Benefits of raising your child bilingually and how to avoid the pitfalls

You may be lucky to have the option to raise you child bilingually, yet there may be fears and doubts. Is there a price to pay, and does the cost outweigh the benefits? Obvious opportunities for a bilingual education are living in a country where another language is spoken, having a partner speaking another language or having access to an educational system operating in another language or another caretaker. More than half of the world population is bilingual, so it is more the norm than an exception.

A few years ago early bilingualism was rather not supported because it was thought to harm the development of the first language. This view is changing and there has been quite a bit of research done. Bilingual research is a relatively new field of study, and while there are many advocates in favor of bilingual education and early language learning, it is fair to notice that longitudinal studies, i.e. research studying long-term effects are still rare. Instead there is still some armchair theorizing around as well as comparisons of situations that are too different to be compared. This means that some of the apparently plausible conclusions we come across are better banned in the realm of myths. Let’s have a look at what we know.

Linguistic benefits

Before the age of three language is not learnt but acquired, which means it is naturally picked up similar the mother tongue rather than consciously learned. Young children learn languages much quicker and more easily than adults. The early age allows our brains to discriminate and learn all the sounds we are exposed to in a way that accent free pronunciation becomes hard-wired. In theory the small child should speak both languages accent free, however, observations in expatriate families show that this is not always the case. The son of an American couple in The Netherlands is in Dutch daycare as from the age of 8 months onwards every day for several hours, and at school age still speaks Dutch with an American accent. A possible explanation could be that the child hears the parents speak the foreign language with an accent.

Speaking two different languages increases the linguistic awareness and thinking. The child learns that one thing can be called different names, a car can be “a car” or “une voiture” or “ein Auto”. Growing up he learns that one phenomenon can be described in different ways, from different perspectives and with different meanings. The child will also learn about language, from a meta perspective, comparing grammar, expressions and style. This will form a general language understanding and basis for learning other languages.

A bilingual child will be fluent in both languages (or more), however, vocabulary will differ. If she speaks one language at home and another at school, she will adopt the “at home” vocabulary in the former and “academic” and “peer” language in the latter. Returning into the home country she may not know an essential part of the vocabulary yet sound like a native speaker. And even within the academic world different customs in school may lead to different kind of vocabulary. Vocabulary difference is not a major problem and with some effort vocabulary will quickly increase. Parents can and should see this as a challenge to introduce as many words and expression as possible to their bilingual child, going beyond the household talk, for example by making excursions to nature and museums, explaining what you see, reading books, encourage your child to read books in the home language.

Social benefits

“When living abroad speak as the local children speak” is an important aspect of integration into the neighborhood, belonging to the place where we live, and more than that. It is an important social value of trying to communicate with others, making an effort to understand and make oneself understood, creating a basis for common activities. It is also cultural learning, understanding of the host culture and being able to take different perspectives. Bilingual children can learn to build bridges between cultures and play with a variety of different personalities.

“Is it still worthwhile, when we are here for only a couple of years?” many expatriates ask. Yes, it is. A couple of years may seem an eternity to your child, with a feeling of not fully belonging here, that native speakers are not important enough to learn their language and communicate with them, that you and your family are “different”. Social isolation versus making an effort to communicate and integrate, one of the two is the message learned for life. Not to mention the fact that I have often observed two years expanding to a whole childhood.

Equally if father and mother speak different languages, bilingual education is a way of getting to know both parents better, including their cultural background and roots. This will increase family cohesion and mutual understanding, and be a bridge to the extended family. Bilingualism may be the key to strengthen both roots and belonging to the worlds of both parents rather than allowing language to become a barrier to parts of the family and their country. The benefits of cultural learning and being able to change perspectives will promote social and relationship competencies.

Cognitive benefits

The ability of taking different perspectives, making connections and thinking about language on an abstract level supports cognitive abilities as well. Short-term differences in the cognitive development have been observed, however these differences level out at the age of approximately 10 years. Long-term cognitive effects of bilingual education have not been sufficiently understood yet. Evidence supporting that third culture kids tend to be more successful academically and in their careers has to be questioned, as there are so many impacts. The influence of parental support and financial situation, attitude towards foreigners, schooling situation, peer influence etc. make it difficult to isolate the effects of bilingual education in longitudinal studies.

1. Living in another country

Living in another country as expatriate or immigrant offers many opportunities for immersion in another language and this promote language acquisition in school, leisure, with peers, and other local encounters. Bilingual education works well, if you can create separate spaces for each language and expose your child to native speakers. When you speak English at home, your child can speak French in the playgroup or school. As long as there are natural and native environment to listen to and use the host language there is not much more to do for younger children. If the child is older, some extra support may help. Creative native language environments enhance cultural understanding and extend the communication abilities to non-verbal clues and choosing the right level of directness or indirectness in the speech.

If you plan to move from country to country, you may not want to change the school language every time you move. That will be a big linguistic challenge for your child, even if she knows a bit of the new language. She will need to follow different academic curriculum in a language, where she has no or insufficient vocabulary of technical terms. This is a double challenge which not every child will master. So, there is an argument for staying within one school system, e.g. International Schools, which you can find all over the world in English, but also in French, German, and some other. Even if your home language is not English, an English international school is an excellent opportunity for your child to develop this language, which will help around the whole international community and prepare for many universities. In this case the local language of the host country may become less developed but is still worthwhile to be encouraged both in school and leisure activities in order to facilitate integration.

