Bilingualism Will Supercharge Your Baby’s Brain
What’s the Big Idea?
Pop quiz! Bilingualism is:
a. A competitive advantage on college and job applications.
b. Best acquired before the age of six.
c. One area in which Americans are kind of lame.
d. Full of surprising ancillary neurocognitive benefits if acquired early. Bilingual toddlers are better able to process new information, more attuned to what others are thinking and feeling, more in control of their will and attention, and four years slower, once they reach old age, to experience dementia than are their monolingual peers.
e. All of the above.
Yep, it’s ‘e.’ If you’re not romantically involved, but would like to have children someday, maybe it’s time to consider an international dating site. If you’ve got a baby already, and both parents speak only one language, you could order Grimm’s Fairy Tales in Spanish or Mandarin, though a crash course at Berlitz might be better. Babies are hard-wired to attend to their parents’ voices, and can learn a second language best by interacting with them.
According to Princeton Neuroscientist Sam Wang, co-author with Sandra Aamodt of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain, the benefits of bilingualism go far beyond the ability to order convincingly at Maxim’s in Paris, or to read Dostoevsky in the original. Bilingual toddlers have an improved ability to resolve “conflict cues.” In other words, their minds are more flexible - better able to unlearn previously learned rules in light of new, conflicting information.