I can relate to your issue! As a mono-lingual adult who  is married to a bilingual fellow and thus his bilingual family, it has been really important to me that our kids are as bilingual as possible. My MIL doesn't speak English well, so everyone just speaks Polish when the family is together. DD4 has been immersed in it at her grandparents' house and understands the language almost fluently. But, she is leery of speaking Polish, and gets annoyed when DH and I try to speak Polish to her (my Polish is limited, but I have taken classes and listened to it for the last 8 years).

Is is reasonable to put her into Polish school? It would be every Saturday through the school year for as many years as possible. I don't know. I want her to be connected to her heritage (DS, too, when he is old enough), but that's a huge time commitment! But, it has to be worth it, right? Doesn't being bilingual make it easier to learn even more languages once she is old enough to be interested?

I know this is weird, but just this morning I heard an interview with Geraldo Rivera, of all people, as he recently wrote a book about immigration called His Panic.  His premise, which I think is correct, is that the current "concern" about immigration is about the changing face of our country, and a certain segment of the population's extreme fear and discomfort.

But I digress. The part of his interview I wanted to mention is that Rivera didn't speak Spanish until he was 15. His father was Puerto Rican, his mother a New Jersey -born Eastern European Jew.  His dad was all about fitting in as an American.  So Rivera didn't learn Spanish until he was sent to Puerto Rico to stay with his abuelos for a period of time (I don't know how long he was there).  Today, he forces his kids to learn Spanish for the same reasons you want Maya to have access to that skill and heritage.

I think giving her immersive time with your parents and asking them to only speak Spanish with her would be a great way to keep her language skills growing.  

I cannot emphazie that enough. KEEP IT UP!!!! What you are doing is an amazing gift to her. She will speak Spanish and English beautifully.  As a monolingual English speaking parent who is paying extra for spanish language education outside of school, I think what you're doing is fantastic.

In grad school I took a class about childhood language acquisition where we talked about bilingualism in kids a lot. In fact, the teacher was raising her kids in a bilingual home where her DH spoke Spanish while she only spoke English--even though they both were fluent in both languages.

Everything that Maya is doing sounds totally normal in terms of what this professor taught. Maya is smart enough to know what the dominant language is, and she's smart enough to know who can speak it and who can't. It's normal for her to play around and see what those boundaries are--such as correcting your 'leon.'

This professor's daughter went through a phase where she realized her father could speak English, so she spoke English to him even though he only responded en Espanol. BUT when they went to visit relatives in Mexico, that little cutie slipped into Spanish like it was her birth language...because

Maya has probably figured out that English is the "right" language, and Spanish is just some weird family thing.  I don't think you can avoid this perfectly logical conclusion.  My Peruvian neighbor has the same complaint - her husband is Anglo and her kids go to an english only elementary school (interestingly, the only kids on our block not in spanish immersion).  So they speak Spanish only with her, but she figures as long as she persists they'll remain fluent until they're old enough to appreciate their advantage.

One suggestion I've heard is to make sure TV/videos are spanish only, in order to associate something "good" (desirable) with Spanish.  We did that while my kids were little; they were so video deprived they'd watch anything that moved, they didn't really care whether they understood it.  In our case I doubt it made any difference, but it can't hurt.

like everything else when it comes to parenting, this is an emotional issue as much as it is an educational one. As such, it's got to be normal that Maya and you will have a fluctuating relationship with speaking Spanish.

Have you tried checking out the cultural activities that the Mexican consulate in LA organizes? I did a quick google and found this,

Also, I agree that spending time with los abuelos is a great thing. It'll all pay off one day, promise!

My daughter's best friend Alexandra is half Peruvian.  With her older brother, the Mom tried to keep everything bilingual with Spanish at home with him and English at school.  When Alexandra and then the third girl came along it became more difficult because the kids would speak English to each other and to Daddy.

But, the son who is now 23 is completely bilingual.  The second child, Alexandra, who is 19 has easily become bilingual.  She wasn't really as a younger child but by taking Spanish at school and visiting relatives in Peru and Spain, she realized she knew more than she thought.  I think the youngest is the same.

So don't worry.  You are creating the foundation and by keeping up with it as best you can and exposing her to classes, she will be bilingual---no problem.

I am not in a good position with this.  My Spanish has suffered since I left school, I haven't spoken Thai to anyone since the second grade.  Spanish and really crappy Mandarin are the languages DH and I have in common, but we lose more every day.  I think it would be beyond wonderful to have an opportunity to live overseas so DS can learn another language the way I learned Thai, but who knows if that will be feasible.

I think, maybe, that early exposure to multiple languages makes it easier to learn languages down the line.  It feels that way to me.

For about a day DH was planning to work for the Indian Health Service, which boded well for my plan to learn Dine, but no...

Hmmm, maybe I can recruit my parents to speak to DS in Spanish, and send him to their place for the summer or something.

I just put ds on the waitlist for the fall for a Spanish immersion playgroup, to seque to a Spanish immersion preschool in early 2009. He'll do this in addition to the coop preschool (which are both only twice a week for two hours).

There must be Spanish immersion playgroups around where you live, and other supplemental immersion programs (if you don't want to take her out of her current preschool). It'd probably help to see other kids and a teacher speaking Spanish.

But I totally agree with everybody to keep going with it!

One thing to keep in mind is that when kids are exposed to another language regularly, even when they're not trying to speak it they are "banking" the sound system of that language, so if/when they try to pick it up, it will come much easier.

I work with a lot of Spanish-speaking parents who say once their kids hit school it was a battle to get them to speak Spanish at home.  I guess is acculturation.

I don't have any advice on this, but your daughter is so cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is 1/2 French Canadian - his father ONLY speaks French to him (and his sibs) and they must ONLY speak French back to him or he won't answer. The kids are completely bilingual. The mom is not a native French speaker and she speaks to them in both English and French, mostly French. The kids are 12, 6, and 3...

Long story short, keep it up, Erika. She will thank you later!

I have utter faith that Maya will be saying the same thing as you in twenty or thirty years.  "I hated it as a kid, but now I'm glad I know."

I hate being mono-lingual and would love for my children to learn other languages.  But how can I teach them something I don't know?  Today I was listening to Spanish language CDs in the car, for myself and hoping the kids would absorb some of it.  Simone asked me about it, and I explained that we speak English, but it's better to speak as many languages as possible, so you can go more places and talk to more people.  She said "well, I only want to speak one language."  Like you, I thought wtf?  

There is a local public school called the Sheridan School of International Languages.  I was intrigued and looked into it.  Apparently, you choose Spanish, French of Japanese, and the lower grades teach half the day in said language, while the higher grades are conducted in it all day.  Sounds great, but overall it rates as such a bad school.  Is it worth maybe other subjects suffering so that my kids can learn a foreign language?  I can probably catch them up on elementary school math, reading, and science, but I can't help them with Spanish...

It's a great book and addresses many of your concerns/experiences.  More than anything, and I say this as someone who works in early language learning, don't stop speaking Spanish!  Make it as fun as possible and don't get caught up in power struggles.  She'll love you for it later!