The sources of my mommy guilt usually break down into three categories: food (as in “I’m failing miserably at getting my children to eat any green vegetables”), sleep (as in “maybe my child is acting like a banshee because he didn’t go to bed until after 9 p.m. last night) and intellectual stimulation (as in “if it weren’t for ‘Mighty Machines’ I’d never get a thing done around here”).

My latest anxiety falls in the third category. I’ve been horrible about teaching my children Spanish. Maybe that would be an acceptable omission for many, but I actually speak the language (for the most part). My oldest was born in Mexico for God’s sake. So I just can’t figure out why I use it so infrequently. Ironically, I’m reminded of the mother of the three children I was a nanny for in Spain. After a month or two in the household, she sat me down and said she wanted me to speak more English to the children so they will learn. “Instead,” she said, “they’re just learning bad Spanish.”

It was true, actually. The 4-year-old would sometimes pronounce R words without the rolled R, the hallmark of a gringo. I suspect, however, it was in part to get under his mother’s skin. At any rate, the reason I wasn’t speaking to them in English was because they didn’t listen. They didn’t listen because they didn’t understand.

So that’s the trap I’m getting myself into with my older child. Because I haven’t spoken enough Spanish to him, he won’t understand me when I do (I’ll note that my husband is much more vigilant about it than me even though he picked up the language much more recently). So along with the green vegetables, I’m committing to do better. (And now that I’ve written it, I suppose I better stick to it!)

A good point that this article in The New York Times makes is that talking to your baby or young children — in any language — is critical for their development. It seems self-evident, but in our busy, over-scheduled, multi-media lives, it’s easy to overlook. There are so many more demands on our attention these days. But making the effort pays dividends. And not just for them. There’s nothing like entering the wildly imaginative mind of a 3-year-old to make all the day’s stresses melt away.

Tags: development, guilt, language

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