What Nobody Tells You About Raising Bilingual Kids
Cross-cultural kids, confused grandparents, y más...
“These little girls thought they were pretty funny today…”
My Dad laughed as he began telling me the shenanigans my two bilingual toddlers put him through that afternoon.
They sat in their car seats in the back of the Suburban, giggling the day away and talking to each other in Spanish, while my parents — who couldn't understand a word of it — begged them to switch back to English.
But they refused to even respond in English, would respond in Spanish, and then they’d both laugh. Much to their grandparents’ dismay.
Personally, I found the story as funny as my toddlers did while playing a joke on their grandparents.
Fast-forward a year or so…
We go visit my family for Easter in the USA.
What was supposed to be a calm trip home to see my parents and let them enjoy some quality time with the grandkids, turned into a full-on family reunion type of event.
So we’ve got grandparents, great grandparents, sisters, cousins, and everything in-between. My younger sister brought her two-year-old.
She’s quite a smart two-year-old, great vocabulary for her age without a doubt.
But as I was watching the kids play and interact over the course of the week, I started noticing that this two-year-old might have a slightly better grasp of the English language than my four-year-old daughter does.
And I won’t lie here…
I had a brief moment of panic, thoughts began running through my mind…
“Am I a terrible father?! Have I not been reading to my daughters nightly?! Is their pre-school just horrible and they don’t learn anything?! Are my daughters simply not as intelligent as their cousin?!”
The panic wasn’t stemming from one of those, “my kids must be the best at everything” type of vibes you occasionally get from fellow Dads.
More so, I was genuinely concerned I was failing as a father. I was tweaking because in that moment, I felt like I hadn’t done enough to educate my children in their early years.
If they’re already behind their peers, like their cousin, then I’ve clearly screwed the pooch somewhere along the way — as a Dad, as a man.
Not a good feeling.
Then I remembered something from way, way back in the day…
What Nobody Tells You About Raising Bilingual Kids
Damn near a decade ago, I was living in the lovely city of Lima, Peru 🇵🇪
So was one of the “OGs” — original gringos — in the LatAm living space, Colin Post.
He had been living in Lima for years at this point and already had a gaggle of offspring in tow. After meeting up a few times and doing hood rat ‘tings with frens, Colin invited me to go to the premier bullfighting event in Peru.
I happily accepted the invitation. Sounded like one hell of a time.
Now, I won’t go into the details of the bullfighting event and how “S.W.I.M.” might have thrown up on a group of Peruvian grannies sitting in front of “S.W.I.M.”
Some things are better left untold. I bring this up simply because of something Colin said…
We were sitting on his rooftop terrace, downing exceptionally strong drinks before the bullfighting. We talked about LatAm living, single vs. married down south, what it's like having kids in a cross-cultural relationship, and all that jazz.
Colin was already years into this game, so he had great insight into raising kids abroad.
As I was asking him about future plans, if they’d ever move back to the USA, and how he planned to handle their schooling — the topic of how bilingual kids develop came up.
It wasn’t something I’d ever thought of before, but I was curious as I figured I’d eventually have kids someday.
Colin proceeded to wax poetic on the topic for a few minutes before leaning over to me, attempting to speak a bit quieter so his kids couldn’t hear:
“Here’s the thing: if you’re raising your kids down here, they’re probably going to be in a bilingual household. You speak to them in English, their mother talks to them in Spanish.”
I nodded my head. That makes sense.
“But because the kids are learning two languages instead of one as they grow up, some of the other stuff might be a bit behind. Counting, numbers, math, reading, etc. all might be a bit slower for them than you’d expect.”
Damn, that adds up. Seems logical.
“I tell you this because if and when you do have kids down here, they might seem behind their cousins in the USA when you go back home to visit. You might think they’re not the sharpest tools in the shed because of this. That you’re raising a bunch of retards. Excuse my French.”
I laughed.
“But they’re not! Never fear.”
He chuckled as he continued.
“The reality of raising bilingual kids is that they’re going to be a bit behind their peers until the ages 6-8. Why? Because they’re using their brain power to learn two languages during their formative years, not just one.”
Very interesting.
