"But I'm American, mom, you know?"

Thats what my youngest son (6 years old) told me today when I asked, or, rather begged him, for the millionth time, "Please, can you speak in Portuguese!"

Yeah...

They are speaking less and less Portuguese, my boys, and it breaks my heart. K and I always speak Portuguese to them and to each other at home and we try to read to them in Portuguese as much as possible and talk to family members in Brazil (and they visit too), but Brazil and the Portuguese language are getting more and more marginal in my sons' lives. And it doesn't help that we're not going (as a family) to Brazil this year. It breaks my heart and makes me feel very guilty because I knew we needed to concentrate on saving money to buy the house and didn't even look into getting award travel tickets when that was still possible. (there are other things too and I'll write more about this later).

Now... this whole bilingualism and biculturalism thing is hard, REALLY!!!! hard. I try to literally brainwash the boys, telling them that they were born here and, yeah, they are American by birthplace, but... in their blood, because of their families, they are undoubtedly Brazilian. They don't care too much, though. :(

Here's an example. Today was the last day of "School Spirit" week in school and it was "Sports Day." And Linton, who spent many days last summer (particularly during the World Cup) wearing one of  his several Brazil soccer team jerseys...:

(Kelvin has a vegetarian hot dog in his mouth, silly boy)

... Linton refused to wear his soccer jersey to school today (and Kelvin, who hardly ever does, 'cause he likes cotton t-shirts better -- he does have several "Brazilian" themed ones, like the one in the photo above -- happily wore his jersey, maybe to make me happy). ;)

Linton had a good reason, I must say: he said he wouldn't wear it because Brazil lost the world cup last year (sigh). Kelvin and I told him that (historically) Brazil is still "the best" with 5 world championships, but it didn't impress him -- I guess what he saw and experienced "talks louder." I also reminded him that he's going to start playing soccer in two weeks, but he said that he'd have another uniform for that (true). I think he felt guilty for not wearing his jersey to school, so he changed into it when we got home from school!

Well... I'll keep trying to get the boys to speak Portuguese and not to forget about Brazil. It doesn't help that Kelvin really wanted to go too (K says, jokingly, but it could be true, that Kelvin only wants to go because he LOVES the plane trip, and he does... My funny and lovely geeky boy, he's a riot at time! I have to share something he said yesterday, I wrote it down in my journal. He also loves going to the doctor and we had a good check-up visit last Monday).

Last, but not least, I have to spend more time browsing Multilingual Living -- a website I used to write a column for back when it was still called Bilingual Bicultural Family Network. I miss writing those columns and I often think that I'm totally falling out of the bilingual wagon, but I hope NOT! Edited to add: I went there after writing this post and it didn't help to read about Corey's (she's the website founder a good "virtual friend" of mine) experience homeschooling in two languages -- I know that I can't do homeschooling, and our problem with English actually began when I became involved in the boys' schooling, as you probably remember... :(

You know... parenting is so hard, so exhausting and we have to pick our battles -- that's what K tells me when I insist with him that we have to make Portuguese one of our battles. He disagrees and says that there's too much on our plates right now, that we have to try our best, but not really "force" the boys and go all "tiger parents" on them in the language department. We're leaving that for music and so far it's working great (I will post some videos to show you, OK?).

Well I hope we can figure out some ways to "revive" Portuguese in our family. My parents are coming, so that should be helpful!

P.S. (ha! I had forgotten that I had made a wish for the next world cup, and no, it's not for Brazil to win, it's for the boys to watch the games with us :)