Question Hi! I am worried about my daughter who is three and a half years old. She was born in Sweden, but I raise her by myself and we speak only Dutch at our home. Her Dutch is fluent, and she has been very talkative for a long time, she speaks in long fluent...
Mary-Pat O'Malley-Keighran
Q&A: How to support a bilingual child with dyslexia?
Question Hello, Can you please advise us on the following with regards to a 7-year-old? The boy’s mother is Australian, the father who he visits is Australian. His step father is from Pakistan and speaks Urdu, English and Arabic. The boy has been to Arabic...
Q&A: How can a monolingual professional offer Speech and Language Therapy for a bilingual child?
Question Hello, I am a Speech Language Pathologist in a school setting. I evaluated a 2 year 10 month old child who is a dual language learner. Dad speaks native language and English. Mom speaks native language and is just now learning English. Dad is concerned...
Q&A: Worried mother: my bilingual 2-year-old is not talking – what to do?
Question Hello I'm hoping you might be able to help me. I'm a first-time mummy and very worried about my 22-month-old. Her understanding is phenomenal, but she refuses to speak. She will say mama, dada, yaya (grandmummy), daddina (grandfather) and about three...
Q&A: How to correct a trilingual child’s pronunciation?
Question Hello! My husband and I live in Belgium and before the birth of our son we were speaking English to each other. However due to our complex family and cultural situation we decided to step away from English and limit the languages to three only. Our son...
Q&A: How can a single parent raise a bilingual child?
Question Hey, I decided long time ago that I would want to make my possible future children multilingual. I have lived years abroad (English was and still is my study and work language), but recently moved back to Finland. I'm a native Finnish-speaker, but...
Q&A: How to motivate a school-aged child to speak the family’s minority language?
Question Hi, I have an 8-year-old son who had speech problems when he was little. He did not really start talking until maybe two. I was forced to choose a language for his speech therapy classes, I chose English. My problem now is that he understands Spanish...
Q&A: How is a baby’s language development impacted by a nanny’s language and accent?
Question Hello We are a Greek family living in Lausanne, Switzerland. We speak Greek at home and French at work. When my wife will return to work after her maternity leave, our daughter will be 8 months old. We plan to hire a full-time nanny until our daughter...
Q&A: Is it normal for a bilingual toddler to go silent?
Question Hello! My husband and I are Spanish living in Ireland. My toddler just is two years of age and goes to crèche three days a week three hours per day. We use Spanish all the time with him and let English language to come bit by bit trough his experiences...
Q&A: How to reintroduce a minority language to a speech-delayed child and a younger sibling?
Question Hello, I am German and, my now, ex-husband is English/Australian. The kids spend half of the week with him and the other half with me. I used to talk German to my son from birth onward, but when he was diagnosed with a speech delay which was luckily...