Bilingualism and Autism: Advantageous?

Despite the benefits of being multilingual when one has autism, there is not much information about them, which can lead to discouragement and confusion, especially as the child grows older. The study by Hambly and Lombonne (2011) states that “little is currently known about the pace of learning or bilingual achievements for children with ASDs” (p. 1349). We are able to realize the disadvantages, however, and it is important that we avoid disadvantaging children. This all starts with the parents.

The learning process begins with the parents, and if there is confusion from the beginning, it can cause conflicts later in school. If there are not any guidelines to show how to go about teaching and working with a bilingual autistic child, there may be messy issues to follow, such as how often to speak what language to the student, whether the students’ homework should be in their native language or not, and whether or not there needs to be someone who is able to translate for the student if there are communication barriers. The problem with communication barriers are that if the student speaks a rare language, there may be trouble finding someone who speaks the needed language. This is where parent involvement and the decision to be bilingual becomes key.

Parents are starting to catch on to the idea that a monolingual child may not have as many benefits as a bilingual child. In an interview with a parent of a bilingual child with autism, the father, Eugene Ryan, who now researches bilingual autistic children, explains how he went about deciding whether or not to raise his child to speak both Japanese and English. His concerns were that his son could be made fun of because he would be different for not speaking Japanese, because in Japa...

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Kay-Raining Bird, E. (2010, May 3). Bilingualism and children with language and/or cognitive disabilities. Retrieved from http://blog.bilingualtherapies.com/background-knowledge/bilingualism-and- children-with-language-andor-cognitive-disabilities/

Kay-Raining Bird, E., Lamond, E., & Holden, J. (2011). Survey of bilingualism in autism spectrum disorders.International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 47(1), 52-64. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-6984.2011.00071.x/abstract

Sadlik, T. (2003). In Jeff MacSwan (Chair). To be or not to be bilingual: Autistic children from multilingual families. In Cohen, J., McAlister, K.T., Rolstad, K., MacSwan, J. (Eds.), Isb4: Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on bilingualism (pp. 1225-1234). Retrieved from http://www.lingref.com/isb/4/096ISB4.PDF