The advantages of a bilingual education
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Welcome to the Papa est Fatigué podcast. The podcast for dads by dads. In this episode, we discuss how we introduced our kids to bilingualism and our experiences as parents in bilingual education.
During this episode we discuss:
The benefits of being bilingual
How we introduced our kids to a second language early on
What is an immersion language program
Why we chose to put our kids in immersion language programs
What our experiences have been and any concerns we had/have in immersion language programs
Resources mentioned in the podcast:
The Effect of Dual-Language Immersion on Student Achievement in the Portland Public Schools
Dual-Language Immersion Programs Raise Student Achievement in English
5 Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism: The Bilingual Brain Advantage
If you like what you heard, please consider subscribing, writing a review, and sharing the podcast on social media.
Transcript:
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Dave: On this episode of the Papa est Fatigué Podcast, we'll be discussing our experience as parents with kids in an immersion language school. Hi, everyone. This is Dave from the Papa est Fatigué Podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. Today, Jim and I will be sharing our experiences around bilingualism and immersion language education, but before we get started, here's a little bit about us. I'm a father of two. I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old.
Jim: I'm Jim and I've got a seven-year-old and a five-year-old and they’re about two and a half years apart, and we don't speak a second language at home.
Dave: That's a nice way to preface this conversation. Let's kick this thing off with a few benefits of bilingualism, just to get some baseline information here, and there are a ton of benefits. We just pulled out a couple that we thought were interesting. The first one here is going to be that bilingual people show a greater ability to switch between different tasks, so they can more easily shift their mental state from one task to another without having any confusion or complication. Based on our reading of the research, it seems that that's a function of the fact that when a bilingual person is speaking in one language, the other language is actually still active, and they're constantly making the switch off between what is the right word to use to express what I'm thinking based on the context, based on who I'm speaking to, based on all of these different external inputs.
That seems to reinforce this ability to switch off between a number of different things. The other one that was interesting was that bilingual people perform better on tasks that require conflict management. We're not talking about fights or anything like that, but there is apparently a test called the Stroop task. In this task, the person is shown a card that has a word, and they're asked to name the color, and the conflict arises from-- In some instances, you'll have the word that it says red and the font is in red and the conflict here is if the word says red, but the font is in blue. That's the conflict and bilingual people are able to perform better on this task.
These types of cognitive benefits, they all lead to structural changes in the brain. That's fine and dandy, but how does that really affect the day-to-day life and what we're all as parents really concerned about?
There was a study that was done by Rand and the American Councils on International Education. What they found was that students who were randomly assigned to immersion programs, outperformed their peers in English reading by about seven months, by the time they were in fifth grade and nine months, by the time they hit eighth grade. What you're seeing in these bilingual kids is not only are they acquiring a second language, but they're gaining a greater mastery of English, the native language in this case at the same time.
I think some really powerful, interesting information there, and these benefits are seen across every student demographic. Whether they were affluent or low income, whether they were native speakers to the target language, or whether they were native English speakers, they all showed that same level of mastery of English reading relative to their peers. The benefits of bilingualism are seen quite early on. There's research that has shown that bilingualism can positively influence attention and conflict management in infants as young as seven months. You're really at an early stage, you're able to see the benefits, but the benefits are transmitted throughout life.
As we get older and we become adults, bilingual adults are able to learn a third language better than monolingual adults who learn a second language. Then at the far end of the spectrum here, bilingualism also appears to have an impact on delaying the decline of cognitive function. In a study of Alzheimer's patients, they looked at bilingual Alzheimer's patients versus monolingual Alzheimer's patients. For the bilingual Alzheimer's patients, they showed an initial symptom onset at 77.7 years old versus monolingual Alzheimer's patients who showed initial symptoms at 72.6 years of age. A five-year difference, which is pretty significant.
With all that being said, let's talk a little bit about our experience as it relates to bilingualism. Jim, we had talked about this. I think you have an interesting path. You guys started with American sign language and while probably technically that's not a second language, it feels like based on all the research that we looked at, the benefits of bilingualism probably accumulate in the same way when you're learning ASL as if you're taking on a second language. Why don't you talk a little bit about your experience with ASL?
