Speaking in Multiple Languages helps Kid Autism Cure

[paaparao]

Post from indian expats group where kid made very good progress after following few steps including speaking in multiple languages.

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Reversing Autism/ADHD

Hello Everyone,

I want to share with you my personal experience with autism of my child - her symptoms were speech delay, social delay, obsessivenes, low tone, no pretend play, staring at space. She was diagnosed with autism at the age 2 and after 3.5 yrs she will finally be taken off diagnosis at age 5.5. So please don’t lose hope.

Early intervention is everything!!

Things we did were -

1. ABA therapy 3 days a week - 2 hrs each and highly focused on speech and pretend plays.

2. Speech therapy and physical therapy twice a week

3. Swimming twice a week

4. Gymnastics once a week

5. Social play dates once a week

6. Preschool 5 days a week with focus on playing

7. Music

8. Diet - no gluten and no dairy. Vitamin D, B13, calcium, ayurvedic ( Saraswatarista)

9. Conversing in multiple languages to allow her to process and switch - made her brian work very hard. Don’t go with people saying multiple languages lead to autism!! It DOES NoT!!

10. Hand in hand - made her repeat, held her hands and made her do things. First she would script but it became natural later. Now she doesn’t script at all.

It can get very expensive but as a family, I and my husband decided to use our savings on early intervention.

In addition to all this, we both read several books on how to do therapies ourselves. We made goals and were heavily invested in working with BcBA on defining goals. I also took FMLA from work. I know it’s too much for others but trust me, early intervention will do wonders. Don’t be in denial please. Just get help and be aggressive about it. All the did with my child for good 2yrs was to talk, play, talk and play. We took turns to talk to her and my older child taught her pretend plays.

Now at 5, my daughter speaks 3 languages, can read books on her own, can make friends and conversations, can join groups and initiate conversations, can transition easily and can let go!!

Read book : Turn Autism by Mary Lynch Barbera.

Please watch her videos for hope!!

Please invest in early intervention!! Early recognition and acceptance is the best gift you can give your child. Be an advocate to your child - they deserve it.

I hope someone is inspired by my message here.

Added-

Thank you for all the love. Point of this post hopefully reaches to those new parents who got diagnosed and feel helpless. I want to give you hope but at the same time, make this your fight against time. 80% brian developments happens between Ages 2-5, use that and don’t give up. When I went through it, I didn’t see light at the end of the tunnel. What you don’t see if the career I & my husband gave up, and the compromises my older one who was 5 because she had to grow up quickly but I am so happy we all did that because we have a child that is now absolutely loving, thriving and is everyone’s favourite and in her own words “ very funny”.

Make measurable goals for each day. Write social stories, be positive because kids feel it even if they don’t communicate, teach them how to play - one pretend play at a time ( making coffee, making baby sleep), potty train early and start teaching them to read because that’s a great way to build up vocabulary. If it doesn’t work, you have at least tired. Don’t listen to any noise or anyone that says nothing can be done. Without trying we will never know how it will turn around.

[paaparao]

Multilingual children have better executive function skills, study finds

The effect was even stronger for multilingual kids with autism spectrum disorder diagnoses, according to researchers.

February 8, 2025

2 min

85

 

(iStock)

By Erin Blakemore

Speaking more than one language may benefit children’s executive function — especially those with autism spectrum disorder, a recent analysis suggests.

The study, published in Autism Research, looked at 116 children ages 7 through 12. Of those, 53 had autism spectrum disorder and 63 did not, though four children were later excluded. Twenty-one of the children with ASD spoke more than one language, and 35 of the typically developing children were multilingual. Most of the multilingual children spoke English and Spanish, though some spoke Portuguese, Hebrew, French, Japanese or Bulgarian in addition to English.

 

 

The researchers tested the children’s executive function abilities and asked parents to fill out questionnaires assessing autism symptoms such as perspective taking — the ability to understand perspectives other than one’s own — and social communication.

 

 

The multilingual children all demonstrated better executive function than their counterparts who spoke just one language, regardless of whether they were on the autism spectrum. But the effect was stronger for multilingual kids with ASD diagnoses, who had significantly higher impulse control than their single-language counterparts on the autism spectrum.

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The research also found a “direct and indirect association between multilingualism and perspective taking.” This could be because people who speak more than one language must assess social cues to decide which language to speak or that their knowledge of more than one language comes with a higher ability to understand language itself, the researchers said.

Multilingual children’s executive functions could be honed by the need to choose the right language to speak, the researchers write.

 

 

“If you have to juggle two languages, you have to suppress one in order to use the other,” Lucina Uddin, who was a professor at the University of Miami during the research, said in a news release. “That’s the idea, that inhibition — or the ability to stop yourself from doing something — might be bolstered by knowing two languages,” said Uddin, now a professor of psychiatry and developmental psychology at UCLA.

Encouraging multilingualism at home could benefit kids with autism spectrum disorders, the researchers conclude, and could even provide a “natural intervention” for some types of executive function.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/08/autism-multilingual-language-executive-function/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIsCJpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHduLIE1cRgcickw6xmxAXPGOhaEe2uHNGAZRecDWTMenM-9rxv-nQyjV5g_aem_IYHpb7qclQg7jadYfO1hgA