Our Strategy (+3 More!) for Raising Bilingual Children & Why We DON'T SPEAK GERMAN at home. 

My children have a Dutch father and an English mother. They grew up in the Netherlands. By today’s standards we did everything wrong when it comes to bilingual education. Sometimes we spoke Dutch, at other times we spoke English. I sometimes spoke English with the children and my wife spoke Dutch with them, or vice versa. It didn’t matter. They are fully bilingual. At 4 years old the eldest could do more or less simultaneous translation between her two great-grandmothers one of whom didn’t speak English and the other didn’t speak Dutch. Children are so versatile.

Growing up bilingual is one of the greatest gifts you can ever give a child, in my opinion.

I am English, my wife is Russian and we live in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Our daughter is now 15. She is absolutely native in Russian, English and French. By "native" I mean better than merely fluent - she has no detectable accent to native speakers of any of the 3 languages. So I feel a bit "qualified" to comment. Your approach seems the right one to me. This worked for us: Reading books to our daughter at every opportunity (and at bedtime without fail very night) - me speaking ONLY in English, my speaking wife ONLY in Russian - i.e. Each parent only in the language they are 100% comfortable with. Then, from the age of 2 she attended a French-only creche/kindergarden and then local schools. She moves fluently and fluidly between all 3 languages. She has been learning a 4th language - German - at school for several years and seemed to pick it up much quicker than most children. Our daughter does not do this but we know of children who do the "you can speak to me in your language but I will reply to you in the community language" but just stick to the "rules" which in your case is "mummy and daddy speak to you ONLY in English"! My strong advice is that you continue on your path: speak English at home and your son WILL speak German in the community. Do not worry about whether or not he will do this - he will amaze you at how quickly he does this once he is mingling with German-speaking children. And speaking 2 languages will help him to pick up a 3rd or 4th language with ease. Then just wait for that knife-to-the-heart moment when he says to you "I know the word in German but I do not know what it is in English"!!!

I am American, my husband is German so he spoke German to our children. I spoke English only with my now 15 and 17 year olds because my German was so new to me when they were little. However, they heard me speak poor German from the start in day to day life as I had to speak German to Erzieher, shops keepers, neighbors, doctors and everything else in life. But I read to them in English, my husband in German and by the time they started Grundschule, they could already read basic stories in English and German as well as switch languages like a switch and they knew exactly which language to speak to which person. Example, we boarded a flight to the US, as the Lufthansa plane landed, my then 4 year old stood up and though he spoke German the entire flight, loudly stated in English, “Ok, now we must speak English!” I had another passenger say to me in German, if only if were that easy. Lucky child. Since we also spent 6 weeks at a time in the US, my children also used their English speaking with family and cousins. When strangers suddenly heard my boys switch to a German when talking to my husband, they always did a double take. Their English was fluent and accentless. They could not believe their English was their lesser used language. Growing up in the US, my parents were Italian immigrants so we spoke only Italian at home and with the relatives. The older cousins, some born in Italy including my brother all spoke fluent Italian. Being part of the youngest cousin group, I understood all Italian but mostly answered in English ( Shame on me, I can say now.) But I had no other use for Italian growing up. All my relatives were already in the US and there was no other opportunity to speak Italian. Also no RU-vid, Netflix and even getting Italian story books and such was costly and difficult. I think having English as a second(ary) language is also easier now with RU-vid, Netflix, original language films shown in the theaters. I just look at my boys’ friends and how fluent they are in English even with no English speaking family. They have so much more exposure to English than I had with my Italian growing up. Now that my kids are older, they prefer all movies in the original language, whatever that may be. They read in whichever language an item is in. We discuss things in the language that fits that subject. If we discuss US politics, it is in English. We discuss the newest BMW model that just came out, in German. And myself, I’m trying to get that Italian back.

This was so interesting to watch because I myself grew up multilingual with a very similar approach. In my dad’s household we spoke (Suiss-) Italian because he is from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. In my mum’s household we spoke Danish because my stepdad is from Denmark and wanted to give us the possibility to learn a another language from the get-go. Then with German, my brothers and I were exposed to the language in our general environment because we grew up in and around Munich. Nowadays, we can just switch between the languages and whenever I hear Italian or Danish, I get this weird feeling of family and home 😅

I've been raised in French speaking countries (for 7 years) by German parents. The most interesting part was that my German differed from the other Kids German because it was "older". My parents didn't speak a lot of German when living abroad with anyone that lived in Germany so there German "froze in time" as opposed to the German spoken in Germany which always changes. To this day I actively use the Futur II and Plusquamperfekt, because my parents did. Those two timeforms somewhat died out in day to day German conversations at the beginning of the Millenium which is why most of the my friends my age don't really use that at all. I first noticed that in school, when all the kids were struggeling to form sentences in those forms and I wasn't. A few days ago a friend said: "Wir waren gewesen kann man nicht sagen, das heißt wir sind gewesen". So he uses those time forms so little that they even sound wrong to him even though they are technically correct. I highly doubt that that will happen to you though. Unlike my parents who were living in smaller African countries and had pretty much no contact to modern German you'll always be connected to modern English due to communicating with your family via Internet and English speaking media. It might happen with social trends though. Maybe everyone will always start petting the table before they start eating in America and everyone will look at you weirdly once you visit and don't do that because you didn't learn it in Germany. I actually don't see that difference as a negative point though. Working in the academic world means that I'm facing weird wordings on a daily basis so being used to that is actually an advantage. Generally speaking being billingual is pretty cool. I think it's even cooler if it's two languages other than English (no offense) because one will learn English anyway making those people that grew up with Turkish and German e.g. trilingual which is even cooler. My only advice is to look out for Jacks German in case you move back to America. It is uncreadibly easy to forget a language if you don't use it on a daily basis. My french was pretty much lost after a year of living in Germany after speaking it with all of my friends for 7 years as my first language. Don't make that mistake and always keep him in touch with German media.

Raising your (so cute) little one bilingual or building your new home.... you put so much effort, deep research and at least fully comprehension for every little detail into each "project". I love that approach, admire your energy that goes into it and most of all... thank you so much for sharing all of your thoughts, concerns and experiences.

Living in the USA, where languages are not valued at all, I brought up my daughter bilingually. Since my husband never learned German and the rest of his family was wondering why I even bothered, this was extremely difficult. I finally had some support when a German Saturday school opened and brought us into contact with likeminded people. Today, she speaks German fluently with an occasional grammatical error. My German nephew is totally bilingual because his parents spoke German exclusively at home after being transferred to the US. I taught at that Saturday school and experienced that children had no problem developing skills in two or three languages. Sometimes development was a bit delayed, but generally sorted before school age.

As growing up being the child of a Flemish father and German mother, living in French speaking part of my country, I grew up being able to think in 3 different languages. This is for me the main point: the ability to think in any language, allows you to understand, speak and write in any language.

My best friend and his wife, both Germans, moved to Spain when their first daughter was one year old. Their second daughter was born in Spain. They only speak German at home and the girls went to Spanish schools and had Spanish and English friends. So the girls now speak all three languages fluently and switch without any effort. It just happened completely naturally. So my advice would be: don't overthink this. You basically would need to actively keep your child from learning a language it is exposed to.

