{"id":11333,"date":"2016-06-29T08:07:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T15:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.speechbuddy.com\/blog\/?p=11333"},"modified":"2023-11-08T10:29:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-08T18:29:11","slug":"bilingual-household-speech-delays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.speechbuddy.com\/blog\/language-development\/bilingual-household-speech-delays\/","title":{"rendered":"Bilingual Households and Speech Delays in Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does growing up in a bilingual household create speech delays in children? The answer in the short term appears to be yes. Over the long term, however, children from bilingual homes tend to bounce back and may even derive special advantages from growing up in a household where both English and another language are spoken.<\/p>\n

Tips For Raising a Bilingual Child<\/h2>\n

The key to raising a bilingual child is early exposure. The first few years of a child\u2019s life represent the most rapid period in the growth of language pathways for speech development. Researchers say that a child\u2019s brain in this critical period are like giant file cabinets that store up huge libraries of phonetic knowledge.<\/p>\n

Scientists at Cornell University describe the acquisition of language as one of the greatest feats in human development. Their research indicates that an initial deficit in word learning or vocabulary was followed by \u201ca fast pace of development,\u201d ultimately reaching the same rate as children raised in monolingual homes. While many teachers and parents may be concerned that raising a child in a multilingual or bilingual household could be confusing, the scientific evidence indicates that bilingual children do not suffer from \u201clanguage confusion, language delay or cognitive deficit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Advantages of Raising a Bilingual Child<\/h2>\n

The cognitive advantages that your child will reap from bilingualism or multilingualism will likely aid his or her academic achievements later in life. In fact, far from causing problems in a child\u2019s intellectual development, bilingual or multilingual kids enjoy special advantages over their monolingual peers, including easier access to other languages and cultures in ways that their peers often do not share. Moreover, exposure from birth to more than one language may yield the best results in achieving native-like proficiency.<\/p>\n

Perhaps best of all, the children of bilingual or multilingual parents do not need to be \u201ctaught\u201d a second language in order to get it right. Language learning is a complex process that children work through on a step-by-step basis, according to the sounds that they hear from their parents and overhear in other settings. So while exposure from birth to different languages is essential, moms and dads do not need to drill their children if they are developing normally. They can simply allow their kids to \u201cdiscover\u201d other languages on their own.<\/p>\n

At the same time, however, parents can take concrete steps to facilitate multilanguage development that will enrich understanding and mastery, including:<\/p>\n