I’ll be honest with you – this episode hit differently for me as a mom. My son is six and learning Spanish in school, and my parents speak our native language with him, but listening back to this conversation with Alicia made me wish we had been more intentional from the start. No guilt though… just real talk about what the research actually says.

Alicia Gandhi is a bilingual speech language pathologist and clinical assistant professor at NYU, and she is the person you want in your corner when it comes to separating fact from fiction on raising kids with multiple languages. There are so many myths floating around out there, from pediatricians, from teachers, from well-meaning family members, and we break them all down.

In this episode we cover:

• The real cognitive benefits of raising bilingual and multilingual kids (hint: it goes way beyond language)
• Why code switching and mixing languages is not confusion – it is actually a sign your child is doing exactly what they should be
• The milestone myth: bilingual kids are not on a different developmental timeline
• Why you should speak your strongest language at home, even if it is not English
• The harmful practice of “forced monolingualism” and who it hurts most
• Whether kids with language delays or disabilities can still be raised multilingual (spoiler: yes)
• What happens when kids enter a new language environment like daycare or school

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00;00;00;02 – 00;00;29;13

Dr. Mona

Welcome to the follow up. I’m Doctor Mona. You’re a pediatrician and online mom friend. And this is where we revisit an old favorite episode of the PedsDocTalk podcast. In less time than it takes your toddler to mix Spanish and English Spanglish in the same sentence and somehow make it work. Today, we’re bringing you back a conversation I had with Alicia Gandy, a bilingual speech language pathologist and clinical assistant professor at NYU, and we talk all about bilingualism and multilingualism.

 

00;00;29;16 – 00;01;00;25

Dr. Mona

That’s a time for full transparency. My own kids are not bilingual, and honestly, this episode made me wish we had started earlier. My son is six and learning Spanish in school, and my parents speak our native language with them. But this conversation really helped separate fact from fiction for so many of you. There are so many myths out there about raising kids with multiple languages, and Alicia and I break them all down, talking about the real benefits and getting into how families can actually approach bilingualism or multilingualism at home.

 

00;01;00;28 – 00;01;16;28

Dr. Mona

And if this one hits home for you. Share it. Tag us at the PedsDocTalk k Podcast and at Aleesha BGG, underscore SLP and make sure you download the full episode. Let’s get into it.

 

00;01;17;00 – 00;01;39;15

Dr. Mona

We’re going to be chatting about bilingualism, multilingualism, and first of all, before we get into the misconceptions you hear, what are some of the benefits? I know you’ve mentioned beautifully already that there’s no one superior thing. So of course we’re talking about if a family is bilingual, wants to teach their children multiple languages, what are the benefits of this multilingualism or bilingualism?

 

00;01;39;17 – 00;02;08;09

Alisha Gandhi

Yeah, absolutely. We know that there is so, so many benefits being multilingual, being bilingual or multilingual. One, we know that our multilingual learners just overall have great language skills. It is well known that kids who are learning multiple languages and multiple ways of communicating are better at learning new words. There are great benefits to their literacy development. They are really good at using information in new ways and having that cognitive flexibility.

 

00;02;08;12 – 00;02;39;08

Alisha Gandhi

Just overall, you know, there’s been tons of cognitive benefits that we’ve seen for children who are multilingual, working memory benefits, executive functioning benefits, problem solving, and also connecting and listening to other people. Being able to really tune in to what other people are saying because they’re constantly in the process of tuning their communication, their communication partner. Another really wonderful benefit of bilingualism is, you know, there’s huge social emotional benefits when a child is learning multiple languages.

 

00;02;39;08 – 00;02;59;05

Alisha Gandhi

They’re also being immersed in multiple cultures and that connection to their own culture or their own identity, to their family, to their background, to their own identity, into their own history is really important for social and emotional development. So encouraging that really fosters their mental health and their emotional growth in that sense as well.

 

00;02;59;07 – 00;03;26;12

Dr. Mona

Well, I love to hear this. And obviously knowing the benefits of bilingualism on multilingualism is absolutely there. There are a lot of misconceptions about this. You know, I think one of the big ones I’ll throw out there and of course, I’m sure you even hear even more than what I’m going to say is the misconception that if you teach multiple languages, that they get a pass on milestones in terms of what we expect of them, in terms of how many words they should have by a certain age.

