[clara]

Hi Shoshana,

Children are fantastic linguists. My children are exposed to three and have no problem understanding or making themselves understood in one way or another. Even with unilingual learning, children develop a series of what are called ''interlanguages'': esp evident among toddlers who have not yet developed the full capacity of speech. Children are extremely inventive and free of all those adult hangups and insecurities about grammar correctness and pronunciation. My four year old occasionally even takes to translating from one language to another to get me to fully understand what she wants to tell me LOL

Very basically, allow your daughter to grow up among in a bi-lingual environment: you have Spanish speaking friends. When she is older allow her to go to a Spanish or bi-lingual creche, playschool or kindergarten: Allow her to listen to stories in both languages and learn children's songs in both. If you can get her into a Spanish preschool enviroment( the age where there lingsuitic skills develop most fully, maintain English at home with her: let her choose her language of preference. never force a child to speak one or the other: they will go through natural developmental pahases of choosing one above the other/much as they do developmentally on one parent then the other as infants and tinytots: it is how their learning mechanisms economise and concentrate on the intense mimicry required to learn the necessary skills.
Language is as natural a means of communicating as hugs and cuddles: play is the greatest way kids can effectively learn most anything when they are little. Just because a child is not actively angaging in a language for a length of time does not mean it is being ignored or has gone lost. Both my little ones are surrounded by Italian: the four year old could not be anything else LOL and evry now again she teases me with surprise comments in English. Even the two year old has begun practising words and phrases.
the grammar does not need to be perfect from the go in either language: enjoyment to express themselves in either or both and to feel a natural enjoyment in exploring sound is a solid enough foundation for the brain to muscle in and do the work and it does.
My eldest (now 13) who learnt Eng and Swiss German (dialect)along with German was singing songs in all three when she was four, translating lines back and forth in the same song: that was enough proof to me that enough mental work was being done.
She has excelled herself during the past year and a half: having begun with no Italian, to now conversing, studing and writing in italian as well.
Songs, rhymes, stories: indulge your Spanish friends with the joy of singing lullbyes to your little one, chatting to her in Spanish when they visit. SHE will be bi-lingual if you make it part of her natural environment and not a learning necessity.

Good luck and congrats...
Renée