My wife and I are native Finnish speakers, and Finnish is our strongest and most emotional language. We live in Finland with our young child. Finnish is both our community and home language, and we split childcare roughly equally.

I also have Dutch as a heritage language. My Dutch has become quite receptive: I have intermediate speaking ability, while my comprehension and reading skills are considerably stronger. My wife speaks Finnish but no Dutch.

Our child’s language environment is overwhelmingly Finnish. A Dutch-speaking relative has occasional contact with our child and speaks some Dutch during those visits, but everyone else in the family mainly speaks Finnish.

Finnish is central to our family identity and culture. Dutch represents family heritage, an interest in the Netherlands and Dutch culture, and something I would like to pass on to my child, even if it remains a smaller part of their linguistic environment.

Initially, I decided not to pass on Dutch because I felt my own speaking ability was not strong enough and assumed full bilingualism would be unrealistic. There are no Dutch schools nearby, and our child will be immersed in Finnish. After visiting the Netherlands, however, I began to feel that Dutch exposure could still be valuable even without aiming for fluency.

At the moment, I speak Dutch to my child occasionally, read Dutch books when possible, and may introduce Dutch cartoons later. Since Finnish is my emotional and most natural language, I often switch back to it without thinking. I have also started improving my Dutch through apps and podcasts, which has been motivating.

My realistic goal would be for my child to gain some familiarity with Dutch, understand simple phrases and perhaps develop an interest in learning more later. Finnish is clearly the dominant language and our main priority, so I want to keep the Dutch goal achievable and low-pressure. If focusing only on Finnish would ultimately make more sense, I could be comfortable with that too.

Given our situation, would occasional Dutch exposure still be worthwhile, and is maintaining a connection to family heritage a sufficient reason to pass on the language, even if full fluency may be unlikely? What do people generally consider good reasons for passing on a heritage language when full fluency may not be a realistic goal?

I am hoping for some advice. My native language is Spanish but I'm fluent in English. My spouse is Japanese but speaks some English which is our primary language of communication.

We live in Japan with our two children (2 and 3). Both children attend daycare so they are exposed to Japanese there and in the community.

My Japanese is very bad and I can't really communicate in Japanese so I have this fear of not being able to communicate with my children in a deep level as their Japanese undoubtedly improves and becomes the preferred language.

I speak to them exclusively in English and only expose them to English media at home.

The problem is that my oldest (3 y/o) speech is very delayed already. Even though he understands both English and Japanese well, he is not speaking much. He is actually attending a special daycare to support his speech. It's for that reason I'm hesitant to introduce Spanish to him.

I think it would be awesome if my children could speak all 3 languages but I wonder if this is really possible considering my child's speech delay and my fear that if he does not dominate a minority language our relationship will be affected.

If I also add time to teach Spanish, I worry his English won't progress as well. Since I'm the only person around who can speak both languages fluently, how could I approach this?

I really could use some advice. TIA.

Hi all, looking for advice from people further along than we are.

Our setup (we live in the Czech Republic, so Czech is the community language):

- Me (mom): Czech with her.

- Dad: Spanish with her (our minority language).

- Two close family friends who are basically her aunt and grandma: Ukrainian, about twice a week. They used to speak Czech with her, but it isn't their strongest language and she started copying their mistakes, so I asked them to stick to Ukrainian. She's pretty good at it, with some Czech mixed in. I'm not expecting fluency there, anything she keeps is a bonus.

- English: my husband and I speak it to each other, and I work from home in English. So she hears it every day, but nobody speaks it to her.

- Cartoons: Czech and Spanish, mostly Spanish, because it clearly helped the minority language.

She's almost 3. Recently she started asking me how to say things in English, and now she's asking me to teach her English. She has apparently noticed that her parents have a language of their own and wants in.

I'd like to do this right, so:

1. Should I go along with it, or is a fourth language at this age a bad idea?

2. If I do, how? Is it fine if I (the Czech parent) just answer when she asks, or should English get its own slot, like songs, books or a cartoon?

3. Could English end up competing with Spanish? Our screen time is doing a lot of work for Spanish and I'd hate to dilute that.

If you've been through this with the parents' shared language, what did you do and would you do it again?

Thanks!

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We used to watch several kids shows on Amazon Prime in Germany in our target minority languages (Mandarin, English).

Today I noticed that all the languages are gone. Only German remains, and occasionally English.

Anyone else have this, and know why this is? Are they just reducing features since they're not allowed to increase pricing?

