Can a toddler be bilingual?

This week I wanted to share the topic of how my son acquired his first languages (English and Japanese).

(*Disclaimer: I am in no way considered a licensed professional, this story is based on my personal experiences, Conversations with friends, and observations as a long-time educator and now, mother.)

As a bonus, at the end of my posts, I will be adding hidden gems and/or trendy places in New York that I recommend visiting.

At 28 months old, my son can speak 2 languages well, and this is the result of 3 strategies that my husband and I decided to utilize.

Here is a bit of background about myself, I grew up in a modern but traditional Hmong family where we always spoke Hmong at home.

I would only speak English with my (many) siblings, and friends at church or school.

Fortunately, I went to a traditional public English-speaking school but even with those opportunities my English or understanding of English usage wasn't very good until my high school and college years.

---------- FAST FORWARD TO THE PRESENT ---------

(THE GOLDEN NUGGET)

Strategy 1:

My husband and I wanted to teach our child English, Hmong and Japanese and after much research and discussions with multicultural and bilingual friends in Japan, we decided to have one parent exclusively focus on one language.

My husband would only speak Japanese and I would only speak English (still trying to figure out the Hmong part to this day) to our son except when we speak to each other in English.

Now that my son is 2 years and 4 months old (28 months) his language development has been amazing! He understands and speaks both Japanese and English (leans more on the English side because he is also exposed to English at Daycare).

On occasions, such as video chatting with my family, I would try to teach and speak Hmong to him and have him practice speaking too.

Strategy 2:

From my childhood experience, college education, educator, and mom perspective, I believe being able to teach and expose my son as early as possible (even in embryo) to these two languages fluently (no baby talk) has helped him to further his language development and understanding.

Lesson 1:

In all of my Child Development courses, the one thing that I can remember that my professors stressed was that babies have an innate ability to learn, speak and understand any language that they are exposed to.

Lesson 2:

And in my Speech-Language Pathology courses, a child "should be saying about 10 words by 15 months, 50 words by 18 months, and 200-300 words by 24 months."

As I prepared for my son to enter this world, these two lessons helped me strategize as a parent, when and how to expose my child to language and help him better communicate his thoughts, needs, and wants.

*SPECIAL NOTE: First, I want to thank our Deaf and Hard of Hearing community for Sign-Language!

We are so blessed to have Sign-Language be a language that babies and toddlers can learn to use as a nonverbal communication tool to express their needs and wants before having the ability to speak intelligible words.

When my son was able to eat purees at 6 - 7 months (wish I had introduced this earlier on), I taught him the little that I knew of the "Baby Sign."

We always watched baby sign videos and made it part of our communication even if I couldn't make whole sentences out of what I learned (don’t be afraid to try and just go for it).

He was able to pick up on it quickly but didn't sign himself until he was 9 – 10 months old and it helped to know when he was hungry and when he was finished so that I could avoid spitting and food throwing.

Strategy 3:

Like I mentioned before in strategy 2, try your best not to “baby talk” and be prepared to explain, describe and talk talk talk!

What happens in this SUPER IMPORTANT phase (even if they’re a baby and may not understand everything or anything yet) is, babies are hearing the articulation and tone of your spoken language.

This is where they will learn how to use syntax, grammar, pragmatics, and so on (from you and the people around them).

I always allowed myself to use words that aren’t popular with babies or children, for example:

“I feel exhausted today,” and would go on to describe the meaning, “feeling exhausted means to be tired or a little sleepy.”

No matter how young he was and how he gave me blank stares all the time as a 3-month-old, it was like registering vocabulary into his word bank.

REFERENCE TIME: if you can think of it this way, as a Pokémon trainer when you find new Pokémon it always gets registered into the Pokédex even if you never see it again, you will always recognize it because you have encountered that Pokémon.

Story Time: I can read a book with my son about emotions, and he can tell me in his little sentences why he thinks the character is feeling sad or scared just by looking at the picture context (I’m baffled and surprised every time, at how accurately he describes the pictures).

If you are feeling brave and want to go about teaching or exposing a child (nieces, nephews, grandchildren, friends' children – ask for permission) to vocabulary or another language but it is too much EXTRA energy, trust me it is SOOOOO worth it!

In the long run, I am proud and confident that my son has the ability to feel empowered with any language that he uses, even if for now it is to say, "No gang-kyu, I don yaik it." (No thank you, I don't like it) or he tells me he feels "sad and happy" after getting a hug from crying about finishing a book and having to go to bed.

I know that he is capable of understanding language usage and as an added plus, developed emotional awareness (sometimes I still feel happily shocked about his accurate language output).

It's important to know that even if we aren't parents now or yet, knowledge like this shouldn't stop us from trying it out with people we know because we are all either aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, or a friend.

Leave a comment about some strategies or questions about teaching language.

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