Two Languages is Not a Delay! Raising a Child Bilingual,

With or Without Language Disorder

Daniel Miller, MS, MA, CCC-SLP

Speech-Language Pathologist

While in school for speech-language pathology, I was taught that using two languages is not harmful for children who have language disorders, and that is also does not create a language delay or disorder.  Nonetheless, this remains a very strongly held community belief just about everywhere: that kids with bilingual language exposure will achieve language milestones later than kids with exposure to only one language. It turns out this is a myth: first words should still happen in the same time frame, vocabulary size should be the same (counting across both languages), and certainly there should not be any delays in social communication (meaning: responding to others’ language, intentionally trying to communicate with others using words and gestures). 

Bilingualism is a topic near and dear to my own heart.  I am raising my own sons in a bilingual household, with both Japanese and English in use at home.  I try to use only Japanese there, but that’s my second language so English slips out pretty often.  There are as many different ways to raise a child bilingual as there are bilingual families. But you can group family’s approaches broadly into a few categories:

  1. One parent, one language.  Each parent uses a different language.  The child gets dual language exposure right from birth.

  2. Language of the home and language of the community.  Usually the case when both parents speak a minority language.  In this case, the minority language is spoken at home, and the child doesn’t get much exposure to the majority language (in this case, English) until they enter the larger community—for example, when he or she begins attending an English-speaking daycare, preschool, or public school. 

  3. Both parents mix at home.  Also very common if there are older siblings—even when parents intentionally use only the family language at home, older siblings will start using the majority language at home, so the language environment is mixed.

For a long time, “one parent, one language” was a standard recommendation made by second language professionals (many still do recommend this) for families that could do this.  My own look into available research turned up this: there isn’t really one best method for ensuring that the child acquires both languages.  We selected method 2 from those above (which has been great for my Japanese, that’s for sure!), with the expectation that our kids are going to get the majority language for certain. It’s the minority language which is in danger of not being acquired at a functionally useful level, so our aim was to provide as solid a background in Japanese as we could.  My children at home are presently ages 4 and 1, and doing great.

And if one of my children had a language delay or disorder--- would I do anything differently?  The answer is a resounding no – I would not limit access to the minority language.  This one is indeed backed by research: studies have shown that use of two languages with children who are known to have a language disorder (for example, in the case of Down Syndrome or Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD) is not harmful, and occasionally you will see a result which actual favors the children who had two language exposure.  For just a quick summary of a couple of studies I have seen myself:

  • Bilingual children with ASD had an advantage over monolingual children with ASD: they more frequently used gestures like pointing, and more frequently used their voices to communicate.(1)

  • There was no additional delay identified when comparing bilingual children with ASD to monolingual children with ASD.(2)

  • Bilingual kids and monolingual kids performed similarly when their expressive grammar was measured.(3, 4)

  • Children ages 3 to 6 ½ achieved communication milestones at the same time whether bilingual or monolingual.(5)

This is an issue that needs to be addressed frequently.  After having read this, you’ll continue to hear from other people, maybe even speech-language pathologists, that you should only use one language when you have a child who has a language disorder. It seems logical, but it’s just not supported by available evidence. Hopefully this article has been useful in providing a window into that available evidence for you!

For some additional reading on this topic, I recommend this article at the Hanen Centre:

http://www.hanen.org/helpful-info/articles/bilingualism-in-young-children--separating-fact-fr.aspx

References:

  1. Valicenti-McDermott, M., Tarshis, N., Schouls, M., Galdston, M., Hottinger, K., Seijo, R., . . .Shinnar, S. (2013). Language differences between monolingual English and bilingual English-Spanish young children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Child Neurology, 28(7), 945-948.

  2. Reetzke, R., Zou, X., Sheng, L., and Katsos, N.  (2015).  Communicative development in bilingually exposed Chinese children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, Just Accepted, released February 12, 2015. doi:10.1044/2015_JSLHR-L-13-0258

  3. Paradis, J. (2005). Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of specific language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children’s acquisition of object pronouns. Language Acquisition, 13(1), 33-62.

  4. Paradis, J. (2010). The interface between bilingual development and specific language impairment.Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 227-252.

  5. Hambly, C. & Fombonne, E. (2011). The impact of bilingual environments on language development in children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 42(7), 1342-1352.