multilingual babies

[parisa Daftarifard]

Dear Miquel and all,

I understand that the concept is very important to you and many parents and
sometimes a must in certain situation. I guess what I explained creates a
little bit misunderstanding.

What I said was that
1.  Some children are at risk of many problems which leads to language delay
(these problems would not show themselves very early)
2.  We are not sure that who are those children
3.  early simultaneous bilingualism might compound the situation for these
kids for unknown reasons
4.  Expressive and fluent and creative language development in many
instances of bilingualism (based on experiences and papers) would requires
more time than usual kids unless one language is dominant and functional and
the other just environmental.

what I have seen is based on clinical study. although we do not have many
reports on language delay and bilingualism or autism, we cannot ignore some
instances we see around.

We are facing with *an innocent child* who is supposed to learn *an
instrument* through which he develops his cognition, ways of expression,
feeling and many other things. Some children, for unknown reasons, have
language delay. many bilinguals (most of them) will start speaking fluently
and creatively later than their own age. Some of the children have autistic
signs and many language and cognitive impairments. Who can say any formula
for these situations? All are mystery to us

What I am suggesting is that we as parents should create the situation for
the kid so that he learns one language functionally first and then moves to
another language. You may disagree! And I agree to disagree...

I have seen many bilinguals who *have problems* and their parents became
concerned about their problems.  because of the same situation you
explained: mother was Iranian, Father English speaker, country Arab. The kid
didn't speak at the age of three! What the doctor suggested was to stop
speaking other languages but one that is mostly dominant. Let's say that the
kid has other factors as well.... How would you claim that you can
distinguish these kids from the rest when they are one month?! I hope I
express my meaning.

I have seen many instances like this. My son was exposed to English through
TV and my interaction, his environment and father's interaction was Persian.
His language development is very slow, even we thought that he might have
had serious problems. I stopped English. Many instances like these exist
that have not developed into papers. finding no paper about similar
situation in an ISI journal cannot stop a researcher to ignore many other
instances that assure the risk.

When it comes to *clinical situation*, we decide based on few instances. I
hope more research to be done regarding the benefits of bilingualism on true
early bilingualism or simultaneous bilingualism which  would clearly explain
what the situation is.

It would be great if we can learn about ideas of  other specialists as well
like psychologists, cognitive psychologists, those who are working with
problematic children.


Best,
Parisa
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Miquel Serra <miquel.serra at ub.edu> wrote:

> Dear Parisa
> Bilingulism is both, a situation to which a family has to (functionally)
> adapt and a project for the children to fullfill. It is not (only) a desire
> of parents or politicians (and academics).
> Adaptation depends on many factors  and circumstances. And a project
>  depends on long distance goals and means for them. If one is fucntional and
> has clear goals, there is no problem. But it is more important for the
> children to admire a culture than to be pressed to learn a distant language.
> Miquel Serra
> U Barcelona, Catalonia
>
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-- 
Parisa Daftarifard
Phd Student of TEFL
Islamic Azad University of Science and Research

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