I arrived in the United States when my children were small. At first I encouraged them, even pressured them, to practice the English language, since I was afraid not doing so could affect their academic performance or make it harder for them to adjust and make friends due to their poor domain of the language.

To my surprise, it took only months for them to master the English language, but ironically they were forgetting their Spanish at the same time. I didn’t want them to forget their roots! Two out of every three words they said were in English. Worried, I constantly asked them to speak to me only in Spanish. We agreed it would be the language we would speak at home. I realized they could understand it perfectly, but they had a hard time speaking it and they couldn’t read it and write it at all. I thought that if they couldn’t read the language (Spanish), it would be difficult for them to learn new words.

I went to book stores and searched the internet looking for material to help me teach them my native language, but at that time (in 1999) I didn’t find any, so I decided to create it myself. Therefore, I took action by combining the method that I learned when I was a child, as well as using my own techniques. That is how I started to teach them Spanish, and succeeded. At first I created this material for personal use only, but of course my job is far from over because my friends, from different cultures, had the same problem and that was the reason I did it for everyone else! The Mili & Molo products have been excellent tools used successfully by thousands of teachers and parents around the world!… I hope they work for you too! Let me know!

Mónica Mejías