With the current academic year now well underway, some Spanish-speaking and bilingual parents may worry about their children losing their “home” language as they interact with peers and participate in school lessons solely in English.
Though the current political climate doesn’t support bilingualism or multilingual education – President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring English the official national language and has proposed defunding English learner programs, among other actions – 95% of non-English-speaking families and 55% of English-speaking ones believe it’s important for their kids to grow up speaking more than one language, according to a 2025 study by the Century Foundation.
Diego Roman, associate professor of bilingual and bicultural education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said there are numerous long-term advantages of being bilingual or multilingual, such as expanded career opportunities and maintaining cultural ties. There are cognitive benefits as well: better focus and ability to multitask; stronger memory and problem-solving; and research shows that multilingualism delays the onset of dementia, said Roman.
Parents and caretakers who want to encourage their child to be bilingual can do several things to help foster their learning and language retention, explained Roman, noting that it helps to understand the primary ways children acquire two different languages while growing up.
“There are two types of bilinguals or multilinguals,” he said. “The first one is simultaneous bilinguals, which are children who are born in families who speak more than one language. These children start learning more than one language [from] birth, and the second one … is called sequential bilinguals, who are people who acquire one language [first], and then … another one.”
Studies on language acquisition “have informed the curriculum [of] dual language immersion programs,” which allow students to learn regular school subjects in two different languages – English and a partner language, such as Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, French or German. There are both public and private schools that offer dual immersion instruction, including Los Angeles Unified School District schools in the San Fernando Valley, such as Gridley-Montañez Dual Language Academy and Vista del Valle Dual Language Academy in the City of San Fernando.
While these types of schools offer ideal foundations for cultivating bilingualism, they can be difficult to get into because there are limited seats for these increasingly popular programs, said Roman. But parents can still support their child’s bilingual development, starting in the home.
“The most important thing for parents and caregivers to do is just to … use their language [in the] home with their kids,” said Roman. He suggests the same to his students – whatever their background or linguistic heritage, whether it’s Spanish, German or any other language. “Talk to your parents … and try to sustain it at home. … Any language can be supported in the home.”
In addition, parents can identify activities that their children enjoy – fun social activities, watching shows or movies, or visiting websites that are kid-friendly – that are presented in their family’s heritage language or depict children their age communicating in that specific language.
Regardless, bilingual children can start “losing” their Spanish or other home language when they begin school in a traditional English-dominant setting, because English becomes the required language for learning and the young brain adapts to the language it hears most during the day. Many kids also feel swayed by peer pressure to fit in with their English-speaking classmates.
As a parent himself, Roman acknowledged he has seen this happen firsthand. His son was born in California, and they later moved to Texas – two states with large Latino communities, where “it was easier for us to find families with children my son’s age, so we [could] all interact in both English and Spanish,” he recalled. His son also attended bilingual schools in both states.
“But when we moved to Wisconsin, the number of bilingual schools [became] more limited,” said Roman, noting that his son currently attends school with an English-only academic curriculum. “So he has fewer opportunities to use his Spanish in academic settings.”
When students don’t have the option to attend a dual language or bilingual school, it “creates more work for the family or caregivers to find or create [different ways] in which their [heritage] language – in my son’s case, Spanish – is used beyond just family interactions,” he said.
To achieve that, Roman said he finds Spanish books from Ecuador, Roman’s native country, to read together with his son and they also watch science shows in Spanish from Latin America. The goal is to find opportunities for his son to “continue using his Spanish in an academic way.”
Some parents may worry that raising their child to speak two languages may set them back academically, but that’s not the case, emphasized Roman. At the start, when a child is learning a second language, there may appear to be a delay because the student is not demonstrating their full understanding of select school subjects, especially if they’re only being tested in English.
“Any of us, if we were … acquiring another language and we are tested in that [new] language, we will not be able to show all of our knowledge and skills,” explained Roman. “So sometimes when parents and teachers are worried, most of the time it’s because the testing and assessments are … done in English when the child, for example, [predominantly] speaks Spanish at home.
“We have seen studies that have shown that when children are tested in their [home] language … then this kind of gap in academics [is] completely erased,” he added, showing there is no real difference in academic performance. In fact, he added, some studies indicate that multilingual students perform better over time when both languages are used for instruction and testing.
The bottom line, stressed Roman, is that “being multilingual is beneficial and beautiful.”
“We live in a huge country in the United States, in which English is the main language used” – but, he noted, being monolingual is actually “unusual” and largely not the norm elsewhere.
“If we go to Europe, there are so many different languages [spoken across] very small regions,” said Roman, who believes that being multilingual is “the common default setting in our world.”
“I love to talk with people who speak more than one language,” he continued. “I am fascinated by how we communicate ideas and connect with people using language. … To me, the fascination of how we do that as humans is amazing.”