In our house (in Germany) it went like this with all of our kids, but most prominently with our 1st daughter because at the time at home only English could be heard: with around 3 and a half she started Kindergarten purely speaking English. 3 months later her German was better than her English and she started to request movies to be shown in German on TV. Hence my recommendation from my own experience: you can absolutely relax, in the end it will work out, no matter what you do. Just be yourself and don't make a science project out of it, your son will do it his way, no matter what empiric scientific findings say. He'll speak English and German naturally and intuitively. If you interfere to much you can only jinx it. All 3 of my kids speak perfect German and perfect English, despite never having lived longer in the US and despite basically zero effort of us lazy bones to worry about the issue in general. Just expect the typical phenomenons with real bilingual children. He will have grammatical, semantical and ethymological Germanisms in his English and Anglizisms in his German - meaning here and there native English only or German only speakers will hear some cute little glitches (like a persistent english subject, verb, object word order in a german subordinate clause). That's how it is. Not a lot you can do about it. I don't see it as a flaw, rather an asset: my kids have their own unique accent when they speak German and when they speak English.

As a Brit married to a German and living in Belgium, with two grown-up, bilingual (German/English) children, I can confidently say that you are on the right track! I am sure that the heritage language at home approach will work very well. We adopted the one parent, one language approach and were consistent about it and just let our children do their thing. We have the advantage that your mentioned of both speaking each other's language, so no-one was ever excluded from the conversation. I always spoke English to the children and their mother always spoke German. They understood both of us perfectly from the start, but at first spoke mainly German (Muttersprache!), with a bit of English (and French!) thrown in for good measure. I never insisted that they reply to me in English, but over time they began to speak more and more English until it began to seem strange to them to speak to me in German. It was a fascinating process. Don't worry if Jack speaks an alarming mishmash of English and German at first. It will sort itself out and will be a huge advantage for him later.

Thanks for the overview! Me and my siblings were raised by the second method. My parents enforced only speaking English at home, while speaking German outside of our home. Even though both my parents could speak both languages. I am so thankful that they made the effort, because Englisch comes natural to us, while living in Germany.

Dear BFF, you cannot imagine how much I envy your little one - for his gift to be raised bilingual ! This is such a big opportunity, it's truly amazing. I once was in Thailand, up in the northwest, where we stayed at a little resort which has been run by a thai-german family with two nice beautiful girls who came up to us when we had breakfast, starting a conversation in fluent perfect english, but as soon as they noiticed we spoke german with each other they switched immediateley to german as well, just instantly. As they both went to a thai school I'm sure they could also speak thai without any problem. And all this at an age of about maybe 10 years (the older one of the sisters), I was truly blown away by them... I guess your approach is the best for your son, to speak english with him at home while leaving him talking german up to his environment. It'll be so cool to accompany him on his journey, so please keep on posting your interesting videos !!!

Hi, We have been having the same approach with our daughter (4,5yr) for the past 1,5 yr and so far results are very satisfying. We have moved from Poland to Austria in 2020, my daughter spoke basic polish at that time. She has been attending to bilingual KG (german+english) since the move and now she switches between polish, german and english depending on the person she speaks to. Recently we bought 10 sessions of speach therapy (one session every 1-2 weeks) to help her construct longer sentences in german and funny enough it has not only actually helped with german but also has imprved her polish. For me it is very interesting to see how it is all connect for her, and how things just have multiple names. Thank you for another great video. Best!

Usually when parents speak the foreign language with their kids, the kids pick up a very heavy accent. I think that speaking the mother tonque at home is absolutely the right approach as the chances are high that the kids can then speak both languages free of any accent. Jack will learn german in school and from friends while learning english at home.

I studied language, and I think the decision to mostly speak the language you are most proficient in with your child (if they are still very young and have enough exposure to the language it will need to understand in day to day life in a specific country) is a good one. Young childrens' brains are so much more flexible than we often give them credit for. And who knows, nothing is set in stone - my class in Grundschule had kids from many different nationalities, which meant a plethora of different languages when the parents came together, and by a certain age, the children were able to correct their parents' German. They knew the mother tongue of their parents well because it was what the parents used at home with them, and they knew German from pretty much every other aspect of everyday life, andmost of them were not confused by the differences, but enjoyed explaining them to others. There are perhaps as many different approaches to this as there are families. And may I just say, your "Was ist das?" was accent-free :)

My wife and I have lived in Germany for over 30 years.My wife speaks French and English is my native language.When our children were small we never spoke German to our kids,we both spoke our seperate languages to them.They had no problems learning English, French and German.We worked in a Occupation where our colleagues came from all over the planet.It was noticeable that parents who were not native German speakers passed their imperfect German onto the kids.Up to about the age of 9 or 10 the 2 older children would only communicate with my wife in French and with me in English. German was something they just did without even thinking. As they got older they start talking to us in German, which I would say is their first language.Our youngest daughter however somehow picked that up from them would only converse with us in German when she was small.All of our kids speak and write all 3 language and it is quite normal that our conversations could jump threw all of these lauguages at the dinner table.I think you guys heading in the right direction. Jack's German skills will outpace yours in a remarkable short time.

I have met several people who grew up multilingual, several of whose only source of their native language was one of their parents, and they all ended up speaking both languages fluently. I think it's a great thing you're doing, and I'm absolutely certain that you don't need to worry about the outcome. Children are little learning machines, and he will easily achieve fluency in both languages if you provide him the opportunity.

i am one of the kids growing up in a family that moved to other countries like you are now. ... as a small boy i picked up the local language easely playing with the local kids around the neighborhood , so after a year i was always taken by my mom to the market as a translator to the locals. this was before school so i could not read the language but spoke it as well as the children my age. we left this country after four years into another and after a few years another that my parents called home and i understood why. i met my grandparents and aunts and uncles. but what i am trying to say is i lost my first foreign language totally because i did not have a chance to use it. you are doing the right thing in speaking english at home. your child will pick up german at kindergarten and school so fast that you wont believe it, and he will be at home in both countries and maybe others to come lol

i think it‘s so great that Jack will grow up bilingual! in school I‘ve learned English (since the age of 8) and French (since the age of 12) but unfortunately I already start forgetting French grammar and structure… however, being bilingual offers so many possibilities not only in one‘s individual development but also when it comes to jobs. Great vid as always, keep going :)

While watching, I started to write several lenghty paragraphs about what I learnt about language acquisition while studying linguistics. And, yeah, you don't "learn" your native language, you *acquire* it... However, this was a well researched video and almost all objections I would have raised were mentioned. Very well done! Only some minor additions: Regarding the first approach you mentioned: the crucial point is that parents with different native languages are always consistent, i.e., they need to speak to *each other* in their respective native languages as well, at least while the child is within hearing distance. "Learning" any language (don't matter if native or foreign) via TV is generally a bad idea because it lacks interactivity. I also wouldn't recommend the third approach, at least not for L1: When linguists talk about the acquisition of language, they actually mean "determining the grammar of that language", i.e. gainig the capability to differenciate subtle judgements on grammaticality and semantics. For instance, native speakers know intuitively that "I know what Mary did" is okay, but "*I know that Mary did" is not, or why "Bob knows which picture of himself Charles posted after the conference" is ambiguous in a way that "Bob knows how proud of himself Charles was after the conference" is not. If the parents are not fluent in a language, they may not be able to use that language to a depth that would be necessary for the child to develop the ability to recognize those kind of subtleties. However, as an approach to learn a foreign language (i.e., a language learnt after a speaker's native langauge(s) is/are fully developed), this may work way better.

