Overcoming Language Barriers

One of the biggest challenges in providing culturally responsive early intervention is a lack of EI providers who can speak the home languages of all the families on their caseloads. While there are some bilingual EI providers, the majority of  EI developmental services providers speak only English (Childres et al., 2024). One of the most common complaints from Spanish-speaking families in EI is the lack of Spanish-speaking providers (Durán, et al., 2023). Whenever possible, EI does provide interpreters, though research (Durán, et al., 2023), anecdotal evidence from the EI directors I work with in Massachusetts, and my own professional experience indicate that there will be times when there aren’t interpreters available. When this happens, the EI practitioner just has to do their best to communicate with the family using less-than-ideal methods like calling in to a translation hotline or using translation apps and gestures.

When interpreters are available, and they share the identity of the family you are working with, the interpreter can serve as a cultural broker who can help you learn about the culture and Funds of Knowledge of the families you are working with. Interpreters are often able to provide valuable insight into the deep cultural beliefs in a community. Whenever possible, I highly recommend budgeting time to take your interpreter out for coffee to get to know them, talk to them about medical or other jargony words and phrases you’ll be using, and learn more about families. As a member of the dominant culture, I am definitely a person who sees time as a finite resource, so I had to be very intentional about scheduling time to connect with interpreters outside of our regularly scheduled home visit times. If you are working regularly with the same interpreter, I recommend setting up a regular monthly meeting time.

Once you begin working consistently with an interpreter, it can feel more natural to speak directly to them since they are the person with whom you share a language. However, speaking only to the interpreter can signal to parents that you don’t value or respect them, so be careful to look at the parents as you are speaking. One of my colleagues taught me the trick of sitting in a triangle formation so you are able to look at the parent and still make intermittent eye contact with the interpreter as well.

Bilingual providers may not share the cultural backgrounds of their clients. For example, there are 21 Spanish-speaking countries from which families may have immigrated from or whose relatives immigrated to the United States. This situation leaves plenty of room for cultural differences between Puerto Rican Spanish speakers and Dominican Spanish speakers. This situation can also be the case with interpreters. You, your interpreter, and the family members must acknowledge which language dialects each person speaks so that everyone is aware of potential misunderstandings that may arise due to dialect differences.

If you are bilingual and do speak the same as the family, try to avoid using the family’s home language only for caregiving and switching to English when talking about more academic or medical topics, especially when talking directly to the child. Many Latine families in EI reported that EI providers and interpreters who spoke Spanish would talk to the children in Spanish during caregiving routines but switched to English when teaching the child pre-academic skills like counting and colors (Puig, 2012). Several mothers reported that this communicates that the language of academic instruction should be English. Some families may internalize this behavior as the EI provider or interpreter placing a higher value on English when it may simply be a case of the provider or interpreter not knowing how to communicate those concepts in English.

Spanish-speaking parents were also more likely to report one-directional relationships with EI providers than English-speaking families (Puig, 2012). In my own experience, I know that I felt more removed from families when I worked with an interpreter because I couldn’t connect with them as easily as I was used to. When I started working with interpreters I was also preoccupied with making sure that I was speaking slowly and clearly enough and pausing often enough that the interpreter could easily translate what I was saying. Then there was the lag time while I had to wait for the family member to speak and then have that translated back to me. Again, as a person who billed by the fifteen-minute increment, I was also conscious of time constraints, so I didn’t want to “waste” time socializing (of course, now I know that time spent building relationships with EI clients is never wasted).