ABA for a a bilingual 3 y.o, do we need to drop our second language?

[Wiolla]

Hello,

Originally misposted my message in Bilingual section, my apologies.

I would really appreciate any advice on or experience on how things may work out.

I have a 3 y.o who has been raised in a bilingual environment, sadly he is running a developmental delay and main issue speech and language (not just a late talker) which greatly affects his communication and social side with peers.

We are about to start and ABA programme for him and our consultant recommends against using a second language until DS is fluent in English. Same advice was given by a private psychologist.

Which of course breaks my heart as it means dropping my language, switching into English for at least couple of years and it feels so unnatural for me. However, I do not want my son to get stuck in his progress because of my own feelings, on the other hand it does make me sad and worried that I will have to speak a foreign language to my own child.

At the moment his Expressive English is more advanced than the other language but still way behind where he should have been even if to consider the bilingual component which may sometimes slow down things. His receptive language is about 6-8 months behind and general development is about 1 year behind, though not in all areas.

Any thoughts and ideas are welcome. Did anyone have a similar case?

Zzzzz thanks for the link on the website, I did get stuck on it last night, before it was too late to answer:))

Thank you for the explanation re IQ. The psyc said ours had mild/to moderate learning difficulties and frankly I do no agree with her. They keep going on about his self help skills and keep saying that he needs to improve them. Is that supposed to be an indicate of the IQ? It is not like he does not know or can't use a fork, or put shoes on, it is just on some occasions he just does not want to do it, on other occasions absolutely fine to do it. I bite my tongue when the nursery supervisor mentions his self-help skills. I actually put in writing in his diary how many things he can do, so that she stopped going on and on about this.

I do hope with ABA we will have a more structured approach and will be able to develop many of his skills.

SALT visited nurserry and sent me another letter for a training in PECS, Visual schedules etc...guess not a chance to get a 1-1 Speech therapy on nhs.:((

AAmommy, thank you for sharing. Did this help his social interaction and for how long did you stop using your native language?

I know, I should be banned from such sites:), I already have a Montessori subscription, now a new site addiction:))

Well this is what I was confused about LD and low IQ, or just because he is slow. I honestly think he is fine, behind but fine, and his receptive is coming alone. She did say it was not a dx, just that at the moment he has some issues and hopefully he will get over with help. But what you said in your message makes sense to me, thanks a lot.

Saying that I am seriously considering a getting 1-1 help whilst he is at the nursery, as I do not think they see him the way I see. Last drop was this morning when we came in and another kid was crying there, DS immediately showed trembling lips. Nursery supervisor said that he does not like the sound of children crying and suggested to get him special headphones to block the sound....

So to me it looked like let's put headphones on him and then we will not have to deal with that. I did say to her that it is not the sound he is upset about, but the situation itself when anyone cries as he senses it is not good, but is not sure how to react.

Thank you Zzzzz. You did actually describe the problem quite well. I suppose in this case we still stand our ground, as frankly considering the nursery costs I could not care less for their convenience, my DS and his progress is the most important thing. I can't wait until he moves to a pre-school group with a different supervisor though.

Yes, that would be great if you could send me the link, I think I will need to stuck up on some stuff for the ABA and beyond. I think as a parent I will need to use as many tools as possible to help DS.

Thanks for the IQ comments, yes sadly this could be the case.:((. When you deal with people around (other parents etc) do you mention that you son has difficulties?

IQ is bollocks. 2 years ago Ds' was assessed as being 126 and he was classified as HFA. In Jan just gone he was assessed as 85 and then rated as moderate-functioning after 2.5 years at a SALT Special School.

I was horrified but DH just laughed and said 'DS is DS and that is all we need to know, - but know well'.

The tests are standardised and talk about a 'normal' our kids aren't even close to and they are measured against that as if that is some kind of prognosis. It really isn't.

You know the Optimal Outcome Lovaas kids? The majority are not working and suffering severe depression, though technically they are 'indistinguishable' from their peers. Clearly there is so much yet to learn.

DH also said 'so what do you wanna do about it, train him to pass IQ tests?'

Again, unlike typically developing children I believe that children with ASD actually CAN train for IQ tests if they were motivated to do so, certainly for the non-verbal reasoning ones. People don't like to admit scores can move around/improved depending on your exposure as that would render them invalid but it's more like a not very well kept secret imo.

Yes. I did kind of think about it. No harm in keeping the well-oiled parts of his brain working and challenged.

Also, isn't that the kind of stuff that produces great programmers?

Yay!!! lol

hello, DS is also sort of brought up in a bilingual environment - we speak English and our home language half half and DS has been to nursery since 1 year old so hear English quite a lot. We are now waiting for the various initial assessment with paed and SALT to take place and while waiting we have been using English to communicate with DS for around 90% of the time, but me and DH still talk in our language for the majority of the time. DS seems to be making some progress but is still unwilling/ refuses to communicate in speech.

I am just wondering, when you said 'dropped' the home language, did you mean you use only English even when communicating with your DH or family members whose first language is not English? Many thanks!

Hello Cinqueterre, we have a slightly different situation as my husband is a native English speaker, so we do speak English a lot anyway. With my family I speak my language as their English is non existent. And my family continue to speak their language to him. So in essence it is not possible to eliminated it completely and frankly I do not really want to I want to save at least passive understanding. I also speak English to him now, but I do repeat the same in my language. He differentiates languages and uses some words from my language, but English dominates, but then again it is significantly easier than my language.

Zzzzz and Sralight, very interesting comments about IQ. I think the main point is to continue to persevere with learning as no one knows the brain capacity of a particular human being and what his/her brain is capable of.

