Building Bilingual Skills at Home
Dina Stein, MS, CCC-SLP/L, one of North Star’s speech-language pathologists, provides important context about her recently published research into the importance of maintaining access to heritage language and passing on pride in a family’s heritage and culture.
Many families wonder whether they should continue speaking their home language with their children. Some worry that using two languages might slow language development or make things more difficult for their child.
The research tells a different story.
In a recent study examining immigrant families from Hebrew-, Tagalog-, Korean-, Spanish-, and Mandarin-speaking backgrounds, Yu et al. (2026) found that both parents and adult children reported strong pride in their heritage languages. Even when families felt that society placed less value on their home language, their connection to that language remained strong.
More importantly, the study found that children who experienced more consistent use of their heritage language at home reported stronger heritage language skills as adults.
Pride Matters
The study found that parents who reported greater pride in their heritage language were more likely to use that language consistently with their children.
Importantly, more consistent heritage language use was associated with higher self-rated heritage language proficiency among children.
These findings suggest that everyday language use at home plays an important role in supporting bilingual development across generations.
Parents and Children Don't Always See Language Use the Same Way
One interesting finding was that parents generally reported using their heritage language more often than their children remembered experiencing.
This may reflect differences in how parents and children think about language use. Parents may count brief interactions, such as greetings or reminders, while children may think of longer conversations as meaningful language use.
Regardless of the reason, the findings highlight the importance of creating regular opportunities for meaningful communication in the heritage language.
What Strategies Help?
Families reported using a variety of strategies to support heritage language maintenance.
Across all groups, digital media was the most commonly reported strategy. Families described using:
Social media
Videos
Language apps
Parents also frequently reported:
Speaking the heritage language at home
Enrolling children in language classes
Participating in cultural activities
Children described a broader range of experiences that helped them maintain their heritage language, including entertainment, cultural activities, travel to their family's country of origin, and written materials.
The Takeaway for Families
For families, the key message from this research is that everyday, consistent use of a heritage language matters. Children benefit when they regularly hear and use their heritage language at home, and this continued exposure is linked to stronger language skills and a stronger sense of pride in their identity.
There is no single “right way” to support a heritage language. What matters most is creating frequent, meaningful opportunities through daily conversation, stories, songs, books, media, and cultural traditions for children to connect with the language in natural ways.
Supporting a heritage language is ultimately about connection. When families keep the language alive in everyday life, they are also strengthening relationships, identity, and ties across generations.
Resource
Yu, V., Shin, N. Y., & Stein, D. (2026). Maintaining heritage languages across generations: Parental strategies and youth perspectives in U.S. immigrant families. International Journal of Bilingualism, 0(0).
