In our Italian-English bilingual home, a lot of our food vocabulary is Italian, and we use this even when we're speaking English (and when English words are available). (This is called code-switching.) But this doesn't mean they are confused about which language they are speaking. Like adult bilinguals, bilingual children often use words from one language when speaking the other. Don't bilingual children ever mix their languages up? Our older child just took a little longer. This is a normal developmental stage for monolingual English children, but they usually figure out that they have to say Where are you? by the time they're three or four. Our older child was still saying things like Where you are? instead of Where are you? in English at four and a half. The disadvantages that earlier research found were generally economic disadvantages, linked to the hardships of immigrants' lives.Д«ilingual development sometimes results in slightly slower language development than for some monolingual children. Newer research tells us that this is not so, and there may be advantages to being bilingual (in addition to knowing more than one language), such as more flexible thinking. Some researchers thought that early exposure to two languages put children at a disadvantage. For children, the bilingual situation is just a matter of another difference between people!ДЇifty years ago educators throughout North America used to tell immigrant parents that it was better for their children's schooling if they spoke English at home. Even when they only hear one language, they learn very quickly about differences between the way men and women talk, the difference between polite and impolite ways of talking, and so on. Children are incredibly sensitive to the different ways people speak. Don't children get confused when they hear two languages spoken around them? Our own situation is an Italian/English bilingual home in an English-speaking setting, and some of what we say here is based directly on our experience bringing up bilingual children. In the second, the parents may want to be able to use their own language at home even though their children also need to function in the world outside the front door. In the first case, both the mother and father may want to be able to use their own language when talking to their children. There are many reasons, but the two most common are:ДЎ) The parents speak different languages (say, an American woman and a Turkish man).Дў) The parents speak the same language, but live in a community where most people speak something else (say, a Korean couple living in the USA).

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