An interesting article on Bilingual Children from the Cornell language Acquisition Lab.

The article confirms that bilingualism has no negative impact on children, on the contrary it stimulates them positevely, and it also gives some very useful practical tips to parents, which I copy below (however I still encourage you to read the whole article):

Tips to teach a child a second language
• Surround the child with more than one language through conversations and social groups using different languages; the earlier the better.
• Maintain home (heritage) language when a second language is being learned outside the home.
• Expose children to multilingual settings and give them plenty of opportunities to play with children who speak the second language.
• Provide fun and interactive language-learning environments (e.g., music, dance and film) in both languages, and often with children of similar age.
• Promote reading and storytelling in multiple languages.
• Maintain a positive attitude toward languages and cultures children learn.

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• It’s the easiest way to learn a second language. No lessons, no grammar books, DVDs or other boring stuff. Children learn living, playing, eating…
• It’s cheap. Much cheaper than any language class. It costs practically nothing, or may be just the the price of a couple of books or some music
• It gives the child an opportunity to stay in touch with his/her roots and extended family. The child won’t feel left out when s/he will be with grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins and relatives in general
• It’s natural. It’s easier and more natural to learn a language from birth than at any time later in life, hence it’s best to start early.
• It allows to reach native like mastering of the language, i.e. to speak it without accent, or close to
• Later in life it will be easier to learn a third or more languages, because of the acquired ability to recognize different sounds, intonations, rithms, grammatical structures
• It stimulates intelligence. Bilingualisms requires an extra efforts and flexibility and stimulates the brain, as a consequence bilingual children are faster in learning to read and write and have more developed analytical skills
• A bilingual child is more aware of different cultures and environments and is open and curious towards cultural differences. In a constantly shrinking world s/he is better prepared to become a true citizen of the world
• In the future being bilingual could improve his/her career and open new opportunities, more and more mastering of multiple languages is critical for professional success

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