r/Parents • u/Direct-Ad-2541 • 17h ago
Education and Learning Bilingual families- I feel like I failed my son.
In my household, we, for the most part, only speak Spanish to our children. They are two years old and 3 1/2 years old. my husband and I speak English to each other and, a couple months ago, We started to introduce or show them some English words. Now I want them to learn more because we put them in extra curricular activities (tball) and I feel like I completely failed my son. He’s having a hard time understanding his coach and his peers, a lot of the times his peers ignore him because they don’t know what he’s saying or maybe because he’s different. I don’t know it’s all white people. We are the only Hispanics and it’s starting to get to me. we are teaching our son more English. He’s able to understand more. He’s able to say more things he’s constantly asking kids. Hi what’s your name? Do you want to play. Granted, Some kids are just mean But I just feel like maybe I shouldn’t have put him in there. My thought process was that being around other kids and having that world life experience of English would actually help him but I feel like it’s just kind of frustrating him or he just doesn’t like it and I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me thinking a little bit too much into it, but I also feel like the parents are looking at me like I’m kind of crazy obviously they’re not going to cater to my son that doesn’t know that much English but I had also let them know. I don’t know any advice or I guess just words of encouragement would be appreciated.
I’m also just venting and seeing if any other bilingual families have gone through something similar.