 

00;03;26;12 – 00;03;47;15

Dr. Mona

So I get this a lot like, hey, you know, we’re speaking two languages at home, so, you know, they’re a little bit not, you know, they’re not speaking as much. But that’s because of the multiple languages. So that is definitely one of them. But I would love to hear what the other misconceptions or maybe truths that you see about or hear about bilingualism or multilingualism in families with young infants and toddlers.

 

00;03;47;17 – 00;04;08;19

Alisha Gandhi

Yeah, absolutely. So I think, I mean, I think there’s tons of myths and misconceptions. I think the one that you mentioned about kind of that milestone development and that milestones are different or we don’t look at them because a child is bilingual and that definitely a huge myths out there. You know, it’s really important kind of across the world language development.

 

00;04;08;19 – 00;04;35;09

Alisha Gandhi

It’s an innate human process and it develops pretty similarly in terms of developing words, hitting milestones. Kids who speak one language in, kids who speak multiple languages are going to develop at different rates. They’re going to develop their language at different rates. There’s really not a huge difference between children who are learning one language, who some learn it faster than others, and children who are learning multiple languages.

 

00;04;35;09 – 00;04;53;23

Alisha Gandhi

You know, that’s the case no matter what. I think the multilingualism gives people an excuse for why, you know, they feel like their child might be not developing language as quickly as possible. But the truth is that every child develops the way they’re meant to, and they’re doing it on their own timeline. Again, we want to support that.

 

00;04;53;25 – 00;05;26;22

Alisha Gandhi

We do see sometimes when a child is exposed to one language in the home primarily, and then maybe they enter a new set in daycare school where they’re now immersed in an entirely new language. And oftentimes in the US context that is English. We do see, sometimes there is a time where maybe their communication becomes a little bit lax, maybe they’re a little bit more reserved or quieter than they’ve been in the past, because they’re kind of taking in all this information, but they’re not developing more slowly, or at a different rate than anyone else.

 

00;05;26;22 – 00;05;45;23

Alisha Gandhi

They’re honing their cognitive development. It’s kind of like we talk about any milestone, right? They’re learning something new. So something else kind of needs to take a little backseat for a while before it all catches up and comes together. And that’s with all of the milestones. So that’s kind of one big method idea. And the other one, and this is one I got all the time.

 

00;05;45;23 – 00;06;19;01

Alisha Gandhi

And it’s so frustrating and upsetting and disappointing because typically I hear this from parents who really trust the practitioners, the professionals in their lives like us. They are pediatricians. They’re speech and language therapists, teachers, daycare providers, sometimes family members, educators. There’s so many people that tell families that they should not use their home language practices with their child, and in the US in favor of English or majority’s language.

 

00;06;19;03 – 00;06;42;18

Alisha Gandhi

And all of the research tells us otherwise. I have a parent who said, yeah, we stopped speaking this language at home because he was having difficulty in the pediatricians. But just after the speech, there were a lot of that. And we know for a fact that one that’s not true at all. So first of all, one thing with bilingualism, there’s a lot of concern that kids are going to get confused that they’re not going to understand how languages work.

 

00;06;42;18 – 00;07;03;16

Alisha Gandhi

And what we tend to forget, especially in America, is that globally, multilingualism is the norm. And we’re actually kind of the anomaly in that way. We see English as the majority, as language of power. That is supposed to be the most important, but it’s not right. Globally, kids are learning multiple languages all the time and doing just fine.

 

00;07;03;19 – 00;07;18;11

Alisha Gandhi

Yes, there are instances of code mixing and code switching where you might see some words in one language, some another. You might see grammatical patterns transfer over. But that’s not confusion. That’s a normal part of language development. And those are things you’re going to see in a kid that speaks one language to.

 

00;07;18;18 – 00;07;19;00

Dr. Mona

Correct.

