Language delay in bilinguals

So far, I have met two children who are being raised with multiple languages and have been diagnosed with a slight language delay at 18 months.

In Denver, there is a special free service from Denver Options, where a development specialist can come to your home for free, observe the child and diagnose any delay in speech or motor skills.

In two cases that I have heard of, children were diagnosed with a speech delay, and now their parents are being discouraged from using other language with their child. By other language I mean other than English. So, now these parents are confused: "Did my bilingual efforts cause this delay?".

This has been blogged about, and talked about: "Well, don't you think that your child will be confused about what language he should speak? Well, aren't you concerned how he will do in school?"

In my opinion, this is just how people discomfort with foreign culture and language manifests itself. "I am confused about this bilingual code switch, and so this child should be, too". In the reality, there are many places around the world where people live in a multilingual society - Switzerland, Ethiopia, India, and many more. And nobody in those societies questions whether their child should speak more than one language. In those societies, this is the only way to success in school, social life and business.

Coming back to those kids that I know. One is 3 years old, and another one is 19 months. They do seem to be more quiet in comparison to other kids. The 3 year old uses only English. She has been in English speech therapy, and her mom felt that using English with her would help. By now, she can still address her in her native language (I am omitting the information about what languages are being used with those kids, because I do not want those families to be identified), but the child only responds in English.

The second child has been diagnosed with a slight speech delay just a month or so ago. Originally, the father raised the concern about the child not saying any words. Denver Options diagnosed the child and offered speech therapy. Now, therapist comes about once per week and plays different games with the girl, games that would encourage communication. The therapy is in English. Sign language is also being introduced. The mom tries to copy the speech therapy techniques, and also switches more and more to English.

I have just seen the second girl again today on the playground. And at some point during play, she raised her hands to the sky and said something. We didn't really understand what she said and what language was used, but she does say stuff. I wonder if the therapy is working or if there was no delay. According to this article on Mommy Maestra, which is written by linguists who are working on a study of language delays in bilinguals, testing a bilingual child in one language guarantees lower scores than testing a monolingual child of the same age group. But if you combine vocabulary from both languages, you may get even a higher score. So, the question is if those programs available in our communities can properly diagnose language problems in bilinguals.

At the same time, I would like to say that Denver Options is probably a great service, because it is free, and they come to your house. I am just seeing two families that are convinced that their bilingualism caused speech delay in their child.