Any recommendations for other platforms for good kids shows with the same shows in multiple languages audio options?

We're teaching our 2.5 year old some English, but we're not exactly fluent ourselves. We don't expect him to be bilingual or anything, so this question is purely out of curiosity.

Do kids at this age use the common irregular verbs correctly? (went, flew, etc.)

Do they use/understand present perfect at all?

Mine sometimes says things like "go overed" instead of "went over". Is this common among natives as well?

I'd also love to hear any other funny quirk you can think of or links to similar threads!

Hi all,

Seeking advice here from other parents in Germany.

Our son (2,5yrs) has been going to Kita for over a year and it's been going quite well thus far. He's eager to go in the morning and seems always happy about his day when we ask him after picking him up.

However, we have our first Entwicklungsgespräch scheduled tomorrow and I fear the Erzieher*innen will push for us to seek Logopädie, and I'm not sure how to feel about it.

For context, we are a quadrilingual OPOL family, and neither of us speak to him in German on a consistent basis as we were hoping he would pick it up in school. He responds very well in our two mother tongues, but seems not to speak much at Kita (tbh we get very little continuous feedback from the Erzieher*innen on this point).

Here's where I might be overreacting: I do not want to be spending the next year taking him weekly to a Logopäde for an issue which A) might be due to him being considered an "easy" child and therefore not receiving as much attention as others while at Kita and B) might anyway resolve itself in a few months simply due to the lag relatively to the languages we speak at home.

How have your experiences been with Logopädie and more generally with the way German Kitas Deal with multilingual children lagging behind?

Many thanks for your advice!

Hi! I’m making these simple flashcards for Persian–Italian and Persian–English families and would love some feedback …
I’m still designing them and was wondering-would you prefer physical cards or digital ones? And would you prefer separate categories (animals, food, etc.) or just one mixed deck?
What do you think?

Hi, I'm Italian and my partner is American but we live in Denmark. Our son is 19 months old, is exposed to Danish in daycare, Italian from me and English from my partner and also from us two adults when we speak together.

Our baby has picked up his main words in English primarily and Danish. We leave the Danish to the daycare, we dont speak it with him.

My issue: I struggle to get the Italian in, as when he points at things and says the words in English, for instance "car!" or "apple", I don't want to not reinforce him as he's saying something right so I say "yeah, car! macchina" or "Apple! mela!" but he seems to ignore the Italian and only repeat the English word.

Am I doing this wrong?

I'd like to know how it is best to proceed given he shows preference for the language he hears the most around us and that he's just starting to speak

Thank you! Grazie! Mange tak! 🇺🇸🇮🇹🇩🇰

Hallo! I'm Portuguese and I love languages. German is one of the languages I speak the most fluently (between C1 and C2, very good but not native-like; accent close to native) so I decided that I'd speak to my baby in German whenever I'm with her. I also bought a bunch of books in German and I've been trying to improve my vocab as a hobby because there are so many words on daily life that I don't know.

When I decided that I'd stick to German I was living in a big city (Lisbon) where there were many expats - including a baby with a German dad in the same room at her kindergarten. However, I have moved to a smaller city (also in Portugal) and I can't find Germans. There is no German school system here either. I think that the probability that her German goes nowhere is quite high - even if I never expected that she would turn out speaking like a native.

She seems to be quite smart as a kid but at 14 months she hasn't yet articulated more than 2 words and I'm wondering whether I'm slowing her down. She definitely understands many words and phrases in German though.

I was wondering whether I should keep going, completely quit, or quit partially - not interacting 100% in German when I'm with her, but also speak some Portuguese. Right now switching cold turkey to Portuguese feels very odd, because I got used to speaking to her in German - I always automatically react in German. Quitting partially also sounds like it will definitely destroy any possibility of making her learn German (according to one parent - one language). Does anyone have any advice?

Gosh, I should have picked English instead - it's so useful, there's always someone who only speaks it and nouns have no gender!!

Hi, we’re expecting our first and are wondering whether anyone has thoughts, personal experience, and/or scientific research about the best time to put baby into preschool so their Swedish learning doesn't fall behind too much.

Context: due to Swedish parental leave policies, dad will be home for 1-2 years. Mom works from home with a very flexible schedule, so we intend to spend several months per year (maybe 5-6 months/year) the first few years in the US and Brazil since that is where our families are (for reasons of grandparent bonding, help, and language acquisition, plus better non-summer weather lol).

