Hi everyone... So glad I found this group! We had been told so many things (including popular misconceptions) about bilingual children, and went through some ups and downs. We live in Italy, I have always spoken English with my son who is now 5. We moved here over 3 years ago, but my husband made the mistake of not speaking Italian with our son from birth. This put our son in a different category of bilingual learning. Since he was 2.5 years when he was integrated with Italian children and first introduced to Italian language, he is playing a bit of "catch-up" to be as fluent in Italian as his classmates. I recently read a study on these bilingual categories that stated this would only take him approximately 5 years from the introduction of the new language to be as fluent as his peers. If we had started both languages from birth, he'd be equally as fluent in both languages at this point in his life. So start those babes from birth! Mom speaks one, dad speaks the other. It's a misconception that it will delay speech or that child will become confused. They are sponges. They'll learn whatever you teach them, and the younger they are, the faster they learn. Learn from our mistake! If anyone wants to connect, I welcome it! We've been to pediatric psychologists and speech pathologists over this because it has challenged him in a few ways in school that has been misunderstood by educators. I'm open to speak with anyone about our experiences. 🙏🏻 Cheers, Mamas.
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