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Multicultural families

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Trilingual toddler speech delay

22 replies

Rflo92 · 04/04/2025 05:37

Hi everyone. My 2.3yr old son is still not speak very much. He is exposed to three languages (English- mother, Spanish - father and community and Catalan- nursery and community). His language is behind but we have seen a speech Therapist and she was not particularly concerned given her experience with bi and trilingual children. At home he is very chatty but doesn't really make any sense. He has some words he says clearly and the speech therapist was able to decipher even more. He is happy and confident at home. However, his nursery have just completed a development report where they have labelled him as having a significant speech delay because he is completely silent there. He doesn't interact much with his teachers or peers and doesn't use any of the language he uses at home. He follows instructions and copies the other children so he 'masks' not really understanding what's going on there. He is also the youngest in his class with most being almost a full year older.

I hate thinking about him being there and uncomfortable in some way that makes him silent and withdrawn. We can't afford for me to stay at home with him.

Does anyone have any experience with language development with multiple languages or a child that has slight delay but silent in nursery? I hate the thought of him being labelled as having problems so young, especially when he is dealing with multiple languages.

Any advice or encouragement welcome!

Thanks!

OP posts:
Caspianberg · 04/04/2025 06:06

Not quite the same, by my Ds is Billingual. English at home, German at nursery.

He would have been around 2 years 4 months when he started nursery. And he didn’t speak a word of German. Most the other children around his age who were native speakers also spoke hardly anything also.

At the child annual check ups here at 2, I asked about language as he only spoke a few words in English also, and they said they don’t check speech at all until 3 year check up as is super common lots don’t talk at just turned 2.
They were right. By 3 Ds was talking in non stop sentences in English, and by 4 he’s fluent in both languages

I think you will be surprised how he develops in the next 6-9 months

Wigtopia · 04/04/2025 06:11

He likely understands much more than you think. Very normal for bi lingual and multilingual kids to have a delay then it will switch like a light!

as well as speech delay it can also happen with reading and writing as well as speech. A friend of mine said she had this herself as a child and was maybe 5 or 6 I think she said before she could read words out loud and agin, suddenly there was a switch that seemed to come on and all of a sudden she could read and write!!

I think there is so much that bilingual and multilingual children are absorbing that it sometimes slows down them using the skills but is totally normal and you should keep up the exposure to all three.

TooManyCupsAndMugs · 04/04/2025 06:11

I had exactly the same with my bilingual 2 year old with nursery telling me he had speech delay etc. I panicked and gave up on 2nd language and I wish I hasn't as they now monolingual. Keep up with the languages - you will regret it if you don't.

2025ishere · 04/04/2025 06:19

If he’s following instructions etc it might be more helpful to think of him as coping at nursery rather than ‘masking’. It’s well-recognised that early stage bilingual (and probably even more so trilingual) learners go thru a silent or non-verbal phase in a new setting. Sounds like he’s doing fine.

EliflurtleAndTheInfiniteMadness · 04/04/2025 06:33

Speech delays are common where a child is exposed regularly to 2 or more languages, theyre not necessarily delays in the normal sense, it takes a little longer for their brains to figure it all out. He's not masking at childcare, it's not really something kids that age can do. The silence depends on why, if he's happy but quiet I wouldn't worry some kids are quieter at nursery or school. If hes overwhelmed that's a different matter. You saw the speech therapist and one with experience in this area, I'd take their advice. At this age and with being exposed to 3 languages I wouldn't be worrying about speech acquisition. It's also not really an age to intervene unless there are wider issues, speech therapy requires a lot of focus and understanding from the child. Unless you're seeing signs of distress around nursery attendance I wouldn't worry about the silence there either.

WelcomeToMonkeyTown · 04/04/2025 06:34

My bilingual daughter was the same. We speak English at home but German at school.

When she went in kindergarten, at age 3, she was almost completely silent. The teachers assured me she understood everything, followed all instructions, just never spoke. At home she spoke a lot, but did mix up words between languages.

They did some small group sessions at the Kindergarten with other kids with language/speech issues and it just came naturally. Now her German accent is flawless and she never shuts up!

i wouldn’t worry at this stage, but keep an eye on it. I found with my other daughter that reading/writing concerns were brushed off as “it’s just because she’s bilingual” whereas actually she was quite severely dyslexic.

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 04/04/2025 06:56

How long has he been at nursery?

What jumps out at me from your post is that the nursery language, Catalan, is not the same as either his mother's language or his father's language. I think labelling either Spanish or Catalan as the "community language" is misleading at this stage, because a toddler doesn't really have a community outside of family and daycare. That would mean that your son's native languages (that he has learned from his parents) are English and Spanish, and when he started at a Catalan speaking nursery, he was being introduced to a third language he did not speak yet. How much he understands at nursery will depend a lot on how long he has been there if this is his first significant exposure to Catalan.

