My daughter is picking up a lot of Spanish words from her sitter these days. She’s begun to use lots of English words (“No!” being a big one) but sometimes she just starts saying things that just sounds a lot like babble to my wife and I. But it's not; our sitter has informed us that she's using Spanish words (which we...or "I" of course don't know). This scares me a little. I don't mind her learning another language like Spanish (it’s now essential living here in Southern California) that's all “coolio” with me - my fear is this:
I don't want to be somewhere (store, mall, Canada) with my daughter, when she's 4 or 5 years-old, chatting or laughing in Spanish to some stranger while I'm just standing there, smiling like cousin Balki from Perfect Strangers.
He could be plotting to kidnap her or directing jokes at me and I wouldn’t even know it. He could be talking to my daughter about jumping into his van for ice cream and ride's on princess pony’s or about my ‘big pore’ problem and I would just stand there smiling like an idiot. That scares me.
Maybe I can do something about this…possibly watch Dora or that cheesy Playhouse Disney show "Manny and the gringo talking tools" and learn how to say things like “Monkey, bring my banana hammer here, por-fa-vor?”