“So their peers who are only learning one language will be ahead of them developmentally in math, reading, etc. But once they are fully bilingual, usually between the ages of 6-8 years old, they’ll catch up with their peers across the board quickly.”
The Bilingual Advantage
A decade later, sitting at my parents’ kitchen table watching my daughters with their cousin, Colin’s words came back to me.
I chuckled and relaxed a bit.
But as per usual, the autism got the best of me and I had to do my own research. Was Colin right about this?
Turns out he might have been:
Growing Up in Scotland study of 8,000 kids found bilingual children catch up to monolingual peers on vocabulary by age five.
NIH research shows grammar levels out by age ten.
1962 Peal and Lambert study found bilingual kids actually outperformed monolingual peers on nonverbal intelligence tests. That paper kicked off 60 years of research on the bilingual advantage.
My daughter was code-switching between English with her grandmother and Spanish with her sister mid-sentence, barely noticing she was doing it. Two languages. Two cultures.
The American cousins have better vocabularies for now. They’ll seem more advanced for their age, and that’s perfectly fine. Nothing to stress about. No need for competition. No te preocupes.
Because what looks like a delay at four might become an unfair advantage down the road. Being fully bilingual and biliterate will always have benefits.
And that’s just one of the trade-offs nobody tells you about when embarking on this...
LatAm Dad Lifestyle™
I don't remember the children being behind in non-linguistics. I remember learning two languages had them behind in both English and Spanish. It was becoming a point of contention among the Peruvian in-laws, angry at the children's speaking ability. Sometimes what they spoke was unintelligible in either language. They'd blend the two. There was pressure to drop the English.
I hadn't delved into the research, but it makes me regret not forcing the bilingualism. We moved to the U.S. and they dropped Spanish like a rock. I have yet to meet a bicultural family whose children speak both languages without accent or mistakes. And I've met dozens if not hundreds of bicultural children who speak one well and the other almost not at all. Consider that a majority of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. don't speak Spanish!
On the other hand, I've met the adult children of bicultural couples who were satisfactorily bilingual. They might even trick the monolingual into believing they were native in both, but a bilingual would catch the ticks.
The only truly bilinguals I have seen with my own eyes either (A) grew up somewhere inherently bilingual like the Netherlands or South Florida like Marco Rubio, (B) grew up as American children of immigrants who didn't speak English so Spanish at home and English outside or (C) grew up in LatAm as students of the most expensive English or American school where all classes are in English, and most of them have an accent/make mistakes. I think it takes a gargantuan effort to have truly bilingual, accent-free children. You basically must become a part-time linguistics professor (20 hours per week) at home.
Thanks for reading my Ted talk. We should record a podcast discussing the complexities of raising bicultural children, from the perspective of politically incorrect, ugly American, "tiger dads."
I totally feel this. Not a dad yet, but my girl is western european. So we got 3 languages we'll have to manage. Its going to be a dilemma bc at some point their spanish will have to be on point so they can survive here (PG) if they need to. sure they can always go to the USA, but that would leave my girl alone here if for some reason I've already passed (not likely but not remote either considering our age gap).
My best friend, his girl is ukrainian. ukrainian grandma lives with them. And their son is totally confused. 5 y/o. school told him he needed remedial speech help before he could attend. I still can't understand anything he says at all. Kids a giant, D-1 d-line... gotta be scary for the other kids having him run around speaking jibberish.
Even tho studies show they even out... I'm more concerned about identity formation. The very first time that my kids stratify themselves against their peers, I want them to be like, "Oh yeah wow, I'm way smarter than these people." Kind of like for me whenever I first did math timed tests in class and I was the only kid in the whole school who could get it done in less than three minutes. In a certain way that cemented my view of myself. I'm afraid that if I had done bad for some reason, that I might have identified as a person who wasn't that way, it would have limited my confidence. I'd rather my kids feel smart and then think, "Well I know I'm smart, of course I'll be able to learn these other languages." If I got forced to do the double bilingual thing, I think I'd have them play like chess or something to build their confidence vs others.
I think that's why in my case we're probably just going to do English only until they're like five, then they can start learning their mother's tongue after that and then Spanish after that. Or maybe just straight to Spanish.