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Autism and bilingualism

Toyohashi

Hello,

My wife and I are wrestling with the difficult question of whether it is necessary to expose our 4 year old autistic boy to Japanese only, or continue as we have bilingually. We live in Japan, and are both fully bilingual. We speak English at home, and our children attend a Japanese nursery.

Our son's language development has been very slow, and this has worried my wife to the point that she feels we may need to give up on English for a while.
Orthodox thinking in Japan is that concentrating 100% on Japanese first until it is established is best. However, recent research suggests that autistic children's Japanese does not suffer from being exposed to a second language. 
Is there anyone out there who has tried successfully to raise an autistic child bilingually? If there were any examples it would be very encouraging for us.

Parents

  • I don't know about autistic children specifically, but I read once, in How the Mind Works, by Stephen Pinker, I think, that there is period very early on where the languages we're exposed to as a baby lays down the brain-circuitry needed to speak that language 'as a native'.

    This means that it is then no harder for a child that is exposed to two, even quite different, languages during that period to learn both languages, than it is for a child that is only exposed to one language during that period to learn that one.

    In fact a child exposed to only one language would find it harder to subsequently learn a second language.

    When we also consider that language delay is a common occurance in the development of a child on the Autistic Spectrum, I think it unlikely that your child being exposed to two languages would have contributed to that delay.

    But that last part is pure speculation.

Reply

  • I don't know about autistic children specifically, but I read once, in How the Mind Works, by Stephen Pinker, I think, that there is period very early on where the languages we're exposed to as a baby lays down the brain-circuitry needed to speak that language 'as a native'.

    This means that it is then no harder for a child that is exposed to two, even quite different, languages during that period to learn both languages, than it is for a child that is only exposed to one language during that period to learn that one.

    In fact a child exposed to only one language would find it harder to subsequently learn a second language.

    When we also consider that language delay is a common occurance in the development of a child on the Autistic Spectrum, I think it unlikely that your child being exposed to two languages would have contributed to that delay.

    But that last part is pure speculation.

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