Should I Only Speak One Language at Home With My Children?
This may surprise you, but speaking more than one language with children can have incredible benefits for cognitive development and cultural awareness.
Confusion. Fear of tongue development. Misunderstanding. Not being able to make friends at school. What worries you about speaking your mother tongue at home with your child if it’s a different language than what’s spoken in the country you live in?
All around the world, parents and researchers have wondered if there’s any harm in teaching multiple languages to children at a young age. Dr. Jonathan Malka, a specialist in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology with extensive personal and professional experience, understands these concerns well.
I recommend parents start teaching their children as soon as they can.
Based in Miami, Florida, Dr. Malka works with parents of children from all sorts of backgrounds, many of whom speak his mother tongue, Spanish. He’s quick to point out the benefits of teaching children multiple languages from an early age and is a proud father of three bilingual children who learned both English and Spanish at home.
“I recommend parents start teaching their children as soon as they can. Data shows over and over that there are many benefits to learning multiple languages, not just cognitive; also cultural. Being bilingual is certainly a large part of what’s gotten me to where I am today. And for my children, being able to communicate with everyone in the family and make new friends has been an absolute blessing.”
Cognitive Benefits of Speaking Multiple Languages
The cognitive benefits of bilingual children have been widely researched. As detailed in The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual↗ by Viorica Marian, Ph.D., and Anthony Shook, bilingual people often excel at managing conflicting information and switching between tasks.
Improved Focus
For example, in a Stroop test↗ where people name the color of a word's font while ignoring the word itself, bilinguals tend to perform better at filtering out distractions and focusing on the color.
Switching Tasks
Participants also switch between different tasks—like sorting items by color and then by shape—more quickly than those who speak only one language. This ability to handle distractions and switch tasks efficiently is known as cognitive control, and bilinguals usually have an edge in these skills.1
Dr. Malka has seen this in his own children, who are able to juggle activities and conversations across English and Spanish in everyday life. “It’s amazing how I’ll see my son playing video games online or watching a movie in English, and he’s able to have a full conversation with me in Spanish at the same time. His ability to switch is so fast, not just the languages but anything. We’re all a multitasking family, and my children are incredibly good at it.”
Although Dr. Malka began learning English as a child, and that has helped him develop similar skills, he says learning earlier has given his children even more of a strong cognitive foundation.
”The only downside to my kids learning both languages at home is they were never immersed in Spanish outside of the home. They would need more exposure to become truly fluent, to understand the slang and the culture, but the cognitive benefits are still clearly there for them."
Activities for Teaching Children Multiple Languages
According to a study titled "Shared Multimodal Input Through Social Coordination: Infants With Monolingual and Bilingual Learning Experiences"↗ by Lichao Sun, Christina D. Griep, and Hanako Yoshida from the University of Houston, bilingual children benefited from interactive moments despite hearing fewer words overall.2
The research underscores that effective language development is influenced by both the structure and quality of language input, rather than just the quantity. In other words, the most effective way to teach your children any language(s) is to spend quality time with them, and make the activities as engaging as possible. Children whose parents used more gestures, made more eye contact, demonstrated mastery of multiple languages as well, if not better, than children whose parents repeated words over and over to them.
Make Visual and Audio Associations
- Dr. Malka also emphasizes that it’s important to help children make associations with pictures and activities. It doesn’t hurt to share music in other languages, or have them watch shows, but the time spent reading together with his children has always been a cornerstone of learning.
Read Together
- “When we read together, we also look at the pictures. I always make a point to ask them, in Spanish, ‘What do you see? What is this?’ and they answered me in Spanish. That helps them make the connection between the visual and the words, and it also gives them multiple ways to express themselves."
Find Interactive Activities
- As children grow, it can be helpful to make these associations even more interactive by playing games, challenging them to name things they see while at the zoo or the park. “The key is to keep things interactive and help them make that connection with visuals,” says Dr. Malka. “After all, that’s how I learned English when I was growing up in Venezuela.”
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Raising Bilingual Children
Mixing Languages—No Spanglish!
It’s not uncommon, mid-sentence, for a bilingual person to suddenly switch languages, but when it comes to raising children, it’s best to break this habit as best you can. “I think children get confused when their parents mix the languages and start speaking Spanglish, for example.” Dr Malka explains. He emphasizes the importance of clarity and consistency when teaching your children.
In order to maintain consistency, some parents like to speak only one language to their children during early childhood. For example, if Mom is a native English speaker, she speaks English to the children, and if Dad is a native Spanish speaker, he speaks Spanish. “For many years, my children thought I didn’t speak English and that only my wife did.”
There is No One-Size-Fits-All Approach
However, Dr. Malka acknowledges many parents take different approaches that can also be effective. One parent can teach multiple languages to their children at the same time—the key is being intentional about it.
That means speaking in complete sentences in one language at a time. If you’re explaining something to a young child, don’t be afraid to repeat yourself in another language so that they hear the same explanation in different ways. Likewise, if you’re reading to your children, ask them what they see in both languages. Explain that the picture they’re looking at is the cat and also el gato, for example.
Don’t Forget to Make Learning Fun!
One of the greatest benefits to children learning multiple languages is the ability to communicate with their grandparents and other family members. But sometimes, Dr. Malka points out, “It can feel like you’re just learning your grandparents’ language, and to a kid that’s not always interesting.”
Dr. Malka recommends introducing children to a variety of mediums—music, TV shows, games, and everyday conversation—to keep them interested and engaged. The variety of exposure to language empowers children with more styles to express themselves, as well as understanding others.
“When my daughter and I went to the Dominican Republic to help build water access to remote villages, being able to communicate with the locals fluently gave her so much ability to connect with people that she otherwise wouldn’t have had. If nothing else, learning multiple languages gives children more opportunities to make new friends at school or wherever they go.”
Supporting Parents is Our First Language
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References
1Marian, V., & Shook, A. (2012, October 1). The cognitive benefits of being bilingual. PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583091/↗
2, Griep, C. D., & Yoshida, H. (2022). Shared multimodal input through social coordination: infants with monolingual and bilingual learning experiences. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.745904/↗
Dr. Jonathan Malka↗, is currently the Director of Allergy & Immunology at Pediatric Associates↗.
