Hi Irene!
I really appreciated the point you made about multilingualism and bilingualism often seen as detrimental practices to children's' linguistic development and how much this can be detrimental for children with disabilities. It made me think about how much institutions excerpt power to dictate what is best for disabled children through a white monolingual lens. This lens completely ignores the history of the family language practices and keeps placing the blame on the child or the parents instead of broader systemic structures. All of this also reminded me of something I did research on my ASL class on how much deaf or hard of hearing children were deprived from signing and were strictly exposed to only English policies in the classroom and also during social interactions with their family members because ASL was still perceived as an incomplete since it was not vocal. Often, English was more valued and prioritized by both the doctors that were a big influence on the parents of the deaf children. They thought it could make the child learn better in a classroom setting and also incorporate themselves better into society while making them go through speech development lessons that ultimately left them with no form of communication for many of them where they could thrive in. Ultimately, research has shown how multilingualism is such a fundamental part of our brains on how we process information, teach, and learn and it is no exception when it comes to children with disabilities.
I really appreciated the point you made about multilingualism and bilingualism often seen as detrimental practices to children's' linguistic development and how much this can be detrimental for children with disabilities. It made me think about how much institutions excerpt power to dictate what is best for disabled children through a white monolingual lens. This lens completely ignores the history of the family language practices and keeps placing the blame on the child or the parents instead of broader systemic structures. All of this also reminded me of something I did research on my ASL class on how much deaf or hard of hearing children were deprived from signing and were strictly exposed to only English policies in the classroom and also during social interactions with their family members because ASL was still perceived as an incomplete since it was not vocal. Often, English was more valued and prioritized by both the doctors that were a big influence on the parents of the deaf children. They thought it could make the child learn better in a classroom setting and also incorporate themselves better into society while making them go through speech development lessons that ultimately left them with no form of communication for many of them where they could thrive in. Ultimately, research has shown how multilingualism is such a fundamental part of our brains on how we process information, teach, and learn and it is no exception when it comes to children with disabilities.