Introducing more English or stay strong in Minority Language?
Hi all, I’d love some advice on our language set up as our toddler has become very chatty and increasingly interested in communicating with others that don’t speak the minority language.
My partner and I have two kids, one is 2.5 and we have a new baby. We live in the US and are fluent in Spanish (partner is a heritage speaker and I’ve learned in school + living abroad) but our dominant language is English. Since our first was born we have spoken to her in Spanish almost all of the time, and speak to each other in English most of the time. We do read books to her in both languages, and sometimes substitute words or phrases in English if we don’t know the word in Spanish, or a phrase just feels more fitting to our English-dominant brains (ex. Oopsie, yucky, yummy yummy in my tummy, night night, etc.). She is also in a Spanish immersion daycare 3x/week where staff exclusively speak Spanish but many of her classmates primarily speak English, which she picks up phrases and words from.
Our social life is basically entirely in English. We use English with our friends and family, though many have basic Spanish and will speak to her in Spanish in whatever limited capacity they’re able to. Her Spanish-speaking grandparents don’t live close by but we talk to them every couple weeks. They also speak English, but mostly speak to her in Spanish because they understand what we’re trying to do.
Now that our daughter is 2.5 she talks a lot! And she almost exclusively speaks Spanish which is great as it’s the target language. BUT we’ve noticed she seems frustrated that her English js limited and she can’t communicate as much with English-only speakers like her cousins for example. She only feels confident with certain phrases and vocab (“I want x”, “it fell”) etc., and as people are telling a story or laugh at something someone said she often says “Que pasó?”.
We are torn on whether we should start introducing English more, and if so, how. We don’t want her to feel excluded socially, but also don’t want English to completely take over as we’ve seen happen for many kids.
Anyways, what would you do? Stay strong in Spanish and allow her to just kinda figure out English little by little? Or ramp up English in some sort of structured way to prevent her from feeling excluded in social situations?
Thank you!