Jim: You're right in that it's not a full second language. I don't think it's bilingualism, but it is a second way of expressing. I know a lot of parents have the baby sign language, the more, eat, bedtime, whatever it is and we actually took a class, my wife and I took a class and we learned American sign language. Our daughter-- I was trying to remember at what age, but at a very young age, she was expressing herself in full sentences, complex sentences, and was expressing abstract ideas. Whether or not there's some benefits to us as parents and that she could express herself, she could express what her needs were.
She was able to have some agency in her life, and she wasn't just helpless and I think it eliminated a lot of screaming and a lot of yelling. It was also helpful as parents to be able to communicate with our kids in a way that was more than just fundamentally baby talk. We never did the soft cutesy stuff, but just simple sentences and things like that, and my impression was that that experience laid a neural network for her that helped her develop language, helped her speak very quickly when she did start to speak, it wasn't full sentences and it was very expressive. Whether or not that benefit the sign language continued, I do think it teed it up for a second language in the immersion program. I think it made it easier for her to remember.
Dave: We were talking before in preparing for the podcast, you had a funny story. I think it was a friend of yours who taught their infant ASL, and there was a nanny that came over and was surprised about the level of mastery. Why don't you talk a little about that story? I thought that was a fun story.
Jim: The parents had left the kid when they went to a wedding and they came back and I think it was an aunt or a family caregiver, and she was a pediatric nurse and she was blown away that this little kid could tell her when she needed a diaper change, and when she was ready to go to bed. I don't remember at what age, but it was clearly pre-language, and that experience was very encouraging to us in that that was a way to see that the kid could say what they needed and get what they needed from the people around her, I think was really powerful.
Dave: It would be so cool if my kid could be like, "It's time to change my diaper."
Jim: Yes, totally.
Dave: It would be awesome because that was always, especially when you're on trips or whatever where you can't check on them all the time, you're in a car and you're driving somewhere and you're like, "Man, we got to check that diaper. "You got to pull over to the side of the road and check the diaper and make sure he's not sitting in something. If the child is able to really express that, I think what a gift as a parent. I love that.
Jim: We got a little lazier with the second. It was pretty much just the fundamentals, but I really enjoyed learning the American sign language. One of the things that we'll talk about with the immersion program is that there are ways of expressing things in other languages that you can't express in English. You mentioned it earlier, this idea, I think of it as a triangulating on an idea or a concept. If I only have one word to express what I want to say or one way of expressing what I want to say, that's very limiting.
If there's two ways that I can get to that same idea, I think it's a more fundamental and a deeper way of understanding concepts that language are meant to express rather than the other way around where our language expresses our emotion we can, how am I saying this? Rather than having the language drive the expression, it's the expression that is then put out through the language.
Dave: Yes, I think that's an interesting point. Absolutely. For us, we introduced our kids to language at an early age as well, and we have a little bit of a different situation. I'm bilingual, my wife is call it bilingual 0.5, like she has two and a half languages, but we only share English as a common language. At home, we speak three different languages effectively, and when our oldest daughter was ready for daycare, we actually put her in an immersion program in a language that neither one of us speak. She's getting a language at school and then she's got three more languages at home.
Then when our son was ready to go into daycare, the daycare actually had added a second language. He's at school, he's getting two languages at school and three languages at home and we are thinking, again, both having grown up bilingual let's just throw as much as we can at him and let's see what sticks. At that age they're sponges and they'll be able to absorb all sorts of stuff. One of the other things that I had read was that if a child is exposed to a language early on, even if they stop that language for a number of years if they come back to it, the acquisition is a little bit easier.
Two of those languages, he no longer speaks, but I think one of the things that was interesting throughout the process is I think he was maybe a little bit slower to talk. There was a little bit of time there where we were a little bit concerned and we were sort of talking to our pediatrician and look, he's getting five languages so that could very well be a part of it. Also, he's a boy. He was our first boy, we weren't really sure. We've heard that boys develop a little bit slower.
There are a lot of inputs there, but I think also if you look at it if you break down the day. He's got an hour with us in the morning as he gets ready and there may be three languages going on there. Then he goes to daycare, eight hours a day, he's getting two different languages, and then he comes back home for another three hours and he's getting the same three languages he gets in the morning. There's no baseline. They're all happening at the same time, but what was interesting about that is while he may have been slower to speak, you could speak to him in any one of these five languages and he would understand. He for sure knew what was going on because you could ask him to do something and he could do it.
