Bilingualism, language delay and ASD

Post Reply New Topic

Been thinking about this for a while; it's been a bone of contention in my family at times.
Any input much appreciated (even more so if you explain where you got your info from).

It's apparently very common for kids who grow up bilingual to have a bit of language delay. Most people that I've come across nevertheless recommend introducing both languages right from the beginning (typically each parent speaking to the kid in their own mother tongue), the language delay being considered a small price to pay in exchange for the prize of early fluency in 2 languages; though I've also heard some dissenters claiming that a second language should not be introduced until the child fully masters the first one.

It's also common for ASD kids to have language delay, or sometimes more serious difficulties with speech/language altogether.

My kids have / had language delay more severe than that of other (presumably NT) kids growing up bilingual, and I guess some/all of them are on the spectrum (currently undiagnosed but we're working on that). Now I'm wondering: is it still a good thing to expose them to both languages at an early age? Or could it be that, with ASDs, bilingualism could overwhelm them and they'd be better off starting with only one language?

Answers may well depend on individual circumstances, of which I may share more later, and in the case of my eldest the horse has bolted anyway. But for now I'd like to just put the general question out there to see if anyone knows of any resources / research / personal experience / anecdotal evidence / stories etc.

Most research studies I have seen on this topic of bilingualism and language development in ASD have concluded the bilingualism does not have negative effects on language development in ASD. I don't recall seeing a study that concluded the opposite.

We're not very typical and I knew DD would have to learn Dutch later in life as we had planned from the beginning to have her educated in Belgium.
So from the beginning I exposed her to the Dutch language through nursery songs I remembered from my own childhood and through family visits she got exposed to my dialect mother tongue as no one in my family really speaks Dutch proper. I wanted to instill the sound of the language that she was to learn rather than force her to learn it before she had a need to. I say force because I never spoke Dutch or Flemish when living in the UK and as my English vocabulary is greater than my Dutch it would not have made sense to me to raise her speaking Dutch.

We moved when she was 4.5 and she picked up Dutch at school within 6 months.
She was tested at 8 years for language development because she had trouble at school. The outcome that she had a low score but nothing to worry about.
She is 11 now and perfectly bi-lingual. At school she learns dialect but I won't let her speak it at home and she accepts that as many children are not allowed to speak dialect at home in Belgium.

She is behind on vocabulary and a little with grammer and conjugations compared to children her age in the UK but am confident she will pick up on that as she get older.

I am unaware of any research related to this, however, I do attribute this, at least in part, to my son's delayed diagnosis. He started speaking late, but the pediatrician concluded it was because he was being raised in a bilingual environment. Especially because once he started speaking, he rocketed past his peers in speech. It wasn't until my daughter's speech was delayed even further and she had more pronounced signs of autism that led to her diagnosis before the age of 2, that I realized that perhaps his speech developed atypically because he was somewhere on the spectrum.

Their bilingual influence was in the form of their grandmother who watched them while I worked. Neither of them retained any of her tongue after the childcare arrangements changed. However, in the long run, neither of them appeared to have any permanent language deficits related to their bilingual beginnings. Both of them have pragmatic issues (my son moreso than my daughter) that appear fairly typical for kids on the spectrum who were raised with only one language. I realize it is only anecdotal evidence, but you did say personal experience and anecdotal evidence were OK

Thanks all for your replies!

btbnnyr, could you point me to some of this research? I don't have subscriptions to any medical journals or such (and it would probably be a bit over my head anyway), but I like to get close to the proverbial horse's mouth.

DD, I can totally relate to your situation, I'm also more comfortable in English than in my mother tongue for most purposes. But just as I got really comfortable in English (and learned to restrain myself from correcting native speakers' mistakes, so as not to annoy them), I complicated things further by moving to yet another place with yet another language. Some people seem to think it's very important that I ONLY EVER speak to the kids in my mother tongue, but sometimes this takes great effort for me. Sometimes it feels natural but other times it feels contrived, and sometimes at the end of a long day where I've been switching between 2 or 3 languages all day long I'm just tired of all that switching and just want to go with the flow and reply in whatever language people speak to me. My kids often address me in their mother tongue, which I can speak well enough for day to day stuff but my vocab is not huge and I still make grammar mistakes.

InThisTogether, younger siblings having more severe language delay than older ones sounds familiar - #1 is now blabbering away like a talkshow host after a very slow start, #2 was like "you call that language delay, I'll show you what real language delay looks like", but at least he's talking now even though not always very clearly, and #3 is massively outdoing both of them. #4 is only a few months old but I can't help wondering what's in store...

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-011-1365-z

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946711002029

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22859698

There are more on Google Scholar and PubMed, if you search "autism bilingual".

btbnnyr, thanks!
For some reason Google Scholar has not been part of my toolbox so far, guess it's time to change that.

don't forget that a lack of a language delay is one of the defining differences between aspergers and kanners autism.
i myself grew up bilingual (well, in my case, the second language came from TV and internet, but that's simular enough), and i have had no notable delay in either language; well, not in comprehension and conversational skills anyway.

My kids have grown up going through full immersion programs in a second language from the age of 3 on ("learning" English in 4th grade). My son on the spectrum had no problems with learning to read and write in the second language while being fully proficient speaking in his first language (English). Where he did have difficulty was in learning to read and write English- it took him longer than his siblings who had the same language experience. It took him a year just to accept the idea that he could- and should- learn to read English, and another 2-3 years to get to grade level (he was fully literate in his second language). He reads at grade level now, while his siblings are several years above grade level, and his spelling is still well below what is expected-- to the point where it's pretty illegible if you don't know his writing "style." He follows the phonetics of his second language (first written language for him).

I know there is at least one study out there that suggests bilingualism can actually have a protective factor for children with autism in that it's supposed to offer some advantage to executive functioning, which is an area of weakness for children with ASD.

I was trying to find the reference, but I can't find it. When/if I find it, I'll post it.

Hello, just sharing my experience.....
My son also was delayed a lot in language and we were told it was due to the bilingual exposure. He was not diagnosed with ASD at that time, but was given Speech and Language Disability. Wew switched to English only and after A LOT of therapy for years, he got better but language is still the biggest cause of his struggles today at 17. He is a junior, mainstreamed with support. But now looking back we regret our decision ...unfortunately we were not able to switch to English completely (which is not our mother tongue). Whenever my husband and I have to debate, argue , discuss or analyse something, we switch, and that is soo often. We talk to him in English. He is the only one in the family who does not follow conversations when we are together. It makes him even more alone and miserable. Now when I ask him to try to learn our language, he resents that and says he does nt want to... I often think if we should have continued to teach both languages to him, but language was such a challenge for him that this might not have worked well either....all the best to you

Well just a personal experience:
I spoke my native language to my eldest son and he heard English at daycare and from dad. He never developed language skills. Around when he was 2, I started to try to reduce my native language around him because his language was completely absent (it was hard because English is what I learned as an adult - it wasn't natural to me at all then- more so now). That's when my second child was born also, so, my second child was exposed to less of my native language/ more English. He talks now. Both of my kids were originally dx'd with severe autism but youngest is now considered moderate-severe (eldest still just severe). But there are several things that are different between my two kids, so I don't know if the second language had a negative impact... I wonder though.