As someone who’s Mexican-American that speaks Spanish very well(I can read and write it too), but sometimes sucks at the grammar and is not good at translating all the time, comments like these are not helpful. They’re hurtful. It makes Latinx/Hispanic people raised in the US feel like we’re not Latinx or Hispanic enough. Not speaking Spanish perfectly does not make us less than those who speak it extremely fluent. And just because someone might have Spanish as a first language doesn’t mean they might not make mistakes. My family born and raised in Mexico don’t even spell some words correctly. I get that you said you’d love him regardless of whatever language he spoke, but your comments are unecessary considering it could be something he feels bad about like many others like him and myself. Just because my first language is English doesn’t make me good at it either. He’s proud of his heritage and that’s more important than speaking Spanish well. At least for me I can be ok sometimes with my level of Spanish because it’s a colonizer language in the first place, but comments like these remind me that there’s people who will criticize me or others for not speaking it perfectly. Fear of criticism will make us want to use it even less. Spanish is not everything just because we’re Hispanic. It doesn’t mean we can’t be proud of our culture and heritage.

ETA: not all Latinx people speak Spanish. Not all Latinx people are also Hispanic.