No, multilingual children are not confused
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A toast to the ability of children’s brains & why children are not confused by multiple languages
Often times, when people hear about raising multilingual children, they respond with “isn’t that confusing for the child?”. And you ask yourself in the middle of a sleepless night, when your toddler who is exposed to three languages has not spoken as many words as its monolingual cousin, if all of these languages are not a bit too much for your little one. Aren’t they getting confused? Do they even know what you are talking about?
The funny thing is, why should they be confused? Do babies or toddlers know that their multilngual upbringing is different? No, they don’t know that. In their world, it’s the absolute normalcy. Different people speak different languages. And cars go on roads, and food is eaten at a table.
So, the question is more: is my child consistently exposed to each language that matters? Are the languages consistently separated from each other (e.g. through techniques like OPOL, and by not mixing languages in one sentence from the side of the caregiver)? Then, the consistency will lay the foundation that your child needs to decipher language structures naturally. Multilingual upbringing does not cause speech delay.
Let me share a beautiful (and recent) anecdote with you that made my heart smile.
Our son knows for every book in his library in which language it is written, and who of his closest contacts can read which language to him. So, he most times has a clear preference of which language he wants to hear when he’s reading a book with someone.
The other day, he was with our Portuguese-speaking babysitter. They usually read a lot of books together and that day, our son wanted to show the babysitter some German books. He was purposely picking the German books, so he could explain and describe them in Portuguese to the babysitter. He introduced the books with "I know they are not in Portuguese and you cannot read them, but mum can, and this is what they are about.” (I am paraphrasing a bit). First of all, his awareness of languages separation became crystal clear. And second of all, he used the knowledge gained in one language to connect to a person in a different language. This time, it showed perfectly explicitly what was happening. So many other times, it’s still happening, but not explicitly expressed. To him, it doesn’t matter in which language he read about the book, the knowledge is there, ready to be expressed in a different language to create connection with someone who cannot tap into the knowledge from the book otherwise.
This is not to humble-brag about our son’s abilities in any way. This is to show the bright abilities of children that are naturally exposed to multiple languages. They are not confused. They know exactly that each language is separate from the other, and that not everyone can speak all of them. They might not understand just yet (with 3 years old) why that is, or if they like to speak multiple languages, but… they are certainly not confused. It is the most natural thing for them to speak different languages with different people. They have not been growing up as a monolingual, so they don’t know (yet) that a world exist where one person only ever learns and speaks one single language.
Of course, every child is different, and not all language exposure is created equal. However, if you are consistently exposing your baby or toddler to multiple languages with rich variety, in an engaging and meaningful way, children are not confused.
If you were looking for a sign to keep going with your multilingual upbringing, and to overcome the fear of confusion, this is it. You can do it. And so can your child :)
Let me know in the comments how your own multilingual upbringing journey is going!
