Child Development 101: Little Polyglots Have Big Benefits

Asked whether he'll confuse the three languages later on, Antonini responds confidently, "By age 3, he'll have it sorted out." Recent studies have shown that being bilingual at an early age has its advantages, and some parents are making sure their children don't miss out.

Among the benefits researchers have documented in bilingual infants is an enhanced ability to focus and a stronger attention span. Bilingual babies are more perceptive to other languages, even those they don't know and the brain's executive control system enables bilinguals to keep two distinct languages separate, according to research. Children who are bilingual use this system more frequently than their monolingual peers, thus strengthening it and enabling them to perform better on some cognitive tasks, according to a New York Times article.

San Francisco pediatric psychologist Sunny Im-Wang notes that the executive functioning system is responsible for problem-solving and inhibitory control skills, both of which are associated with academic success. Toddlers who socialize well and can express their needs tend to fare better in school.

Antonini, a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Languages and Linguistics and founder of Early Lingo, a language-teaching tool for children as young as 6 months, notes that babies are born with the ability to make all the sounds from any of the 6,000-plus languages in the world. "Parents shouldn't worry about their toddlers confusing two or more languages," she says. "You have only to look at Europe, where multiple languages are [taught in school], to see that it works."

So what should parents do if they want their toddler to become bilingual? Susanna Zaraysky, a former English teacher to non-English speaking students, who speaks seven languages, suggests parents get actively involved in the process by singing foreign-language songs with their children, watching movies or programs in the second language and reading bilingual books together. Most important is having fun, says Zaraysky, author of Language is Music, a book about language acquisition through music and media. "When parents get too didactic, language becomes a chore."