The best way to introduce a child to a foreign language is through immersion — no English translation.
If you are lucky enough to be a bilingual family, seize this opportunity to expose your kid to your native tongue. But you can also sign him up for language classes where babies as young as 6 months sing songs and play games. Or you might hire a babysitter who is fluent in another tongue.
Don’t worry about confusing a pre-talker by introducing foreign words at the same time as she is learning to speak her primary language. “There doesn’t seem to be any limit to the number of sounds a human mind can store at a young age,” explains Francois Thibaut, director of The Language Workshop for Children, in New York City. “Children have an innate ability to tell one language from another.”