Teaching Baby Two or More Languages
When waiting for your little one to arrive, there’s no shortage of questions you may be asking yourself. If you’re a bilingual parent, which language or languages to speak to your baby may be the ultimate question. Here’s your answer: expose your baby to all languages you speak and you will give them the opportunity to be great communicators.
I brought in the bilingual speech-language pathologist on the team to help bring you the FACTS about raising a bilingual (or multi-lingual) baby. Let’s dive in!
Language development in bilingual children
Bilingual children are expected to meet their language milestones within the same timeframe as monolingual children (i.e., children learning one language). Yes, your baby who is learning two (or more!) languages is expected to babble, say their first words, and put words together to make sentences at the same time as children learning one language (2). While the language they use first may depend on how often they are exposed to each language and/or who they are communicating with, those milestone checklists apply to your bilingual baby, too!
Take the guesswork out of the equation!
Check out our 0-24 Months Milestone Checklists - created by an SLP, OT, and PT for all the milestones - all in one place!
Learning two languages will not confuse your child
A common concern you may have as a bilingual parent is that simultaneously learning two languages from birth will confuse your baby. Parents, or even teachers and pediatricians, may mistake a bilingual child using two languages within the same sentence (i.e. “I see a perro”) as confusion. However, using two languages in a single sentence or conversation is a normal aspect of bilingual development (5). As a bilingual parent, you likely do it yourself when chatting with your friends or family, and still have a meaningful, not confusing conversation. There are many reasons why this part of bilingual communication, called code-mixing, may happen. Maybe your child does not yet know how to say the word in each language individually, or realizes halfway through a sentence that their communication partner doesn’t share in speaking both languages. Whatever the case, how creative of the bilingual child to pull all the tools they have to get their point across!
Language delays in bilingual children
While there are differences to bilingual language development - like code-mixing - these differences do not cause language delays. Bilingual children are not at a higher risk for communication delays (2)!
If a child has a language delay, it will be present in all languages in which they speak and not just one, and is not caused by being exposed to multiple languages.
In fact, given the opportunity to use all the languages they speak, a typically developing bilingual child (i.e., a child who is hitting milestones on time) has equal to or greater vocabulary size than their monolingual peers (3). Words in all languages count towards this overall word count, and their knowledge of each language should not be separated. This is true both for receptive vocabulary (i.e., words they understand) as well as expressive vocabulary (i.e., words they say). That’s right, the combination of words they understand and say in each language may exceed what is typical in one language! This also applies to reading skills. The skills that prepare children for reading (e.g., learning letters, knowing how to handle a book, etc.) and reading itself transfer across languages (6). Even if your child reads more often in one language, they can apply these skills to reading in a second language. All in all, speaking in two languages won’t delay your child, but it may change the way their brain is structured (in a good way!).
Bilingual speakers and brain function
Even though there are many similarities in language development between monolingual and bilingual children, being exposed to multiple languages has an effect on how the brain works.
Executive functioning is a set of cognitive skills that help us manage our everyday tasks, including how we plan, manage and prioritize our time.
Executive functioning skills become super important for school readiness and achievement as they help us follow directions and solve problems. Lucky for bilingual speakers, performance in these nonverbal tasks (i.e., tasks that don’t necessarily require speaking) may be better than their monolingual classmates, all because their brain has changed, grown, and adapted to learning multiple languages (1).
Bilingualism should be encouraged, not discouraged
In case I haven’t convinced you yet, it is undeniable that the ability to speak two languages will allow your child to interact with people of different cultural roots, including family members. Maybe they will learn songs/games from grandparents born in a different country, or engage in play with children of a different linguistic background at the park. Because of this (and their excellent executive functioning skills), they may have an easier time relating to others’ perspectives: “walking a mile in their shoes.” Plus, being exposed to a language from a variety of different speakers may support their language development even more than the number of hours they are exposed to a given language (4).
Put simply, communicating with their grandparents over dinner in a second language may advance their bilingual language skills more than speaking only to you in that same language for hours on end!
If you want your child to continue to speak the native language as they grow older, which is important to many for preserving culture and tradition, encouraging use of the second language across all aspects of daily life is crucial.
So invite grandma and grandpa over and sing those traditional songs without hesitation! Trust in your bilingual language learner, but as always, seek advice from a bilingual speech-language pathologist if you have concerns. Your little one is lucky to have this skill; flaunt it!
Take a look at our favorite Spanish and Spanish/English book picks from our bilingual speech-language pathologist!
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