Parents love hearing that their child is special. We see the won- derful aspects of our children and it is fulfilling when others
notice those special qualities too. But
throw in the word “needs” and the pride
we feel turns to fear. Our minds start rac-
ing with questions: What kind of special
needs? How bad is it? Will my child grow
out of it? What do I need to do to help my
child? Will I be able to afford what I need
to do? Will my insurance cover it? One
question that I suspect would not enter
most parents’ thoughts would be “Will I
still be able to teach my child a foreign
language?”
Every family is given their dose of
unique and unexpected challenges. Mine
certainly did. With three boys, we have
dealt with an expressive speech issue, a
receptive speech disability, and ADHD
– manifesting itself three different ways.
Just writing this I have to remind myself
to take a breath.
It started when my first son was a tod-
dler. I noticed that he wasn’t keeping up
with the other toddlers in our playgroup.
They were crawling, walking, and speaking and he wasn’t. He skipped crawling
altogether, walked late, but the worst was
when he tried to talk. He could only say
a word at a time and his articulation was
unintelligible to all but me. I wanted to
deny what was going on. It was so much
easier to believe what family and close
friends were telling me—that he would
grow out of it—but my gut gnawed at me
telling me this was a real concern that I
could not ignore.
On a positive note, my son did not
share my concern. He was happy as could
be and fortunately, did not experience
any of the frustration that he easily could
have. As opportunity would have it, with
my love of languages, I had taught him
baby sign language when he was very
young so he was always able to communicate his needs and wants to us despite
his speech limitations.
We started speech therapy. It was pain-
ful seeing him struggling to speak. He had
a motor planning delay which meant that
he had difficulty with sequencing, which
is why he never crawled, because crawling
requires moving your arms and legs in a
certain sequence which he couldn’t do. In
speech, motor planning manifested itself
with my son’s difficulty stringing words
together. While he could say “yellow”
(with poor articulation) and “bus”, he
could not say the words together.
He enjoyed therapy, though, and was
making progress, but it was slow and I
was frightened for him. I was also disap-
pointed because I had always planned on
teaching my children foreign language
early and now I might have to abandon
those plans. I knew too well the difficulty
of learning a foreign language at an ol-
der age. I began French at thirteen and
it was too late. My report card suggested
I had skill with French but in reality, my
comprehension and ability to converse,
which is what really matters, was lousy.
I asked the therapist about my son
learning French. She discouraged it. I
did a lot of research and her discourage-
ment didn’t make sense to me. Research
Special Needs plus
Foreign Language—
Helpful or
Harmful?
by Kit Strauss
Research has found that early
learning of a foreign language makes
a child’s brain stronger, larger, more
robust and more flexible.
