A special need and two languages: nine questions first

That is a decision for you and the professionals already working with your child, and it is worth weighing the costs before it is made. King & Mackey, in The Bilingual Edge, say very little research supports the common recommendation to drop the heritage language once a special need is identified. They also say real costs can follow a switch to one language. This article gives you the questions they use, not an answer.

What the authors say about the common advice

King & Mackey say very little research exists on special needs and bilingualism specifically. The recommendation that a family switch entirely to the majority language has intuitive appeal, they say, but it is not backed by much evidence. They do not call it reckless.

They also point out why it deserves a second look. Doctors and therapists are trained to look closely and narrowly at specific skills, and they have little time to weigh a child's whole family, social and emotional life. A decision about language at home touches all of that. The authors add that in most of the world children with and without special needs grow up bilingual or trilingual as a matter of course.

What a switch to one language could cost

Before deciding, the authors suggest looking at what would actually be lost:

• The ability to talk with a grandparent or relative who does not speak the majority language.
• A parent ending up in their own weaker language with the child, when the richest input they can give is in their strongest language.
• Brothers or sisters losing the chance to grow up bilingual too, if the whole household changed languages.

Keeping both languages has costs too, and the framework below asks about them: time, energy and extra support. Both sides go on the table.

The nine questions

The closing framework of the chapter is King & Mackey's adaptation of one by Toppelberg, Snow & Tager-Flusberg (1999). We have read the authors' adaptation, not the original paper. The questions are shown in the same words and the same order the Kinlingua app uses:

1. What are your child's communication needs? What would introducing or keeping a second language give them?
2. How do you, your child, your family, your community, and your child's school actually operate: in one language, or both?
3. What are your child's strengths?
4. What are your child's weaknesses?
5. What support already exists for each language: people, programs, materials?
6. What would be lost if you switched to one language only (for example, a relationship with a grandparent)?
7. What would be gained by keeping both languages going?
8. How much time, energy, and extra support would a language-rich environment in both languages actually take?
9. How does your child seem to respond to, and handle, having two languages around them?

How to use them

Write your own answers first, one line each. Questions 3, 4 and 9 are about your child, so the professionals who work with your child can add what you cannot see from home. Questions 5 and 8 are practical: who and what supports each language, and what keeping both would take from the household. Questions 1 and 7 ask what a second language would give your child and what keeping both would gain, and question 6 asks what would be lost. Read those three side by side before you read anything into one of them alone.

The framework is a way to think the decision through, with no score and no answer key. The sources read for this site do not say which language arrangement suits a particular child or need, and this article does not either. Bring your answers to the people who know your child and decide together.