 

00;07;19;03 – 00;07;41;22

Alisha Gandhi

Learning new words and learning new ways of speaking. They’re figuring out how to put language together. So it’s not a sign of confusion. It’s a sign that they’re making sense of their language, of communication. There’s also concerns that they won’t learn English well if they’re exposed primarily to a language other than English at home. And English is often the language of academics and a power in the United States, which again, it’s untrue.

 

00;07;41;29 – 00;08;05;03

Alisha Gandhi

Why would learning skills and in fact, the better exposure you have to language in any language from as a child is going to really set any child up for success in learning whatever language and language and practices they are going to need in their, you know, academic career, professional career, social lives, etc.. So really, really important is that one bilingual of them should not be discouraged.

 

00;08;05;03 – 00;08;27;19

Alisha Gandhi

It’s not a deficit disorder, it’s not a problem. It is a really strong part of a child’s language development. And then another really important thing is that the best way to teach language and to model language for your child is your as a parent, your language model. And that should be whatever language you feel the most comfortable communicating.

 

00;08;27;19 – 00;08;51;00

Alisha Gandhi

And that’s your strongest language model, and that’s what you want to model for your child. Your trouble. It’s going to do just fine developing language. If they have that strong language foundation and that strong language translation does not have to be a monolingual or an English language foundation, it just needs to be a strong language capital foundation. So we really, really want to encourage multilingualism if that is a choice that a family’s making in the home.

 

00;08;51;07 – 00;09;22;19

Alisha Gandhi

And again, I’m including signed languages and dialects. And when I say multilingualism because those are important as well, they’re not going to stop or inhibit any other language from developing, you know, a freshly with our ASL communicators and language communicators, we hear this as well, that if they learn sign language, they will develop oral speech. And that’s the choice that a family makes that they want their child to communicate both using oral speech and using signed forms of communication.

 

00;09;22;19 – 00;09;43;00

Alisha Gandhi

There is no evidence that one is going to inhibit the other. They can really develop really well and really support each other, which is really important for all children. One more huge math is that children with disabilities should not learn additional languages. So we get this a lot kind of similar to, you know, the pediatrician, the SLP, they’re having trouble with language.

 

00;09;43;00 – 00;10;09;18

Alisha Gandhi

They do have a language. They do have a language disability. So they can’t learn two languages. There is no such thing as that. Multilingualism does not cause language impairments or disorders, nor does it exacerbate any language development or disorder. So it’s really important to continue to encourage monolingual ism, even if your child is diagnosed with a language delay or a disability of some kind, you still want to develop their communication practices in all languages.

 

00;10;09;20 – 00;10;29;06

Dr. Mona

I think it’s so great how you laid all these myths and misconceptions out and kind of debunk them. You know, the one you said about the people saying that you shouldn’t be speaking these multiple languages? I wonder if they’re coming from families who themselves or people themselves who just aren’t multilingual or maybe culturally have multiple languages, but that is, I actually haven’t heard that one a lot.

 

00;10;29;07 – 00;10;38;05

Dr. Mona

Maybe because myself, I don’t really see that too. Obviously. Having said that, to any families, but that’s a really important one that I think I maybe some listeners might have experienced as well.

 

00;10;38;08 – 00;11;02;07

Alisha Gandhi

Yeah, a lot of families and there’s been research that, that so many families are given kind of best guess misinformation. And this I think, disproportionately affects children who do have language delays and disabilities. We talk about something called kind of like forced monolingual ism essentially, which is when practitioners essentially tell families to stop speaking in one language in favor of the academic language or English.

 

00;11;02;12 – 00;11;23;15

Alisha Gandhi

And that can cause more harm than good. You know, we talked about the right that connection to family, community, culture is really important. Making that part of a child’s identity away from them is so detrimental. Taking away that connection with their family, right? That ability to communicate in their family. So, you know, it’s really important. Again, it hits all the domains when we’re supporting language and practices at home.

 

00;11;23;15 – 00;11;32;08

Alisha Gandhi

However, any family chooses to communicate is a really, really important option.

 

00;11;32;11 – 00;11;53;19

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded, or had an moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram at the PedsDocTalk podcast.

 

00;11;53;26 – 00;12;09;10

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at PedsDocTalkcom. Because parenting is better with support and remember, consistency is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona. See you next time for your next dose.