Raising a child in Spanish in an English-speaking country

Make Spanish the everyday language between at least one parent and your child, then count the hours it really gets. That is the method King and Mackey describe in The Bilingual Edge for a family where both parents speak the language natively and the community speaks another. A caution first: the sources read for this site do not test anything specific to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia, or to Spanish as such. What follows is the general method, written for Spanish-speaking parents in an English-speaking country.

What the sources cover, and what they do not

The Bilingual Edge is a general guide for families raising children in two languages. Some of the studies it describes involve Spanish-English children (Pearson and others, 1997; Patterson, 2002), and one involves Latino children in the US (Dolson, 1985). We read the book's account of each, not the original papers. The notes behind this site record no comparison of Spanish with other languages, and no comparison between countries.

So this article says nothing about schools, classes or the size of a Spanish-speaking community in any country. Check what exists near you yourself.

Why the home carries the Spanish

King and Mackey call a family where both parents speak the language natively, and a different language is spoken around you, a minority-language family. Their advice for it: use the heritage language as the everyday language between at least one parent and your child, and do not worry that this will hold back English.

The reason is how the two languages reach a child. English, in their words, has a way of seeping in from everywhere else. Two languages are never on exactly equal footing outside the home, so they suggest extra support for the weaker one inside it. For the early years the goal they give is 80 percent of child interaction in the minority language and 20 percent in the majority language.

On the worry about English, they cite research, as they describe it, linking a strong first language to strong second-language and academic outcomes (Skutnabb-Kangas and Toukomaa; Dolson, 1985). That is their account of those studies, not the papers themselves. If only one of you speaks Spanish natively, you are in what they call a mixed-language family, which has its own article.

Count the week, not the plan

King and Mackey recommend that families audit their real interaction time: the hours each caregiver gets with the child, in which language, doing what. The Family Language Audit counts the first two. A caregiver who speaks only Spanish counts in full, one who switches between languages counts at half weight, and one who speaks only English counts as zero. The counted hours are divided by the child's waking hours in a week, which the app estimates by age band (UNVERIFIED). The audit adds your entries as typed. It cannot see clock times, so it only warns when the total is more than the child's waking hours; enter each hour once.

ILLUSTRATION built from the app's arithmetic, not data about real families. I ran one invented week through the audit code for a child aged 2, whom the app counts as awake 77 hours a week:

• Mother alone: 12 hours, Spanish only. Counted: 12.
• Father alone: 8 hours, Spanish only. Counted: 8.
• Both parents together: 16 hours, Spanish only. Counted: 16.
• Grandmother on video calls: 3 hours, Spanish only. Counted: 3.
• Childcare: 25 hours, English only. Counted: 0.

64 hours are logged and 39 count, which is about 51% of waking hours. The audit puts that past the 20% line, one study's debated figure, and short of the 80% goal, which would need 61.6 counted hours. The gap is 22.6 hours. The audit shows no one parent, one language note for this week. That note needs a household profile saying the parents have different first languages, and both parents here speak Spanish. The separate hours-only note does not appear either, because the Spanish hours come from several caregivers. The 64 logged hours are under the 77 waking hours, so there is no overlap warning. The hours and labels are invented. What comes from the app is the method.

One detail on the measure. King and Mackey state the 80% as a share of child interaction. The audit compares it with a share of waking hours, which is the app's choice. Read the result as a rough count, not as a score.

What to do this week

1. Decide which parent, or both, speaks Spanish with your child by default.
2. Log one real week in the audit, each hour once, including the people you tend to forget: a grandparent who calls, a relative, a caregiver.
3. Read your share against both lines, and treat the 20% line as debated.
4. If the hours fall short, look at which caregivers add Spanish hours and decide what to change. Where to find Spanish outside the home depends on where you live, and the sources read do not cover it.

The audit counts hours and language, not what the hours are spent on, and it does not diagnose. If you worry about your child's speech, ask a speech-language professional.

What is still unknown

• Whether anything here differs by country, or for Spanish compared with other languages. The sources read do not test it (UNVERIFIED).
• Whether 80% of child interaction, or 20% of waking hours, suits any particular child.
• How common it is for a child in a minority-language home to understand Spanish but not speak it. No source read gives a rate.
• Whether half weight and the waking-hours estimates match your week. Both are the app's own choices (UNVERIFIED).