dysTalk Children With Dyspraxia And Bilingual Education - Dyspraxia - Forum - dysTalk

Anyone have any experience or insight into children with dyspraxia and bilingual education? My son is 4. I spoke to him in english until 1 year ago when all drs and therapists recommend i switch to one language. Since we live in a spanish speaking country where he goes to nursery school in spanish and is around spanish speaking people mostly, including his father, we swtiched to spanish. Problem is most schools are now bilingual (or catholic and we're not). My son understands english perfectly as i continue to speak to my older daughter in english. But he responds mostly in spanish.

18/01/2011 00:38:27
Brendaps

My dyspraxic son has been going through a bilingual education (welsh / english) since he was 3 and it hasn't hurt him or contributed to his condition beneficially or negatively beyond confusion over spelling. the benefits of having two languages are huge compared to the slight extra work. if you concentrate on just speaking in one and let him continue to do all his school work and general day to day in spanish he will thank you later on.

01/05/2011 16:54:11
Welshmum

My son is dyspraxic and he is completely bilingual in french and english, he is learning german that he loves and he studied chinese for a few years as he wanted to. He was never under pressure to learn languages, it is his personal interest to do so. All i am trying to say here, is even if his writing is not great in all these languages ,it gives him lots of self confidence to speak several languages and even though i was told he would never speak a foreign language it is happening.....

07/06/2011 20:56:33
mum

Hi, I'm 19 and have dyspraxia. I attended Welsh first language education until I was 11 and then bilingual education until I was 16.

I spoke only English at home and only Welsh in school but barely spoke either language for years because I kept muddling the two up and feeling acutely embarrassed. Now I barely speak Welsh which is a shame and also I would say that the whole experience has had a negative impact on my ability to construct sentences and my confidence at an important stage of my education/life.

From my experience, learning two languages one that is 'back-to-front' from the other (as Welsh is to English as Spanish is to English and as apparently most European languages are to English) made learning the basics of sentence construction and grammar very difficult.

I'm sure there is plenty of research on the subject, with pro's and con's to bilingual education and every child will have a different experience but I thought I'd share mine.

17/07/2011 19:47:35
Student

We suspect our 7.5 year old son has Dyspraxia . He has problems with handwriting & written spelling ( due to handwriting ) no problem with oral spelling , problems putting on shoes & socks , can't cut up his food , and can't ride a bike , however he is an excellent swimmer and a confident , fluent reader . We are Irish Exparts living in HK and our son attends a small private international school that teaches 45 mins per day of Mandarin. Our son is very comfortable with writing / reading this language and writes the chinese symbols beautifully ( we have many samples framed on display in our home ) . wonder if anyone else has experienced this ?? .

07/01/2012 02:00:03
Morag McGinn