Raising a bilingual (or in our case, tri-lingual) child raised a lot of questions and doubts that I didn't think it would.
Are we doing this right?
Are we confusing her?
Is she going to end up totally messed up?
I guess it's harder since I was raised only speaking English. That seemed normal to me. Alex was raised bi-lingual, so maybe that's why he doesn't suffer the same agonizing questions that I do.
I guess ultimately, we know that the price of NOT raising her tri-lingual are much higher than making this work. Who would I want to cut out of her life? Who would I decide that she doesn't need to communicate with?
My family? I can't imagine her not being able to talk to my parents, or not being able to sing "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" with her.
Alex's family? Wounaan may be a language spoken by an indigenous tribe of only a few thousand people, mostly hidden away in the jungle. But it's the language her Daddy grew up with. It's the only language her grandmother is fluent in. It's what's spoken in Alex's village. How can she understand what it is to be Wounaan if she can't speak with her family?
And Spanish, well, it's only the language that Alex and I communicate in most, and that everyone else in this country speaks, so unless we move somewhere else, she's stuck with it.
And somewhere along the line, as I contemplated whatever marvelous processes are going on inside her little brain as she picks up these languages, is not so different from other kids, just a little broader. She is learning that Mommy and Daddy talk differently. I say, "let's go to sleep." and Alex says, "Vamos a dormir". But really, how different is that from a child learning that "night-night is the same as "sleep", and that "Daddy went to work", is another way to say, "Daddy went bye-bye."
So maybe she won't be any more confused than other kids. She'll just have a much broader vocabulary to choose from.
