When Your Child Asks “Is Trump nice?”









Being Mexican American surrounded by Trump Signs

Next week is our 2nd year anniversary living in Georgia.  I’ve had no regrets about the move. My blog is filled with words and photographs of my love for Georgia’s landscape and weather. From the very day we moved to Georgia we’ve felt welcomed and accepted.  I have to admit, before the move, I had little knowledge of The South. I was nervous about the cultural differences there might be, and if I would be accepted as a Hispanic or a northerner. I think our friends back in Chicago were nervous for us as well.  We often get asked by family and friends if he we have encountered any racism in our Atlanta suburb.  I explain to them the stereotype of The South being racist is not accurate, at least not in our town.  I had to explain to them that strangers would say hello to each other on the street, and I was invited to play dates by the second week of moving into town.  People were extremely polite and kind.

I had thought we found paradise.  I was excited for my children to say “yes ma’am” and enjoy a childhood where they would have the freedom to be outdoors year around.  If only I could stay living in that rose-colored world, but it is an election year, and my perfect suburb is not immune to the divide that the country is experiencing.

The contrast from living in a blue state to living in a red state is very visible now.  Being a Mexican American in a red state is an eye-opening experience. Mexicans were brought into the forefront of the political arena by Donald Trump during his presidential announcement speech when he said, When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

It was insulting to hear him call my parents and relatives that immigrated to the US rapist and criminals.  What is that you say? He said some are good people so that makes it ok. No. He said he “assumes” some are be good people. You see, to assume is to say you are guessing, you are really not sure.

My relatives are citizens now, thanks to Ronald Reagan’s Amnesty program, but I can’t deny our history.  I know they all came to work, and I know they are not drug dealers or rapists. I know most immigrants work in factories, agriculture, hotels, landscaping, housekeeping…not drug dealing. I know that although they may not become rich working in blue-collar jobs, they are giving their children a better life than they lived. I know, I don’t assume.  Trump did not have to walk in my shoes to know this.  It is statistically accurate. It is for that reason that I dislike Donald Trump. I can never support his use of racism to fuel his campaign. Over and over again he paints Mexicans as the enemy, and to me his name is synonymous to a hate symbol.  To discuss securing the border or enforcing immigration laws is what civil people do, but to name call and create an inaccurate portrayal of people that look like me is dangerous and irresponsible.

Currently, Trump signs could be found on front lawns in my Atlanta suburb. Trump bumper stickers are on cars, and people wear “Make America Great Again” hats. At first it made my heart break every time I saw a Trump sign. For the first time since I had moved here I felt unwanted.  I felt that these people must all agree with Trump, who said he could not trust a Mexican American judge because of his Mexican heritage and Mexican billionaire is conspiring with Hillary and the New York Times to create a sex scandal against him.  When in trouble he finds a Mexican to blame. Seeing the vast Trump support in Georgia I wondered if we made a mistake in moving here. Don’t get me wrong, I have to say that there are many other people in my suburb that feel like I do about Trump. It just seems that by the look of the lawn Trump signs we are outnumbered.

If I lived in Chicago,  I would most definitely write these Trump supporters off as crazy.   It is so easy to think of people as crazy if you don’t know them.  Now they were my neighbors and friends.  I could read their posts on Facebook, where they expressed their distrust in Hillary Clinton and their desire to protect their conservative values.  They are not voting for Trump. They are voting for the party. There are a few who truly do like Trump and insisted the media was to blame for my taking offense to Donald’s Trumps comments, as if it all his comments were not taped on video for all to replay, however, for the most part, as I heard Trump’s supporters reasons for supporting him I found out they care about taxes, the security of the country, gun laws, abortion laws, etc.  They did not like Trump for the racist things he said.  Those comments were just irrelevant to them.  It was something to accept or rationalize in order to protect something higher in their priority list. They don’t hate me, they hate Hillary. In fact they hate Hillary as much as I hate Trump.