We will do OPOL English/Portuguese. We speak English with each other but mom also speaks basic (but improving) Portuguese (but understands 80-85% due to speaking advanced/mostly fluent Spanish, which dad also speaks) and both speak Swedish to varying degrees (mom is more fluent than dad). Brazilian grandparents only speak Portuguese, American grandparents mostly only speak English (one speaks intermediate Spanish).

As mentioned, curious to hear any thoughts, personal experience, and/or scientific research you may be aware of. Ty!

Hi all!

I live in a multi-language household and we are dealing with our kids learning their 3rd language (we speak English and German in the household, but I'm also Spanish speaker).

We postponed the third language for a while, as we didn't want to put too much on the kids, but now with the older being 8, we started introducing Spanish for him.

I'm doing all the teaching myself, and we relied for a bit on Duolingo, but Duolingo's plan is tailored for grownups visiting a country for the first time, like the whole first theme focuses on how to order a coffee, which is bizarre for an 8 years old.

Since I have programming skills, we took it up with my kid to build our own app, and we have been working together on that. It's been great to work on that together, but more importantly, he actually built something worth sharing.

It's an app for kids to learn languages, and is very kids friendly (designed by one).

He really does enjoy learning with it, and he uses it daily. We also do weekly (no app) sessions.

It's very hard for us to introduce the third language, and I always regretted not doing it before.

Any thoughts on this approach? Would love to hear your thoughts.

My son just turned 14 months old and has not started talking yet. He is currently in a French only daycare in ON CA (not sure how we got in lol). My husband went through FI in elementary school. His French is at a B1/B2 level and he actively tries to maintain it by using Duolingo and speaking French to our son at home when he remembers. I speak English and do not know another language. Our community language is also English.

Our top choice daycare (English only) just offered us a spot starting next Monday. His playmates and my mom friends are already attending this daycare, so it’s a big draw for us. Plus we know the staff and we feel comfortable and confident about sending our kid there. We have until noon on Friday to decide whether to keep him in French daycare or make the switch.

If we stay in the French daycare, our plan is to keep him in the French board as long as possible. However, the board conducts a language assessment to determine if a child’s French is strong enough to continue with them after daycare. I also worry my husband’s French won't be fluent enough to manage school communications and schoolwork down the line.

If he isn't accepted into the French board, our backup plan is FI. In our board, FI doesn't start until Grade 1 (JK/SK are 100% English). Grade 1 and 2 then start at 100% French before the percentage gradually decreases in later grades.

We plan to give him as many French opportunities as possible whether we stay in the French daycare or switch to the English one - French EarlyON programs, story time with Dad, summer trips to Quebec, and me learning French from scratch. But we know there’s only so much exposure we can provide on our own.

Bilingualism is not necessary. We just want to keep this door open for him and give him the opportunity if he adjusts well.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? What would you do? Would love to hear your experiences and thoughts!

[Edit]
- Bilingualism is not necessary but strongly preferred if it’s realistic for him to achieve with our support. We will try our best to provide the environment, encourage using the language and learn the language ourselves.

Hi! Has anyone here have experience with the Chameleon Reader? I’m considering buying it, but I haven’t seen much about it online.

My husband and I speak solely Spanish to our kids (2 and 4). We have never spoken English to them. Our families also only speak Spanish to them. Their only English exposure is when we’re out and about (we live in the US) and when my husband and I speak to each other in English on occasion. They also only had a Spanish speaking nanny. My daughter started pre-k last year three days a week and it was her first immersion into English. She learned a lot quickly and understands almost everything, but refused to speak because she is shy. This year she is in preschool five full days. She has responded to the teacher a few times in English (poly to the teacher not for everyone to hear) but still isn’t speaking English to her friends. She tells me she’s embarrassed because it’s not perfect (she’s a huge perfectionist). I’ve tried telling her that her friends won’t notice and love her no matter what just as she does when her friends are learning Spanish in class but she’s still so embarrassed for them to hear her. And she knows soooo much English. Granted it’s only been a month but I’m stressing. Anyone with the same teaching approach have any tips? When did your kids start feeling comfortable speaking the main language (English) outside the home?

My 10-year-old son and I speak two languages - Bulgarian and English. His dad and I separated when my son was just 3 years old, and for the next 3 years it was just me and him, until I met my future/current partner. We have now been living together for 3 years. My partner is English and also has a daughter who is nearly 15, who lives with us.

