Baby is in Spanish Immersion ( learning all subjects except English in Spanish with no prior Spanish knowledge). Yaya refused to help her in any way saying that she didn’t have anyone to help her when she joined Spanish Immersion and Baby just have to struggle like she did.
I was very upset with Yaya, but I didn’t have any valid reasons why she should help her youngest sister. What Yaya said was true, that she struggled and survived and so will Baby. I had to make an appointment with Baby’s teacher and explain to her that Baby doesn’t get any help at home even though both her brother and sister are fluent in Spanish. ( I used to get in to so much trouble at school when I didn’t know to do some of the maths problems.. according to my Math’s teacher who was also my oldest sister’s teacher, I was being simply lazy, because she knew my oldest sister was a brilliant student and I could have asked my sister for help. Unfortunately my oldest sister refused to help me by saying if you had paid attention to what the teacher was teaching, then you would know how to do the problems)
Last week Yaya had her first set of IB internals and she made tons of notes. After the exam, when I picked her up, she told me “Mom, when I get back home, I am going to make a celebratory camp fire and burn all the notes, because I will never be learning John Keats again for the rest of my life. After a few seconds, she said ” But then again, perhaps not. Baby can use all these notes when she is in Grade 12.”
I guess this is what siblings love is all about.. You may not see it all the time, but just when you least expect, you get this glimpse of pure love.. I am so happy.
Well like they say,
Immersion is the best way to learn a language, and I find it true. It also beats the theory that it’s too “late” to learn a language after age 7 or so. I picked up speaking Malayalam after spending only 3 weeks (probably because I already understand it) in India since the language was spoken everywhere, and can now hold a descent conversation even though I’m not entirely fluent. I learned Spanish in school but barely used it until I started volunteering in a few medical offices where a lot of Hispanics had zero knowledge in English, therefore I went the “cold turkey” method and had no choice but speak. I can converse in Spanish very well now and my comprehension is improving since I’m using it more often. I really hope to learn Hindi the same way since my knowledge is very basic, and if time permits maybe Korean and Hungarian haha. I bet in a year or so, Baby will be fluent or so. She may struggle now, but it may be worth it at the end. Just curious, did you want all your kids to learn Spanish, or was it solely their choice? Cuz they could have gone and opted to study other languages too 🙂
J1206: All three chose to learn Spanish because they want to move to US. Yaya speaks French and Japanese and wants to learn Russian when she is on her gap year. None of them know any Indian languages or are keen to learn.