Both my parents spoke English to each other (and that was for them their 3rd language) and the only one they had in common, and I grew up with a rather funny English at home in a Spanish speaking environment. Mum found a bilingual school for me. I heard her speaking German with the dogs and on CB radio. I also learned a few rhymes and songs in German without really knowing what they meant. Emigrated to USA at 13. Then emigrated to Austria at 24, and when our child arrived, we decided to follow my parents example and speak English at home. Her first multi- word sentence at 14 mo. was mixed: "aber, I want some" 🙂. Eventually there was a lot less mixing. I also bought books, music cassettes and videos that were in English (expensive way back then) and found an English play group for one afternoon a week. Funny enough the children all spoke German to each other in the play group but when they spoke to us parents, it was in English. It was very important for me to emphasize English in every day activities so that she could speak to our family with no hesitation. We couldn't afford the private bi-lingual school at that time, but if we could, I would have sent her there. Some of my friends said their children stopped speaking to them in English as soon as they realized mom or dad could soeak German anyway, so why bother... But for some, at school, their English came back and they began to use it at home again. Now our daughter tutors children and adults in English.

I was raised trilingual- in Australia, English at school, and Kroatien and German at home. It was never exclusive, at home both languages were spoken „ Kreuz und quer“. You can imagine that it was sometimes hard and weird…🙈

I was born in 1961. Both my parents were Dutch and yet I'm almost fluent in English and I also speak German and some French. The reason why so many (over 90 percent) of Dutch people are able to speak English is because of our tv broadcasting system. All series, documentaries and movies are broadcast in the original language with Dutch subtitles. Because the vast majority of foreign tv programs in the Netherlands come from English speaking countries, Dutch children are confrontend with the English language from a very early age. Speaking English isn't a problem. The only thing is I don't do that very often in everyday life. As a result it sometimes takes me longer to form my phrases correctly or to find a specific word from memory. A typical case of 'use it or loose it'. That's why I watch and react to English spoken youtube videos. In the Dutch highschool curriculum English is mandatory. Our Dutch highschool system consists of several levels. In the middle and high level, besides English, a second foreign language is also mandatory. This has to be German or French. Of course outside the curriculum there's the opportunity to learn more languages voluntariliy.

Again, another awesome, informative, and instructional video! While I commented on the last two videos in German I thought it might be better to write in English today as more of your followers will be able to read it. It came to me the last time that while I was writing my comment primarily for you there is a whole community out there that also reads comments, at least occasionally. So, I'm writing in English today! I found your research into the various methods of raising a bilingual child very interesting and it brought up many memories for me. First, a bit about my own background: I was born in Hamburg, Germany. When I was two years old my family moved to Italy where I would spend by childhood (1963-1971). I went to one of the six European Schools (each member country of the "European Common Market" back then - Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg - had one European School). I went to Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1-4th Grade there. Then, when I was 11 years old we moved back to Germany. That's where I spent my teenage years and my early twenties. Then I moved to the United States, got married and had kids. As you can see from this life journey, I can relate in various different ways to your research: My own experience in Italy and returning to Germany: Since we were a fully German family living in Italy we only spoke German in the house. My parents were themselves in the process of learning Italian. My early expose was mostly to German at home but to Italian when I went with my mom to the market or other stores. When it was time for me to enter Pre-K at the European School I was enrolled in the German group. So I continued to have German as my predominant language at home and in school. The following year, in Kindergarten, I was placed in the French group. Now I was exposed to German at home, French in school, and Italian in the school yard and in town. When I got to first grade I was in my German homeroom for the core subjects (Reading, Writing, Math, etc), we had French as our second language (taught by a teacher from Paris), and subject such as Sports, Music, or Art the kids from the various language groups were mixed up together with the subject taught in the mother tongue of the teacher. So, besides having kids speaking all various mother languages I had Sports in Italian, Music in French, and Art in Dutch. In the school yard everything was Italian, of course. And I spoke Italian with the kids in our neighborhood when we played together outside the home. This continued through my fourth grade when we moved back to Germany. What did that do to my language learning? Overall, I was exposed to multiple languages all at once when children absorb languages the best. I learned German with no problem (except for some vocabulary that our family adopted in Italian, and which I didn't learn in German until we moved back when I was eleven). I learned both Italian and French quite well for speaking and normal conversation. I only started learning reading and writing in Italian and French in third grade. The philosophy of the school was to raise us kids as European citizens who would be comfortable in all the main language of Europe (at the time, the U.K. and English was not part of that). I suppose, if we had stayed in Italy and I had continued at the European School through 12th grade I would have become fully fluent in all three languages. But moving back to Hamburg, Germany, when I was eleven left me stuck on the level of an 11-year-old in Italian and French. Back in Germany I actually felt a bit out of place because I was used to speaking German only at home and in school. It was strange to speak German even in the street or at the store. And I had to catch up with some German vocabulary that I had known only in Italian. I actually never learned any curse words in German. I only knew curse words in Italian. In school in Germany, starting in fifth grade, I had Latin as foreign language. Knowing Italian was great as it was easy to learn Latin vocabulary. In 7th grade I finally got English too, which I hated and didn't want to learn... famous last words! But I started to loose my Italian a bit. French got a boost when it was added as a subject in school in 9th grade. So, today, I am fully fluent in German, and I feel competent enough in Italian and French to get around in Italian and French speaking environments. I don't feel fully competent writing in Italian or French but it only takes me a few days to get back into it when I'm in those environments. When I hear or speak Italian I feel home! Raising my children in the United States: Today, I wish I had insisted more on speaking German to them when they were little. My wife was American who didn't speak German. Even though I was still in the process of fully learning English when I first came to the United States (1985) I quickly caught on. With my wife we spoke English exclusively. When the kids were born we only spoke English. I would only occasionally speak German with them when I put them to bed. I would sing German night-time songs to them until they fell asleep. And I would sometimes read German children's books to them. But pretty soon, in daily living, when I did speak German with them, they would say, "Papi, speak English!" When family came to visit from Germany I would, of course, speak German with them (which gave the kids some idea of what a German conversation could sound like) but everyone in my family also knew how to speak English so no one here in the U.S. had to try and speak German. My daughter really doesn't speak any German these days. She got enamored with Japan and now lives there as an English teacher learning Japanese. I'm trying to catch up with learning a bit of Japanese. My son did try to learn German on a few occasions. He is actually trying to speak sometime but is still quite rudimentary. He could probably pick up on it fairly quickly if he had a chance to live in Germany. In retrospect, I wish I had asserted myself a bit more to speak German more often with the children. But it was hard when everything else surrounding was only English. I think, that a number of the methods you mentioned in the video came through in my story, except that there wasn't really any method to any of my or my children's exposure. I would say that there was definitely a method employed by the European School in Italy, which would have been great if I had stayed at that school all the way to 12th grade. Some of my friends from that time are absolutely versatile in German, Italian, French, English, and Spanish. Again, thank you for your great video. I hope my story was interesting and might have shed some light on the topic.

