Although raising bilingual children can be challenging, children tend to absorb more information when they’re younger, learning new skills quicker than adults – who often choose to learn things that can be applied to their career or professional life.

Communication skills are essential for strong child development, building relationships and connecting with other family members. If children are unable to do these things, it can create challenges – such as difficulty sharing feelings – which can lead to frustration and even emotional stress.

Martin Curtis, director, Palaver, discusses these challenges, exploring how new technology can help to overcome language barriers amongst bilingual families.

How a child’s brain develops…

A child starts to recognise words when in the womb, particularly from their mother’s voice.

From birth until around age six, a child’s brain is like a ‘sponge’ – absorbing everything around them. Before age three, children will often take in information subconsciously, as their brains are developing faster than any other time. Between ages three and six, they will typically start to absorb specific information more consciously.

As a child’s core brain structure is 85% developed by the time they’re five, so it’s important to teach your children to learn their heritage language from a young age. The ideal age window for children to learn an additional language is during their first couple of years.

The benefits of bilingualism

There’s approximately 3.3 billion people worldwide who are bilingual – accounting for 43% of the entire population. Specifically in the UK, 20% of children of school age can speak more than one language.

A 2021 study shows that bilingual children have around 6.5% more efficient thinking skills than monolingual children. They’re also able to better switch between and juggle multiple tasks, ignore distractions and problem solve. As this can benefit their development as they grow up, bilingualism has been proven to offer long term benefits, such as memory retention and even dementia reduction.

How language barriers are affecting families

Speaking the same language as family members can help children to feel more accepted by their relatives, as well as more connected to their culture and family traditions.

Learning one language from an early age is hard enough, but when a child is also unable to speak the same language as their relatives, it can create language barriers, causing knock-on effects such as distance – physically and emotionally – or even misunderstandings. The inability to communicate with family in their heritage language can restrict close relationships, social discussions or learning about family history.

Some monolingual people report feelings of embarrassment when visiting their heritage country if they’re unable to share the language, as well as feeling like they’re treated like a child, relying on other family members to translate. Some also say they don’t feel the need to learn their heritage language, due to living in countries like the United Kingdom – where the majority of people speak ‘universal’ English.

In early years, children begin to express thoughts and feelings, but if they have underdeveloped heritage language skills, it can affect their social and emotional well-being, leading to potential self-isolation or behavioural issues. For example, ‘selective mutism’ is described as a childhood anxiety disorder, where a child will not speak in certain settings but will speak in others. This can cause issues with socialising and enjoying themselves.

In a family setting, language barriers can cause children to feel as though they’re unable to communicate or ask for help in their heritage language. This can lead to them feeling frustrated, less intelligent and less confident – as relatives tend to correct them rather than listen to their comments or questions.

How new technology can help

When they’re learning, it’s important to give children the space to explore by themselves – they need to live their childhood without constant direction from adults around them. New technology supports this by giving them independence while learning an additional language. Palaver is a new, free to download app, which is easy and simple for any generation to use, allowing children to build their own personal relationships, without the reliance on other family members for translation.

Children have more time to explore, learning from their mistakes as they grow older. New technology can encourage interaction and engagement, supporting discovery and investigations.

It’s recommended that parents should encourage their children to talk, read, sing and even play in their heritage language. Children also absorb more in short and focused learning periods – one step at a time – putting all their energy into grasping a small piece of information before moving onto the next. They focus on one thing until they understand it – for example, a word.

Learning a sentence word for word can expand a child’s vocabulary in their additional language, as well as the order of words and sentence structures. The Palaver app can instantly translate audio and text into another language – allowing children to absorb as much vocabulary as possible. Not only this, but the image feature also enables on demand translation when reading books or textbooks, for example.

Building relationships with relatives overseas

Coming from a bilingual family often means there’s a chance you’ll have family members living overseas. Under these circumstances, communication is key to maintaining long-distance relationships. Building relationships digitally is tricky enough, but when relatives speak a different language to your children, this is even harder.

Palaver’s live voice translator for phone calls and text translate for messages allows your child to independently build and maintain relative connections, anywhere in the world, without the reliance on other family members.

New technology can help your child to build close and meaningful relationships – that last a lifetime. As an effective way to bridge the distance between different generations, learning an additional language as they grow older can boost a child’s confidence, encouraging open communication amongst family members and distant relatives.

The Palaver translation app is free to download from the App Store and Google Play.

Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.