And don't worry -- there is more information on those advantages and effects to come! But I want to pause for a moment to consider: What do we do with that information?
No information is of use to us unless it makes a practical difference in our lives. (At least that is my opinion. I have academic-type friends who would beg to differ.) What does being bilingual practically mean in the lives of TCKs and those who care for them?
Several things, from my experience.
Note: unless specifically referenced to another article, the information in this post is my own opinion and experiences or the experiences of those I have spoken with.
1. Being bilingual is a great advantage in many ways -- and is one of the great opportunities often afforded by the globally mobile lifestyle! It allows you (obviously) to communicate with many more people. It often (in my experience) allows TCKs to fit in better or more deeply experience their host culture.
If culture was a house,
then language was the key to the front door,
to all the rooms inside
(Khaled Housseini)
It also confers many more general brain benefits, such as better executive function and short term memory, better musical ability, and the ability to learn more languages more easily.
Therefore, the first suggestion I would have, specifically for parents of young TCKs, would be to encourage them to learn the language of your host culture. Give them resources, allow them (encourage them!) to attend language classes, allow them to practice, etc. It is so easy to allow learning your host language to become not-that-important, especially if your children are homeschooled or go to an international school, but in my experience, TCKs who learn the language of their host country never regret it! This blog post has some suggestions for helping your kids become bilingual, particularly if they are teens or young adults.
2. Younger children learn languages very fast - please don't be threatened by this! --this is from my own experience. I learned languages very fast as a child, so I became far more proficient far faster than my parents -- particularly one parent (the other one has more of a natural language-learning ability). For some time, we took language classes together as a family, but my faster language learning made it hard for my parents to feel confident in their language ability, and the family lessons soon transitioned to just mom and dad going to class while my brother and I stayed with a babysitter.
I did still learn our host language to some extent, but certainly never to the level of fluency that I could have if I had continued taking classes. As a result, I did not make friends as easily or fit in as well as I could have. My parents have expressed regret that their decision to continue language school without me or my brother resulted in those difficulties for us.
As a parent, please try to remember that children naturally do learn languages faster. Perhaps you need to attend a separate language class from them in order to learn better, but please let them take classes of some sort -- don't discourage their language learning because it is difficult for you to see them learn so quickly!
3. Once a person is bilingual, that second language is a part of their thought process all the time, whether conscious or not - understand that both languages are a part of "your" TCK's identity and thought process.
Several experiments have been done which indicate that even if a bilingual person is thinking and speaking in only one language, their second (or first) language is still active in their minds. It affects the way that they think. Marian and Spivey (2003) call this "between-language competition" or "parallel activation of languages." Fancy terms for "both languages compete for space in your brain all the time."
I'm not completely sure what all this means in everyday life and thought (another blog post coming up on that), but I do know that when my husband respects the fact that my identity includes more than just English, I feel better known and loved. Sometimes this is by letting me listen to music in another language without complaining, sometimes by not making fun of me when I call things by non-American or non-English names. However it might play out, the idea is to realize and respect that more than one language is active in "your" TCK's mind.
4. The only recoreded disadvatage to being bilingual is slightly smaller vocabulary in each language, and slower access to words and phrases (Bialystok & Criak, n.d.) - so be patient when we can't think of the word for the thing.
This one gets me a lot, ironically. Ironically, since I am a very verbose person (to put it lightly), who talks a lot with a lot of words and has a huge vocabulary (probably due to the massive amount of reading I seem to be addicted to). But, especially when I get tired or stressed or distracted, I lose nouns. I just... misplace them. In my brain. They go missing. It is like I go to retrieve them and have to go rummaging through 5 more drawers to see where I might have put them and by the time I find them, the conversation has moved along and they are no longer necessary and I look like an idiot because I can only speak in half-sentences that have no nouns in them. My words (ask my family!) usually go something like this:
"Honey, where is the..... (motions indicating object) ... you know, so I can sweep the.... because of the... oh, you know!!!"
Except my husband is awesome, and has learned this about me, and helps. So it actually goes like this:
"Honey, where is the....." "broom?" "Yes! so I can sweep the...." "kitchen?" "Yes! because of the..." "children who have made a giant mess?" "Exactly! thank you." "It's right over there." "Ah. I see that now."
I also often make up words on the spot that seem to fit the ticket (the ticket of my missing noun, that is) ... which usually makes people laugh. They think I'm being funny. I just roll with it.
"Can I please have the... scraper...flippy...fliperator thingy?" "....the spatula?" "Yes. that."
This particular issue does not seem to affect all bilinguals equally. My husband, for examply, is actually bilingual, but he (1) acquired his second language later in life, and therefore does not have items floating around in his brain with three or more equally attached names for it that tend to go missing, and (2) talks slower than I do. So his brain actually has time to retrieve words and deliver them to his mouth before he needs them.
5. That second (or first) language really is part of "your" TCK's identity -- so maybe you should make an effort to learn it! Or maybe you shouldn't. The point is - be aware of that portion of their identity, whatever you decide to do about it. My husband has not learned my "first second" language (Fijian) -- it is extremely complicated, for one thing, and for another, it is pretty useless in any part of the world other than the Fiji Islands. However, he did learn my "second second" language, when we lived in Papua New Guinea for two years. His learning that language did wonders for our relationship, since he now knows what it is like to have two languages competing for space in your brain, we speak a common extra language (great for secret communication), and he also has some "expat" experience.
Also, when we were first dating, he learned to say "I love you" in Afrikaans (the language my father grew up speaking, and taught us some of). Just that one phrase in a language than means something to me is wonderful to hear from my spouse!
What do you think? Any more suggestions for how to care for your Bilingual TCK?
Resources:
Marian, V., Spivey, M. (2003) . Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within- and between-language competition. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/S1366728903001068. Retrieved from: http://www.bilingualism.northwestern.edu/bilingualism-psycholinguistics/files/competing.pdf
Bialystok, E. & Craik, F. (n.d.). Cognitive and Linguistic Processing in the Bilingual Mind. Department of Psychology York University. Retrieved from: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/cd/19_1_inpress/Bialystok_final.pdf?lan=ayajzqechdlh
http://www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk/learning-learning-spouses-language-children-greek-family-dinner-table/
http://www.speakingofchina.com/china-articles/why-its-a-really-bad-idea-to-teach-your-spouse-your-language/
ttp://www.speakingofchina.com/china-articles/why-its-a-really-bad-idea-to-teach-your-spouse-your-language/