Such a gift to be raised bilingual! It's incredible how much our thoughts are formed, restricted, and directed by the words available to us through our language. Jack's lucky to have great parents giving him such a wonderful start!

Hi Black Forest Family, I am a foreigner, my wife is a German. I already spoke about four or five languages before I moved to Germany more than a decade ago(without a German word at age around 25). Once I moved here, I went to a Volkhochschule and learned German for three straight months, 5 hours a day. I enrolled in a University and took German language full-time. A year after, I spoke in German fluently and about a year and a half, I could write in German grammars, went on to do postgraduates and find work before my studies officially completed. My two kids are fluent in both German and English, as I continued to speak with them in English all throughout the years since their birth. They are in Gymnasiums and taking up a third language in school. The point I wanted to contribute is, you do not have to care so much about Jack's German language skills. He will, either way, have both English and German his native language. The challenge is on both of you, and Jonathan. You continue to support Jack in his English skills, while do as much as you could to better your German language. Jack will be happy about this later when he will realize that you are learning the language he internally fully mastered as provisioned for by his interaction with the German environment since early age - he will perhaps correct your German skills at some stage lol..! (°_*). His brain is naturally evolving and adapting to German language and language's environment. This is my own experience with my kids (10 and 15 years respectively). Learning languages is fun ;-)

Hey to you three. First - thank you for all of your well-researched Videos including sources and opinions stated clearly out. Myself was raised trilingual - Greek, Italian and German. Back in the Days around the 90s the approach was that at home also the parents need to talk German. Hearing what you said I am happy that My parents didn’t follow it fully. My mum spoke Italian with me - my dad spoke Greek with me so I was able to communicate fluently with all the people around. But I can also say that it made a lot of things easier once my mum learned Greek besides her Italian mother tongue. She was able to communicate also in Greek within the family nucleus. Long story short the ability to get new language it somehow become type of my DNA. But still today I need everytime some days of getting all my language skills back when I am for example in Greece or Italy but our brain is a powerful piece of evolutionary engineering. It will not forget a language but bring everything back in the “daily-use” part of our brain so we can access easier. Same thing when I started my job back in the days for a sole English speaking company. It took me a while to get everything I learned in school back in my brain but once my brain accepted this fact it was easy to improve everything. So yes apparently I can confirm all the scientific research that you did and I also can tell you that your effort is amazing and that finally you don’t need to be scared for what might come. It is very helpful to know different languages and it makes it easier to adapt to new cultures. But there is one caveat on that point which I see in myself. Depending which language I speak to some extend my own character on views on things may slightly vary. Example - Mediterranean slow life vs. German high productivity. Here you may see big variations when I think about a problem or solution in German or in Italian/Greek. Anyway thanks again for this good content. Keep doing what you doing

Very nice video. We went through the first and second strategy with our children (especially with the older one). My wife is Czech, I am Slovak, the languages are quite simillar but not the same. Kids were born in Czechia, so we started with the first strategy, me speaking exclusively Slovak to them, my wife exclusively Czech, and by the age of 2 the older one was able to speak both languages and even switching them seamlessly according to whom he was speaking to. Then, when boys were not yet 4 and 2, we moved to the German speaking part of Switzerland (actually quite close to you, just next to Basel), and as the older one was about to start to go to kindergarten, we got the advice to use the second (the Heritage language) strategy. And it worked very well (eventually, there were some hiccups of course), they are now (after almost 10 years here in Switzerland) fluent in Czech, Slovak, High German and Swiss German, as well as very good at French (taught in school) and English (taught in school, too, but exposed to it at home, as we have been watching English TV channels at home from the beginning, because my wife wasn't speaking any German when we moved here). So I strongly believe rising your kids bilingual can help them to become multilingual eventually, as I know some other bilingual families, and for their kids learning a new language is usually quite easy.

Great video, and some great thoughts and tips! Before we moved over here to Germany, we decided to use the "Heritage" language approach. Our four kids are learning German in the schools and in our city, but we wanted to make sure that they maintain and use their English skills as well. I feel the hardest thing for me is that I don't know how good my kids' German skills really are! I know they are doing well because of their schooling (and the older ones can get around in the city and shop and all of that), but it's strange not hearing them speak German. And I agree that it's hard not being able to practice our own German in our house - I have to make sure I continue to make opportunities to speak with my German friends in German to get that extra practice!

Thank you so much Ashton for discussing this topic. I will be sharing this one with my Aussie daughter who moved to Germany just over a year ago to be with her British boyfriend living in Germany . She is in what I call a modern family situation. Her boyfriend has a daughter that is German born and is bilingual in English and German . I wonder which method was used in her early years prior to school. Thank you for the references as well, this is definitely worth giving some serious thought to. I’d better brush up on my German phrases too in readiness for my bilingual grandchildren ha! ha! danke und eine schöne woche. so schön, den kleinen Jack wiederzusehen ( I cheated lol 😂) not that clever……yet!

I fully agree with your approach.

Sehr gutes Video über dieses interessante Thema! Ich glaube, ihr habt die richtige Methode gewählt, weil sie am besten auf eure Situation passt. Leider kann ich keine eigenen Erfahrungen beitragen, da wir England bzw. Frankreich verlassen haben, als unser Sohn gerade anfing zu sprechen, aber in den ersten zwei Jahren haben wir zuhause auch nur deutsch gesprochen, weil wir wussten, dass unser französisch zu schlecht war, um dies als Grundlage für die Sprachentwicklung unseres Sohnes nehmen zu können. Ich wünsche euch viele gute Erfahrungen in dieser Hinsicht und bin gespannt, wie Jack reagiert, wenn er mal keine Lust hat, englisch zu sprechen, weil er weiß, dass ihr auch deutsch versteht.

In the Netherlands most schools offer multiple language classes besides our native language (German French and English) but also more and more schools are starting English at a younger age (basisschool I believe). Being bilingual is a great asset and passing that on to our children is a great gift. Thank you for making this video full of great information

My experience is that you should talk with your child in your mother tongue, as you would not teach mistakes you are prone to in foreign languages. I am German, but my wife comes from Vietnam. We talk to the children in our mother tongue only, but my wife and me communicate in english. As the school language is also english, my children grew up with 3 languages, which they all master. Difficulties arose only, when the vocabulary in one language did not yet include a representation in the other languages. I discovered, that German language does contain many more words then English or Vietnamese. Always interesting to work this out :-)

This is by far the most positive comments Section in the whole RU-vid and I love it. :)

I‘m also thrilled for Jack. These days, even if you would move back to America, he (and you) can keep the language fresh by watching films. That’s what I do with Italian. And absolutely, perfect English spoken at home and perfect German in his out of home environment is … well perfect 👍 I‘ve often wondered if my husband should speak German or English if we had a child, and I think German so that the language absorbed is correct. This has been my favourite video apart from when you said you finished your PhD!

