Given the fact that Utah has the highest percentage of bilingual parents of any state (due, no doubt, to the number of Utahns who serve LDS missions), it seems fair to assume that there is a general interest in raising children to be bilingual. And yet, compared to other states, Utah has a relatively low number of bilingual public schools.

How sad that is, says Mary Lou Oland-Wong. "Because being bilingual is such a gift." Oland-Wong teaches in one of the few bilingual elementary classrooms in the state, Salt Lake's Jackson Elementary. She didn't learn to speak Spanish until she was 28, she explains, and knowing Spanish changed her life. It was as if a part of her brain was finally full, she says. Maybe a part of her heart, as well. When she got married she told her husband, Steve, that they would have to raise their children to speak Spanish.

Oland-Wong knows some families who do what she calls a "geographical" program. If both parents speak a language other than English then they can speak Spanish (or Tongan or French or Greek) in the home and English outside the house. And their children will grow up bilingual.

But in her case, because her husband didn't speak Spanish, Oland-Wong had to be the one to speak Spanish to the children, while he spoke English. She likes the two-parent/two-language approach anyway, she says. She had read about it when she was pregnant with her oldest child, Natasha. (Oland-Wong recommends books by Nancy Cloud, Fred Genesee and Else Hamayan.)

BYU early childhood professor Byran Korth just got back from Guatemala where he had been helping design school curricula. In Guatemala, as in many countries, children are expect to be bilingual, he notes. English is a regular part of the classroom instruction, from preschool on up.

A child's ability to learn multiple languages at a young age has been well documented, says Korth. "The way to do it is to immerse them," he says.

He offers several words of caution to parents who are looking for a preschool where their child could learn a second language, or who want to teach their children themselves. Children need a "home" language, he says. That can mean speaking one language at home and another at school, or one language with mom and another with the nanny. As they go back and forth between two languages, they need to be able to speak one at a time and not mix words from two languages into one sentence.

When selecting a preschool, check out the guidelines of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (naeyc.org), Korth suggests. A good preschool will focus on the needs of the whole child, not just on language.

Meanwhile, at libraries across the state, there are more and more resources for parents — especially for parents who want to teach their children Spanish. In Provo, at the Academy Square Library, Hispanic outreach coordinator Emily Edman says they never buy a Disney movie in English that they don't also buy in Spanish.