Another fantastic post that explains why children who have language delays or other learning issues can become bilingual. It’s a question that comes up often, and is usually accompanied by the advice to “drop a language”, which is nether necessary nor necessarily beneficial.
Is the earth round, really? It seems flat to me. I’ve been in many places in the world and I haven’t heard about anyone falling off it and so from my own logic and experience it appears the earth is flat. This is how evidence goes it seems and I find myself getting frustrated but I do try to understand the logic of disbelief– even in light of evidence. Yes, the earth is round (a sphere actually) and children with language impairment and those with other disabilities that affect language learning CAN (and do) become bilingual. No, they do not become MORE delayed.
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on raising bilingual children 
This helps me so much. I always have to read such articles when I have a discussion with my son’s teacher, as she does not encourage us enough. Probably she can’t understand the mix of more cultures and the use of more languages. I have just had in mind to drop my language for a while and speak only Dutch to my kid. But I won’t. And when we work I explain in Romanian and in Dutch and from today I am going to leave Dutch out.
Please don’t drop Romanian Iulia! It’s so important for your son, both for his language development and his cultural development, And, dropping Romanian would not make his Dutch any better – and it could be the opposite – dropping Romanian could make his Dutch worse! He needs to grow in the language he has heard from his birth. If he has a language delay it would be the same if he were monolingual, having two languages does not cause a delay. Good luck, and send me an email if you want any more information.
Thanks for your encouragement, Eowyn :). I am not going to drop or diminish Romanian. He doesn’t really have a language delay, he scored average at Dutch, but his teacher is not so happy.