All ages
Bilingual & Multilingual Families
Two languages are never the problem. Neither are three.
Families at Atlanta's international and immersion schools ask us weekly: "Is our second language causing this?" The evidence is clear. Bilingualism does not cause speech or language disorders, and you should not drop a home language to treat one. That holds for trilingual homes too.
Signs to watch for
- A dual-language child whose difficulties show up in both languages
- Teachers unsure whether it's a language difference or a language disorder
- An immersion-school child struggling beyond typical adjustment
- A relative insisting the second (or third) language is "confusing" your child
Our approach
A disorder shows up in every language a child speaks; a difference doesn't. That principle drives our assessment: we take a complete history of all your child's languages, count vocabulary and milestones across languages combined, use bilingual-normed measures where they exist, and, for languages we don't speak, work through structured parent report and interpreter-supported sampling rather than pretending an English-only score is the whole child.
Immersion-school families, specifically
Many of our clients attend Atlanta's international and dual-language immersion programs. If your child's difficulties appear in the home language and the school language (like a /k/ that comes out as /t/ in English and Spanish), that is exactly the both-languages pattern worth evaluating. Articulation therapy generalizes across languages: fixing the motor pattern helps every language that uses the sound. And no clinician at TALK will ever suggest dropping a home language; it would cost your child a grandparent and gain nothing.
Who treats this at TALK
Yvonne Bolin, M.S., CCC-SLP
Yvonne came to TALK after years on the team at Atlanta International School, so she knows the immersion-school world from the inside. She is trilingual, providing therapy in French and German as well as English; Bethany, who is bilingual, provides therapy in French.
Meet the whole team →Every plan begins with a comprehensive evaluation and ends with measurable goals reviewed on a set schedule. See the full process →
Begin here
Start with a conversation.
Your call reaches a person who knows speech and language, live or returned the same or next business day. We’ll listen, tell you honestly whether an evaluation makes sense, and explain exactly what happens next.
Calls returned the same or next business day · Evaluations typically within 1–2 weeks · After-school appointments available · TeleTherapy backup for busy weeks