Linguistic intelligence is one kind of human’s multiple intelligences.  Language development is very important, especially when a child is young, because a child’s language develops along with his/her brain /cognitive development.  Without language competence, children will not be able to learn new things, and without language competence, children will never be fully competent communicators.  That is why almost all students with special needs are accompanied with language problems.   www.6park.com
Bilingual children have to deal with much more complex language environment, they have more chance to become a language disorder, learning disability, communicate disorder and emotional and behavioral disorder.  www.6park.com
How many bilingual people are there in America?  In 2003, about 15% of school aged children in the United States spoke a language other than English at home and the number grows each year.  It is projected that by 2035, about 50% of the kindergarten children in California will speak languages other than English at home.  To face the social need that come along with the new bi-lingual population, we need more bilingual pediatrics, more language therapists, more bilingual teachers, more bilingual counselors and more bilingual psychologists.  www.6park.com
Now let us discuss the challenges and strategies through three cases.  I will focus on the language issues especially.   www.6park.com
Case 1:   Ken, 3 years old. His heritage language is Spanish. His father is from Puerto Rico. His mother is from Brazil. When Ken was 1 year old, his parents divorced.  Ken lived with his mom.  Every two weeks Ken goes to visit his dad at his dad’s new family.  Ken’s mom runs a small cleanup company; she is normally very busy so her young sister (Ken’s aunt) came from Brazil to help to take care of Ken.  Ken’s aunt is also an ESL speaker.  When Ken was 3 years old, he still did not speak, either English or Spanish.   www.6park.com
Problems: Many bilingual infants begin to speak late. Boys are more than girls.  www.6park.com
Analysis: It is a common understanding that human infants are born with a biologically endowed innate language faculty.  However no children can speak at the time when he/she was born. The wild children can never master human languages.  A child with hearing impairment sees speaking impairment with much greater chance. It means the language environment – language input is a very important factor we have to take into account. www.6park.com
If we set X is a standard of language input quality that a child can begin to speak a language, then a bilingual child has only X/2  or less quantity of language input for one language comparing to a regular child with only one language exposure.  That is why bilingual children usually have speech delay problem.  It is my hypothesis that lack of language input is one of the etiologies for children with language impairments. www.6park.com
I visited Preschool-Primary Learning Center (PLC) at CES which is a regional special education program for children from 3-10 years of age who fall within the Autism Spectrum Disorder continuum or who exhibit severe language impairment.  There are 8 classes and total 40 students of which 5 have bilingual family background. In fact, when parents or educators found a child has language problem, they usually begin to speak a singular language to the child.  For example X is one friend of mine whose son was diagnosed with autism.  She switched to speak only English to her son, even though she continue to speak Chinese to her daughter because she wants her daughter to be dual language speaker.  www.6park.com
Solution:      Increasing the effective quality of language input.
