Bilingual is a word used to refer to those children, including myself, who can converse or at least speak two languages at their birth homes, schools, or daycare.
Children with experience on learning a second language can develop in the world. Bilingualism encourages learning and speaking more than one language most of the time. Raising a bilingual wasn’t really challenging for my parents, but for other is highly challenging, thus requires and individual to be more dedicated and committed.
People seek bilingual children because of different reasons that motivates them to raise a bilingual child. Yet, even though this includes use of different languages to converse and parent speaking the similar language, they still live in society where most people speak something very different. Therefore, a bilingual home situation occurs both parents use different languages to speak to their child. Raising bilingual children is a benefit because it improves social skills, academic, introduces child to a different culture and prepares for the future. One benefit is improvement of social skills. Knowing more than one language, it helps children to adapt to a new environment easily, increasing that child self-esteem and self-confidence. Having a second language develops new relationships and friendships. Raising a bilingual child is beneficial also for a lot of reasons, the educational advantage, culture advantage and emotional benefits.
It requires a lot in intentional planning and can be a lot of work. It requires parents to continue in a language when using another language might be easier. It also requires additional language support as children navigate the two languages at school and at home. To persist, celebrate bilingual milestone with the children, and continue speaking the language around the house. Bilingualism is a gift that anybody could thank them for. Communication with an extended family.
My nieces and nephews have a great bond and relationship with their Panamanian grandmother, cousins, aunty, and other families. Children who can communicate fluently across culture boundaries in their family, tend to stray close with the family and rely on them for support. This is an emotional benefit on raising a bilingual child.
An educational advantage on raising a child. Research believe that bilinguals score higher on average on tests involving creative thinking or problem solving. I disagree, because some bilingual children, including myself, doesn’t comprehend certain things well even though it has been explained to them a million times.Bilingual children have a deep understanding of another culture. They are more likely to have an interest in the culture of the second language they speak, whether is a heritage language or not.
Bilingual children are better to immerse themselves in other culture than monolingual children. They also show stronger senses in school and social setting leading to more self-confidence. During this research about bilingual children, various questions need to be answered. For instance, do these children become confused when they are spoken to by different languages? The short answer from the research, is no. Children are never affected since they are extremely sensitive to various ways people speak. Even when they hear one language, they learn very quickly about differences between the way men and women talk, the differences between talking, being polite and being impolite.
Researches shows that bilingual children never mix their languages when speaking. For example, exposing a child to a language in various situation with many different people from their time of birth, they will learn the language with different people if the desire to interact with world around them. Exposing a child to two languages with different people from the time, they are born, and if they desire both languages to communicate with those close to them, they will learn both languages.
Bilingual children stand a good chance of understanding their own culture at a faster rate than monolingual children understand. Bilingual children are always beneficial because they can speak with their parents and the large family in their own way. The children are in a better position of forming relationship easier if they can speak and not hold that feeling of loneliness and separation from the family. It’s a good opportunity to learn a second language, communicate, travel while at ease, and for them to learn new chances to read. Speaking in a way that is comfortable for the parent is the best approach to take.
It’s important to know that a bilingual child ability in each language often change. Bilingual children might show stronger skills in one language compare to the other in certain time, which is very normally. For example, I speak Spanish. My Spanish skills get stronger while spending my summer with my aunty, but might show stronger skills in English during the school year when I hear English most of the day. So, my opinion, it’s natural for children language ability to change along with them.
