Normally it is thought that a child who grows up with an older brother will develop his language skills faster… But it seems that it is not like that. According to a French study by the National Center for Scientific Research in that country, it has been discovered that a child with an older sibling will later develop his language skills.
This only happens when you are a child, because when you have an older sister, it does not influence language development. This study has been published in the journal Psychological Science. Several investigations have shown that a child acquires language slower if you have an older brother and not if you have an older sister.
After many studies they found that boys or girls with older siblings had a two-month language delay compared to other boys or girls who had older sisters. There are two theories why this phenomenon could occur:
- Older sisters talk more and can be a good incentive to learn vocabulary.
- Older sisters are not as jealous of parental attention as older brothers can.
In addition, in the study they made it clear that more older siblings ... less language skills. Perhaps everything is related to the competition towards the attention of parents, with boys being more competitive than girls and displacing in a certain way the younger brother or sister, so they would not be a good reference for language.
Studies suggest that This negative effect on the language development of younger brothers or sisters only occurs when the older siblings are boys. In this sense, if you have older children who are boys, then you will have to support the language development of your younger children more.