The trilled R — the rolled "rr" in words like carro and perro — is the last sound a child develops in Spanish, and it doesn't fully click into place until close to age seven. If your toddler can't roll their R's yet, that's not a sign anything is wrong. It's exactly on track.
For this episode of Bilingüe, I talked with Nichole Carrasquillo-Stumpf, a Latina bilingual speech-language pathologist with over a decade of experience supporting bilingual children and their families. Nichole is the founder of Topi Topi Bilingual Therapy, a Doctor of Speech-Language Pathology candidate at Northwestern University, and the author of Vocabulario Boricua. This is Part 2 of our conversation — if you missed Part 1, where we cover what actually makes a speech-language pathologist "bilingual", start there.
Does Spanish develop on the same timeline as English?
Largely, yes. Major milestones land at roughly the same ages in both languages — first words around 12 months, short phrases by age two — and that holds true for children being raised in both languages at once. The biggest differences show up later, in grammar and syntax rather than timing, since Spanish and English follow very different rules for things like verb tense and word order.
Sounds work the same way. Most consonant sounds are shared between Spanish and English, and the earliest sounds babies produce — P, B, M, T, D — develop around the same age in both languages. Where the two languages diverge is in the sounds that exist in only one of them, and that's where Spanish has its most notoriously late-developing sound.
When do kids roll their R's in Spanish?
The trilled R doesn't exist in English at all, and in Spanish it's the most complex sound a child has to learn to produce — it requires precise tongue placement and airflow control that takes years of oral-motor development to manage. Around 85% of children can produce it correctly by age seven. Some children get there earlier; plenty don't, and that's typical too.
"That's a great example of how complex that sound is — even an adult, when you explain exactly where to put their tongue and how the air comes out, still can't always do it. That gives you an idea of why it takes so long to develop."
Nichole Carrasquillo-Stumpf
What to do in the meantime
Pronunciation perfection isn't the goal — exposure and awareness are. Nichole's advice for parents working on this sound (or any later-developing sound) is to build phonological awareness instead of drilling pronunciation: break words into syllables, and point out other words that share the same sound. Rojo. Rápido. Noticing the pattern does more for long-term development than repeating the sound back correctly ever will. The mouth and tongue muscles need time to catch up — no amount of practice rushes that timeline.
Is mixing languages a sign of a problem?
Not on its own. As bilingual children build vocabulary and grammar in two languages with genuinely different rule systems, some interference is expected — things like article errors or sentence structures that lean on Spanish syntax while speaking English, especially in children who aren't getting schooling in Spanish. That's a child figuring out two systems at once, not a red flag by itself.
The harder question is telling typical bilingual development apart from an actual language disorder — and that's exactly the kind of judgment call that requires a clinician trained specifically in bilingual assessment, not a general SLP guessing at what's "normal" for a bilingual kid.
How to raise a bilingual child: start with your goal, not a method
Before picking a strategy, Nichole says the real first question is: what's the goal? Near-native fluency? Conversational comfort? Cultural connection? The answer shapes everything downstream. Nichole's own goal isn't academic-level fluency for her kids — it's that they're proud of their culture, can speak with extended family without forcing anyone to switch to English, and feel at home in the language when they visit Puerto Rico.
Two common models came up in our conversation:
- One Parent, One Language (OPOL): each parent consistently speaks one language with the child. This is Nichole's current setup, partly out of necessity — her husband doesn't speak Spanish.
- Minority language at home: the non-dominant language (Spanish, in a mostly-English environment) is spoken exclusively at home, frontloading it before the child enters school in the majority language. This is how Nichole herself was raised.
Neither is objectively "better" — the right one depends on your family's language makeup and your goal, and consistency matters more than which model you pick.
Getting your partner and community on board
Raising a bilingual child as the only source of a language in the house is genuinely hard — Nichole was direct about that. Two things helped her: having an explicit conversation with her husband early on ("Spanish is important to me — are you on board?"), and setting expectations with extended family so a Spanish-only rule didn't feel like an inside joke or a slight to anyone in the room.
The other lever is community. Nichole and I both default to Spanish with anyone who speaks it — a dentist, a stranger at the store — specifically so our kids see the language used outside the home. It signals that the language has social value, not just a "house rule" status.
What to look for in bilingual children's books
Nichole's two filters: books written originally in Spanish by Latino or Hispanic authors first, since that carries cultural context a translation often can't, and — when a book is translated — a translation done by a native speaker rather than a literal, word-for-word conversion. The difference shows up in everything from sentence rhythm to whether the characters' names even sound like they belong to a Spanish-speaking world.
Why Nichole created Vocabulario Boricua
This is where Nichole's own book came from. As a Puerto Rican Spanish speaker, she ran into a real gap: most bilingual children's materials are written in a more generalized Latin American Spanish, not the specific dialect she grew up speaking. It became obvious at home — her son attended a Spanish-immersion daycare with teachers from Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela, and started correcting her at home: she said violeta for purple, he'd learned morado at school; she said guineo for banana, his teacher called it cambur.
Unable to find books reflecting Puerto Rican Spanish specifically, Nichole made her own flashcards. She posted them on TikTok, and the response from other Puerto Rican families — many raising kids far from the island — was immediate. That response became Vocabulario Boricua, a bilingual book celebrating Puerto Rican Spanish vocabulary and culture. (One detail from our conversation that stuck with me: there are reportedly 11 different regional ways to say "straw" across the Spanish-speaking world — a small reminder of just how much variety lives inside one language.)
Frequently asked questions
-
When do bilingual babies say their first word?
- Around the same time as monolingual babies — typically close to 12 months — whether a child is being raised in one language or two.
-
When do kids roll their R's in Spanish?
- The trilled R is the last sound to develop in Spanish. About 85% of children can produce it correctly by age seven, and it's normal for it to take that long.
-
Is it normal for bilingual kids to mix languages?
- Yes. Some grammatical interference between languages is typical while a child is building two systems at once. A speech-language pathologist trained in bilingual assessment can help distinguish typical mixing from a true language disorder.
-
What's the best way to raise a bilingual child?
- There's no single best method — One Parent One Language and minority-language-at-home are both well-established approaches. The right choice depends on your family's goal and who speaks what at home; consistency matters more than which model you pick.
Nichole's closing message, for any parent wondering if they're doing enough: the fact that you're seeking this out already says you are.
"I think we're so hard on ourselves. You are doing enough, you are doing an amazing job — give yourself some grace. It is difficult to raise a bilingual child, but it is absolutely worth it. You're opening your child's world to so many different cultures and lived experiences." Nichole Carrasquillo-Stumpf
ABOUT NICHOLE
Nichole Carrasquillo-Stumpf, M.S. CCC-SLP, is a bilingual (Spanish/English) speech-language pathologist with over a decade of experience supporting bilingual children and their families across Illinois. She's the founder of Topi Topi Bilingual Therapy, providing bilingual speech-language evaluations for school districts, professional development for educators, and mentorship for new bilingual SLPs. She is currently pursuing her Doctor of Speech-Language Pathology at Northwestern University and is the author of Vocabulario Boricua, a bilingual children's book celebrating Puerto Rican Spanish. Nichole is mom to two bilingual kids.