Blackburn Speech and Paediatric Therapy

Is My Bilingual Child Behind, or Is This Just Normal Bilingual Development?

Does My Bilingual Child Have Language Delay? In most cases, a bilingual child who seems “behind” in one language is showing a completely normal pattern of bilingual language distribution, not a language delay. Bilingual children typically reach the same overall developmental milestones as monolingual children, but their vocabulary and grammar are spread across two languages

Is My Bilingual Child Behind, or Is This Just Normal Bilingual Development? Read More »

Does Speaking Cantonese and English at Home Confuse My Child? What the Research Actually Says

What the Research Actually Says About Bilingual Development Speaking two languages at home does not confuse your child. This is one of the most persistent myths in child bilingual language development, and decades of research say the opposite: children are fully capable of learning two or more languages from birth without becoming confused, and the

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Why Does My Child Melt Down After School When Everything Seemed Fine All Day?

Why Does My Child have a MeltDown After School When Everything Seemed Fine All Day? If your child holds it together beautifully all day at school, then falls apart the moment they see you, you’re likely seeing what’s sometimes called after-school restraint collapse — not bad behaviour, and not a sign school went badly. It

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Raising Kids Like Seeds, Not Blueprints: A High-Achiever Mum’s Honest Take on Trilingual Parenting

Raising multilingual Children When Winnie Wu sat down with Chloe for this episode, she wasn’t there as a speech pathologist, an educator, or anyone with letters after her name. She was there as a mum of two — a self-described “high achiever” who runs multiple businesses in Sydney, is married to her Italian husband Carlo,

Raising Kids Like Seeds, Not Blueprints: A High-Achiever Mum’s Honest Take on Trilingual Parenting Read More »

When Should I Worry About My Child’s Unclear Speech? A Guide to Speech Sound Milestones by Age

Speech Sound Development Milestones As a general guide for speech sound development milestones, most children can produce sounds like p, b, m, n, t, d, k, g, h, w, and f clearly by age three, and around 75 to 85 percent of children have mastered nearly all English consonants by age five. If your child

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My Child Mixes Up Sounds in Cantonese and English — Is This a Speech Delay or Normal Bilingual Speech Development?

Bilingual Speech Sound Mixing In most cases, a bilingual child who mixes up certain sounds between Cantonese, Mandarin, and English is showing normal cross-linguistic transfer, not a speech delay. Learning two sound systems at once means a child’s brain is actively working out which sounds and rules belong to which language, and some crossover between

My Child Mixes Up Sounds in Cantonese and English — Is This a Speech Delay or Normal Bilingual Speech Development? Read More »

“My Child’s English Is Better Than Their Cantonese” — What a Speech Therapist in Hong Kong Wants You to Know

Cantonese Children Speech Therapy If you’ve ever said — or quietly thought — “My child’s English is just better than their Cantonese,” you’re not alone. I hear it from families in Melbourne. Gloria Tsang, a paediatric speech therapist practising Cantonese Children Speech Therapy based in Hong Kong, hears it from families there too. But here’s

“My Child’s English Is Better Than Their Cantonese” — What a Speech Therapist in Hong Kong Wants You to Know Read More »

How Many Words Should My Bilingual Two-Year-Old Be Saying? A Milestone Guide for Cantonese/Mandarin-English Families

Bilingual Vocabulary Milestones For a bilingual two-year-old, one of the most helpful bilingual vocabulary milestones is around 50 meaningful words in total, counted across every language she uses, alongside the start of two-word combinations like “more milk” or “mama go.” The key difference for bilingual families is that this count is combined across all languages

How Many Words Should My Bilingual Two-Year-Old Be Saying? A Milestone Guide for Cantonese/Mandarin-English Families Read More »

My Toddler Isn’t Talking Yet — Is It Because We’re Raising Her Bilingual, or Is She a Late Talker?

Bilingual Toddler Late Talker Being raised bilingual is not the reason your toddler isn’t talking yet. Research consistently shows bilingual children reach key language milestones within the same general range as monolingual children, once you count their words across both languages combined. If your toddler has very few words in total — not just in

My Toddler Isn’t Talking Yet — Is It Because We’re Raising Her Bilingual, or Is She a Late Talker? Read More »

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