RAISING KIDS BILINGUALLY - NYC parents are enrolling their youngsters in foreign language classes — for the earliest possible exposure.

Bonjour, ca va? Curious toddlers who step into West Park Presbyterian Church on Wednesday mornings are greeted with a singsong voice and smile from Michelle Bertrand, founder of Music & Play En Français. The foreign language playgroup — one of dozens held throughout the city — is part of a growing trend of parents opting to raise a bilingual child or give their babies a leg up by exposing them to a second language early on. Most are still in diapers, but folded in their moms’ laps for the next 45 minutes they’ll sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”, listen to stories and play circle games — all in French. Some sit absolutely transfixed, others concentrate for a moment and wander off the way toddlers frequently do. Either way, parents bring their kids to the class in the hopes that their babies will gain some proficiency in French.

“This is one of her first playgroups,” says one of the moms, Regina who asked to be identified by her first name, in attendance with her 15-month-old daughter. “I’d like to have a little more exposure to another language and start her early. Hopefully, some of it will rub off.”

Alissa Owens and her husband, Mark, who live in Park Slope, have two children, Zoe, 9,and Jordan, 7. They hired Spanish babysitters who spoke to the children, from birth, only in Spanish “It was a major effort on our part,” Alissa says; the Owenses insisted the children speak Spanish to the babysitters and they created a library of Spanish books. Even more unusual, neither parent speaks Spanish. Both children attend Hannah Senesh, a Jewish day school in Cobble Hill where half the instruction is in Hebrew; both children are now tri-lingual.

The earlier the better

When it comes to learning a second language, the younger the better is what many linguists say. Research indicates there is a critical period for acquiring language that can begin as early as 7 months old. As children approach puberty, they lose this natural ability as the brain becomes less adept at creating the neural connections necessary for processing a new language. “There is a growing acceptance of the idea there is a window of opportunity or ‘critical period’ during which a person’s brain is unusually receptive to language learning,” writes Carey Miles in Raising Bilingual Children.

“The formative years are the first five years,” explains Bertrand, who was raised in a French-speaking household in New York, and didn’t speak English until she attended nursery school. “No one takes the class expecting to walk out and speak French fluently, but the more you expose children to different languages, the more you expose them to different sounds which opens up synapses in the brain.” This, according to Bertrand, creates a drawer for the language file in the brain, so when the child is older and exposed to language in a more formal setting, she’s not hearing a foreign language but another language that’s familiar.

Though many parents raise bilingual children for cultural reasons, studies available through the Center for Applied Linguistics suggest that there are other benefits children derive from being fluent in more than one language. On average, bilingual children read earlier than their monolingual peers, take a more creative approach to problem solving, and tend to score higher on standardized tests, even in areas non-related to language, such as math.

Another reason to expose children to a second language early on is the emotional advantages they enjoy. Francois Thibaut, founder of The Language Workshop for Children in Manhattan, notes that young children are rarely as self-conscious as adults and are not afraid of saying something wrong in another language. “Youngsters are willing to call out their new foreign words and their spontaneity pays off with a faster fluency adoption,” he says.

Though children raised in bilingual homes tend to speak later than monolingual children, it’s because the process of learning two native languages takes more time. Bertrand is doing what her parents did: speaking only French to her 4-year-old daughter at home and waiting until nursery school for her to learn English. “It’s amazing how fast she’s picking it up,” she says.

Consistency and commitment

Whether a parent is fluent in a second language, raising a bilingual child requires consistency and commitment. “It’s important to separate the languages that children are learning,” maintains Luisa Costa-Garro, a linguist and professor of education at Bank Street College. In families where the dad speaks English and the mom speaks another language, Costa-Garro says the optimum way to learn multiple languages is for the mother to consistently address the child in her native language and the father in his. Alejandra Novillo, who is raising her 6-year-old son and 8-month-old daughter bilingually, agrees. Married to a non-speaker of Spanish, Novillo only spoke Spanish at home with her son, Henry, who is now fluent in English and Spanish. Persistence is key, she says, noting that if Henry asked her a question in English, she wouldn’t answer until he repeated it in Spanish.

“The important thing is for children to be exposed to lots of language practice in the language of the home,” says Costa-Garro, who also advises families to find ways to incorporate the language they want their children to learn into fun and meaningful activities such as cooking, storytime and sing-alongs. Foreign language playgroups, videos, DVDs, music CDs and audiotapes available in the language of choice can also help. Costa-Garro, whose 19-year-old daughter is trilingual, says her family frequently had Spanish-speaking guests in their home and took numerous trips to Argentina, which increased her child’s exposure to the language, and also helped her acquire it in an authentic manner.