The nursery will probably have a lot of experience with children who are growing up speaking Catalan and Spanish, but maybe not much experience of children who don't speak Catalan at all when they start nursery. For this reason they might be assuming that your son has a developmental delay because they are used to working with bilingual children and can see that your son isn't like other bilingual children, when the reality is that of course he isn't like them because he's actually bilingual in English and Spanish, and learning Catalan at nursery. He isn't trilingual at all. He's bilingual in two languages, neither of which are the nursery language. But I would expect that if he stays in a Catalan speaking environment at nursery and school, he will become trilingual fairly soon and will never remember a time when he didn't speak all three languages.

Is it actually a problem if he is assessed as having a developmental delay that he doesn't actually have? It seems to me like the worst that can happen is that he is referred for SALT he doesn't actually need and eventually the therapist says, "he doesn't need this, he's fine".

Whatever you do, don't stop speaking any of his languages to him.

For what it's worth, my bilingual 4 year old barely spoke at all before age 2 and barely spoke English at all before age 3.5. My 27 month old is really just starting to speak now, but is saying words and phrases in both languages. I don't believe either of them has any kind of developmental delay and am not worried.

I think some cultures are much quicker than others to suggest that a child has a speech delay. I remember feeling quite stressed because other women in my baby bumpers group (with children born in the same month as my son) were talking about getting their children referred for a speech delay because they weren't talking much yet, when my son was not talking at all in any language. But here in France, nobody has ever suggested that he has any kind of delay, and when he did start speaking everyone commented on how good his vocabulary was.

ChilliMum · 04/04/2025 07:15

It's perfectly normal, not an expert but have bilingual children and was told that word acquisition of children is pretty uniform so every child will have for example approximately 150 words at a particular age.

Which then follows that for a monolingual child that would mean they have 150 different words and are making full sentences, for a bilingual child these words are split so only 75 words per language so limited sentences and for a trilingual child only 50 per language (not necessarily split evenly and could possibly include the same words - think 3 words for coat rather than 1).

So although it might sound like speech delay as they just don't yet have the vocabulary range to say what they want to say they are in fact developing at exactly the right pace and as their vocabulary grows in each language you will see they start to make full sentences and sound exactly as their peers do.

That said mine are teens / young adult and even now there will be the odd word they have in one language but not the other but on a day to day basis they are just as capable of expressing themselves as a monolingual child.

BecauseRonald · 04/04/2025 07:17

I had a very similar experience with DS - 3 languages, speech delay at 2 and a half years. The SALT said to give it six months, to expect delays because of the multiple languages, and not to expect the same development pattern as DS's big sister who thrives and shines with languages. I wasn't happy with that reply but the SALT was right - within two months there was a marked improvement and by 3 years DS's speech was perfect in his main language and good in the second language and the school language.

I think your DS being silent in nursery is a separate issue. Is he not happy there? Depending on when you are in Catalonia the nursery could have a lot of experience with trilingual children (say speaking Arabic or Ukranian at home but having had limited exposure to Catalan and Spanish), or no experience at all.

endofthelinefinally · 04/04/2025 07:29

It sounds as if nursery don't understand anything about speech development in chiidren exposed to more than one language.
He will get there in his own time. He has hardly been exposed to the 3rd language that is used at nursery so he is listening and watching the other children. What else can he do? The speech will come once he understands more.
He is lucky to be learning 3 languages. I met a 7 year old Swiss child on holiday who had 5 languages. It is a tremendous advantage in life. My dc are fluent in 3 languages. They took a little longer with 2 of them but you would never know now.

Sajacas · 04/04/2025 08:21

It will be fine! The speech therapist is not worried so you can rest easy. We have a bilingual child at home and our speech therapist said that an 18 month delay is normal. I was also worried about the gibberish when ours was younger, but he has made great progress and now at almost 6, he is still behind his peers, but not hugely, and he can communicate in two languages!
Some advice from our therapist and teachers was to make the language choice context dependent, so Daddy is always language 1, Mummy language 2, inside the house always this language, outside always this etc. When they are so young they don't know the differences yet, but can still pick them up if they are consistent.
Best of luck!

endofthelinefinally · 04/04/2025 08:48

The only thing I would be careful to check is his hearing. Hopefully the speech therapist will have organised that already.

Macaroni46 · 04/04/2025 09:15

Sounds like too many languages to me. I know it’s not fashionable to say that but in over 30 years of early years and primary teaching, I’ve rarely seen trilingualism work. Does the Spanish father speak Catalan? Could that be spoken at home instead of Spanish?

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 04/04/2025 09:19

Macaroni46 · 04/04/2025 09:15

Sounds like too many languages to me. I know it’s not fashionable to say that but in over 30 years of early years and primary teaching, I’ve rarely seen trilingualism work. Does the Spanish father speak Catalan? Could that be spoken at home instead of Spanish?

