Teach 'em Young

Ever go shopping with your wife and she ends up in the shoe department? For my lady readers, I’m sure you love shopping for shoes. It really does look like a lot of fun sending that salesperson to the back room multiple times looking for more sizes and colors. But seriously, for us guys it can be kind of boring. My wife shows me tons of shoes and I like them all. Really. So I usually find a comfy seat and relax while she goes through countless pairs of shoes. Sometimes I observe something interesting and sometimes I just kind of blank out.

Anyway, this past weekend we were doing a little shopping and we ended up in the shoe department again. This time as I was relaxing I noticed a man and his young daughter doing the same thing I was. He was waiting on his wife and the little girl, about three or four years old, was playing off to the side. I heard the dad say something to her in Spanish. She looked over and he said something else in Spanish. Now that’s not unusual since I hear Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. quite often. But what was cool was that she then answered in perfect English. He then rattled off a few long sentences in Spanish so fast I could barely separate the words. She promptly gave him a long answer in English again. I just sat there for the next five minutes or so listening to them converse in two different languages. This little girl was totally fluent in two languages. How cool is that? I guess dad was also but I was more impressed with the daughter.

There was a time many years ago that I was one of those guys saying, “This is America. Speak English.” But I’ve softened my stand on that attitude. Yeah, learn to speak English but go ahead and speak another language if you know it. Most of the world speaks more than one language and we should too. I now wish my wife and I had taught our kids Spanish when they were very young but we didn’t and we have no excuse. My wife’s second language is Spanish and we missed a great opportunity. All I can say is, “Learn from my mistake and teach ‘em young!” You won’t be sorry. Chiefpigskin.com