Not all language environments are effective language input. Such as that some parents use TV to take care infants. There have been many report show that TV is one reason which causes children’s language delay.  What is effective quality of language input for human infants?  These qualities include: 
。	correct and meaningful 
。	slow and clear 
。	level to the children’s cognitive characters suitable for his/her age
。	easy to understand 
。	interest, with fun, can attract children’s attention  www.6park.com
Now I’d like to introduce an excellent set of English learning materials which is Disney’s World of English by Anne R. Dow from Harvard University and Dr. Diane Warshawsky.  The set of material was designed for children of 0-10 years’ old in non-English speaking countries.  I purchased DWE for my first daughter when she was three month.  When she was one and half years’ old we came to America. Comparing to other children’s TV programs, my daughter liked DWE DVDs more until she became 3 years old. Although my little one was born in America, she was like her elder sister on this matter.  She also used and liked DWE up to when she became three years old. After 3 year years old they became more interested in regular children programs on TV such as PBS kids, etc.  DWE gave my two daughters’ good English foundation - language comprehension, clear pronunciation, correct grammar, and basic vocabulary. It proved a good learning support for ESL children, even native English speaking children with special needs children. www.6park.com
Cases2: Zhou was born in China.  When Zhou came to Miami, FL as a 5-years-old, he was frightened and restless.  In the first coupe of years, he was afraid to talk to his teachers and he even refused to answer questions.  He only nodded his head to mean yes and shook his head to mean no.  His marks were always “D” and “C”. His teachers suggested that he stay behind. Everybody thought he was strange. His teachers doubted if he had autism and threatened to bring him to see a psychiatrist.  Many times, he had to stay at classroom to be observed at breaks. He had no friends and couldn’t attend any interesting activities. He was deeply disappointed and lack confidence in himself.  He remained this situation until third grade. www.6park.com
Analysis: In fact, it needs at least one year for bilingual children to adapt to a new school. In Zhou’s situation, he had been 3 years as a silence child.  When a transferred bilingual child meets the grade placement at school, the principal or the teacher usually suggests him/her to the lower grade.  Many  immigrants send their before-school-aged children to home country.  If the mom is householder, usually they will let the child stay at home or go to part time preschool. So did many America families. It is not the best choice for children’s development. www.6park.com
At first, many psychology think 3 or 2.9 years old is a critical period for children to have   collective spirit and to learn how to community with others.(In Massachussats, most preschools accept children from 2.9 years old.).  Once passed this age, children will see more difficulty to fit society.  In Japan, for children to get preschool education, appointed preschools can be subsidized by the state.  Depending upon the family’s income tuition is around 50$-200$/ month.  www.6park.com
Secondly, for bilingual students, 3 years old is the best time for them to enroll in full day preschool and catch up with other native English speaking children in language. From “Milestones in Language” in the first 6 years, a 3 and 4 years child only have a vocabulary of about 1,000 words.  The average 6-year-olds have a vocabulary of about 10,000 words. Per data from United Ways, by age 6 a child from a low –income family who had no formal pre-school experience had a vocabulary of approximately 3,000 words.  On the contrary, a child from a higher income family had a 20,000-word vocabulary. The English ability of bilingual children without preschool experience is lower than the native English speaking children from low-income family.  I enrolled both my two daughters in full time preschool when they were 3 and 4. When my older daughter went to kindergarten, she was tested and evaluated as fluent speaker of English. Now she is in third grade. Here is her academic achievement at grade 2 winter in reading and writing. 
	Full point	Goal 	School average 	Record
Reading  	30	20	21.7	27
DRP(Degrees of Reading Power)	75	32	39.9	61
Writing prompt	12	5.6	/	10 www.6park.com
For the same reason, my little daughter was registered in a full time preschool.  At the same time she was also enrolled into T Early Childhood Education Center ESL program which is a free program for T’s bilingual preschool children.  The bilingual program children met 2 half days per week when they are three years old. After one year, my little daughter was tested as a fluent English speaker and could not be able accepted by the ESL program.  It is strong evidence that, for a bilingual child, enrolling in a full day program with native English speaking children are much better and faster way for him/her to master English.   www.6park.com
There are two other programs in ECEC.  One is for low-income families, one is for special needs children. Although I really appreciate all efforts that ECEC did for Trumbull bilingual children, low-income children and special needs children, it ignored the characters that preschool-age children like to imitate adults and playmates – these imitation plays a large role in their growth and language development.  In special needs programs there were regular children as model.  These regular children can pay low-tuition to be registered in the program.  However, these regular children are in a minority situation in the special needs program; the chance for the regular children to receive negative effect from special needs children are much higher than that special needs children receive positive effect.  It is my suggestion that ECEC may open to all Trumbull preschool children and charge tuitions depending on family’s income, to bring in more children without special needs. www.6park.com
I do believe that “do not let children failed in the start line” is prerequisite of “do not let children behind school”.   www.6park.com
At last please enjoy my older daughter storied and pictured book “The Happy Alien Family” which got Excellent Award in the first children book design contest in Japan in 2005. 
http://sumai.judanren.or.jp/ehon/index.htm