Expert: Valerie Herskowitz - 12/28/2010

Question
Hi, my son is diagnosed to be in the autism spectrum/ PDD, NOS.  I am trying to decide whether to introduce my son to a second language at home.  He is two years and eight months old and started receiving ABA sessions through early intervention right before his second birthday.  He was also approved for speech therapy at the time, but we did not start him on speech therapy right away because we wanted to first focus on his socialization skills and ability to attend to tasks.  He has made good progress over time.  So five months ago we decided to start him on speech therapies.  The following evaluations were provided by two different speech therapists.  My boy’s total language score was 70 and a percentile of 2 on the PLS-4 at 20 months.  His score was 76 and a percentile of 5 at 28 months.  He is intelligent.  It is just hard to teach him because of what I would like to call “learning disabilities.”
Now my first language is Mandarin.  At home, my husband and I speak English to each other and to our son.  My son’s therapists are very against me introducing him to another language.  They think that since he is already delayed, we should only use English with him.  There was one time one therapist found my son watching a Chinese DVD for children, she was not very pleased.  A year ago when I took my son to Taiwan to visit my family, he was exposed in a Chinese speaking environment for a few weeks.  But back at home, I have only used three or four Chinese words with him (for example, thank you.)  But even that stopped because I felt discouraged by his therapists’ attitude and worried that the second language would impede his progress.
I have heard that the best time to introduce a foreign language is when the child is young while the brain is most plastic and before language and speech patterns are fixed.  I also heard that bilingual children are slower with language acquisition but they really “take off” once they get it.  I really would like my son to speak or understand Chinese, if possible.  At one point of time, he did repeat “thank you” in Chinese after me.  Then I stopped using the word for many months.  Lately, I started asking him to say “thank you”  again.To my surprise, I found that his pronunciation was not as good this time around as before, as if he had a better ear when he was younger!!!  I have to say though his pronunciation gradually improved over the last 2-3 weeks with practice.  Anyhow, this finding really alerts me and prompts me to ask for help.  I don’t want to miss the window of opportunity to teach my son Chinese, but I don’t want to further delay him or confuse him.  Secretly, I hope your answer is yes.  It’s okay to teach him Chinese.  Then my question will also be how and when?.  Autistic children learn differently.  Is there a recommend method to teach them to be bilingual?   I would really appreciate your advice on this matter.  Cathy, a worried mother

Answer
Hi Cathy

I TOTALLY agree with your therapists. Though you are correct that normally the best time to introduce a foreign language is when the child is young, we have to look at your child in a different light. Stick with the English. Once he is totally fluent and up to par, then you can think about introducing Mandarin. But this is really the least of your issues. The language deficits in autism greatly affect the ability to process that if you were to introduce Mandarin, you would most likely cause so much confusion.

I need to ask you why it is so important that he learn Mandarin? If you are planning to move to a country in which Mandarin is the primary language then you should be teaching him Mandarin as his first language. But I suspect that is not the reason, but you would like him to have some sense of his ethnic background. I can appreciate this. So I recommend that instead of focusing on the language component, introduce him to some other Chinese cultural concepts.

I know it is hard to accept that raising a child on the spectrum is not going to be what you had thought. Expectations are so hard to let go off. (I know this first hand!) But in this case, you really have to do some deep introspection and realize that if you were to introduce him to Mandarin at this time, it would something that could cause him deep language confusion. Try to let this thought go and concentrate on getting him to communicate well in one language first.

Feel free to write back-I know how hard it is to accept my answer and I feel bad to have to say it.