Traveling with young children – even as young as six months old — can also help them with linguistic development, said Erika Levy, an associate professor in communication sciences and disorders at Teachers College at Columbia University.

“We know that in terms of language, babies perceive sounds differently from adults. As they get older... they lose the ability to distinguish many of the other speech sounds,” said Levy. “If we surround them with speech sounds from all around the world... then we are keeping those categories going, which helps later on in life with their language.”