Last week I was at my kid’s soccer game.  A man was wearing a Trump shirt.  I read his shirt and looked up and our eyes met. I looked away. I don’t know how that man feels about me, but I do know how the friends I’ve made feel about me.  They reach out to offer help if my kids are sick.  I see them tell their kids to stand up for other kids that get bullied. I see them do their best at parenting.  I no longer think we made a mistake in moving to this suburb of Atlanta.  I realize that it is important for me to be here.  Just like it would have been easy for me to call Trump supporters crazy if I lived in Chicago, it would be easy for Trump supporters to not care how Trump’s words affect me if they’ve never met anyone like me. I can’t defend some of the claims against Hillary and they can’t defend some of the claims against Trump. We have limited choices. We are forced to make the best choice for our family.  I needed to write this and be at peace.  I needed it to make sense to me. No matter who you support politically being able to look at issues through someone else’s eyes can bring a feeling of peace and calm.  I am now glad for this opportunity. My political stance is unchanged, but at least now I can respect the opposing views, and I hope that by being in Georgia I’ve helped someone else respect mine.


Time is Now

My sister had a great idea for our mother’s birthday this year.  She suggested we get our mom tickets to see Juan Gabriel, one of the most legendary composers and singers in Mexico.  She thought it would be great to coordinate with our cousins so that our aunts could join her.  It was going to be amazing.  Growing up my mom would play his music as we cleaned the house on Saturday mornings.  I remember singing along with her.  I currently have a Juan Gabriel Pandora station on my phone for those days I might want to go back to my childhood, and sing to the top of my lungs.

Sadly, my sister called me today to inform me that Juan Gabriel passed away.  Selfishly, at first, I was very upset that my mom would now never be able to see him.  His concert was scheduled for this fall. We should have bought her tickets last year!  Once I got over the fact that my mother’s surprise was ruined, I thought about what a great loss Juan Gabriel’s death is to the Latin American world.  His death, I am sure, feels like a personal loss to so many.  He has been making hit songs since the 70’s with “Querida” and “No Tengo Dinero”.  Since then he has composed hundreds of songs. A wiki page claimed he wrote over 900 songs for 300 artists.  I am not sure if that is accurate, but finding exact numbers is not possible. I tried. I guess we can say he wrote countless amount of songs.  His songs were remade to different genres, including Spanish Rock, bachata, salsa, banda, etc. He recently collaborated to sing, some of his most popular songs, with young artists. The music videos made of those duets gives me the chills.  His lyrics are gold.  His songs are timeless.

It was the kid’s bath time at home, but I just wanted to sing so I turned on my Pandora Juan Gabriel station.  I bathed the kids with the music in the background.  I told the kids that Juan Gabriel was an amazing artists, and that I would listen to him when I was a child. Why didn’t I do this sooner? Ugh! Time is passing by.  My kids don’t know about Juan Gabriel. They barely understand Spanish at all.  My mom will never see Juan Gabriel.  Time all of a sudden seems so precious. My sister said she would now be on the look out for tickets to other Mexican legends that are aging like Vicente Fernandez, Marco Antonio Solis and Joan Sebastian.  I promised myself to start putting on music and singing while I cleaned the house, instead of putting a Frozen DVD for my youngest so that I could clean more efficiently.

As I listened to his music, I came upon “Abrazame Muy Fuerte” (Hug Me Tightly).  It is a very emotional love song about time.  It was a very fitting song for how his death was making me realize time is NOW.

Spanish lyrics:  “Abrázame que el tiempo es malo y muy cruel amigo, abrázame que el tiempo es oro si tú estás conmigo, Abrázame fuerte, muy fuerte, más fuerte que nunca”.

English translation: “Hug me, that time is a bad and cruel friend, Hug me, that time is gold if you are with me, Hug me tightly, very tightly, more tightly than ever.”

We don’t have time, especially with kids, parents and aging legends.


We lost a legend. We missed our opportunity to see him in person, but his music will be forever.  From now on I will give more than just my love and attention to my kids. I will share who I am, what I listen to, what I like.  They should know who I am besides mommy. How else will they know what concert tickets to buy me?

May Juan Gabriel rest in peace.  He will live forever in our hearts and through his music.


