How to raise bilingual kids even if you don’t know much Spanish (Before the World Cup Ends)

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I started my daughter’s life by speaking to her in Spanish, but by around three, I was really overwhelmed (it was during the panini!) and slowly pivoted back to English. I completely regret that because she went from a baby who understood complete Spanish to a toddler and kinder kid who does not speak Spanish. So I am not trying extra hard to turn her into a natural Spanish speaker and she is just now starting to pick up words. But it is hard, especially because her dad does not speak Spanish (luckily a lot of her school friends are lil’ Latinas and halftinos too!).

If you’ve ever caught yourself wondering whether it’s too late to raise a bilingual kid — whether you’re fluent enough, consistent enough, whether the window has already closed – our buddy Mike Alfaro has something to say about that.

Alfaro is the creator behind Millennial Lotería, the cultural phenomenon that turned a beloved Latin American card game into a modern classic and earned him features in TIME, the New York Times, ADWEEK, and Men’s Health. Now he’s channeling that same energy into Sí Sabo Kids, his bilingual children’s imprint, with two new books: ¡GOOOOL!: A Bilingual Book of Soccer and The Unbreakable Piñata, which hit #1 in Children’s Spanish Books after its May release.

We talked to him how not to get so down on yourself for not teaching your kids your language, how to use soccer to help them learn, and why your imperfect Spanish is actually literally a superpower.

You don’t have to run your house like a language boot camp.

That’s one of the first things Alfaro told us, and it’s the line we needed to hear. His approach to bilingual parenting isn’t about perfect grammar or structured lessons. It’s about making Spanish feel like it belongs in the room. This is one of the mistakes I had been making all along – creating the perfect moments and structure, and drills.

“Make it part of your family culture, not just a lesson,” he says. “Kids are much more likely to connect with a language when it’s tied to songs, books, inside jokes, grandparents, foods, soccer games — all the things that make a family feel like your family.”

For families watching the World Cup right now, he sees a direct opening. Fútbol already comes with its own vocabulary — el gol, la portería, el árbitro, la pelota — and when kids are screaming at a screen, adrenaline is doing half the teaching. “Suddenly vocabulary lessons are attached to celebration and family memories,” he says. That’s the Trojan horse.

 

 

On the generation that was told to just speak English.

This is where the conversation gets real. A lot of señora-era parents grew up in households where Spanish was quietly set aside — not out of shame exactly, but out of survival. Out of wanting their kids to fit in, avoid discrimination, have access.

Alfaro doesn’t shame that generation. He understands it.

“I try to approach that conversation with a lot of empathy,” he says. “That pressure came from survival. So I never want to shame the choices they made under very different circumstances.”

But then: “We know more now. Bilingualism isn’t a burden — it’s a superpower. Raising bilingual kids today can be an act of healing. It can be a way of giving back something that assimilation tried to take.”

That framing — language as healing, as reclamation — is very much in the spirit of what we write about here. The señoras of our family trees didn’t think of Spanish as a lesson. It was just how life sounded.

On what Latino representation in children’s media still gets wrong.

“A lot of children’s media still treats Latino culture like it’s explaining us to outsiders instead of reflecting us back to ourselves.”

His books are built on the opposite premise — not translation as a performance for people who don’t know us, but language as something that belongs to the kids holding the book.

For the parent who doesn’t feel fluent enough.

This is probably the most useful thing he said, and we’re passing it along directly:

“Don’t let your insecurity become the reason your child loses access to the language. You do not have to be perfectly fluent to raise a bilingual kid. There’s something really beautiful about a parent saying, ‘I’m learning too.’ That turns language into something collaborative instead of intimidating.”

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¡GOOOOL!: A Bilingual Book of Soccer and The Unbreakable Piñata are both available now through the Sí Sabo Kids imprint. With the World Cup in full swing, the timing could not be better to read one before a match and see what happens.

  Here are other tools that have helped me in my journey here at home: Homeschool Languages   8 Beloved Spanish Films to watch with the whole family Best Spanish Cartoons for Kids