Bilingual Households and Speech Delays in Children

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.

Tips For Raising a Bilingual Child

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

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 “a fast pace of development,” 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 “language confusion, language delay or cognitive deficit.”

The Advantages of Raising a Bilingual Child

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’s 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.

Perhaps best of all, the children of bilingual or multilingual parents do not need to be “taught” 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 “discover” other languages on their own.

At the same time, however, parents can take concrete steps to facilitate multilanguage development that will enrich understanding and mastery, including:

Surrounding the child with conversations and social groups that utilize more than one language.
Exposing children to different languages through multilingual play groups.
Reading to and telling your child stories in different languages.

Another tip for parents raising the bilingual or multilingual child is for each parent to stick to his or her native tongue. This is known as the OPOL — “one parent, one language” — strategy for nurturing multilingual speech development. It’s based on the idea that kids will have an easier time if moms and dads consistently speak their own native tongues.

Of course, parents with children who have diagnosed language difficulties have special concerns regarding the effects of bilingualism. But research shows that, even among kids with language development challenges, it is possible for them to achieve bilingualism. According to one researcher, the evidence “suggests that…these children can acquire functional competence in two languages at the same time, within the limits of their impairment. Therefore, children with specific language impairment living in families where knowing two, or more, languages are useful and important, should be given every opportunity to acquire two languages.”

Parents who are unsure or have doubts should make sure that their children’s hearing has been tested; they should also consult an expert and remember that language development is a complex process that takes time and that some children will simply develop these skills at different rates.

Expert corner: Frequent ear infections in children

by Noel Hartman Expert Corner Hearing and Speech Hearing Loss Speech and Hearing Disorders

Frequent ear infections in children: Signs for parents with concerns about speech and language development.

Ear tube surgery – it is one of the most common childhood surgeries.

According to the New York Times, nearly seven-hundred thousand children a year in the United States have tiny plastic tubes inserted into their eardrums.

“No one wants to see a child in pain,” said renowned pediatrician and parenting expert Dr. Jen Trachtenberg. “The main reason to get the tubes is that it helps with hearing loss. When you have the tubes, all that fluid and pus comes out of the ear, therefore, you don’t have the pressure and the temporary hearing loss.”

Although ear tube surgery may be among the most common surgeries for children, Trachtenberg says the number of such procedures being performed is excessive (“doctors are doing too many,” she says) and that parents should think twice before they “jump the gun” and opt for ear tubes.

Dr. Jen Trachtenberg, expert pediatrician in NYC

“I never take it lightly,” says Trachtenberg. “I would never jump to just doing tubes surgery on a child. That said, not all infections need to be treated with antibiotics.”

Doctors say that ear infections are one of the most common childhood ailments, with eighty percent of kids experiencing at least one instance of infection by they time they turn three years of age. Ear infections also account for more than 30 million doctor visits a year, so the potential for excessive use of the ear tube procedure would seem to be possible.

What, then, should a conscientious parent do if he or she is considering ear tube surgery for his or her child?

First, remember that, if left untreated, otitis media (the common ear infection) can lead to loss of hearing in your child and delays in terms of speech development. Dr. Trachtenberg says it’s more important to focus on the length of a child’s ear infection, in terms of how long the fluid remains in the ear rather than just the number of ear infections that may occur. “This is why continuity of care and having a primary pediatrician is so helpful,” she says.

According to the American Academy of Otolaryngology (A.A.O.), parents should not opt for ear tube surgery in otherwise healthy children who have had just one episode of ear fluid lasting less than three months. On its website, the A.A.O. says that infections of “short duration” will probably go away on their own.

However, if there is evidence of speech delay, then opting for ear tube surgery could be the right decision for your child. As for how much hearing loss is required before parents should consider themselves to have reached this point, some physicians say that early ear tube surgery can be considered in kids who register a hearing loss of forty or more decibels.

As for signs of what parents should look for, Trachtenberg says that persistent fluid and persistent hearing loss would mean that parents or caregivers should ask their pediatricians about referring them to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor, who specializes in the ear tube procedure.

If it does come to getting the surgery, doctors say parents should be aware that the procedure involves general anesthetic, but is also generally an easy one to carry out.

“About fifteen minutes,” says Tranchtenberg, when asked how long the surgery lasts. “Kids in general tolerate it very well. Not much pain. Your child may get antibiotic drops for the ear. Generally they do really well.”

photo credit: Doctor Aunt via photopin (license)

Do Ear Infections Affect Speech Development?

by Noel Hartman Hearing and Speech Hearing Loss Language Development Speech and Hearing Disorders

Ear infections and speech development: good news for youngest kids, but parents still have plenty to fret about.

Although a new study published in Pediatrics shows a sharp decline in the rate of childhood ear infections among kids in the first year of life, there are still plenty of children (and parents) who have to struggle through an ailment that remains stubbornly common — and, if left untreated, ear infections affect speech, lead to hearing loss or an overall delay a child’s speech and language development.

Stine Jewett, a mother of two who lives with her husband near San Francisco, knows all about the trials that come with recurrent ear infections. Last year, her son, Thomas, developed an alarming streak of ear infections at the rate of one almost every other month. According to the meticulous records she kept of Thomas’s condition, Jewett says that her son suffered from five incidents of acute otitis media — the common ear infection — in less than one calendar year.

“It would always happen on the weekend,” Jewett recalled. “There would be no symptoms leading up to it and then, always early Saturday night, going to get the ear drops.”

At the beginning of this period, Jewett says that she and her husband had no idea what they were in for. Their other child, an elder daughter named Anna, had never come down with an ear infection in her entire life. Also, Thomas’s age made him a bit old to be so vulnerable to ear infections, not to say a long and — for his parents — bewildering series of them.

Stine Jewett and her son Thomas

“Whenever I saw a runny nose, I would worry,” Jewett said. “What was most puzzling was that he didn’t start getting them until he was three. Most kids start getting them around one. He never had any until he was three, and so it was not a typical case. The doctors really didn’t have anything to say.”

And, after a while, Jewett ran out of patience with the antibiotic remedies that Thomas’s physicians were prescribing. After some initial reluctance, she opted for a procedure that involved putting her son under total anesthetic and inserting tubes in his ear canals, so that the middle part of that organ can drain the fluids that cause infections in the first place.

“I was hesitant,” she recalled. “I actually wanted to avoid [the tubes] for some reason. In surgery, they put him completely under so that he will lie still. But that’s only for children. An adult getting this would not be under. So that was scary. But what basically pushed me over was, ok, he’s on antibiotics again. Is he going to get resistant to antibiotics? What if he gets really, really sick. A friend who was an ENT was like, just do it. Now I wish we had done it sooner. Looking back, I feel bad that I thought he was just being difficult or grumpy.”

Ear Infections Affect Speech and Language Development

In the days just before his surgery, Thomas was tested by an audiologist who found enough congestion to account for low hearing loss in the boy’s left ear and moderate to severe hearing loss in his right. The severity of hearing loss can fluctuate, however, due to the varying levels of fluid build up, which can make it even more difficult for parents who are trying to figure out their child’s inflamed level of irritability or grouchiness. A person speaking in a clear, normal voice will sound like a whisper to a young child with enough congestion to block the normal passage of sound waves.

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