My [32F] husband [33M] doesn’t want our nanny to teach our daughter Spanish. Feel like I’m seeing an ugly side of him.

A mother of a four-year-old discovers her husband has asked their nanny to stop teaching their daughter Spanish, despite the mother’s enthusiasm for it. This request, made without consulting her, has left her questioning her husband’s motives and the damage done to their relationship with the nanny. Read her story below.

‘ My [32F] husband [33M] doesn’t want our nanny to teach our daughter Spanish. Feel like I’m seeing an ugly side of him.’

My husband Eric and I have been married for 5 years. We have one child, a four-year-old little lady named Katherine. We both work busy jobs but I’m a writer and I usually work from home or from my office down the street. Our live-in nanny, Ella [45F], has been with us for about six months. She is INCREDIBLE at her job, and she’s honestly become part of the family.

The other day Katherine, my husband and I were driving somewhere in the car and my daughter said, “Want to hear me talk like Ella?” And she started speaking Spanish! I’m not fluent but I know enough to know that she was really speaking it, not just pretending. I was really impressed and told her great job, keep practicing, etc. My husband didn’t really respond but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Then tonight (just now) Ella came to my office after Eric got home and took over watching Katherine. She was really quiet which isn’t like her, and she apologized for teaching Katherine Spanish without asking. My response was basically, um…what? I told her (completely confused) that I had no problem with that and I actually think it’s a fantastic idea.

I wish somebody had taught me when I was little — especially where we live in Southern California, it’s a great skill to have. So I reassured her that I would actually appreciate it if she would keep teaching Katherine the language. Ella then told me that Eric had just asked her to please only speak English around Katherine.

Ella has gone back to our house for the night, but I’m still sitting in my office fuming. I am beyond furious with Eric, and I know I need to collect myself before going home and speaking to him. First of all, I feel like he’s damaged our relationship with Ella, who’s been nothing but wonderful to us and our daughter.

Secondly, I cannot for the life of me understand why it’s a bad thing for our young daughter to learn a very useful second language (which she’ll probably have to learn later in school anyway). Eric has never expressed any r**ism (if he had, we wouldn’t be married; that’s a dealbreaker for me), but I can’t see any other explanation for this. And finally, I am furious that he made the decision to talk to Ella without me. That’s not how a partnership should work.

A) Where do I begin in addressing this with him? and B) How do I make it clear to Ella that she’s free to speak whatever language she wants around our daughter?. Ttl;dr: Our amazing nanny has been teaching our 4 year old daughter Spanish, and my husband asked her to stop without discussing it with me first.

Here’s the comments of Reddit users:

drzoidburger −  I’m in medical school, and one of my good friends in class grew up with a nanny who taught him Spanish, and he is still fluent to this day. So many of our patients are Spanish-speaking-only, and they are blown away when this white dude with a Jew fro walks in and speaks to them in their native language. He doesn’t have to wait for an interpreter like the rest of us. I am *so* jealous and wish I had paid more attention in Spanish class because it’s a big advantage to have.

Arctic_Puppet −  I would start by expressing to him how impressed you are with Katherine’s Spanish, and how much you appreciate Ella teaching your daughter such a valuable thing. See where it takes you. I don’t think you should deceive him, but I worry that you letting him know that Ella told you what he said is going to get him upset with Ella, which will cause problems.

YFMAS −  Keep your temper in check when you speak to Eric, but make it clear how beneficial you think it is for your daughter to learn a second language, especially young when it is so much easier to learn. My mother knew a child in Africa that spoke Arabic (her parents were Egyptian doctors), English (the language of the expat community), and Yoruba (the language of her nurse/nanny).

At age three she spoke all three languages with the proficiency you would hope for a child her age, speaking all three languages did not slow her down in any one. There is a chance he is thinking this will hurt her continued development in English, I have to hope that this is the case, rather than r**ism, which is obviously just as likely his reason.

