Raising Children Bilingual or multilingual Doesn’t Cause Confusion In Children

By Pauline, Speech Pathologist, Change for Life

Often parents are told by some health professionals not to speak two languages with their child, or I will have parents say to me: “I don’t want to confuse him/her by speaking two languages”.

These are all myths. There are a lot of myths that dual-language learning causes language delay in children, would confuse the child, or that bilingual children are less intelligent than monolingual children or reducing to one language would improve a child’s chances for success. It is farther from the truth.

There is no evidence indicating that speaking to your child in more than one language causes a delay or that speaking one language will improve your child’s chance for success. Children who speak one language make a lot of errors. It is a normal part of language learning, and, it is not a sign of confusion.

On the other hand, there is evidenced-based research indicating numerous advantages that bilingual children have over monolingual children. Bilingual children can ignore distractions and focus their attention on important information. They are more creative. Bilinguals are better at planning and solving complex problems than monolingual children. The effects of aging on the brain are diminished among bilingual adults. One study found that the onset of dementia was delayed by four years in bilingual children compared to monolingual children. Bilingual children have better access to people and resources. Bilinguals have higher employment rates in some countries. For example, in Canada, people who speak both official languages, i.e., English and French have a 10% higher income rate than those who speak only English.

Reducing to one language can cause a lot of other difficulties emotionally and psychologically because parents can struggle to communicate with their child, and the child might not fit in with other family members and friends. Many parents are learning English themselves, so they are not able to model rich linguistic grammar and therefore, the children only get exposed to simpler linguistic models in English. Research suggests speaking to your child in the language that you speak best as this will provide your child with rich linguistic input. Learning more than one language is doable. Also, children with Autism can be bilingual as there is no scientific evidence that children with developmental disabilities or language impairment cannot learn more than one language. Remember half of the world is bilingual or multilingual.