Hello multicultural friend,
We are a bi-cultural couple. I'm from South America and my wife is from the USA (Midwest). We live in the US so we speak English most of the time, but my wife speaks Spanish with almost no accent and we try to speak it, about 20% of the time.
We just had our first son, and we have the "first time parent jitters".
My son just turn one year old and we are kind of worried because of his delay in the area of communication. Basically, we were looking at some child development charts, , and he is right on target on all areas (motor-skills, problem solving, mobility, social, etc) except on Language and Communication.
He only says one word -"dada" -to either of us, where she should already say at least three... he doesn't clap, he doesn't wave bye-bye, and when ask to play peak-a-booh, he is clueless....
I guess I should mention that she is a Pediatriacian so we are overloaded with information and studies and stuff but it's difficult not to think the worst. She thinks that he has a mild delay of about 2 months...
I know that bilingual kids are slower to learn how to talk, but that early? I don't
want to stop our special spanish bonding time and all the spanish baby-talk and my wife singing Spanish nursery rhymes... and we are lucky that our Pediatrician support us in our efforts since she also comes from a bilingual family and is raising bilingual kids (vietnamesse-american), but how much should we worry?
Any experiences would be useful.
Looking for symphaty in KC,
Miguel
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