[Reddit User] −  Take a deep breath before you talk to Eric. It could be as simple and stupid as him not liking the idea of Katherine asking him questions he can’t understand, let alone answer, which is why my parents stopped my informal Spanish lessons with my babysitter when I was a toddler. (They admit in retrospect this was a bad call.) Unless he exposes more bigoted motivations, the biggest problem here is him making the decision unilaterally, especially when he apparently knew you’d disagree with him. Start by expressing your disappointment in that regard, and go from there.

RazzBeryllium −  Part of your discussion with your husband needs to be about how you two need to discuss these things first. He should have come to you first, and discussed this with YOU first. Instead, he went behind your back. That’s unacceptable. For A) I guess start by calmly asking him his reasons. It’s kind of hard to go forward without a “Why?” Hopefully, if you keep asking him questions and forcing him to explain himself, he’ll realize how absolutely idiotic he’s being.

I have no idea what he’ll say, as there is no good reason. Fluent Spanish as a second language is an awesome skill — I have a friend who learned it young from her nanny, and now owns her own company with locations in the U.S. and South America. A couple other friends speak it fluently and it has opened up numerous career opportunities for them. And maybe there’s a chance that Ella misunderstood what he was trying to say?

For B) — Your husband needs to be the one to apologize, or to clarify if Ella misunderstood. For your part, you need to reassure Ella that it’s ok that she came to you. If your husband is being an a**hole to Ella behind your back, it’s possible he’ll get even worse if he thinks Ella tattled on him.

Shlapper −  Try to be calm before you approach this issue with him. Before you accuse him of r**ist views, make sure you ask him to clarify why he has an issue with your daughter learning Spanish from Ella. Address his issue directly and fairly while also providing your reasoning for wanting your daughter to learn Spanish.

If r**ism is not the issue, it might simply be that your husband worries that learning Spanish will give Ella an avenue to communicate with your daughter behind you and your husband’s backs, and he may feel that his role as a parent is being threatened with this in mind. That belief is sometimes, though not likely in this case, a justified one.

My mother was adamant that my siblings and I were not to learn the language of my father’s family. My father’s parents regularly called my mother a whore and a gold digger (despite earning more than my father) and looked down upon her as less than deserving of my father. She feared that, had we learned the language, it would be easier for his parent’s to manipulate us and shut her out of our lives by spreading misinformation about her (which they tried to do anyway in broken English, but at least this way she understood what was happening). While I wish I had learnt the language anyway, I understand and support my mother for that decision.

Your husband may have similar fears, but I don’t think that they are reasonable in this particular instance. Whatever you do, avoid mentioning that Ella spoke to you about this, your husband may see this as Ella trying to win your favour behind his back. Just start with: “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about Ella and [daughter]. I got the impression that you had a problem with Ella teaching her Spanish, but I actually encouraged her to continue teaching her because it’ll be really helpful later in life. Is everything okay?”

sleepygirl08 −  Please keep us updated! I’m super curious. I also wish I would have grown up bilingual and I would be MAJORLY pissed to find out my dad ruined it for me.

bunnyball88 −  If you don’t have any other data point to support your worst assumptions, don’t jump there yet. Just ask him why he doesn’t want your daughter to be exposed to another language. If he has some reasonable but misinformed fears (e.g. I’ve heard parents worry about primary language development, though I’m fairly certain that’s a dated view), research it together and come up with an agreed upon approach based on that education. If he shows himself to have unreasonable or bigoted opinions, you can be sure it won’t just apply to your nanny speaking Spanish.

korovko −  I’m bilingual myself (having two native languages, English is not one of them) and I’m raising a trilingual son (hopefully he’ll have 3 native languages). Bilingualism is good for practical reasons and that’s very obvious to everyone – you’ll probably have a better chance to find a job in the future because of your other language, you can communicate with more people from different cultures, etc.

Bilingualism is good for your brain development – even if you’re teaching your child a second language that is not practical at all (like Klingon) it’s still good for your brain. Learning a second language doesn’t have any detrimental effects on your “first” language in the long run. I can provide you with sources if need be. As for your husband, he probably thinks that learning Spanish is bad for her English development. That’s not true, but that’s quite a common misconception. I don’t really think you see an ugly side of his. Just a misinformed side.

VeeRook −  You’re not just getting a nanny, your daughter also has a tutor. This is great for her!