The Forgotten Treasure: Bilingualism and Asian Children's Emotional and Behavioral Health

Objectives. We investigated the relation between the language status of children and their behavioral and emotional well-being during their early school years. Methods. Behavioral and emotional well-being were drawn from teacher-reported data and included externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Three-level growth curve analyses were conducted on a subsample (n = 12586) of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, kindergarten cohort, who originated from Asian countries. US-born, non-Hispanic White children served as the comparison group. Results. All children started with a similar level of internalizing and externalizing behaviors at kindergarten entry. The growth rate of problem behaviors was slowest in fluent bilingual and non-English-dominant bilingual children compared with White English-monolingual children. By contrast, problem behaviors increased at a significantly faster rate in non-English-monolingual children, who had the highest level of problem behaviors among all children by fifth grade. Conclusions. By fifth grade, fluent bilingual and non-English-dominant bilingual children had the lowest levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors, whereas non-English-monolingual children had the highest levels of both behavior problems. Our data suggest emotional and behavioral benefits of being bilingual. (Am J Public Health. 2010;100:831-838. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.174219)