حين لا يتكلّم الطفل بالقدر المتوقّع، أو حين يصعب على الآخرين فهم كلامه، من الطبيعي أن يخطر على بال الأهل أنّ اللغتين في البيت هما السبب. وكثير من العائلات يُقال لها ذلك صراحةً، أحياناً من أشخاص يثقون بهم. لذلك من المهم أن نقولها بوضوح: الأدلّة لا تدعم ذلك. الجواب المختصر تعلّم الطفل لغتين منذ الصغر […]
انتظار أن يتكلّم الطفل أمر صعب، ويزداد صعوبةً حين يختلف من حولكم في الرأي. أحدهم يقول امنحوه وقتاً. آخر يذكر ابن خالته الذي لم يتكلّم قبل الثالثة ثم صار بخير. وثالث يلمّح إلى أنّ السبب هو اللغتان. ولا شيء من هذا يخبركم بما ينبغي أن تفعلوه الآن. اللغتان لا تؤخّران بداية الكلام هذه النقطة تستحقّ […]
Waiting for a child to talk is hard, and it’s harder when everyone around you disagrees. One relative says give it time. Another mentions a cousin who didn’t speak until three and turned out fine. Someone else suggests it’s the two languages. None of that tells you what to do this month. Two languages don’t […]
Is speaking two languages causing my child’s speech delay? If your child isn’t talking as much as you expected, or their speech is hard for other people to follow, it’s common to wonder whether the two languages at home are behind it. Plenty of families are told exactly that, sometimes by people they trust. So […]
Good Arabic–English bilingual resources can be hard to find, so I’ve pulled together a list of genuinely free tools and references for assessment, intervention and supporting families. Search for “free bilingual speech therapy resources” and you’ll get plenty back. Search for anything built specifically around an Arabic-English caseload, and the results thin out fast, mostly […]
Arabic-speaking children follow a developmental timeline for speech sounds that’s completely different from English. Knowing what’s typical for each age—and each Arabic dialect—is essential for accurate assessment. If you’ve gone looking for straightforward, non-academic information on when Arabic-speaking children should be producing which sounds, you’ve probably come up close to empty-handed. Milestone charts online are […]
Not speaking a child’s home language doesn’t disqualify you from assessing them properly. It changes what “proper” looks like—and makes doing it well more defensible than trying to test in English alone. There’s a particular kind of dread that comes with opening a referral and seeing a home language you don’t speak. Arabic, Polish, Urdu, […]
Bilingualism doesn’t cause speech delays, but it does change what typical looks like—and that confusion leads to both missed diagnoses and unnecessary referrals. Here’s how to tell the difference. If you’ve ever sat across from a worried parent and heard “but he’s bilingual, maybe that’s just it,” you know how much weight that one sentence […]
