Growing up with several languages
Is your child mixing their different languages, speaking less than others, or no longer speaking since you moved abroad?
Some behaviours can be usual in a multilingual child; others are warning signs and may call for a speech therapist's opinion.
Typical development in a child growing up in a multilingual environment
Growing up with several languages does not cause developmental language disorder.
- It is common to see multilingual children use words from different languages within the same sentence. This is normal: the child draws on everything they know.
- Your child may have less vocabulary than a same-age classmate in one given language. Their vocabulary is spread across their different languages, and must be counted together.
- Your child prefers one language over another depending on the person, the place or the subject, and refuses to speak a given language at home for a period.
Behaviours that may call for a speech therapist's opinion
The difficulties you observe in your child appear in every language they live with. A difficulty that exists in only one of the languages does not generally point to a language disorder.
- Your child babbles little or not at all before the age of one.
- They produce no words by around eighteen months, or do not combine them into short two-word phrases, in any of their languages.
- Your child's speech is hard to understand, even for those close to them.
- Your child has difficulty understanding what is said to them, across their different languages.
An assessment that measures your child's real abilities
- Assessing a multilingual child in a single language only measures part of what they know. The assessment must therefore take the child's multilingual environment into account.
- The questionnaire completed before the appointment retraces their language history: which languages they live with, since when, and in which settings (at school as well as at home).
- Results are read in the light of that history, rather than compared without nuance to those of a child raised with a single language.
- The report can be shared with the school, including a French school abroad.
Wherever you live
French-speaking families across South-East Asia — Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia — rarely find a French-speaking speech therapist nearby. Therapy then takes place online, on the region's clock. In Phuket, sessions can also take place at home.
From which country?
Sessions run on Phuket time (GMT+7). Here is the difference from the countries where most French-speaking families in the region live.
- Same time as Phuket: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia (Java, Sumatra).
- One hour ahead: Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia (Bali, Sulawesi).
- Two hours ahead: Japan, South Korea.
- One to four hours ahead depending on the region and the season: Australia.
- Five to six hours ahead depending on the season: New Zealand.
- One and a half hours behind: India.
- Three hours behind: United Arab Emirates, Mauritius.
- Five to six hours behind depending on the season: mainland France.
A late-morning appointment in Phuket falls in the early afternoon in Singapore, late afternoon in Sydney, and early morning in France. Available slots are shown in your own time zone when you book.
Wherever you live, booking happens online, and the first assessment can take place by video call.
Book an appointment