With approximately 68 million individuals raised in multilingual households in the United States, many parents share concerns regarding the benefits and disadvantages of raising their children bilingual and the appropriate approaches to do so. However, misconceptions circulating children’s language acquisition promote misinformation among parents. It is important for them to understand and acknowledge these misconceptions to aid their children’s development.

One of the most common misconceptions is that bilingual children experience language delays. While it may seem as if bilingual children know fewer words compared to monolingual children, they typically develop language skills at a similar rate. This perceived delay occurs because the vocabulary of bilingual children is distributed across two languages as opposed to one. This causes their knowledge to seem limited in each individual language when their overall vocabulary is comparable in reality. Understanding this disproves the misconception that learning two languages puts bilingual children at a disadvantage by hindering their language acquisition.

In addition to disproving widespread misconceptions, research also acknowledges the advantages of raising bilingual children, especially when they are given equal exposure and opportunity to both languages. From an early age, children are capable of distinguishing between languages and can adjust their use of each depending on their environment.  This skill in turn allows several cognitive benefits to flourish, including enhanced communication skills, attention spans, mental flexibility, and problem-solving skills. These findings demonstrate bilingualism as a beneficial process for children instead of its negative associations. When children are given consistent opportunities to engage with both languages, they are able to develop strong communication abilities alongside valuable cognitive skills.

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Chelsey Ko 

UConn KIDS Research Assistant

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