In SAP, please.

An article on a Hispanic blog called "Hispanic Trending" written by Juan Tornoe claims that parents are now focusing on making their kids multilingual. In "A bilingual future: More parents are sending their kids to language classes" , Lourdes Rovira claimed, ''The key is the home. It depends on how much respect, how much value the parents place on knowing more than one language.''

I disagree. Even though, my parents placed premium on learning Spanish, my Spanish was practically nonexistent by high school. I spoke to my parents only in English by then. I spoke to my friends in English. By college, the other Latino students were questioning my Hispanic roots. I think the root of all my problems was being moved out of bilingual kindergarten into English-only first grade. Somewhere on the street, I picked up that bilingual education was for "the slow kids."

My Dominican-born little cousin is going through the same thing. Even though his parents speak to each other in Spanish, he's speaking to them in English. His American-born Dominican mom has relented and she speaks to him in English, too. He's learned somewhere, probably at school I'll bet, that the premium is placed on being good at the English language at the expense of his native tongue.

Naomi Steiner, author of 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child ($14.95, Amacom) and a developmental behavioral pediatrician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston claims parents don't have to be bilingual themselves to raise a bilingual child, though having one parent speak the language certainly helps. ''There only has be a committed, consistent effort and a plan,'' adds Steiner.

I certainly hope that this applies to me. I'm having panic attacks that my children won't be able to speak to their grandparents or cousins in Spanish. I mean, my Spanish can be fairly lame and my husband's Spanish is only good for laughs. How are we going to ensure our kids speak English, Hebrew AND Spanish? I feel ashamed at how difficult it is for me to negogiate conversations with my grandmother in Spanish. And my Spanish-speaking prima hermanas (literally, cousin sisters, meaning first cousins) prefer practicing their English with their American cousin. So who is going to practice Spanish with me?

I asked my father when I visited him in the Dominican Republic if it bothered him that my sisters and I spoke mostly English. Wasn't he angry that we were (oh the horror) "assimilated"?He shrugged. He said as long as we understood each other, it didn't matter what we were speaking. Thanks Dad! Now can you PLEASE help me shape up my Spanish?