Juan Gabriel Duet with Juanes


Here is a mesmerizing Juan Gabriel Duet with Natalia Lafourcade “Ya No Vivo Por Vivir”


Mana singing Juan Gabriel song “Hasta Que Te Conoci”


Selena singing a Juan Gabriel song “Costumbres”



A Mexican, Colombian, American Christmas

I can’t function without a plan.  I find that I get lost, I forget things and I don’t complete tasks.  I know this about myself, and therefore I am usually armed with a list and detailed plan.  Currently, I feel like I have failed to plan Christmas, and I am behind. In my defense we spent Thanksgiving in Hawaii, and when we returned our Christmas tree was not up, my son had an ear infection and my daughter had hand food and mouth disease. It took us awhile to get ourselves together and back on track. Our tree just went up last Sunday, December 6th.  I decorated the kitchen, dining room and living room. My husband decorated outside and put up the stockings. He found the Elf on the Shelf, but has only moved it twice. I bought a snowman clock that tells us how many days are left for Christmas. It currently says there are 20 days, but there are actually 16 days left until Christmas.  I feel like I suck at Christmas.

I wonder if my disorganization this Christmas comes from the fact that the Christmas that my husband and I are creating for our kids is a mishmash of  traditions from our Latino upbringing, American traditional Christmas and some new traditions of modern times.  It is like creating a new recipe as you go — add a little of this and a little of that and hope that it all turns out good.  We are making it up as we go, creating a new Christmas for our family that is Mexican, Colombian and American.

Growing up my family use to celebrate Christmas with my mom’s family or my dad’s family.  They took turns. They each had 10 siblings.  At that time not all of them were in the US and not all had children.  We all fit in one house.  The house was still packed, but somehow us kids had room for running around, and the adults had room for dancing. Those were fun times! We ate traditional Mexican Christmas foods: tamales, ponche (Mexican spiced punch) and bunuelos (dessert that looks like elephant ears) and the families all brought additional dishes to share.  From ribs to chile rellenos, rice, spaghetti, you could find it all at our Christmas buffet style dinner.   The party started Christmas Eve at around 6pm and lasted until 2am.  Everyone would stay up to wish each other a merry Christmas at midnight and open gifts.  It was awesome opening gifts at midnight.  Only once did the adults pretend that Santa Claus dropped off the presents (it was my Godfather in a Santa costume).  The rest of the years everyone brought the gifts over.  My mom would label some from Santa and others from Mom and Dad. She used the same wrapping paper. That is the extent to which the adults kept the Santa fantasy alive.  Maybe I was just very gullible, or maybe I suspected the truth and decided to pretend like everyone else. Whatever the case, celebrating Christmas was always fun, and one of my favorite holidays.  It was the perfect celebration.

I thought Christmas would always be celebrated like those days of my childhood, but in marriage each family redefines their traditions.  Some traditions are passed on, others are dropped and new ones are added. Here is what Christmas looks like for my family now.


It is a breeze to pass along the core of what it means to be hispanic to me: music and food!  I make sure to play Spanish Christmas songs at home and the smell of cinnamon, cloves and orange from the ponche fills my home.  I make the Mexican bunuelos, and have added Colombian bunuelos to the table to represent my husband’s culture.  I am happy to have kept these traditions even if we are far from family and our party only includes my husband, my children and I.


There are other traditions, however, that are harder to keep.  I refuse to dedicate two days to making tamales.  Maybe when my kids are older I will have that luxury.  I could even invite friends to help me!  For now I will buy them if I can find them, but it may not be possible in my suburb where hispanics are only 7% of population. Another tradition that has been dropped is staying up past midnight on Christmas Eve.  I loved this tradition as a child, but my kids are 3 and 4 years old. I don’t think they could stay up until midnight even if it is for presents.  The truth is that I like the idea of the kids opening up their gifts Christmas morning….it makes it easier to explain that Santa brings the presents, it allows us to go to church on Christmas Eve and it takes the focus away from the presents.


Besides waiting until Christmas morning to open presents we are incorporating other American Christmas traditions like mailing Christmas cards.  It makes sense with living so far from family (family: you won’t all get one because there are a zillion of you). We also now put up Christmas stockings, count down to Christmas on a Snowman’s wooden face and do Elf of the Shelf. At first I did not like Elf on the Shelf, but after I discovered that the Elf watches the children and reports back to Santa on their behavior, my husband and I decided it was worth a try.  It could not hurt (and we can use the help). Also, the kids will pick out one ornament a year.