Thank you for this very interesting, informative, and well researched video. The only advice I can offer you, is to not put too much pressure on yourself. It will work out in the end. I myself am bilingual, my mom is German and my dad is American and I grew up on both continents, however my son is growing up in Germany and my husband is German. So when our son was small, we practiced method one: Me & my dad spoke exclusively English with him and my husband & his family spoke German and the Kita spoke German as well. Every book we read or tv show we watched however was only in English, even my husband read him books in English. Our kiddo understood both languages without any trouble, but he spoke only German. At around age 1 1/2 his language skills kicked in and he had a best friend at Kita. Turns out, the other little boy had the same bilingual learning experience growing up, his mom is a Brit, and he also only spoke German. However they quickly caught on that they could use English as a secret language when at Kita. For instance when they saw an opening at the Playmobil Burg, they would whisper “castle” to each other and race there to get the free spot, before any of the other kids caught on. When he started German school, I started to speak in both languages with him. For me, family life is just easier if you speak the language of the land you live in (in other words,I got lazy). Fast forward, he is 17 now and my son is fluent in both languages. English is not as dominant because he learned reading and writing in English at German school starting in 5th grade, but he has no trouble switching between languages and adapting easily when in situations with people who only speak one of both languages. He is also a fairly decent translater between the two. It also helps that his complete media intake (RU-vid ,TikTok, Animes, playing video games online with people all over the world, and whatever else he does) is all in English. With such caring and thoughtful parents, your son will grow up learning the languages of both worlds in no time. It is an invaluable gift, at least in my experience as it has been, that you are giving your son and I applaud you for putting in the extra effort to do so.

Extremely research-based - a good expression to describe your videos! (In case it‘s not clear, that‘s a compliment!) A good friend of mine (herself with a German mother/English father; grew up in England with frequent visits to Germany) married a German and has always lived in Germany from her early 20s. They raised their 2 children with the „each parent speaks his/her native language only“ method, and she‘s doing that with her grandchildren now. Her 2 sons are of course fluent in both languages, but I am very aware that their English is „less refined“ because they did not go through the educational process with that language. Many funny stories while they were growing up, but this one is especially good. I was visiting one day and the younger son asked me to read a story to him (he loved being read to). It happened to be a German book, and I ended up reading several of them to him (he kept saying, „More!“). When we stopped, he went to his mother and asked quizzically: „Does Michael speak German?“ She laughed and asked him what language I had been reading to him for the last hour!

Hi Ashton, I assume that because of your scientific background, you approach the topic of bilingualism very rationally. You have informed yourself about the different methods and weighed up the respective pros and cons. What more could you want? I have a good feeling that you found the optimal method for Jack.

Great video, thanks a lot, it was fun t watch. As a German, living in the bilingual city of Brussels with a partner who is originally Hungarian our future kids will have to deal with 5 languages (and it certainly doesn't help to shorten that list that we speak English at home, as her Dutch and my French are not that great yet).What helps us is that we have a lot of other couples where the kids are exposed to a greater number of languages around us, so hopefully we can pick up tricks where needed here and there. To be fair, living in a place where language isn't as much a monlithical thing as Germany or the US we might have an advantage as well, there should be less cases of bullying or people thinking it is weird (and I happened to have friends my age who grew up in similair situations in Brussels 20 years ago, so we might even be able to draw on their experiences as well).

As a German/Dutch family, living in Germany. We speak Dutch, my mother tongue, at home since my husband speaks a pretty good Dutch. It is our family language, only when German speaking people are with us, we do speak German. Our children learned German from opa and oma, school etc. When they were still little, we went to the US for nearly one year. They went to school and kindergarten and learned english. In this year we didn't speak German, but when we came back they picked it up right away. Our daughter of 7 even changed her German handwriting to American and coming back she used the German again. Since this time in the US english was a third language in our family and I have to be honest, we do mix up the languages sometimes. Later we moved, we lived close to the Dutch border and our children all studied in english at the Dutch universities. Our youngest went after 4 year Grundschule to the 5th class of a Dutch primary school which is six years. It is true, they could speak Dutch, could read it, but writing was more difficult. Now they are adults they can write Dutch, but I still need to correct them sometimes, but it is no problem. They are so thankful that we raised them tri-langual. It is one of the best gifts you can give your child. ☺.My advice: just relax, sometimes the language our child speaks looks a little 'messy', and maybe it looks like Jack is 'behind' in its language development but at the end it will work out well. Children are so flexible!

I am always impressed. You pick up a topic in get into it so deep, structured and in a scientific way. It seems to be your habbit, to learn and understand each topic to the max possible way. And yes, kids learn foreign language very fast in Kita, school, with other kids,... in a natural way. It's quite natural for them and no "work".

Hi Ashton, as always, a very well researched and well presented video. After a minute or so, I thought (not for the first time) you really should teach at university, and what a loss it would be if you didn't. Well, given how hard the German system makes it for people to enter that career, it's sad that it probably won't happen. But still... On another note, at the end, when you showed the books, I wondered if you aren't overdoing it a bit. When I see a book about child development that has the word "optimizing" in it, the alarm bell starts ringing. Such a title implies a very American thinking, and it raises images in my head of prenatal music courses, a rigorous schedule of preschooling, a full calendar of courses here and courses there, and helicopter parents that drown their children in pressure. Now, I'm generalizing unduely, of course, and you are surely quite self-reflecting and probably won't fall into that trap so easily. But what I actually want to say is this. You can't plan everything, and though it is typical for first time parents to try ;-), it will all just work out quite naturally. Jack will learn both languages natively, whether you follow any of theses guides or not. With the second child, you will be much more relaxed, and they'll turn out perfectly fine. That's an experience parents have made from the beginning of time. :-) Take care!

Wow. What an efford. What a lot of background work, scientific research. I somehow felt like listening to a well structured scientific lecture at a university. Chapeau, Ashton. Let me tell you for sure: Jack will be fluently in both languages, German and English, and he will distinguish between how to address people more or less "without thinking" - see his first sentence. He just noticed instinctively that he had to address his nanny in German because she only speaks German with him. Let me tell you a good example: Some friends of us have the following situation: He is German, she is a late patriate from Russia who came to Germany at an age of 12. Her parents, however, can't speak German very well and therefore stick to Russian. Their 3 children speak only Russian with their grandparents, they switch between Russian and German speaking with their mother and speak only German with their father. Outside their family they of course use German with the side effect that this is now their mother tongue and they can speak Russian pretty well but not write it due to the Cyrillic alphabet. Speaking only English at home will manifest the awareness in Jack that you are American and the rest of the world is different. And he soon might trick you using German if he doesn't know the English word for something. So, to sum it up, I guess something like the "Everyone participates" method is the right one to help Jack being bilingual and you as parents as well to improve your command of German. Anyway, I know you will do the right thing. I love your channel.