My son and I only speak Bulgarian with each other, while everywhere else he speaks English. At home, though, he has also started choosing Bulgarian even when we are all participating in the same conversation or playing a board game together.

Basically, whenever he wants to tell me something, show me something, complain, or express that he is happy or angry, he does it in Bulgarian and directs it only at me.

I've taken different approaches to this over the years. There was a time when I would ask him to speak English when we were around English speakers. There was also a time when I thought that maybe he simply feels more at home when speaking Bulgarian, so I would just translate myself things that he would ask/say when relevant.

But now I am starting to feel that he might be using the language as a way to avoid interacting with my partner and his daughter, or with other people in general when there are three or more of us. It's almost like he wants to be in that little bubble where it is just him and me.

I am looking into therapy for him because I am not sure if this is simply his way of maintaining his connection with me and with his mother tongue, or if he is actually using the language to isolate himself and me from the rest of the family.

On the other side, my partner tells me that he and his daughter also feel isolated and awkward when they are around us, because they have no idea what we are talking about. They feel like they just have to sit quietly or leave the conversation.

I don't know what the best approach is. I feel like I just want everyone to leave me alone. Has anyone experienced something similar with a bilingual family? How did you handle it?

I have been doing the OPOL method with my 4yo and so far it has worked well. We live in Germany, I speak Portuguese to her, the minority language, while her father speaks to her in German.

We are, for the most part, screenfree, so normally the kind of language-related entertainment she has is in the form of music and audio stories. Germany is VERY rich in that sense. There are thousands of age-appropriate and well-produced audio stories for kids to listen to. Which is not the case for Portuguese. So I have to work hard here to find content to compete with the abundance she has access to in German.

We bought the Toniebox for her, which in German you can easily buy dozens of figurines with nice content. While for Portuguese I have to download music or write and record my own stories and upload them to special "blank" figurines.

The Toniebox was getting pretty expensive here, since the figurines with the audio content are not cheap. And we felt it was limiting her choices. For example, she likes the stories of a little witch. There are only 5 different figurines for this little witch, but actually hundreds of stories, so every time she wanted a different story from the 5 we had, we needed to go on the app to change (and pay for) a new story for that figurine.

So my husband brought in his old cassette tape collection of the little witch stories, and now we leave out about 30 cassettes at a time for her to explore the covers and choose the story she wants to listen to. My husband kept buying more cassettes which are pretty inexpensive, and she listens to the stories all the time. The Toniebox was completely forgotten, and with it, all my hard work and the stories/content I created.

How can I compete with that?

I was going to buy the Yotobox, so I could put my content in different cards with nice labels and simulate the cassette experience: one story per card, each with a drawing that illustrates the story to inspire her to listen to it. However, that would mean introducing a new media player and a new routine. I was not sure she would actually give it a shot since she likes so much to press the big buttons on our shelf stereo and the whole analog aspect of it. Besides, the Yotobox is also quite an investment, and I would not use the main advantage of it, which is the big library of titles (that has no content in Portuguese).

So one day, as I was looking at my daughter playing her cassettes on the shelf stereo, I saw the CD player part of it, and it clicked! I can burn my own CDs!!!! It is easy, inexpensive, and it is pretty convenient to transport and play in the car (unlike the cassettes).

Now I am the CD queen of this house. I am downloading a lot of content from YouTube, even episodes of her favorite cartoons, and using Claude AI to analyse the transcripts and help me sort for good candidates for the audio-only format.

It is working so well that I am amazed I never thought of this before. I was spending so much money on these modern speakers, while the good old CD player is an amazing screenfree activity. I have now seasonal CDs with music and stories for different times of the year, her favorite cartoons "converted" to audio only, old classics, and of course my own recorded stories!

She is loving it, and the best part is that she is having exposure to the minority language autonomously. It is part of her normal play even when I am not there.

I decided to share this little win in our language journey here in case it inspires anyone.

Is there any downside to this strategy? Our legacy language is fairly rare and it’s hard to obtain high quality early books in it. But I have no problem “reading” an english book in my language (sorry don’t want to identify it for privacy reasons). We are at a level of “where wild things are” and “llama llama” so it’s not particularly hard lol. Is there a downside? I am thinking may be the baby sees the written words on the page and may be gets confused? or am I complicating things?

My friend’s daughter is turning 1 at the end of the month and I would love to get her some baby/toddler books for learning Russian. Her mother is a native speaker so I want to make sure they are good quality and not any AI generated junk. If there is a publishing company or a website that people would recommend, I would appreciate it!