SPEECH DELAY IN MULTILINGUAL FAMILY

A child could experience speech delay caused by physical or environmental factors (Syamsuardi, 2015: 68). Physical health factor, such as abnormalities from birth, can cause speech delay in a child. Asphyxia, seizures and oropharyngeal deformities are examples of health factors which often result in the risk of speech delay in children. In addition, environmental factors also affect the ability of a child to speak. The immediate environment, the family, plays an important role in a child's ability to speak. Parental education, kinship, stimulation provided to children and family background are some of the things that affect a child's ability to speak. (Sunderajan and Kanhere, 2019: 1643).

Talking about family background, the parents’ background is very important to note because it is related to the mother tongue or language used by parents. In a case of multilingual family residing in Singapore, it was found that the only child in the family experienced speech delay until the age of eight. Certainly, this would be a concern for the parents, considering that a child should have started talking at the age of 11 to 14 months. Other concern is that at the age of eight, the child was study in a primary school. The speech delay could affect his education and social life. In this case it was found that the father was French and the mother was Indonesian. The language used by the father is English while the mother uses Bahasa. The interesting thing that caused this family to become a multilingual family was that the maid who worked in their home is Filipino and communicate in Tagalog.

The child experienced speech delay which was very likely caused by language confusion. Interestingly, language confusion was not caused by the many input types of language he received, but the inconsistency of language use. The inconsistency can be described as follows. The father who daily used English to communicate often used Bahasa when communicating with the child. Likewise, the mother who daily used Bahasa often used English when communicating with the child. Because of the limited skill to speak English, the house maid also often used Tagalog when communicating with the child. This can cause confusion for the child that encourages the emergence of speech delay.

This becomes interesting when both parents decided to consult with a child growth and development expert. The expert suggested that each family member should consistently use one language in communicating with the child. This aims to give the child a consistent pattern of communication within the family. Father must be consistent in using only English in communicating with child, mother must be consistent in using only Bahasa and the house maid must consistently use only Tagalog.

The result of the application of the consistent use of language by each family member caused a very significant change in the child's speaking ability. In less than 6 months, the child could speak three languages ​​fluently; English, Bahasa and Tagalog. The most important thing that becomes the key to success in implementing this language consistency is that the child can absorb the right information from every language, in terms of pronunciation, intonation and language structure of the native speaker. No less important in the consistency of language used is that the child has a great opportunity to hear and speak using these three languages ​​(Byers-Heinlein, K. and Lew-Williams, 2013: 112).

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Byers-Heinlein, K. and Lew-Williams, C. 2013. Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says. LEARNing Landscapes Journal, Autumn 7(1): 95–112.

Sunderajan, T. and Kanhere, S. V. 2019. Speech and language delay in children: Prevalence and risk factors. Journal of Family Medicine Primary Care, May; 8(5): 1642–1646.

Syamsuardi. 2015. Speech Delay and Its Affecting Factors (Case Study in a Child with Initial Aq). Journal of Education and Practice, 6 (32): 68-71.