Love this family 🥺😍

I believe its gonna be alright. My sister and me are both raised in German and English language. Having a foreigner Mother helped alot. Its sometimes hard for me to remember a specific word in German or English. Which sometimes mess up my speech. Living in Germany also has its benefit living near all kinds of foreigner languages and it shows in our school too. I had a really diverse school class, from Turkish to Russian People. My best Friends have Polish Origin and it shows in my life. I cannot speak Polish but there are words that influenced my speech. So don't get confused if your son learns some specific words in a complete different language later in school :D

Young children learn languages so easy - its really fascinating. I remember the times when I was a student. There was a pizzaria at the campus. The Owner was italian, his wife was from the US and his 4 year old daughter grew up here in germany. Every time we sat at the bar for an espresso and his daughter came around and spoke to everyone, she swtiched permanently between english (speaking with her mother), to italian (speaking with her dad) and to germany (speaking with me and my friends) - she did this without even thinking about it. Everything fluent of course :)

My sister (German) has married a Spanish man and moved to Norway for good when their son turned two. My Sister spoke German to him, my brother-in-law Spanish, and his friends obviously Norwegian. My sister and her husband arbitrarily switched between Spanish and German. So little Axel grew up with three languages, actually with four, since English is a major school subject in Norway - and he struggled. He started late to speak at all, and he always had problems to express himself. He is now in his twenties and a successful IT-programmer in Norway, but up to this day he has problems expressing himself in German, Spanish or English, his language of choice obviously is Norwegian, and since I can't speak Norwegian I can't assess his eloquence in that language. If you want to raise your son bi-lingual, I definitely would support the heritage approach. Don't bother about reading and writing, he will learn that in school very well. The disadvantage of this approach is, that you yourself will not really master German ever. To achieve this, you need to make German your first language, and with the heritage approach you won't do that. As soon as you start speaking German at home, Jack will not learn English on a native basis. The question is, if that is really a missed chance. He still will grow up with some English around him and most likely always be better in English classes in school than his class mates. He will be very good in English as his second language, but not really bi-lingual in the sense, that he will speak English truly as well as German. The question is - is being able to speak English as a second language really good not enough?

I was a stay at home English speaking mother to our now 22 year old son (my husband is German). We used approach 1. When he started Kita with 3, he would tell me about his day in German. New experiences that maybe he didn't have an English vocabulary for?? At pre-teen he stopped talking English with me. I still spoke only English to him (still do) and he usually answers in German. But somewhere late teens it became "cool" to speak English and he uses it with his German friends as well. Now as a young adult, he reads English books most of the time, and speaks fluently. My Canadian relatives say they can hear a slight German accent/tone fall when he speaks but I think that is quite understandable. I think your biggest challenge will be the balance with your German.

So we're also an English speaking family with a different community language, and we also speak just English at home, with most of the kids' second language exposure being from school and the community. My kids are older, though (primary school age), so we've relaxed some aspects. We definitely take part in conversations in the local language together when there are locals who don't speak English present. Eg neighbouring kids, at the doctor - although many of these do speak English - etc. We also started reading to the kids in both languages, not just English, for vocabulary and to promote both as fun to read. The vocab was particularly relevant relatively early. We realised that our kids were missing a lot of "home" vocab in the local language, (and honestly so were we) so we particularly looked out for kids vocab books locally on everything from kitchen appliances to body parts. It's important for a child to be able to describe their body accurately to the doctor if they have a pain, or hopefully never in the case of assault, thus a bilingual child needs to know how to say "waist", "ribs", "ankles", private parts etc in both languages.

I was an exchange student as a teen where I truly learned my second language, Dutch. Prior to that I'd had classes in Spanish, Latin, and American Sign Language (ASL), but I only knew some basic grammar and a range phrases. As I met students or adults from abroad in my home town, I'd pick up a little from time to time. Once immersed as an exchange student, I had siblings around my age and a younger sibling. My host parents and the older children could speak a range of English with me as I was stumbling through learning theirs. One etiquette adults use at parties with young children is to speak in English to have a more private conversation since English is taught formally in middle and high school (post elementary grades or approximately ages 12-18). Since my little host sister was learning "too much" English from hearing conversations with me, I was encouraged to speak Dutch at home as soon as possible. This started with a hour at supper time followed by an hour of my choice and an additional hour the next month. I played many board and card games with my siblings. When we visited younger cousins, all the children played Animal Barnyard where each person makes the animal sound in the dark. I quickly learned new common sounds for a dog, bird, chicken, and so on that I wouldn't be so easy to identify. I bought discarded children's books from the library for my family in the U.S. but I found several challenges to share this language with them as I couldn't transport the immersion experience. With one of my siblings, I attended a high school where nearly all of the classes were in Dutch. Some of the teachers encouraged me to use English but I found it too confusing, like grinding gears in a car. My English class was British English and literature where I became aware of vocabulary I had overlooked and the many similarities of Dutch and American English. I also learned a little Dutch sign language which is based on ASL. My host family enjoyed traveling on holidays and hosting people during my stay. Once heard a church service in Dutch and German. As a college student in the U.S. I took immersive German classes. One of the fluent German speaking American students commented that I had a Dutch accent when I spoke German. I'm a mom now and share my experiences and challenges with my kids. There isn't a perfect way to learn except that consistent good exposure makes it far easier than lessons for a class as one's sole exposure. Today we can access movies at home if there are subtitles or other languages on the dvd and RU-vid channels of topics which interest us and our children.

I'm speechless. what an effort to read and learn all those things. i am an elementary school teacher in a poor part of town. you can find people who are living here for 30 y and more, but they can't speak or understand german very well. my students are from everywhere, only two are germans. some of them can't comunicate at all. they all live in germany for a few hours a day, they don't need the language and some will never learn. your very intellectual approach is rarely to be found, I only have one set of parents in my class with a university level of education. they do so much for their son, visiting sites and museums and zoos. others rarely do that. with a heavy heart I wish you could adopt them all and show them the way to live a better life. your son is a lucky guy.

-flawlessly, without any hiccups or problems. Now we use as a form of therapy and he is reading the newspapers in both languages and books. He has improved verbally, reading and his writing is normal in his native language and have spelling issues in the other but his english spelling issues are words that sounds the same but spelled differently (example:meet & meat ) that kind of thing. Knowing more than one language could delay deterioration in dementia and Alzheimer's disease. I think the reason why is you are using your brain more, by more I mean differently, like an old fashioned switch with a string you pull on. When you are speaking your native language there's no effort because it's natural reflex for you but you switch to another language, it's like yanking on the string light. It takes effort and forces you to use your brain in a different way and switching often ( every other paragraph of a conversation), keeps not only working more but keeping it sharp. That is our family's hope anyway. So far so good. Who knows?it might be a key that leads somewhere or just delaying it. At this point we take what we can get. I love being trilingual and my hope to learn another.

Hats off to all the work and effort you put into your videos...the academic background clearly shows;) Maybe a second PhD down the road? Check out the videos from My Merry Messy Life of the McFalls family, they moved to Germany with four kids.

