Bilingual Kids in the News!

Last week, our friend Ana Flores of SpanglishBaby made an appearance on NBC's Today Show to talk about raising bilingual kids and the importance of starting early. #BilingualKids swiftly became a hot topic on twitter, and we want to keep the conversation going. First, watch the video in which Ana and Columbia professor Erika Levy make the case for bilingual kids. Note, especially, how adamantly professor Levy dispels the myth that bilingual children start speaking later than monolingual children – good news for all!

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If you'd like to continue to explore the topic of bilingual kids in the news, here are two informative articles from the last two weeks.

1. This Huffington Post piece by Dr. Gail Gross delves into the effects language can have on babies before they are born. Even in the womb, babies can begin to distinguish their mothers' voices and languages!
2. And this recent article in TIME Magazine also reveals how different languages affect the way children process and analyze information. The more languages they learn how to balance, the more analytical tools they have!

Who’s the Smartest Person in the Room? The Answer May Surprise You.

See those babies cooing in the corner? According to a recent Time Magazine article, they’re the best linguists in the room. Babies are born, Time’s Jeffrey Kluger says, with the inherent ability to speak and understand the world’s 6,800 languages, and that babies, and then children, are able to continue to easily learn multiple languages up into early grammar school. Kluger goes on to say that later in life, having gained these language abilities as babies and children, multilingual adults “are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas. They work faster and expend less energy doing so, and as they age, they retain their cognitive faculties longer, delaying the onset of dementia and even full-blown Alzheimer's disease.”

Read the full, fascinating story, here.