He's babbling in Spanish!?

Question

ok. We have a little boy, relative adoption pending, who has been in our care for 3 months now. he spent 7 of the first 8 months of his life in a Spanish-speaking foster home. We found out today (Hispanics at the next table in a restuarant) that he's babbling in Spanish. We thought he was too young to nurture the bilingual thing, but now we're having second thoughts. We realized that we've learned to read his body language and he probably hasn't figured out that we have no idea what he's saying.

Would it be a good idea to get him in a Spanish speaking day care for a few hours a week, or would it just confuse him more? We realize the value of being bilingual in the employment world, and will probably be more so in 20 years. What do you think? I know a good pre-K through 8th grade school for him, (they teach them to read and write in Spanish. We're both former teachers and we could do the English end of it) but he's just turning one next month, so it will be three years before

Answer 1

What a wonderful idea to continue his spanish education, while your teaching him English. Of course, you know if your going to have a bilingual home, your gonna have to learn Spanish too....LOL....Good Luck

Answer 2

It can only help to expose him to Spanish more. When I was growining up my mom spoke to us in English and my Dad in French and while sometimes we would mix the two languages up - we improved as we got older. And it has been really helpful to know the second language.

Answer 3

My just is bilingual, he is 3.5 now, and speaks fluently in both English and Russian.  However, it might be difficult if nobody in your household speaks the other language.

Answer 4

smart kid with a great future!!  keep speaking both languages.  he may be slower to speak, but he'll be so far ahead of his peers.

Answer 5

I would for sure keep him in touch with it. It will be forgotten so fast if you don't. Being this young he will do really good learning both. Your right it will be so useful for his future.

Answer 6

go for it it would be great if you could speak both languages in the household he is just learning so you could learn to spanish along with him enough that he'll be a fluent in the sense of a 2-4 yearold. As a teacher you realize that most kids don't get the whole grammer thing tense and sentance structure untill they are in school. Right now at his age it's just about learning as many words as possible and you should be able to do that.