Hi, I stumbled on to your RU-vid channel and after seeing this video thought I would share my own personal experience. I am the oldest of 5 boys. In 1980 my family moved to Metzingen, Germany which is located about 45 minutes south of Stuttgart. We planned on staying for 3 years during which time my dad worked for a German company. At the time the ages of myself and my brothers was 16, 15, 14, 10 and 8. We were NOT associated with the military, so the only option my parents had was to send us to German schools. I attended the Technisches Gymnasium, two of my brothers attended the Real Schule, one brother attended the standard Gymnasium, and my youngest brother attended the Grund Schule. I will be honest, the first year was TOUGH. Although we did take some German language lessons at the German American Institute in Tübingen, we were basically dropped off at school on the first day and told "good luck" by our parents. It was akin to being thrown into the deep end of the pool when you never learned how to swim. We all struggled that first year, HOWEVER at about the 6 month mark something happened. We all started to learn enough German that we understood our classwork. We started to make friends, and we all started to settle in. We had a lot of good experiences in the second half of the first year, which changed our attitudes for the remainder of our 3 year stay. We did, however, have some setbacks. Only one of us was able to make it through our stay without the need to repeat a grade. If you haven't encountered this yet, it was NOT uncommon for kids in Germany to repeat a school year, especially in the upper grades. When we lived there, if you failed one class you repeated the whole year. We also attended school on 2 Saturday's in the month. I am not sure if that is still common. Our German skills progressed quite quickly after the first 6 months even though we spoke only English at home. The decision to speak only English was partly practical and partly choice. My parents had a much tougher time learning German and they were never comfortable speaking German with their children. Also, remember this was before the internet. We were in a village where NO ONE spoke English, and we had no other outlet. Once we left the door, we only spoke German. Home was our American oasis. Lastly, in spite of the fact that we were fluent in German, we never felt comfortable speaking German with one another. We knew each other in English, not German. It was an issue of comfort. By the time we finished our stay my youngest brother spoke fluent Schwäbisch, not Hoch Deutsch. The rest of us spoke Hoch Deutsch with a thick Schwäbisch accent. Also, my youngest brother, who was 11 years old by this time, spoke a mixture of German and English. It was analogous to Spanglish (if you get my drift). The funny thing is that none of us realized this. We could switch between English and German effortlessly, so we understood everything he said. It was only when we returned to the US and people would ask us what my brother was saying that we realized he was speaking a a mixture of German and English. This was nearly 40 years ago, and yet 4 of us still speak German (albeit a bit rusty and dated). My youngest brother, unfortunately, was too young to retain the German. Ironically, though, if he reads some German text he still speaks with a Schwäbisch accent. We made great friends and had a wonderful, memorable time. It was the most defining time in our lives. I wouldn't trade if for anything. I applaud your decision to raise your son bilingual. Let's be clear your son will probably learn at least one other EU language in school and will be quite proficient by the time he finishes school, so he might even be trilingual. My only advice is that you start teaching your son English grammar and spelling on your own. I say this from another experience. Later in life I married a woman from Mexico. Our two children speak Spanish quite well, but they didn't learn about Spanish grammar and spelling until they learned it in High School. That is a bit late in my opinion. The earlier you learn the more natural it will feel later in life. Best of luck on your adventure.

That was all extremely interesting for me, especially since i never had to think about that. I guess your approach makes sense from what you presented but i also saw the "problem" of your last point. I guess it might be a option to switch to a different strategy once Jack gets exposed to English via different sources than both of you. So it might make sense to switch to different strategy which exposes both of you more to German once has a solid German foundation and starts English in school. And yes, it would be a total waste not to raise Jack bilingual especially since what you said about the sponge is completely true. It is much easier to learn multiple language at a young age.

It can't be wrong to give children the opportunity to learn something with fun at an early age and to challenge it in an age-appropriate way, which of course always depends a bit on the individual child. Especially when it comes to languages, it is actually good to use different possibilities, if a child shows serious interest in it, then definitely support it. Any language that I speak more can only be an advantage. The works by Reinhard Lakomy and Monika Ehrhardt, "The Magic Tree of Dreams"( Der Traumzauberbaum), or "Story songs: the raindrop Paule Platsch" (Geschichtenlieder: der Regentropfen Paule Platsch) wonderful stories and songs are written very simply and understandably and are very well done and suitable for children as well as adults, highly recommended. Hihi, what a sweet little man, he is so adorable, like his parents.

I love this topic, as someone who studied English literature and linguistics, as a mother of a 5-year-old trying to become bilingual and as someone who has learned 9 languages so far (though most far far from fluent). Your approach with Jack sounds perfect to me in your situation. Also for another reason you haven't mentioned. You talked about grammar mistakes you might make. But it is also better in terms of accent if he learns from native speakers. You talked about it being important to learn the language in multiple ways. I actually wrote a seminar paper on developing language skills and something that was stressed again and again is that true bilingualism needs the child to develop both languages equally, meaning he either has to also learn to read and write English when he learns this in school for German. Next to teaching it yourself or through language courses another option are international schools where subjects are taught in multiple languages. My son's situation is a bit complicated. My mother tongue is Swiss German and I'm a single mum. His daddy speaks English but lives in London, so other than zoom calls he can't really help. Because my son was very late with learning to talk and had difficulties, I focussed on Swiss German first. But I will eventually have to teach him English as well. He already has quite some vocabulary and loves his TipToi books as well as audio books, and music. But the plan to really get him to talk is to swap to English as main language at home. Certainly not ideal but in my situation the only feasible option. Something I found really good as a source to read stories to him are books intended for children who start to read English. They use very simple language with lots of repetition which makes it a lot easier to understand. We love the ladybird edition for example. Now to tell him stories and later he can start to read them himself.

Wow amazing, love this Familie

Hi Ashton I think your totally on the right way. I think your son won't have any Problems to become bilingual when you speak English to hin at Home. He will learn German automatically when he comes to kita or Kindergarten. Remembering when I was a Young boy both of my parents were German. So I learned English in school I am grown up in a small City with a big Group of US military forces nearby to the former border of East Germany. Additionaly I was a short wave listener and I am following many English Broadcasting Services from all over the World, Voice of America, BBC, Voice of South Africa. It was an absolute Highlight when you had been able to receive Broadcasting services from Australia or New Zealand. It was so exciting to get World News from all these Broadcasting services. So I think my unterstanding of the English language is quiet good. My wrting I don't know, you can judge in it 😄😄😄😄😄😄 Unfortunately in my estimation my knowledge of speaking could be better.In my job I had to speak English but Not frequently.. But I am convinced I am able tol become absolute fluency when I get a Daily exposure to the English language and I am forced to speak on a Daily Basis. So long Story short you needn't to be afraid your so'n will learn both languages automatically. And I am going on to follow your Videos in oder to keep my English state of the art 😄😄😄🤩🤩🤩🤩👍👍👍👍 good luck to you.

Grew up monolingual as is rather common after all; I guess your motivation has to be profound to pierce that language and cultural barrier especially if you weren't born with it. Mine, it is! I just crave what I didn't have throughout my development years and beyond. I started implementing English the better part of almost 13 years ago on my own but then it has been 6 years since I greatly increased my scrutiny adding books, newspapers to my already established routine of daily hearing hours of spoken English itself. I will say, I came to British English later as I started my journey overseas with American English, the NBA being my very first point of contact with the matter of picking up the language. The idea of tackling German came later as events aligned with one another towards that specific region of the world. I'm quite new to it, it has been 4 years now that I've tried to confront it and I intend to keep on poking into it, consistency being the key to whatever result you might hope to achieve one day. So I guess I will stick around this channel some more if you don't mind 😄😊 On the whole if Jack loves the people speaking the language, that he will come to absorb and relish for the rest of his life 🌝 Un saluto dall'Italia, bella e saporita 🇮🇹🌞

My husband is Austrian and I'm Danish, our common language is English, so our children grew up trilingual. Since we live in Denmark all three children learned Danish in the school from Kindergarten class. From 4th grade they learned English and from 7th grade they also had German classes. So visiting my in-Laws in Vienna they learned the 3rd language is very usefull.

