Some parents need their children to help them during school hours, but Marie doesn't let Esperance miss class to interpret. "A child's business is to go to school, not to pay bills," she said in Creole, through a translator. Still, she admits she depends on her daughter to interpret her job applications. "I'm not embarrassed to say that she helps me," she said. "She's my daughter and I'm very proud of her."

But young interpreters can resent their parents for asking them to miss out in school and social activities. "Sometimes I wish my mom would learn English, because I need to go to school," said Rosa Pedro, 11, of Lake Worth, Fla. "We learn a new lesson every day." Rosa manages to maintain A's and B's but often misses classes to interpret for her Guatemalan Mayan mother. Rosa's mother, Maria Mateo, wishes she didn't have to rely on her daughter but believes she has no choice. "It would be easier if I had someone else to turn to, but there's only my daughter," she said, in Conjubal (a Mayan dialect) through an interpreter. "It's wrong to take her out of school, but what else can I do?"

Some kids look forward to skipping school or dodging homework to help their mothers pick up food stamps or to pay bills, without realizing that the assignments they're missing will add up. "Young kids think, 'Oh, great, I get to get out of school early!'" said Dinny Paulino-Rodriguez, program director of Sociedad Latina in Boston. "But it's not great, because they're having too many absences and missing too much work."

Costa Rica-born Lucia Cortes of West Palm Beach, Fla., tries not to rely on her daughter, 13-year-old Diana, too much. "Most of the time, I try to use bad English," Lucia said. "But when I need her, my daughter helps me a lot." Diana recently helped emergency medical professionals determine why her sister's body had erupted with red bumps. (Turned out, Alex, 9, was allergic to the family's new living room paint.) Lucia preferred to let her daughter talk for her, rather than try to explain herself in broken English. "The doctors don't have the time to listen to me," she said. "They don't have the patience." Diana, an eighth-grader, doesn't mind: "I like to be around adults," she says. "But I don't have phone calls with friends after school."

Eight states have, or are considering, healthcare-related interpretation policies, according to a 2002 National Conference of State Legislatures report. But the cost of good interpreter services can be prohibitive. The Office of Management and Budget reported in 2002 that the annual cost of interpretation services in the nation topped $267 million, covering 66.1 million emergency-room, inpatient, outpatient and dental visits. Rates for services range from $25 to $60 an hour for professional interpreters to $130 or more for telephone language lines, on which a doctor and patient can hear United Nations-like simultaneous interpretation.

The California Legislature is also grappling with the issue, debating a bill that would ban state agencies and organizations that rely on state funding from using children as interpreters. The bill would mandate them to seek out professional or volunteer interpreting services, community groups or older family members to translate. Leland Yee, 54, the San Francisco child psychologist and California state assemblyman who introduced the bill, was himself an interpreter for his parents growing up, and says he remembers "walking on pins and needles" while dealing with his family's immigration attorneys. "I was worried that I was going to say the wrong thing," he said. "It's not fair to burden kids with the big responsibility of translating. It deprives them of their innocence."

But Santiesteban, the West Palm Beach mother, doesn't think that her children's role as interpreters burdens them -- in fact, she sees it as a life skill. "I'm envious of how well they speak the language," she said in Spanish. "I know speaking two languages will help them find good careers." Both exceptional students, the Gutierrez brothers are optimistic about the future. "I want to become a doctor so that when my mom gets sick, she doesn't have to pay for medicine," Humberto said. "I want to be able to use Spanish and English. I might even learn French."

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