I was talking to my friend lately whose DD is ASD/Aspergers and we both came to the conclusion that no one knows your child better than you, as what can a paed see every 6 months? SO many things in child's performance depend on simple factors such as time of the day for the assessment, whether he/she is comfortable with the doctors etc. Although I do value professional opinion, but in the end I think I know much more about my child and where he really is.

Zzzzz thanks a lot for the albums, very interesting read:)

An interesting read

It was a link to an article by an s/lt working with bilingual kids.
I normally go the ABA route first and foremost, rather than the s/lt one (I'm a BCBA and an s/lt) but in the case of bilingual issues, a specialist s/lt will know more than a BCBA.

Here's what I managed to cut and paste-reference at bottom.

In the article, Issues in Bilingualism and Heritage Language Maintenance: Perspectives of Minority-Language Mothers of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Betty Yu discusses bilingualism in children with autism. She indicates that families of children with ASD are often reluctant to speak to their children in their native language for fear of confusing the child or "exacerbating" the impairment. As SLPs in a culturally and linguistically diverse country, we are key to helping families understand the role of their native language in the child's impaired language development. Yu emphasizes the message often given to families by professionals in the field that they should speak English only.
Yu states that encouraging parents to speak English only contradicts ASHA's position statement (2004, 2005, 2011), which urges practitioners to regard the families' cultural and linguistic preferences. Yu indicates that native languages are key to the following:

facilitation of cultural identification
transmitting family values
fostering intimacy
promoting attachment
She moves on to say that asking parents to speak English only is unsupported by research. Yu cites Genesee, Paradis, and Crago (2004), who argue the inappropriateness of advising that children with language impairment should learn only one language. She continues to cite Paradis and Crago, indicating that the circumstances of each child should be individually assessed to determine whether dual language use is suitable.

Yu indicates that only a few studies to date have been conducted with children that have autism as far as bilingualism is concerned. One study Yu cites was conducted by Hambly and Fombone (2012) which compared three groups of children. One was a monolingual group, the next was bilingually exposed for 12 months prior to the study, and the last was bilingually exposed 12 months after the study. Hambly and Fombone assessed the following: social responsiveness, initiating of pointing, response to pointing, attention to voice, total conceptual vocabulary, words in dominant and second languages, age of first words, and age of first phrases. Their study concluded that children with ASD that were bilingually exposed did not demonstrate additional delays compared to their monolingual counterparts. No significant difference was found in those particular skills between bilingual children that were raised bilingually vs. sequential bilingual environments. Hambly and Fombone (2002) reported that 60% of the bilingually exposed children were observed to be acquiring vocabulary in two languages. Yu cites other studies as well in this article.

As Paradis and Crago stated, the circumstances for each individual child should be assessed. Some questions or factors to consider might be the following:

Are the parents fluent English speakers, bilingual as well? - If the parents are fluent in English they may choose this language over the native one until the child demonstrates the ability to communicate proficiently in English.
Is English language proficiency limited? - If English proficiency is limited in the family then this may limit language rich vocabulary.
Is the family more "Americanized" or acculturated? If so, to what extent? - Some families might highly value American culture and want their child to speak English first.
Does the child attend preschool? - Some parents might fear that if they speak their native language their child might have a hard time communicating in English with other children in the community or a school setting.
I would never ask a family to speak English only if their English language proficiency was very poor because this compromises their ability to give their child a rich vocabulary. I always advise parents to speak to their children in their language rich vocabulary and I explain why, whether they have ASD or not. Often, parents of bilingual children fear that two languages might confuse their child or worsen the delay. However, this is not the case. Although, if you are working with a bilingual family that is also English proficient, you can explain the benefits of bilingualism but they ultimately decide which language they feel is best for their child. It is important to explain the benefits of bilingualism and be able to answer or clear up any doubt the family might have to help them make an informed decision regarding language use.

Reference:

Yu B. "Issues in bilingualism and heritage language maintenance: perspectives of minority-language mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders." American Journal of Speech Language Pathology. 22.10-24(2013). ajslp.pubs.asha.org.

I haven't read the whole thread, but to add our personal experience.

We were in a similar situation last August, when we were starting our home-based ABA programme. Our son has HFA and we spoke predominantly Russian at home before the programme start. He was nearly four at the time. He had good vocabulary in both English and Russian, but language was delayed and disordered. Not a single question asked, mixed pronouns and genders (Russian-specific), etc.

What we have agreed with the team at the time, is that we will use English during the to match the programme times, i.e. from 9 to 5, and then switch to Russian (or whichever language he would prefer at that point) out of hours.

It worked out pretty well at the end, as his language has come leaps and bounds over those 10 months, and I would say his English is better than his Russian now (not surprisingly, as there is just more scope for an ASD child to mess things up in Russian due to more complex language structures and our tutors are simply better and teaching him to converse than we were...).

We did have issues over the first couple of months, as of course the moment he realised what was going on his rigidity kicked in in full gear, so fair amount of tantrums and manipulation ensued. We mix and match freely between the two now.

HTH.

Dear Kakty3, thank you so much for your post. You cannot imagine how similar is your situation to ours, as my home language is Russian. Thus all the family is miles away and he is the only grandson at the moment and I feel that it will be quite cruel to deprive my side of the family of the opportunity to communicate with him.

I understand your family is purely Russian speaking, in our case DH is a native speaker of English. English advances faster although I can say the understanding is so far equal, but speech is better in English.

Did your son go to the nursery at this point and did ABA/language thing helped with communication issues? How many hours of ABA did you have and did you deliver it by yourselves or with the help of tutors? Did you support Russian during "out of office" hours with books etc?

Sorry for bombarding you with all these questions, hope you do not mind:)