Mom was stunned when her 9-month-old baby suddenly started speaking Spanish in an English-speaking home — then it hit her
Children might pick up on a language and certain skills faster. A little girl surprised her mom with her Spanish skills just like that. The girl, Gracyn, started speaking Spanish words when she was just nine months old. So her mom, Ebony Brown, was really surprised as they are an English-speaking household. She had no idea how and where her daughter had picked up the Spanish vocabulary from. But then she learned about something at her daughter's daycare center, per PEOPLE.
"I started noticing, around nine months, she was saying 'agua' instead of water. And to this day, she still calls water 'agua,'" Ebony recalled. Soon enough, the mom came to know that there were two teachers at her daughter's daycare. One of them spoke Portuguese and the other teacher, whose class Gracyn was in, spoke Spanish all the time. The teacher hardly spoke any English. "Then she moved to a different classroom and the teacher only speaks Spanish, like very little English." She added, "Now she says 'manos' for hands, she calls her shoes 'patos,' and she'll say 'uno, dos, cinco.'" The mom was really happy that her daughter listened to her teacher carefully and was able to pick up on Spanish words so fast.
"She’s acknowledging what her teacher is saying and doing what she’s telling her to do in Spanish, which we thought was awesome," Ebony went on. "Obviously, she's getting English at home, so it's not a concern that she's not gonna speak English. I just really appreciate that she can understand what someone’s saying in Spanish and follow the instructions." The girl's impressive Spanish skills gave Ebony the idea that she might be more intelligent than her age level, at least more "curious." The mom continued, "The things that she picks up on at her age are so uncommon and it's probably due to the fact that she can understand so much more."
At one of her checkups, the doctors had expected Gracyn to start speaking a few words, but she was already speaking 30, and quite a few of them were Spanish. Ebony shared a video on TikTok, where she goes by @ebonyjbrown, about Gracyn's Spanish-speaking teacher. "It's my favorite thing ever. Gracyn understands so much Spanish," the text overlay of the video read. People appreciated the little girl's language skills in the comments section of the video. @leslievattimo wrote, "Wish we could have all had a teacher when we were that young to learn another language."
@jlovely44 commented, "Ugh, so I’m Hispanic and don’t speak Spanish even though both my parents were fluent. What they did was instead of teaching us, they used it to talk to each other about things we weren’t supposed to hear in Spanish. I’ve half heartily tried over the years, but now that I turned 50, I’m gonna finally put my all into learning Spanish! I know a lot of words, but I just can’t put them in sentences." @58.elc_ remarked, "I love this! She’s at the perfect brain development to know two languages and keep them. Even if you don’t speak it, you can change the audio dub to Spanish on TV for all her movies/shows! She will continue it through life and hopefully keep it all through her career age when she can put 'bilingual queen' on her resume!"
@ebonyjbrown school drop off in style today 🕶️ #toddlergirl #schooldropoff #bilingualkids ♬ ゆったりおしゃべりティータイム - 菊谷 知樹
You can follow Ebony Brown (@ebonyjbrown) on TikTok for more lifestyle content.