This report is intended to provide information regarding the bilingual child to persons in early childhood education who are involved with bilingual children. The first section discusses the nature of language. A section on linguistic diversity discusses the origins of dialects, their relative value, speech styles, and code-switching. A section on child language acquisition deals with linguistic and paralinguistic development. Aspects of second language learning, including interference and psychological factors, are discussed in a fourth section. A profile of bilingual children deals with misconceptions, stereotyping, and socioeconomic and educational problems of Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and Indian children. The final section discusses implications of the data for research, competency specification, personnel training, and curricula selection in early childhood program development. A selected bibliography is followed by three appendices, dealing respectively with the Mexican-American, the Puerto Rican, and the Indian child. (AM)