Lovato's parents divorced in the late summer of 1994, shortly after their second birthday. Lovato's father was of Mexican, Indigenous Mexican, Jewish, Portuguese and Spanish descent, and their mother is of Italian, English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. Patrick's patrilineal great-grandmother, Maria Cristina Perea, was a daughter of Civil War Union veteran Francisco Perea (1830–1913) and a great-granddaughter of Santa Fe de Nuevo México governor Francisco Xavier Chávez. They received their high-school diploma through homeschooling in April 2009. They began playing piano at age seven and guitar at ten, when they also began dancing and acting classes. Lovato told Ellen DeGeneres that they were bullied so badly that they asked for homeschooling.