Will raising my child bilingual delay their speech?

What the evidence says

Being raised bilingual does not put a child at higher risk for a genuine speech or language disorder. A US evidence review found that children raised in bilingual or multilingual households are not at increased risk for speech and language disorders, and some studies even found cognitive advantages compared with monolingual children. It is common for bilingual toddlers to know fewer words in each individual language than a monolingual child knows in their one language, simply because their exposure time is split.

But when you add up the words they know across both languages, their total vocabulary is typically similar to monolingual children's, and researchers note that bilingual children divide their time between languages, so knowledge naturally distributes across both. Some children going through the process of picking up a new community language also go through a temporary 'silent period' where they say little in the new language while they absorb it - this is a normal adjustment, not a disorder, and can last several months. If a bilingual child has real difficulty in both of their languages (not just one), or shows other red flags like very few gestures, no words by around 16-18 months, or loss of skills they once had, that's worth discussing with your doctor or a speech-language pathologist experienced in bilingual assessment - but bilingualism itself is not the cause.