This is my new recipe for Christmas. A little of this and a little of that. I think it will come out alright!  As I speak with other moms I am starting to understand that being a frazzled mom in December has less to do with trying to redesign our Christmas, and more to do with just trying to keep up with all the American traditions. Being frazzles is a something that comes with the territory. My mom friends in the suburbs have their A game out:  awesome cookie recipes, the most clever Elf on the Shelf poses, DIY Pinterest Advent Caladers and I have just discovered keeping the Santa dream alive requires different wrapping paper and pen for the gifts from Santa. I am taking notes.  Next year I hope for a smoother running Mexican, Colombian, American Christmas!



Mexican Bunuelos and Colombian Bunuelos look and taste nothing alike
I put the Elf on the Shelf at the table so my kids would be encouraged to eat…it did not work 😦
This is how we are keeping track of Christmas, except I can’t keep track of the tracker. Next year I hope to get it together for Christmas :-/ Snowmans remind me of Chicago 🙂

Why My Hispanic Children Don’t Know Spanish

Revised Version

When Hispanic people realize my Hispanic children do not know Spanish I can see that they are surprised and disappointed. When American people can’t understand what my son is saying they assume he does not know English. In both these instances I have to explain that my son has a speech delay, and that we decided to focus on English when he started speech therapy. Afterwards, people then tell me that a speech delay is common in bilingual children because they are confused by the language, which is really frustrating to hear because my son could not say mama or momma until he was almost four years old.  It is the same word in both language and yet he could not say it. I find I have to explain myself. I feel I have to tell them the whole story. For this reason I am putting it in writing.  This is for the Hispanic moms that get judged because their children do not know Spanish. This is for the people that think raising bilingual children is easy.  This is for the people that think all Hispanic children know Spanish.  This is for the Hispanic children who’s speech delay does not get taken seriously.

Before becoming a parent I assumed I would teach my children Spanish. How else would they sing along to a Mariachi song or watch one of the classic Pedro Infante movies?  Those are experiences you just can’t translate. Most importantly I knew first hand how speaking Spanish had helped me obtain two job offers after graduating college during a recession. One of those job offers was to be a bilingual account executive for one of the biggest English radio stations in Chicago and the other one was to be a statistics analyst at Mexicana Airlines. I took the latter. Neither of those job offers would have came if I did not know Spanish.  My husband and I both agree that being bilingual helped us in our career, and it was a benefit we wanted to pass on to our children. Teaching our children Spanish was never a question for my husband and I.

When I became pregnant with my first child I decided to inform myself about raising a bilingual child.  I found out that there are many ways to teach children multiple languages.  All of the methods had one thing in common, they made sure that there was a clear separation of the two languages. In one method the parents speak to the child in one language and the child learns the other language at school. This is the method most used by immigrant parents, and it was the one used in my case when I was a child. I started Kindergarten only speaking Spanish, but by the end of the school year I could speak English as well. Another method to raise a bilingual child was to have one parent/caregiver speak in one language and the other parent/caregiver speak in a different language.  This method, again, aims at separating the languages to eliminate confusion for the child. The third method suggested was to only speak one language indoors and speak the other language outdoors.  It seemed real simple! Just expose the baby to both languages, but keep them separate by person, place or time. That was great information, but I did not finish reading the book until the baby was five months, and we had already been speaking to the baby only in Spanish.  By default we chose the first method. We felt more comfortable speaking English, but we wanted to lay a good foundation in Spanish.

I had decided to be a stay at home mom so we were not going to have a two environments with two separate languages. We did not have grandma to teach the baby Spanish during the day while we spoke English to him in the evening, and we did not have a daycare that could speak English to him so that we could focus on Spanish at home. Nope, it was just us…that is until we left the house to go to toddler music class where everyone spoke English.  Outside our home I had to translate for my child. I had to translate to my child in class, during play dates, at doctor visits…I started to feel terrible that he could not communicate with people first hand. The world around us was in English. We lived in a suburb where the Hispanic population is 7%. Our family that speaks Spanish lived an hour away and we saw them once a month. My son could not understand the people in our community, and it was my fault.  Teaching my child English became a bigger concern once we attended Babygarten classes. I realized I could not send my child to Kindergarten not knowing English. This was not the 80’s! We lived in a time and place where children in kindergarten could write their names and could count to 20 before even setting foot into class.  Kids would be working on learning to write and my son would be working on learning to speak. There were so many realities making me doubt our decision to only speak Spanish to our child.  We tried having my husband be the English speaking parent, but he only saw the baby two hours a day. I tried speaking Spanish at home and English outside, but that was hard to remember. It turned out raising bilingual child was not as so simple when one is living outside the Hispanic community and far from family.

