Remember: There’s always high school. While your kid won’t become fluent by taking high school Spanish 1–5, she will be able to ask for directions in downtown Los Angeles. And maybe that’s enough.
Like all mothers, you want to give your child every advantage. You want your kid to win. You want your kid to crawl to the top of life’s scrap heap and rule the junkyard until they’re stabbed in the back by a younger, more ambitious version of themselves.
It’s the American dream.
You do as much as you can afford. The best private school, or the shittiest apartment in the best school district. Music lessons, sports, quality time, reading from books not screens, a rarely used IKEA easel in the family room. In kindergarten, it’s your four-year-old vs. your friend’s five-year-old (your friend red-shirted), and the winner of that round advances to the finals against the smartest kids from Asia and India.
Just when you think you’ve covered every base, and your kid has a chance of succeeding in this awful global economy, you are introduced to Jiao, your friend’s Chinese nanny.
Second language. Forgot that! Damn it. No one in your family speaks anything but English.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Fifty or two hundred years ago, your smelly, hungry ancestors came to America fluent in Italian, Russian, Swahili, or Japanese. They settled in some wretched ethnic enclave or homesteaded on a rocky dustbowl acre only to have their lazy descendants fully assimilate with the WASP neighbors and, in the process, lose the native language.
Now that language is necessary. It’s great for the kid’s brain and future job prospects. Take a moment here to curse your dumb family for allowing the language to die. Meshugenah. Puta. Merde.
Now what? You may be tempted to give up. Quit the piano lessons and gymnastics classes, sell the easel on Craigslist, and just let your kids watch cartoons ten hours a day.
Don’t panic, mama. Not yet.
FLUENCY IN CHINESE IS NOT A PREDICTOR OF SUCCESS.
Look at the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination. Jon Huntsman spoke Mandarin and he never polled above 1 percent. He was creamed by Mitt Romney, who speaks French—the tongue of a fallen empire and Canada’s least loyal province, Quebec. And of course, George W. Bush barely speaks English at all and he was president for eight years.
Your kid still has a shot.
GET YOUR KID INTO A PUBLIC DUAL-LANGUAGE IMMERSION SCHOOL.
Any second language will do. (Except Armenian. C’mon—get serious.) The fact that your kid is learning one at all is what’s important.
SOME SECOND LANGUAGES ARE CHEAPER THAN OTHERS.
There’s probably no polite way to say that Mexican nannies are about ten times more affordable than Asian ones. It’s not right, it just is. Don’t be a snob, Spanish is easy. Es muy fácil! Spanish uses the same alphabet as English, which means you can help with the homework. And Univision is the only TV network that is truly committed to its soap operas. What the hell are you waiting for?
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO MONITOR A NANNY
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.
Don’t assume your friend’s nanny spends all day reading The Art of War in its original Chinese to her charge. If the nanny is teaching the kid any Chinese at all, it’s probably phrases like “Your parents owe me $2,000 in overtime” and “Your mom keeps a filthy house.” All other times, she’s texting her boyfriend, just like a Colombian nanny.
SPEAKING A SECOND LANGUAGE ALL DAY LONG MAKES A PERSON HUNGRY.
If your kid ends up being one of the unwashed English-onlies, don’t fret. As the federal government tightens the noose on illegal immigrants, more and more low-paying jobs will go to unskilled Americans. English-speaking-only Americans. In other words, your kid will always have work. Those foot-long sandwiches at Subway don’t make themselves!
Remember: There’s always high school. While your kid won’t become fluent by taking high school Spanish 1–5, she will be able to ask for directions in downtown Los Angeles. And maybe that’s enough.