FYI Health Tip
Time to start reading Babar in French! A study found bilingual kids have better executive brain function.
Share This Tip
Can learning a second language as a toddler give your child a cognitive edge over kids who wait until high school French class? The authors of a recent study believe the answer is “Oui.”
Health Poll
Loading ...Among toddlers as young as two, bilingual youngsters outscored their monolingual counterparts in the area known as “executive functioning.” To toddlers, this comes down to sorting shapes, but for older kids and adults, executive functioning includes important mental tasks such as planning, strategizing, organizing and goal-setting.
These skills are highly relevant to the ever-hot topics of ADHD and autism, as children (and adults) diagnosed with these disorders typically have impaired executive function.
The bilingual and monolingual children in the study demonstrated no difference in basic cognitive skills, however, and their vocabulary size (whether from one language or two combined) was the same.
Parents who want to help their child develop early executive functioning skills through bilingualism might consider a bilingual caregiver, an immersion preschool or a child-appropriate foreign language program such as Little Pim or MUZZY. Or better yet, dust off that old college Spanish textbook and have the whole family learn a second language together (it’s good for parents’ old brains, too).
The supporting research
Bilingualism Provides Cognitive Advantages for Children
Summary
Bilingual children outscore kids who only speak one language in tests that assess various cognitive skills like “executive functions.” This is attributed to their “practice in exercising selective attention and cognitive flexibility.” However, two-year olds have much less experience in language production, and there have been no studies on toddlers in this regard. Results showed that learning two languages in early childhood provides advantages in cognitive skills from a very early age.
You may also like:
I remember having said as much, greater than fifteen years ago - but the entire case I had presented to the husband at that time and the mother-in-law at that time was summarily dismissed. He is currently "the ex" and so many things could/would/should have gone differently...
