Multilingual and bilingual children: benefits and challenges

If you’re bilingual, you use two languages. If you’re multilingual, you use more than two.Raising multilingual or bilingual children has many benefits. It can create strong family and cultural bonds, and it has potential academic benefits as well. Yet raising multilingual or bilingual children may have challenges in time and effort.

Benefits of raising multilingual and bilingual children

Raising multilingual or bilingual children is good not only for your children, but also for your family and your community.

Children: benefits of multilingualism and bilingualism
For children, speaking more than one language is often linked to:

  • better academic results – this is because multilingual or bilingual children can often concentrate better, are better at solving problems, understand language structures better, and are better at multitasking
  • more diverse and interesting career opportunities later in life.

Also, if your children grow up speaking more than one language, they might have a better sense of self-worth, identity and belonging. This comes from:

  • feeling good about their heritage
  • feeling confident about communicating and connecting with extended family members and people speaking other languages
  • being able to enjoy music, movies, literature and so on in more than one language.

Families: benefits of multilingualism and bilingualism
For your family, developing your home language with your children may:

  • improve communication among your family members
  • enhance emotional bonds
  • make it easier for you and your children to be part of your culture
  • boost your family’s sense of cultural identity and belonging.

Communities: benefits of multilingualism and bilingualism
For your wider community, when children speak more than one language, it means that:

  • everyone in the community gets a better appreciation of different languages and cultures
  • children can more easily travel and work in different countries and cultures when they grow up
  • children understand and appreciate different cultures.

Possible challenges of raising multilingual and bilingual children

Raising multilingual or bilingual children does have its challenges, including handling pressure to speak only the majority language. This pressure sometimes comes from other family members, who may want the family to speak only the majority language at home.  It will help if you:

  • make sure your children get lots of chances to hear and use their second and other languages
  • talk to your children’s teachers and get their support for your efforts
  • get support for yourself – for example, by talking to friends and family who are raising multilingual or bilingual children and finding resources in your community, like bilingual playgroups.