Another issue which is sometimes overlooked is the maintenance and development of your home country language. Even your native language needs to be trained and spoken in order to stay active in your child’s head. One way of supporting this is to rigorously speak that language to your child. Even if he does not respond in that language it will help to keep the sound and enlarge vocabulary. Regular home visits may help to make your child speak. Many organize classes in their home language, some international schools offer this, others search for private lessons, books, DVDs, CDs, and CD-ROMs, maybe a TV channel can further support the native language but never be a substitute for speaking. You may want to consider lessons to teach your child to read and write in your native language.

2. The bi-cultural family

Bicultural education within the family only works with routing and rigor. This means that the parents speak different languages to the child, which requires practice in the beginning. If it is to work, do it as a rule, and do not stop if your child is not responding in the same language. Continue to speak your mother tongue to the child, and it will learn. Experience shows, that mothers show more discipline in speaking their language to the child than fathers do, and it really is a process of educating the whole family to this. To complement the effort you do the same things as described above for retaining the native language with your child while living abroad.

3. Educational opportunities

Educational opportunities are on the rise with international and bilingual schools. International schools are expensive and often have admission rules not allowing the normal local child to enter. In bilingual schools some subjects are taught in another language. The teachers are not always native speakers or language teachers as they are often primarily educated for the subject they are teaching. Some schools are offering true immersion with highly qualified native teachers offering a high educational standard. So, have a close look at the school, its quality standards and how they ensure that neither language learning nor academic learning will suffer.

If you want your child to learn, say Chinese from early onwards but do not speak the language, you can hire a Chinese au-pair or baby sitter who comes in regularly and speaks her language to the children, ideally engaging them in games, books and explaining new words in the environment. This is another playful way of acquiring or learning a language.

4. You live in a bilingual country

In some countries more than one language is spoken, like e.g. Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Hispanic USA and many more. While you would expect this should support bilingualism, reality shows that in bilingual countries the barriers between languages and/or cultures are often high and true bilingualism may not be supported. Still it is important for promoting the dialogue and advancing the country as whole rather than the fight among its parts.

Last but not least I will mention some of the pitfalls of bilingual education, which you may want to consider.

Repatriation

Repatriation with a bilingual third culture kid may be a challenge, returning to a home, which seems strange, speaking the language with fluency, yet not able to understand and express some of the subtleties and not gaining the privileges of being a foreigner who speaks our language pretty well. Pollock and van Reken call these children “hidden immigrants”. My experience with my own children shows that this can indeed be a barrier to communication and source of misunderstandings, which take their time to disappear. Extra lessons will be needed if your returning child is not literate in the native language.

Back home you may also have to face the challenge of keeping up the second language that was learned abroad and is no longer spoken at home. Depending on the language and availability of native speakers this can be a problem. As quickly as children learn a language they forget it again unless they are exposed and trained in it on a regular basis. If everything fails, DVDs and skyping with the friends back abroad can help preserve at least some basic and passive understanding of the language.

Confusion

During early language acquisition monolingual children have a phase where they mix up grammar rules (e.g. regular forms on irregular verbs and vice versa). This is due to the memory overload and complexity and will disappear after a while. The same thing happens to bilingual children, who apply French grammar rules and sentence structure in English and vice versa. This has to do with interference rather than inability to tell languages apart. This period can be more extended than with monolingual children and should disappear as well, however, some of the interference between the languages can continue to happen. Also don’t be surprised if your child starts to speak later, there may be a longer “silent period” in one or all languages.

Numbers can be confusing to the extent of being a problem in math: where English numbers put the ten first, Dutch and German operate the other way round, there you learn that twenty-five is five and twenty.

If, however, you suspect your child has learning difficulties or you are concerned about language delay, please consult a specialist. Bilingualism does not have to be the cause for language delay, there is a big variance and there can be a variety of reasons. My son for example did not hear very well, which can also be a barrier to language development.

Literacy

While it is no problem for children to learn to speak several languages simultaneously, there is an advice against teaching the child to read and write in both languages at the same time. It will give better results to first stabilize the spelling and reading abilities in one language and then introduce the second.  Again keep in mind that spelling problems can be due to bilingualism but can have other causes as well.

Split personalities?

Some bilinguals do report feeling that they have a different "personality" for each language. However, this may be because they are acting according to different cultural norms when speaking each of their languages. When speaking English, they assume the cultural role expected of them in English-speaking society. This is different than the cultural role expected of them in German-speaking society, which they assume when speaking German. The change in language cues a change in cultural expectation

While there are many benefits of raising your child bilingually, there are a few issues to consider, and surprises may come up. What you can do to support your child in the first place is to use your expertise of your native language and ensure your child will learn and expand her knowledge in this language. Regarding her development in other languages you will need to rely on others, their support and their feedback.  While expert advice can be useful, don’t forget that you are the expert of your child and know your situation better than any expert.