Interesting. I see some of the same issues with DS6, diagnosed with an expressive language disorder last year, raised bilingual French (home) and English (community) and enrolled in a Spanish immersion program since K.
I can go in more details on his history through PM if you are interested
Yes please
1) most ST who are not familiar with multilingual kids try to simplify the problem by asking families to go monolingual. The test instruments are not normed with bilingual kids, monolingual STs can't assess functioning across multiple language, it makes problem much too complicated for lost people.
This is something that had concerned me - that the testing material would be designed for monolingual kids and his results wouldn't be accurate because of that. In the end the doctor said the results were inaccurate because of his behaviour, which made sense as well.
2) the one ST we have talked with who deals with lots of multilingual kids told me that language disorders are problem with language acquisition mechanisms and not specific to a given language. So the same problem will show across all languages -- you were right about that.
Yes... I think this makes so much sense. In the info sessions for the program before the kids are in KG, they use this catch phrase: "How goes the first language, so goes the second."
On that note, I thought DS would be ok because... hmmm, where do I start... let's just say I have no experience with "typical" so I had to guess. There are a lot of odd milestones for both my kids, but for brevity's sake, here are just a couple:
DD(now 9) - mastered alphabet at 16 months (would scan and point on request) before she'd say a single word (24 months); was writing letters (26 months) before she was fully potty trained (28 months) ...so she was a little atypical (I stopped referring to the baby books when she was three and reading and writing full sentences)
DS(now 8) - alphabet mastery - not sure, but at 24 months (within a day of his second birthday) he started speaking (not a word before then) by handing me alphabet blocks and naming them. I'm thinking "aw, he does know them. He's a little late, but.." (??). At three he was sounding out three letter words.
He was definitely delayed compared to his sister, but still a bit ahead of the norm, so I felt safe with the language immersion idea.
3) there seems (no hard data there I could find) that learning multiple languages could help with some meta-cognition skills that could in turn help with the language issues.
I've heard this too. In fact our psychologist did her thesis on language immersion, and she mentioned meta-cognition benefits.
You know what's interesting? When he started KG, the teacher said that he seemed more comfortable in the French environment than the other kids. I am now wondering if that's because he was simply used to his brain "scrambling" language and the transition was easier for him than for the typical kids who were taken aback by the new sounds.
4) kids learn how to compensate. The brighter, the better. There might be a cost (they can spend a lot of energy compensating).
Yes
He seems to sleep well at night, lol (as opposed to his sister, who is perpetually wired!)
I think it is great that you identified visual support as a potential helping mechanism.
I'm glad to have that ace up my sleeve. It would have been hard to miss, actually... from a very young age he seemed to be able to "think with his eyes" ...advanced puzzles, mazes, etc.
