The Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Bilingual Individual
The Autism Spectrum Disorders and the Bilingual Individual Given the increasing number of bilingual children in the United States, and the increasing frequency of autism diagnoses, there is surprisingly little information available for clinicians who work with children who are “on the spectrum” from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds What s the question: How do I help these kids navigate the social constructs of two or more cultures?
To Be or Not to Be Bilingual: Autistic Children
from Multilingual Families
Typically, parents of high functioning autistic
(HFA) children report that, unlike normal children, their children display very
little language and sometimes no language at all as they reach three and even
four years of age (Sigman& Capps,1997; parents’ interviews 1998). In many
cases the lack of language provokes parents to seek professional assessment.
After eliminating hearing problems as the cause for language impairment, many
parents bring their children to a developmental clinic for a diagnosis. Upon
diagnosis of autism parents send their children to speech therapy and with time
and effort the children improve their language skills.
Parents whose native language is other than
English indicated2 that they were advised upon diagnosis of autism in their
child to speak only one language to their child, namely English regardless of
the parents' English proficiency. Parents understood that English should be the
language of choice to ensure the child's exposure to the same language inside
and outside the home. This way, clinicians attempted to ensure that the child
was exposed to "simplified" linguistic input in order to facilitate
language learning and use. For these professionals simplified input meant
exposure to one language only, English.
The following two excerpts taken from
interviews with mothers of HFA children exhibit the change in language use
those families made.
Interviewer
Mother
When did
you stop speaking Armenian to him? Mother
As soon
as I um knew about- um almost four years we started.
We
turned the languages at home from Armenian to English.
Interviewer Mother
So -so
what made you do that at four?
Um because I did not want to confuse the kid.
Interviewer Mother
It was your
idea?
It was the
doctor told me that that it might be better.
Mother
He was like
age four. In order to help him move forward a little faster to make her- to
make him speech can catching up as same age kids I- she [the clinician]
suggested we need to use English more often.