Despite my doubts we continued to speak to our son only in Spanish. By the time he was two he would only make animal/vehicle noises and say dada, but he could not say any other words. His pediatrician initially said it was normal and that boys are usually late speakers, especially bilingual children (even though he was not bilingual, we only spoke to him in Spanish). The doctor was not concerned, but I was.  You see, my son still had not said mama or momma…it is the same in English or Spanish.  Upon hearing this the doctor set us up for an evaluation. The evaluation results confirmed my suspicion. Our son had a speech delay and would need speech therapy.  The evaluation results also indicated that due to our son’s tendency to avoid looking people in the eye, dislike of being held or contained, running off into the street, hitting other children, having no sense of fear, trouble transitioning from activities, extreme picky eating and need for routine, concluded he had some sensory issues and he had some signs that indicated he should be screened for autism at a later date.  The last part of the news was unexpected and it was terrifying. It was recommended that he meet with a speech therapist once a week, and that he would need a translator since he only spoke Spanish.

It was at that moment that I no longer worried about my child being bilingual. I would be grateful if he could just say momma and speak one language.  At that moment I decided I would speak to my son only in English. I wanted him to receive speech therapy directly from the speech therapist and not from a translator. If my son has a speech delay I could not make it worse by not teaching him the language he was going to need to survive in the US.  If they thought he might have autism I needed to prepare him the best I could for the world he lived in. I told the therapist we would not need a translator. Abruptly, we stopped speaking to our child in Spanish.  After speaking to my son only in English for a month he started speech therapy.  Not only did he understand the teacher, but he started to say words. It was amazing!  The only consonant sound he could make were V, B and P so it was still hard to understand, but we were so happy he was talking.  A year after speech therapy he finally said momma clearly for the first time. It meant the world to me!

Currently he is almost 5 years old and he can tell you a story, name planets and name endless amounts of dinosaurs. He is brilliant. He still attends speech therapy because he continues to have problems with articulation, but he is improving every year.  He went through an autism screening at age 3 and passed although he was diagnosed with social communication disorder.  He is currently going through another evaluation, but I feel confident his diagnosis will be dropped.  He has matured with time and we had great teachers and therapists to help.

Teaching the next generation Spanish is complicated, and not just for parents with children with a speech delay. It is complicated for families who do not live in a Hispanic community. Never is the term “it takes a village” most appropriate to when it comes to language and communication.  Immersion is the best teacher in language, and in a village where most people only speak English it is not so easy. It may have been easy for me as a child to be bilingual, but my children are not growing up in a similar situation as I was raised. I am proud of my culture, I minored in Latino Studies, I started an online Latino community group for our suburb (300 members) and I blog about passing on my heritage to my children. This is my way of creating that village. I still plan on teaching my children Spanish for the benefits in the workforce, and also because my children look Hispanic. When people realize they don’t know Spanish they act as if I told them they have a third eye. I explain to them that I intended to teach my children Spanish. I tell them about the speech delay. They ask if the speech delay was caused by confusion of the two languages and I want to scream. I was so cautious to only speak one language. My son was not confused. He could identify letters at 18 months, he knew all the words he just could not say them. English speaking children get taken seriously when they have a speech delay.  Hispanic parents get blamed when their children have a speech delay.  The Hispanic community assumes I am not proud of my culture and therefore don’t teach my children Spanish.  So much judgement from different directions.

If my children do not know Spanish I will not feel like a failure, instead I will be grateful for all the abilities they do have. I will forever be grateful for having a healthy and happy boy and girl! In the end it does not matter if your child speaks one language or twelve. You are already winning if he can speak one language clearly.


Update (1 year later):

My child no longer has a social communication disorder diagnosis! His speech delay, however, is now being called a speech disorder. He works very hard with speech therapist and with me. We make progress every year.