It was very interesting to see that he understands fully all of them and then the language which one comes out. One thing I always did wonder about is, again, if we break down that day, he spent eight hours in just two languages. I really believe that for a while, his native language was actually not a language that my wife or I spoke. In terms of communication, what is interesting about kids when they're that young too, is that they know who to speak to in what language. Even if he knows what the word is in that language, he understands that I don't understand that language. He knows that, well, there's no point in talking to this guy, he doesn't get it and that was very, very interesting to see early on their ability to switch back and forth.
That was always one of my things is his native language, not something that I understand? Can I actually not communicate with my son or can he not communicate with me actually was more the issue because he understood a different or he could speak better in a different language? That was really interesting.
Now, as our children got older, we both ended up going into immersion language education, and I think it bears a little bit of time to talk about what immersion language education is before we get into our experiences. First of all, the definition we'll say of an immersion language program is that nationally there are about 1 to 2000 of these language programs in the United States.
They're a mix of public and private schools and they filter into two distinct types. There are the international schools which follow an international curriculum, and then there are bilingual schools which follow a US-based curriculum. Most pre-schools have about an 80% to 20% mix. 80% of the teaching will be in the target language, and by the time they're in middle school, over time that ratio will shift so that by the time they're in middle school, they're at a 50/50 split. What you'll start seeing in middle school is they'll pick up content, I guess we'll call it content classes in those languages so you might have say, I don't know, Chinese math or Russian physics, and Italian art class or whatever.
When you hit the middle school, it's really more about learning that subject versus at that point, you've already hit mastery of the language, and so the fact that it's being taught in your second language really is not an impediment at all. You still have language classes, but that's really more about writing essays and literature, just like you would in English. With that kind of background, Jim, can you talk a little bit about why you chose an immersion program?
Jim: Yes, I can. I was somewhat hesitant to put my precious children into an environment where they were going to be overwhelmed and they were not going to be able to communicate, but something that you said earlier about your younger child is that I learned in some other way that that language is actually the fourth way that kids communicate. First, it's non-verbal, I don't remember what the others are. I think number three is play, kids communicate through play. Being in that environment, it made me feel better that they weren't totally going to be overwhelmed.
That there was still going to be some eye contact and some context and some body language that was going to allow them to learn the second language. This, for my experience, I think that one of the things that my wife and I have talked about is that this is a lifetime gift. Her father had studied abroad for-- their family had lived abroad for about three years before he was 10 years old, he retained a lifetime fluency, which is incredible. In one hand, that's a real gift that we can give our kids for their life and to start them so early.
The second is all the things we've talked about, a different way of learning abstract ideas, the idea that they are going to be learning, as you say, science and math in a foreign language is absolutely mind-blowing to me. I think I'm expecting that there's going to be some long-term benefits. In some ways it was a strange decision and that we made the decision in a sideways fashion, but I'm really happy that we're there and so far, I've seen a lot of improvements. I don't have a lot of comparison other than let's say my niece and nephew that are going to English-speaking schools and I like the result. I like what we're seeing so far.
Dave: My experience obviously was different again. I'd mentioned the fact that we come from a bilingual family, so immersion was the obvious next step for us. I think as a product of an immersion program, one of the things that you get in addition to the language was this deep cultural education. I technically have no ties to this second language that I speak, but it actually has become part of my identity, and I do somewhat celebrate some of these holidays, even though, again, there's no background other than the fact that I grew up doing that in school, and I celebrated these holidays even before I had kids.
Some of them are a little more geared towards kids, but I would celebrate them as an adult because I felt like that, "Hey, that's part of my heritage” even though again, I have no technical links to this culture or to this language. My parents don't speak it. I am the product of a monolingual family putting their child into a bilingual immersion program. I thought that was really interesting. The other thing, you've touched on this a lot and it was something that I hadn't really thought about, but I do talk about this sometimes when I'm talking to other parents is the ability to learn to think differently.
One thing that is very unique about some of these immersion programs and when we're learning to write an essay in English, we're also learning to write essays in the target language and the way that you write in that target language is actually completely different. The way that you structure an essay, it's actually the exact opposite of how you structure it in English. You learn to just simply move back and forth between those two different styles. I think also what I've seen just in general now, as I'm an adult, is that I do think it helps you look at problems and understand that there are generally going to be multiple ways to come up with a solution.
