Do Bilingual and Multilingual Children Speak Later than their Peers?

Kate Morling, Bilingual Speech Therapy and founder of Communicate with Kate, talks about speech delays and bilingualism.

This week we had the great pleasure of welcoming Kate Morling, Founder and Senior Speech Therapist at Communicate with Kate, to speak with our team about speech and language disorders in both children and adults (more to come on adults). 

Kate’s passion for early intervention and accurate information was inspiring - especially as she highlighted how deeply speech challenges can become intertwined with self-esteem, mental health, and behaviour. When kid’s can’t communicate, it’s impacts how they feel about themselves and their relationships. So it’s not uncommon for children to benefit from both speech and psychological therapy.

🎤 One key takeaway?

There’s a persistent myth that bilingualism causes speech delays — and that parents of bilingual kids “shouldn’t worry” if their child isn’t talking as much as others. If you’ve ever been on a Facebook page for parents in Mexico, you’ll often see posts along the lines of “My child isn’t talking, should I be worried?” and a host of comments afterwards responding along the lines of “My child learned multiple languages and didn’t say a word until they were three, and then all the languages came out at once! Don’t worry - it’s normal to speak late if they’re learning multiple languages.” 

Here’s the truth:

👉 If a bilingual child is expected to have 20 words, they may have 10 in English and 10 in Spanish — that’s still meeting the milestone. To a someone speaking to them in just one language, they may look behind (because we're only hearing 10 of their words), but they’re actually right on track. 

👉 But if they’re not speaking at all by that point, or are way behind the expected milestones even when each language is taken into the count, then bilingualism isn’t the reason.

Most of the world is multilingual (about 60%). Most of the world does not have a speech or language day. Bilingualism and Multilingualism do not lead to speech or language delays. 

Some children do catch up naturally - such as the above example. That really happens sometimes! You will hear many true stories of children who were delayed in their speech and spontaneously recovered. However many don’t — and for those kids, early support is crucial. We often don't know which children are going to spontaneously catch up and which aren't. So having an evaluation and getting some intervention happening earlier is critical. For those who won't spontaneously catch up, if the intervention is left till later in life, the gap between them and their peers has often grown and grown and it's much harder to 'catch up' at that point.

We’re so grateful to Kate for sharing her wisdom and for being such a strong advocate for children’s development. Her mission is clear: get the right help, at the right time — not years down the track when problems have compounded. In summary, if your child is not speaking or is behind, always reach out to a professional speech therapist and ask for an evaluation. A stitch in time truly saves nine!

If you'd like to learn more about Communicate with Kate, speech therapy specialists in Mexico City, Mexico, with a specilisation in bilingualism and multilingualism, and speech and language in a cross-cultural environment, please visit them here.