,

I have a similar issue. I don't know how much of a solution I can offer you, but maybe if I share my experience with you, you can figure out what will work best for you. I'm Mexican too, by the way, but I live in Canada.

Anyway, my husband and I both want our daughter to speak Spanish and English. Since I'm the one who has native-like fluency in English, my husband wants me to speak English to her. However, I feel fake. Spanish is what feels natural for me so that's what I speak to her. Besides, he's hardly home so who else is going to teach it to her? She's exposed to English on a daily basis, but most of her actual linguistic interaction is in Spanish.

I don't know how much of Doll's input is true, however, I can tell you that my daughter reached all her milestones on time except the babbling. She's only 15 months old, but children her age from English monolingual homes seem to be able to produce more than she can. The only word that she really says is "agua". She can say "mamá" too, but she doesn't say it to me. Only in the last month or so, has she really been showing signs that she understands what is being said to her. We'll see how much progress she makes...

If it's any consolation to you though, I didn't learn English until I was 7 years old. I haven't lived all of my life in English speaking countries, only 12 years. I was exposed to English for five years as I child; that's what helped me master the pronunciation. The fluency I have gained, however, has been the result of a lifetime of reading and hard, dedicated work.

Hola Anna!

Although I agree with Doll too, that's it's probably not necessary to teach your baby English, I do know that you can play with languag with babies in a fun way.

I'm Canadian and have been teaching my daughter French since she was very small. Why not? I was teaching French so both English and French came naturally to me.

I started with a face cloth puppet called, "Mr. Grenouille" (Mr. Frog). Mr. Grenouille only speaks French and since he's a facecloth, we only ever hear him in the bath. His specialities are colors, greetings, and funny songs. Leila loves it.

If you just wanted to get her started with a few words, try using colors or fruits. I don't think she'll be confused for life.

Buena Suerte.

Mo

There's a pretty amazing course called 'Monkisee' that'll help very young children to read: Kids Reading with Monkisee - Check out the videos of kids at <1 year reading - very interesting..

Doll Don't teach any other language to your child before she can talk in her native language well. This will not help her. It will just confuse her. The sooner is better but this is not valid in yor case. You are not living in a country where English is the native language so there is no need for this. If you want it to so much, start teaching her when she is 5 or 6.

I don't really agree with you here, Doll We've been teaching our son (he'll be 3 in summer) both English and Maltese with the same intensity, and he speaks both of them very well. He knows when to switch to English and back to Maltese without hesitation. And even though in the OP's case, English is not needed right now, it sure will in the future!
I wouldn't necessarily go over board and teach them 3+ languages at the same time, however 2 is definitely possible.
I'm a bit behind on teaching him German, frankly because I barely speak it myself these days because I don't live there anymore, but he has learned a few phrases and words and understands quite a bit of it. I'm sure if I had to speak more, he'd know more and not get confused.
The teachers at his nursery told me that they have many kids that know 2 or more languages and switch between them as needed. It's the age where their brains are like sponges, and never underestimate how much they can learn! I think teaching them another language later on will just be a lot more difficult and that's where the confusion starts.

@Hitch, can't wait to test MonkiSee, will post a thread about it