You're ingrained in that process because early on you understand that here's an essay, there are multiple “correct” ways to structure an essay and that just becomes part of who you are. There's all of these different ways to arrive at an answer and they all can be very valid. It's something that maybe not in my day-to-day life I recognize, but as I sit back and reflect on the value and what I've taken away from an international education that I think is certainly a benefit that you will start to see, and that as you point out absolutely pays off and it opens you up to all these different possibilities, I think in terms of how you think.
Jim: Well, one of the things we've mentioned this in regard to this in a sideways fashion, but I don't want to call it intelligence, but let's say cognitive ability or rational ability. One of the things that I've understood about that is it's strengthened or encouraged by analogies. Being able to make analogies and to draw connections and relationships with other things and other ideas and that's exactly what you just described. Having to write something in one language and then in the native language and then in a second language, that's two different thinking structures.
At each of those points, there's going to be intersections that are going to end up creating cross-references and cross-pollinating ideas. I think that's my own theory, but I think that that's going to be a fundamental way that they're going to be going through their lives.
Dave: Yes, I think the other thing too about it, that again, you've touched on right here is that in a full bilingual situation, you're not translating between languages, it's just happening. When I think of a chair, if you show me a chair, what'll happen in my head is I see two words that are associated with that chair, but it's not a linear English equals chair equals this thing, it's almost like a triangle with the image of the chair at the top, and then the two words that represent chair in my instance at the bottom. It's a different way of thinking and it doesn't pass through a linear fashion, which I think also makes it easier.
Sometimes monolingual people are fascinated at how quickly things happen in the foreign language it's because you're not going through that step of translating. Literally, it's a connection that you've already made.
Jim: I learned a foreign language. I learned a second language in high school and it took some in college and I had to learn that language through my native language, and there's something very clunky and mechanical about that. To see kids pick up a second language in the same way that they learn their native language creates that mental environment that you just described, whereas I've forgotten so much of what I learned and the stuff that I do know is from English. I need to translate, what do I need to say, make a clunky calculation, figure out what it is in the foreign language, where people with a native language or a second language that they acquired in an immersion program it's just like that.
Dave: Now that we have both been in an immersion school for a few years, and we've got a little bit more experience in there, can you talk a little bit about your experience, your family's experience, and any concerns that you might have had going into it, and if they've been resolved? Or if there's things that you're still may be concerned about that you haven't resolved yet, just talk about that whole process.
Jim: When they first started in the immersion school, she was pre-K4. She was four years old. What was interesting for me to see is that she'd come home just exhausted. She had been in a daycare program that was socialization in play and the learning basic early education things, but then going into the immersion school, she would come home just exhausted. My impression was that her brain was working really hard and that she was building those connections and building those neural pathways that allowed her to have a bilingual experience.
There was some developmental regression, both cognitively, and then just behavior really that I don't want to say it was really concerning when we talked to people and we could understand it, but it was an indication to me that that was a challenge. That she was going through something that required some exertion. The younger one has gone through one year of the immersion program at age three, and then we've taken this year off due to the COVID situation. She'll be starting again in kindergarten. You and I were talking earlier, I don't know how that experience is going to be for her, and I think the school probably has mechanisms and ways to get her assimilated.
I also think she has a personality that is going to take it pretty quickly, but it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me nervous as a parent. I put myself in that situation and my personality at that age, I would have just been terrified. I've got a little bit concerns about that and my wife and I talked about the English comprehension and that we had learned that the immersion school kids fall behind a little bit, but then they catch up a little bit later. I think that that delay that is then recovered later is a small price to pay for the immersion program for the second language.
I joke that my biggest concern is that they are both going to learn a foreign language and they're going to use slang and learn code, and my wife and I are going to be oblivious. They're going to have a totally opaque, secret language that is just going to leave us in the cold. That's good, I think, honestly, I think that's my biggest concern going forward.
Dave: It's funny you bring that up because I remember being on the bus a few times with some friends and we were talking trash about somebody on the bus and somebody gets-- it's usually my friend that gets off and now I'm all alone. Then that person starts speaking in the language, oh God, what have I done? I have been careful about-- It was really mostly something you would do in like middle school or high school, but I've learned to be careful about who you're speaking to in what language because you never know. It's totally a thing.
Jim: For sure.
Dave: My experiences with the school are different. I would say that I do a lot of volunteer stuff with the school and I help out with admissions. One of the things I hear a lot from monolingual parents is that often they're a little bit concerned that they're not going to be able to help their child with homework. I think the reality of the situation is when she comes to me with calculus, I'm going to look at her blankly and I'm going to tell her to go look at Khan Academy or something like that. Direct her to my wife who's much better at math. There will always be a bunch of stuff that the kids are going to know that we're not going to know.
