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Development in Bilingual Infants

How Do Bilingual Babies Learn Language?

By Teri Brown

Beth Butler, a bilingual educator and founder of the Boca Beth language program, agrees. "I would like to say that as I have experienced with infants moving into toddler age, no language delay manifested itself nor did an inability to reach language milestones due to a second (or third) language being present in the child's daily routine," she says.

Even though experts feel there is no delay between bilingual and monolingual babies in regards to language acquisition, parents should keep in mind that all children are different when it comes to the rate that they acquire language.

Katie-Anne Gustafsson is an English mother of two living in Sweden with a Swedish husband. Though both their sons are bilingual, Gustafsson has noticed differences in her children's language skills. Gustafsson speaks to her children only in English and her husband speaks to them in Swedish and both children attend Swedish schools. Surprisingly, they speak to each other in English.

"They learned the languages side by side," Gustafsson says. "Neither of them were taught formally in either language. Jake (now 7) was instant bilingual. The younger doesn't have the huge language capability of his older brother, and despite living in Sweden and attending Swedish nursery five days a week, speaks better English than Swedish. His English vocabulary is greater than his Swedish one, and he recently commented that the teachers at his nursery didn't understand him because they didn't speak English!"

Same home, same method, different abilities. Parents who wish to bring their children up bilingually need to remember that all children are different and learn at different rates, but that children who are bilingual are not language delayed.