I am bilingual.

My children are not.

I decided that I needed to work on this, especially since it is a well-known fact that young children can pick up a foreign language with the greatest of ease.

English is actually my second language. I spoke Polish until I started Kindergarten, and I was a bit shocked when I arrived at school and all the kids were talking (what I thought) was gibberish. However, because my brain was a big old sponge at the tender age of 6, I was speaking English pretty fluently within a few weeks.

I still speak Polish all the time now to my mother, my father, my grandparents - pretty much my entire immediate family. I guess I could speak in English, but this is my way of keeping up with my native language by practicing it every chance I get. I do have to say that English is a much easier language to speak, read, and write than Polish, which is part of the reason I never consistently spoke Polish to my children.

This past week I have been trying to speak more often to my children, especially Brad, in Polish. I have also been teaching him simple words and phrases any chance I get. Well, he has picked up an amazing amount in the past week, to the point that he makes an effort to speak Polish everyday by saying “hello”, “goodbye”, and “goodnight” to me without any prompting. He’s even trying to teach his dad everything new he has learned, by coming up to him and saying things like, “Dada, this is how you say tree in Polish… drzewo!” And he won’t stop until my husband repeats the word perfectly. He definitely takes after me in this regard.

My dear son also showed me last night how much he truly understands about people speaking foreign languages, following a conversation with my mom (he calls her Booboo):

Brad: “Mama, I talked Polish to Booboo on the phone.”

Me: “That’s great!”

Brad: “You know that Booboo speaks Polish, Mama.”

Me: “Yes, she sure does and so does your Mama.”

Brad: “Yes, and Dory speaks whale.”

Me: *spitting water out of my nose*