I don't think that's necessarily a challenge. I mean, here's an illustration. In 10th grade, we pick some of our subjects and we pick the language that we take that subject in that class in. I picked physics, which was stupid because I had no friends in physics. I'm not great at math and I'm not that good at science. To this day it's completely confusing to me as to why I picked physics, but I did. Unsurprisingly, by the end of the first semester, I was failing the class. My parents went in to the headmaster and said, "Do we need to pull this kid out of this school? Is this school just too tough for him?" The headmaster looks at them and said, "The problem is not the language. The problem is your kid sucks at physics." That was effectively the takeaway is that the problem isn’t the language.
Jim: You're going to be terrible in any language.
Dave: It doesn't matter, and that's true. By the time you're in middle school, the language is just another method to communicate the concepts. You either get the concepts or you don't. Regardless of what language I took physics in, I was going to struggle with it. I think that's an example of a time when the fact of whether you can help with homework or not, that does not become a thing, and the language will never become the impediment to learning. It's just a vehicle for learning, that's it. I wouldn't be concerned about that. I think the other thing as it relates to, how can I help my child with the second language that I don't speak?
Is that in the research that I've seen, as long as you're modeling the native language, and engaging with your child and reading books and expanding their vocabulary, the studies have shown that that's beneficial for your child when they're in school, learning that target language. Even if it's not in the target language, just by engaging with them in English and helping their vocabulary grow, you are actually helping their second language skills. Those are some of the things that you can do to help them with second language acquisition.
You talk about a lag in English learning. That wasn't something that I had ever thought about again, because I'd gone through and I'm like, "Well, I speak English pretty well," but it's certainly something that I remember seeing in first grade in particular, when the girls were learning to read. I'm looking at the types of books they're reading, they're level one, and I'm looking at what their peers from other schools are reading – it’s like level three and you're just like "Oh my God, what's happening?" Again, I cited that information at the top of the podcast that by the time they're in seventh grade they will be five months ahead of their peers in terms of their reading skills. Then by the time they're in eighth grade, they'll be almost a full year ahead. You can see that, as we talked about, there is a progression to that point. Not only will they hit par with their peers, but they will surpass them by the time they're done with middle school. That's certainly something to understand. I think as you point out, sometimes at least for me, it was a shock to me initially, you were more prepared than I was, but it's good to know that there are studies that back up, the fact that it's a temporary issue. That's not going to be anything that's long-lasting.
Jim: My wife and I have talked about that. My impression is nobody is a better reader because they started to read earlier. I don't think it's-- I think it's a binary skill. I don't think it's something that's cumulative. I don't think that learning to read later is somehow a detriment and later you're or an impediment in later years.
Dave: If you think about it right ,in an immersion program, if you think critically about it, it should be obvious that our kids will be a little bit delayed because while other kids have 100% of the day in English where they can spend the time focused on reading, our kids in first grade are still spending 80% of the day in a different language. Ultimately what we find too is that our kids not only will-- should have better mastery of English reading, but oh, by the way, they speak this other language and they can read in this other language. I always find comfort in the fact that your kid might be reading a lot higher than my kid in terms of their skill level. My kid is reading in two languages, which I think is personally, I think that's cool.
Jim: Just as an aside, I tried to read in the second language to my older one, and I'm reading children's books like Cat in the Hat. Totally can't handle it. [laughs] It's beyond my reading comprehension and she's starting to be able to get it herself. It's a really precious thing to see.
Dave: Well, it's cool when they surpass your skill level, that's ultimately why they're there. You're hoping that they're going to be able to surpass your high school or your college, a couple of credits in that language.
Jim: I'm going to stop using it because I'm probably ruining her. Why would she speak to me in some pigeon language when she's got the--?
Dave: At a certain point, she'll start correcting you.
Jim: Exactly, yes.
Dave: That's beautiful too, to see. Another thing that I saw relative to when we started in an immersion program, our daughter started at three, and it was funny because at home she would speak to me much more. At home, I don't speak to her in English ever. Well, rarely, very, very rarely and when I do speak to her in English, she often says, "Why are you speaking to me in English?" because it is such an anomaly. When I speak to her in the second language prior to going into the immersion school, she would respond to me quite frequently in that second language. As she's grown up, she almost never speaks to me in a second language.
