Should Parents Only Use One Language with Their Autistic Children? The Relations Between Multilingualism, Children's Social Skills, and Parent-Child Communication.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

Parents of autistic children are often advised to use only one language to simplify their child's language acquisition. Often this recommendation orients towards the geographically predominant language, which may cause difficulties especially for minority-language families. On the other hand, scientific evidence suggests that multilingualism does not hinder language acquisition and that communicating in exclusively foreign languages may even impede social interaction. Therefore, we investigated how parent language use is linked to the social skills of 68 autistic children and to their parents' ability to feel comfortable, authentic, and free to express themselves.

Methods

Data was collected online, using parent-report questionnaires from parents of 25 different natio

SUBMITTER: Franco M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12296994 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature