3 Greatest Benefits of Teaching Your Child A Second Language

A regular Sunday afternoon at home with my daughter:
“Dadda…”
“Yes, Bub?”
“Bluey chahiye and paani chahiye.” (chahiye = want, paani = water: in Hindi)
“Okay!”
“Dadda, how do we say ‘I want to watch’ in Hindi?”
“Bluey dekhna hai.”
“Bluey dekkna hey.”
“There you go! We’ll practice that more!”

It can be quite a challenge, being a Hindi-speaking parent and raising children in an English-speaking country. And sometimes it becomes especially difficult to get kids to engage with you — when you’re trying to teach them your mother tongue — such as Hindi or your state’s regional language.

But there are great benefits in raising your child to be bilingual or multilingual, and here are the three most important ones.

Cognitive Development

Bilinguals are people who can easily switch between two different languages.

Their brains are quite active and also flexible with their surrounding environment. Growing up in a bilingual environment hands them an unexpected superpower — interpreting their surroundings with two sets of senses. Compared to monolingual peers, this gives them an enhanced ability to perform tasks.

Some are directly related — such as solving word problems, and learning other languages; while other indirect benefits include logical reasoning and understanding math.

Natural-born Learners

My daughter attends a daycare where they teach Spanish as an extracurricular activity.

My wife and I were pleasantly surprised when she counted 1 through 5 in Spanish! Not just that, one of her favourite shows on YouTube Kids is POCOYO, narrated by the great Stephen Fry in English. But it’s originally a Spanish show, and just to have fun with it, I played the Spanish version one day. She liked it so much that she often remembers that and asks to play the Spanish version.

Kids are natural-born learners and every little bit of encouragement you can provide only fuels their curiosity more.

Start at home!

It’s almost like helping your kids learn one more language could open up a whole new world of possibilities in future!

So why not start with your native language? Language plays an important role in a child’s life, right from the beginning. Parents read storybooks to their kids way before they start to read, speak or even understand the stories in the book… and not just that, but even before they are born!

In his book “Brain Rules for Baby”, author John Medina writes:

Reading to your baby is one of the best ways to increase his or her intelligence.

Reading to a baby creates a special bonding experience with the parent. And it also stimulates their cognitive development.

The simple but important activity of book reading exposes children to a rich vocabulary, varied language patterns, and a range of sensory experiences. The rhythmic tones and melodies of a caregiver’s voice while reading can have a profound influence on a baby’s language skills, memory, attention span, and imagination. Research has shown that early exposure to language dramatically affects a child’s vocabulary, grammar, and overall communication abilities.

These early experiences become the foundation for better academic performance, better social interactions, and future success.

Social-Emotional Development

Speaking of social interactions, the next big benefit of being bilingual is the social-emotional development of your child. Growing up in a bilingual environment gives children three major advantages:

1. It fosters a deep connection for children with their family, culture and community. These factors are integral to the formation of a child’s sense of identity.
2. This sense of community and relationships develops their ability to make new friends and build new relationships through their additional language — almost a superpower in our increasingly diverse society — home and abroad!
3. Studies have shown that infants from bilingual homes exhibit better self-regulation — an extremely crucial factor in academic success early and later in life.

Quoting John Medina again from “Brain Rules for Baby”:

Language exposure in early childhood is crucial for building strong communication skills.

He underscores the importance of early language immersion in developing strong communication skills.

In this critical growth stage, children are like sponges, they absorb and try to interpret the world around them. A nurturing environment rich in conversations, stories and a diversity of languages can significantly enrich a child’s development, courtesy of the efforts of parents and guardians. In this effort, the parent’s active involvement is also very crucial.

A safe, nurturing environment at home is essential to a child’s social-emotional development, which ultimately becomes the foundation for their long-term success in academia, career and life!

Long-term Success as Bilingual Adults

About 50–65% of adults around the world are bilingual individuals.

Knowing at least two or more languages, they are better equipped for international careers that involve travelling and staying in countries that don’t speak their language. They even stand to gain more out of travelling to places and learn from these experiences.

As bilingual adults, these children can easily fit in and adapt to the global economy. This also ensures their long-term success in their career as well as life!

Storytime!

My father was 40 years old when he spoke his first words!

… in Tamil. I remember when I was about 10 years old, my father was transferred to Chennai for 3 years, a city which is the capital of Tamil Nādu state in India.

The primary language spoken is Tamil and the alphabet is very different from the Devanagari script. Devanagari is the base script for both the Hindi and Marathi alphabets. So, a few months into his assignment, he bought the children’s alphabet book, just one mega-sized letter printed on each page and with pictures and everything! When he visited home, he brought the books along to show us.

I couldn’t comprehend why a grown man was reading children’s books. 🤔

As a school kid, I wished for as few books as possible. But here he was, willingly buying them! It wasn’t until he explained (and even still I took long enough to internalise that) that he needed to be able to read signs and posters when out and about. Things like public transport buses, street signs, and food joints, etc. He said that if he could understand a few consonants, he could guess the word and confirm his understanding with a native speaker if possible. (e.g. “Is this bus going to Anna Nagar?” because he would have read the letters for A, N, G and R)

Simple, but so efficient!

So, there he was, in his 40s, trying (and succeeding) at learning a new language! Apart from his native language Marathi, he knows English and Hindi — the two languages in which business is done in India. But his basic conversational Gujrathi, Bengali and Tamil — that’s all him.

Sure, his job being transferred across the country might have had a role in it. But the love of languages comes to him naturally, the transfer just enabled him to pursue it with purpose.

I hope this helps and inspires you to introduce a new language in your family.