I still speak to her in that language. That always makes me a little sad, but it is interesting because I know from the teachers that at school she’s 100%, all day long. She is always in that second language. Apparently, she even speaks to the kids, at least in the classroom, in that second language. The language of the playground will always be English. It will always be the native language of the country you're in, regardless of where you are. That's just the way it is. That's perfectly normal, but at least that the fact that when she is in class, she is always speaking in that second language.
At least it makes me feel a little bit better because I don't see any of it. Apparently, the same thing goes for my son who is four.
I would say that in terms of some maybe non-immersion school-related comments that I have that are just about being bilingual in general. One thing is we have some friends that are not fully bilingual families and this is somewhat reflective of our situation. Again, I speak two languages, my wife speaks a couple of languages, but we only share English in common, which is similar to some people we know where there's one person who speaks two languages and the other person's monolingual.
Sometimes there can be conversations about should we allow bilingualism in the family when one family member doesn't understand? Will that person feel left out? The way we approached it, I've always felt the benefits of understanding that language, and especially the culture, if that is one of the parent's culture and things like that, I think, far outweigh that. Simply the way that we've handled if somebody starts feeling left out, is I will simply ask our daughter like, "What did mommy say?" Then she'll tell me.
What was cool was when she was very young, I would actually oftentimes tell her something in my language, so Language A, and then I would say, "Go tell mommy this" so it comes out, it goes into her ear in Language A, but when it comes out her mouth, it comes out in Language B. She's not translating in her head, she's just simply taking the concepts and then transforming it into the other language has been very cool to see.
Also, how sometimes when I ask her, "What did your mom say?" when she doesn't know the English translation and she has to get by based on the vocabulary that she does know. It's always very interesting to see how she gets there. Again, I find that that is really what I want. I mean, I remember when I was growing up and I had some friends that were maybe bilingual or trilingual, and to hear them speaking to their parents on the phone, and in a single sentence, you would have all three languages come out because that was the first word that came to mind. They know that that parent fully understands all that stuff, and so it's just whatever was the first word was the one that came out whether it was in English or a different language, I think it has been-- It's cool to see.
As it relates to, again, going back to the point about how you handle a bilingual situation where one parent doesn't always understand what's going on. One thing that my wife and I do is, whenever we're having big conversations, maybe social issues or discipline issues, we will always speak in English. That is actually the only time that I will speak in English. That is really a function of making sure that everyone's on the same page. It's really more for my wife than anything, so that we're on the same page, but also so that our daughter doesn't try to game the system and be like, "Well, mommy said this, but you said that." Like, "Well, wait a minute. What actually got said?" It is a way of maybe CYA each other so that we have a definitive--
Jim: A little bit of a nod?
Dave: Right. I think it is important that we understand, we actually just came off of some fairly lengthy conversations about some big, big issues. I mean, it was something where we made sure to both speak in English so that we could be on the same page, and in particular so that we're not contradicting each other inadvertently. That we're really very clear with our daughter and make sure that we're sending the same signals, especially on those really big issues like discipline and things like that.
Jim: You're parenting at a next level. That's some complex parenting environment.
Dave: Yes. I mean, at the end of the day, right? It's a partnership and we want it-- Yes. I mean, when you introduce that language where somebody doesn't understand, you have to make sure, I think that you have to think a little bit more about how you parent and making sure that you're on the same page. I think also, I don't know about your daughter, but our daughter is at that stage where she's starting to do things that she knows she shouldn't do.
Jim: It's that age.
Dave: Just the other day we found a bunch of chocolate in her backpack. She clearly climbed up a bunch of shelves to take that down, right? They're looking at pushing the boundaries. If my wife and I aren't very tight in our communication, certainly, things can get a little bit sketchy there. Yes, I think that's pretty important.
We hope that this episode gave you some insight into the benefits of bilingualism and our experience with it. If you have any questions for us, hit us up on the Facebook page, facebook.com/papaestfatigue. That's P-A-P-A-E-S-T-F-A-T-I-G-U-E and we'll be sure to put all the studies and research in the show notes.
Dave: Thanks for listening to the Papa est Fatigué Podcast. If you'd like the podcast please give us a review and don't forget to subscribe to get ideas and hear discussions around parenting as a dad. Talk to you next time.
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