Lauren Sánchez says she and her children are taking Spanish lessons

“The biggest regret I have is not being able to speak Spanish fluently,” Sánchez, a former helicopter pilot and news anchor, told Garcia. Her mother’s decision not to teach her the language was to prevent her from having an accent. “He thought that would hurt me,” she said.

“Now I’m taking Spanish lessons, and my kids are taking lessons, because it’s something I want,” said Sánchez, who has a son with former NFL player Tony Gonzalez and two teenagers with her ex-husband, Patrick Whitesell.

When asked if she bonds with her fiancé, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, through their respective cultures, Sánchez said, “We bond and collide in the best possible way.”

She gave the example of how Bezos, whose father is Cuban-American, only puts sugar on his churros. However, she adds cinnamon and chocolate sauce. “It’s little things like that,” she said, adding that they celebrate Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead, together every Thanksgiving.

In July, Sánchez discussed her Latina identity with Eve Longoria in a conversation published in The Hollywood Reporter.

“You and I are so proud of Latin. But we are also proudly American. And we are super assimilated. But I grew up with this hyphen, living in two worlds. And I think a lot of people relate to that, especially Latinos in the United States. States,” Longoria told Sánchez.

The benefits of bilingualism

Although most U.S. Latinos can speak Spanish, 65 percent of third-generation or older Latinos said they struggle to hold a conversation, found a 2023 Pew Research study that surveyed 3,029 Hispanics over two weeks in August 2022.

However, 78 percent of Latino adults said it is not necessary to speak Spanish to be considered Latino, the same survey reported.

However, knowing two languages ​​has benefits. Melissa Wells, an African-Latina American, has previously written about not understanding her family’s choice to raise her bilingual. Still, she found that her fluency in Spanish allowed her to stay close to her Mexican family and communicate with her grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Similarly, Conz Preti, a mother of three, wrote for BI in June that she wanted her children to be bilingual because of all the opportunities the skill had given her. She only speaks to her children in Spanish, while her husband speaks to them in English. By the time they could speak, they were bilingual.

Scientists say that bilingualism also provides its speakers with cognitive benefits. Mariano Sigman, a neuroscientist and author of The Secret Life of the Mind, previously told BI that bilinguals have better cognitive control than monolinguals.

Cognitive control refers to the ability to control thoughts, pay attention to a conversation even if someone else is talking, and persist even when you feel tired, he explained.

“So in a way it’s like we’re the pilots of our own existence,” he said.

Sánchez did not immediately respond to an after-hours request for comment from Business Insider.