Most people living in that part of the world will already be bilingual in Catalan and Spanish. And I'm sure you would agree that dropping English is not a good idea.

Trilingualism is very normal in many parts of the world, and the OP's child is far too young for any of this to be cause for concern at the moment.

Krakinou · 06/05/2025 13:31

@Rflo92 I have a similar situation (2.4 m, 4 languages) and agree with most here - DD has definitely spent longer in the silent then gibberish phases than most her peers, especially the Catalan-at-home ones. But in the last two months she has leapt forward. She’s still a lot harder to understand than the 18 month old we spent time with this weekend. I think part of the problem is that she mixes languages together all the time so it’s harder for us adults to interpret slightly mispronounced words from the context. There are a lot of trilingual kids at DDs nursery and teachers there told me they always take a bit longer.

What makes you think he doesn’t really understand the instructions but copies others?

Do you sing much with him? My DD sings a lot which has stopped me worrying about possible hearing issues. And singing Catalan kids tunes with her has been a nice way to connect in Catalan since I don’t really speak it and it seems to be her dominant language.

I really recommend “Mic” or “Canconer de Mic” and “Pot Petit” on YouTube if you’re not already familiar.

Pot Petit is very danceable (obv my standards are lower now than pre-kids, it’s not exactly chemical brothers), and has a lot of songs with actions - I read somewhere that moving and speaking at the same time helps kids learn faster.

Parker231 · 06/05/2025 13:39

Macaroni46 · 04/04/2025 09:15

Sounds like too many languages to me. I know it’s not fashionable to say that but in over 30 years of early years and primary teaching, I’ve rarely seen trilingualism work. Does the Spanish father speak Catalan? Could that be spoken at home instead of Spanish?

DT’s are in their mid 20’s and trilingual. As others have posted they were slow to speak in any language but no speech delay complications. They both got 1st in their degrees in UK universities (English is their least used language).
It’s a huge asset to them - has opened employment opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise. DD works for the EU in Brussels and is continuing to add languages to her skill set and DS works in Amsterdam with people of many different languages.

comoatoupeira · 06/05/2025 14:00

ChilliMum · 04/04/2025 07:15

It's perfectly normal, not an expert but have bilingual children and was told that word acquisition of children is pretty uniform so every child will have for example approximately 150 words at a particular age.

Which then follows that for a monolingual child that would mean they have 150 different words and are making full sentences, for a bilingual child these words are split so only 75 words per language so limited sentences and for a trilingual child only 50 per language (not necessarily split evenly and could possibly include the same words - think 3 words for coat rather than 1).

So although it might sound like speech delay as they just don't yet have the vocabulary range to say what they want to say they are in fact developing at exactly the right pace and as their vocabulary grows in each language you will see they start to make full sentences and sound exactly as their peers do.

That said mine are teens / young adult and even now there will be the odd word they have in one language but not the other but on a day to day basis they are just as capable of expressing themselves as a monolingual child.

This is true.
The way multilingual children acquire language is not a ´speech delay’

TheRoomWhereItHappened · 06/05/2025 14:12

Macaroni46 · 04/04/2025 09:15

Sounds like too many languages to me. I know it’s not fashionable to say that but in over 30 years of early years and primary teaching, I’ve rarely seen trilingualism work. Does the Spanish father speak Catalan? Could that be spoken at home instead of Spanish?

Who would you have him not be able to communicate with? No English and he’ll not speak his mother’s native language and may struggle to interact with her family. No Spanish and you have the same problem with his father’s family. No Catalan and he won’t be able to communicate at nursery and speak the language of where he lives. Depriving a child of a language is very very rarely a good idea and certainly shouldn’t be done because a 3 year old is taking longer to get to grips with speaking. It’s natural that he is because he’s got to get to grips with three language rather than one.

MadKittenWoman · 06/05/2025 17:46

Bilingual / trilingual children are behind in all languages at first but then catch up. He’ll be fine! X

mondaytosunday · 06/05/2025 22:07

My friends kids were brought up trilingual. Mother English, father Dutch, school french. No significant delays at all (they would have gone to French speaking daycare from small). So while this is just three kids, I also know of several bilingual kids (one language at home, second at school) also with no or very small delays. So having more than one language may be a reason for a slight delay. But he’s young yet so I’d give it time.

kersh33 · 07/05/2025 13:48

I would just echo a previous poster that it’s worth engaging with the professionals i.e. SALT as it could be masking another issue. My bilingual DD is an absolute chatterbox and well ahead language-wise of her peers. So it doesn’t automatically follow that multiple languages = slow language acquisition but of course it can be. So be aware of other causes as well as entertaining that it might be caused by the trilingualism.

comoatoupeira · 08/05/2025 20:59

MadKittenWoman · 06/05/2025 17:46

Bilingual / trilingual children are behind in all languages at first but then catch up. He’ll be fine! X

This isn’t actually true! If you look at the research.

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