The Importance of Bilingualism in Raising Global Children

Children today are living in a global world like never before. With just the swipe of a finger or touch of a key, kids are connecting with people and cultures that reach across oceans and continents. As they enter school, students are expected to go beyond the classroom as they learn and grow.

Being a successful global citizen in today’s world is not simply about understanding a different culture. It’s about being immersed in it. To successfully do this, many parents are opting to raise their children in multilingual homes so their sons and daughters speak and understand more than one language. As a result, these bilingual kids have new experiences and profound conversations, simply by understanding a different language.

The trend toward bilingual learning has only increased over the last decade. There are nearly 700 dual immersion schools in the United States — 372 in California alone — that focus on languages such as Spanish, German, Italian, Hebrew, Chinese/Mandarin, and many others.

Yet being a multilingual family is not only critical from a global perspective. It’s also an important part of a child’s cognitive development. Studies show bilingual children often have improved executive function, which leads to better problem solving abilities and the capability to tackle more mentally demanding activities. This is because kids who speak multiple languages are able to focus more on the most important aspects of a task and ignore distractions.

New research suggests kids who are bilingual also have a much stronger sense of social awareness. Those children are often more skilled communicators and have increased sensitivity to others. This is due in part because understanding multiple languages leads to great tolerance and social awareness as whole. Or to put it simply, to “understand a speaker’s intention, one must take the speaker’s perspective.” Bilingualism allows for multiple perspectives.

At Trusted, we believe learning continues beyond the classroom. And the choices each family make should be maintained, even when dad or mom are not home to be with their children. We’ve seen bilingualism become increasingly important to families, which is why we offer providers who are able to converse with children in the language parents prefer. Many parents who use our service request providers who will talk with their kids in Mandarin, Spanish, and a host of other languages. If it’s important to your family, we make it happen.

We understand the importance of maintaining a bilingual home. Trusted makes it easy for you to continue that consistency with the highest quality child care whenever and wherever you need it.

Do you consider bilingual or multilingualism to be important to your child’s upbringing?