DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advice just a summary of research. If you have concerns about your child’s specific development, please reach out to your pediatrician.
Many parents who only speak one language will hold off teaching their child a second language for fear of causing a language delay.
This fear is understandable!
Parents want their children to succeed in life and a language delay makes that difficult.
Thankfully, the research says learning a second language does not cause a language delay or speech delay.
What is a speech/language delay?
First, what is a language or speech delay?
A delay is when the skills for speech or language development aren’t showing up in a child at the expected age but there’s no underlying cause (such as physical structures or illness).
What is a speech disorder?
This is when a child may have struggles with making the sounds of communication due to things like tongue/lip ties or articulation errors.
What is a language disorder?
Is when a child is struggling with understanding or putting words together and communication is impeded.
It is possible for a child to have both speech and language disorders.
This article from Alberta health explains these more in depth.
Research on Bilingualism and Speech/language disorders
The scientific research supports that learning a second language will NOT cause language delays.
This ‘delay’ is often misunderstood as a ‘quiet period’. Many studies have shown that bilingual children will still speak within the normal age range (barring other factors). This ‘quiet period’ can last 1-6 months and they often talk a little later than monolingual peers but only by a few months.
If learning two languages caused a delay, then countries around the world would only teach one language at a time.
There might also be some temporary vocabulary struggles as your child adjusts to thinking and speaking in two languages.
But those are all temporary and do not need professional intervention from a speech therapist as a diagnosed language delay would.
Are Speech language disorders just an American issue?
There is research from Europe, where most of the school systems will introduce a second language early if parents don’t already speak two languages or more at home.
If learning a second language caused a language delay there would be significant children with language delays all over Europe.
Yet most of the language delays in the world I found here in the United States where a large percentage of the population (about 80%!) only speaks one language.
It’s also important to note that the education system in much of Europe switches to apprenticeship or college bound at 15 instead of 18 like here in the United States.
In the United States, it’s about 12%.
Higher Risk Factors
One situation with higher risk factors is being a multiple (twins, triplets, etc.)
It’s often that twins have a language delay with factors such as being born early, having medical issues, twins speak, or other factors.
With this knowledge that twins are at higher risk for a language delay because they’re twins, I am still teaching my twins a second language from birth. I’m not seeing any delay in either language (English or German) from them.
Now this isn’t to say that all twins won’t have a language delay. It will depend on factors such as their birthday versus due date, or genetic components of language delays, or other external factors.
This is not to say the children who are at risk of a language delay won’t suddenly be at risk when learning a second language.
But learning a second language itself will not be a factor in their delayed language.
Long Term benefits vs short term struggles
Language delay even when you only know one language is only a temporary setback not a permanent struggle.
While I will advise that if your child does have a diagnosed language or speech delay, if you are considering introducing a second language, hold off until they are stronger in their first language.
And even if learning a second language did cause mild language delays in either language, would that be enough of a factor to outweigh all the long-term benefits of knowing a second language?
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