There are many benefits of raising a bilingual child and they are not all for the child but for the parents, extended family, the community and the world.
This post is from the series about answering a question from the Reader’s Guide of the book “Maximize your Child’s Bilingual Ability” by Adam Beck. In his book, Beck invites the reader to answer questions about their bilingual child’s journey. You can find more about the series here.
Question 1 : What are the benefits, to your mind, in raising a bilingual child? For the child? For you? For your family, near and far? For others? For the world?
Maximize your Child’s Bilingual Ability, Adam Beck
What are the benefits, to your mind, in raising a bilingual child?
- Quality time with parents in order to learn their languages
- More choices to explore and understand the world
- Interest in learning more languages not just the home language
What are the benefits for the child?
- Giving them a gift that they will be able to share with their families
- Preserving familial ties that will allow them to appreciate their roots and establish a cultural identity
- Provide job opportunities later in life
- Enrich their lives all around
- More brain power and memory
What are the benefits for you?
- Sharing my language is a gift, a special bond between us
- Spending time with them
- Connecting with them
- Feel more natural to speak in our languages and not a language that I don’t know very well
What are the benefits for your family, near and far?
- The ability to communicate with both sets of grandparents and close relatives
- Preserving family and cultural ties
- Travelling to visit family without needing a translator for at least one parent
- Opportunity to spend more quality time with them and appreciate our not so-often visits
What are the benefits for others?
- The ability to communicate with others when we are in an emergency or on vacation
- Make the exchanges with others easier in regards to culture and or politics
- More opportunities to socialize and make friends with others and enlarge their thinking as well
What are the benefits for the world?
- Convince more monolinguals to learn a language
- More open and aware of cultural gestures, linguistics and family values
- Greater tolerance, appreciation and understanding of others
