The Benefits of Raising Bilingual Children

Nuria from the The Adventures Archive is here today to share some helpful tips on raising bilingual children…

By now you’ve probably heard a lot about the benefits of bilingual education. From enhancing your kids cognitive capacity, to a better developed linguistic understanding, there are so many reasons why you should introduce more than one language in your home. Today I wanted to focus on a less known advantage, mental flexibility.

Kids don’t do grey. Their world is all black or white, things are “grrrreat” or “oooful”, they love something “so very much” or they “hate it forever”. And most of the times if you give them a task they’ll want to do it just one particular way.

Yet teaching kids mental flexibility is crucial. A child who is not mentally flexible has trouble adapting to unexpected changes in routine, finds it hard to self-evaluate and is less willing to embrace other people’s opinions. They can grow up to become rigid adults that lack the elasticity that is needed to find different solutions or to work inside a team.

While there are many ways to teach this mental agility, exposing children to different languages can deeply enhance this type of flexibility. Why is that? Let me show you this example. This is a drawing made by my daughter (she speaks Spanish, English and Italian):

The left one is the Italian version of a spoon, “il cucchiaio”, a masculine word. On the right you can see “la cuchara”, the Spanish word, which is feminine.

Just like that, a simple word opens two possibilities. In her brain there isn’t only one way to consider a spoon, it can be seen in at least two different manners and both of them are equally right and valuable.

Ready to create a bilingual environment in your home? Then follow these steps:

• Take it easy: adding another language shouldn’t feel like an imposition but rather something natural. If your kids already speak one language, introduce the new one gradually.

•  Make it fun: from iPad apps to interactive DVDs it’s never been easier to find cool multilingual tools for our kids. If Spanish is your choice you can show them these fun videos that my girls have recorded. Here are some of my favorite bilingual apps:
  • Mindsnacks (Spanish)
  • Gus on the Go (10 different languages)
  • Lately Lily (French/English)
  • Dic-Dic (multilingual app to practice spelling).
  • Kids Learn Mandarin
  • Finally, I love A Story Before Bed eBooks. They let you add the book’s audio so a parent can record it to the kid in his or her native language.

• Ask for help: research suggests that a child needs to be exposed to a language 30% of his waking time to actively speak it, so if you are a working parent you may find this difficult to achieve. Find a bilingual school, hire a foreign nanny or ask a relative to help. Even if they live far away they can connect with your child via web cam and have regular chats.

• Stick to it: consistency and perseverance are the key. If you choose to speak in one language to your kid try to do so always. Also, don’t succumb to peer pressure. Most bilingual kids have a slower start and it can be frustrating to watch them struggle but they always catch up eventually.

Are your kids multilingual? Do you want them to become so? Either way, I’d love to hear your opinions about it.