5 ms·
Nonsense, of course it is. I'm raising bilingual children and every one of them has developmental delays. Of course the plural of anecdote is not data, but as a
by maaku 12y ago
Nonsense, of course it is. I'm raising bilingual children and every one of them has developmental delays. Of course the plural of anecdote is not data, but as a result I've been quite motivated to keep up with the research. My family is not exceptional among bilingual families. Developmental delays are common, as are poor performance in elementary school as multi-lingual children struggle to integrate disjoint systems of knowledge.
Of course I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was absolutely worth it, but the idea the children are sponges that pick up language without trouble at all is a myth that needs to die. Children do learn languages faster and better than adults, but IMHO that is mostly due to (a) time, (b) motivation, and (c) adult learners rationalizing their failures rather than actually trying to learn.
EDIT: But to be clear, although it is not my place to tell anybody what to do, I do wish speakers of dying languages would pass on their words and culture to their children. It's hard, but worthwhile IMHO.
- japhyr 12y agoAre the developmental delays long term, or just focused in primary/ else tardy grades? I've been envious of my peers who grew up bilingual; none appeared delayed when I knew them in late middle school and beyond. In fact, they seemed more academically capable than my monolingual peers.
- maaku 12y agoEarly. They seem to pull it together around age 10 plus or minus a few years. Statistically speaking -- every child is different. Mine are still young enough to have persistent problems.
- S4M 12y agoAn anecdote to counter yours: I am French, my wife is Japanese and we live in Barcelona in Spain where the school is in catalan. Our four years old understands Japanese and Catalan quite well (similar to a monolingual kid) and can speak French, English and Spanish a bit (I speak to him in French, adn with my wife we speak English) but not as well as a monolingual kid. Ofmcourse we have to see how it will turn out for him, but to me in terms of languages he's pretty much like a sponge.
- sumedh 12y ago> as are poor performance in elementary school as multi-lingual children struggle I am too lazy to google but I am pretty sure that I read multilingual kids have slightly better performance compared to monolinguals.
- lbarrow 12y agoThe theory that raising children in a multilingual environment impaired development was common in the 70s, but since then an overwhelming amount of evidence has debunked it. The commonly held view now is that raising a child in a multilingual environment will have no impact on how fast the child reaches developmental milestones. A good introduction to the topic from Paul Bloom (a professor of developmental psychology at Yale) is here: http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110/lecture-6 http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110/lecture-6.
- maaku 12y agoThat does not reflect actual experience on the ground in schools and early start programs where I live. I don't know what else to say.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]