Toddler talk?

Question

My son is mixed Hispanic/Laos/Thai
He has trouble talking sometimes mixing the languages together.
He is only 3. Should we look into speech therapy? I want him to be able to communicate well with other children when he starts school next year.

Answer 1

Is the only trouble that he is mixing languages? If he can speak well in any of the three langauges, then it is not a problem of language comprehension or speech. This is common in children from multi-lingual homes, and goes away as the child develops more proficiency in each language. If there is one language that will be your child's "primary" language, the one which he will be expected to speak well outside the home, start working more on that one. Sometimes it is helpful if the child speaks only one language with one adult in the home, and another with the other adult. This way, they learn how to separate out the sounds of each language, as well as learn the gramatical and sentence structure of each language. Speech therapy will help with children who are not comprehending the language spoken to them (they can't follow simple directions in the language) and with pronunciation of words in the language. If your child is understanding what you say, and can say words close to correct in the languages, then he probably will not need speech therapy, just time to sort out the differences between the languages and their structures.

Answer 2

My children are also mixed, we have a total of 3 different languages spoken in our home. Stick with a main language, but if you would like him to learn the other's, just through a few out at a time. He will catch on very quickly. My 2 year old does very well with this.

Answer 3

maybe you should only speak one language to him at a time I know you might want him to know them all but it must be confusing to him poor baby