Most people in the Netherlands are bilingual and a good portion is trilingual, especially those who live in the east. We grew up with both English and German language through school and TV. Mixed language parents have even more possibilities to raise multilingual children. It gives kids a headstart in life in general.

From what I recall of my (few) psychology lectures, bilingualism actually delays the onset of dementia + gives a theory of mind advantage! So he is very lucky to be able to grow up bilingual :)

Hi great video again!! Use your natural one at home. English it is. Rest is up to the child and believe me he will asthonish you both. Please don't compare him to yourself If you're not raised mulii languaged.But I saw already in the comments that each child is different in this as you may find out some day :-) My parents only spoke Dutch, but school system in the Netherlands forces you to learn other ones. As mentioned English is mandatory. I speak and write English and German (also worked there). Understand and speak French, speak Thai (talking about hard language to learn....) badly but can understand it. Studied some years Latin in school, understanding Italian and Spanish isn't that hard if people don't speak to fast. Am I a language guy, no I'm not. It was and still is hard work but I enjoy it! but I had and took the time, for math and other things we're easy for me. My kids are born and raised in the Netherlands with a Thai mother ( speaking Thai to them in the kids younger years) strangely my daughter has big issues with Dutch grammar, speaking ok and speaks fluent Thai (without any lessons and see can't read it) The family and friends there are always amazed if we're there or on an Internet call. I've had her tested and the outcome wasn't a shock: Thai is her "motherlanguage" and yes Dutch language and grammar is hard to learn. Now she's almost a flight attendent, with proper English C1 level and yes German too. She didn't have German before in school, but I helped her by reading German books together and listen to German music. My younger son is quite different. Hardly speaks and understands Thai but also has problems with Dutch grammar. Also tested and his mother language is English ?! Age 13 already C1 level and C2 won't be an issue. With him I'm reading English books but his world is English. Gaming with other children around the world, speaking English. All programming computers, English. Loking movies and listen music, English. First year French in school was horrible, but with some help now second year he's doing quite ok and now first year German also no problems. My advice, be aware on the (German) grammar part. Ask teachers to monitor that and may be in time extra lessons. Speaking won't be an issue growing up in a German setting. Speaking German and English will be normal for him.It's his world. Second advice is playing music at home works great! Or youtube with different subtitles! I listen to English and later on to German music (my choice and started with it under age of 10) I hardly ever hear my children listen to Dutch music, English it is and I'm stimulating German and French music, youtube rules. So don't worry too much and also not on which system to use. Be yourselves and speak your native language and good luck learning German !

Great video explaining the different methods of foreign language learning and immersion. I am a German living in the USA, and we used the one parent, one language method to raise my daughter bilingually. I found that reading children’s books to her solely in German, exposing her to German children’s songs and nursery rhymes and German children’s shows/movies was extremely helpful. Also, communicating with German family members and friends in Germany by Skype/FaceTime helped enforce her German language skills. You will be pleasantly surprised how quickly Jack will be able to switch between German and English as his language skills develop. I have also found that bilingual children have an easier time picking up an additional language in school. At the time my daughter went to preschool, her German language skills were stronger than her English skills. However, that quickly changed because of the constant exposure to the English language all around her, and now her English skills are much better than her German skills, but she has a strong foundation in the German language and can carry on conversations with German family members. I would consider her mostly fluent in German. My daughter and I continue to speak German to each other, although I have to admit that some English words get mixed in by her when she cannot think of a German word. Much success to you guys in your endeavor to raise Jack bilingually.

In Switzerland it is self-evident that parents living near the border of the language will educate the children in both languages. I have observed this one in a ship near Murten/Morat: These children are able to change from German to French and in reverse order from one sentence to the next.

Your son not only learns English and German but also "Badisch" 😊 in Freiburg. My American colleague (living in Germany) is married with a German. Both spoke English with the daughter. Being 4 she "forbade" her mother to speak English with her, with the father it was accepted. The first understanding why this second language makes sense for came when they visited relatives in the US. That was the 'click' moment. Our English trainer (living in the Black Forest 😊) with 3 boys only speaks English at home to them. She was just unsure which language to use with the boys friends. The friends requested her to speak English. So she uses an easier English speaking with the friends and they seem to like it.

Wie immer ein sehr interessantes Video! Was mich an meine Kindheit erinnert hat, warum weil ich Spanier bin und in Deutschland geboren wurde. Meine Eltern haben die Methode gewählt das jeder eine Sprache spricht . Mein Vater Deutsch, weil er es besser sprach, meine Mutter spanisch. Was dann, laut meiner Mutter, zu einer interessanten Situation führte. Wurde ich von meinem Vater gefragt auf Deutsch, antwortete ich auf Spanisch und bei meiner Mutter dann genau anders. Dazu muss ich aber auch anführen das ich zwei Schulen besucht habe morgens die Deutsche Schule und 2 mal die Woche Nachmittags Spanischen Unterricht. Mit 55 Jahren bin ich mittlerweile in 4 Sprachen Fit genug um als " Native Speaker" zu gelten. Macht weiter so und informiert uns über die Unterschiede in den Kulturkreisen.

what i ofund interesting in the first years is how forming the pronunciationworks if you got time note down how your son develops with certain words: so that nanne became nonne and eventually German nochmal in our case. It is so fun to watch.

Another great video! Hey, it's fantastic that you dug deep about being a parent in a foreign country, but being your mother tongue English, learning it versus German it's going to be sort of a walk in the park IMHO. If it were the other way around, I'm pretty sure it would be harder for your kid. English is probably one of the easiest languages to learn (let alone to a kid) and everybody (at least in the Western world) is surrounded (or flooded!) with music, movies, TV shows and internet in English. I learnt a good share of my current English by watching movies and listening to music (you need some basic level at least to do this, you can't expect to learn any language from scratch by watching movies or listening to music). English is a global language, a "lingua franca", so I guess your kid will grow up being perfectly bilingual, which obviously will be very useful when travelling or looking for a job. I speak 4 languages, 3 from Latin (I include English; I know it's a Germanic language but it has a lot of vocabulary from Latin and French) and Korean (what a great surprise using it as an example!). I don't speak Korean and French very fluently but I can get by. I can also understand some Catalonian, Galician (both spoken in Spain), Italian and Portuguese, and a tiny little bit of Swedish. Raising your kid in 2 languages is going to be good. I strongly recommend you to let him learn Spanish and French someday. He'll probably complain then but when he gets older, he'll be extremely grateful. Learning a third language is easier than a second, and a forth is easier than the third, because your brain has broken in the language learning stuff. My nephew is half-Spanish and her mother talks to him in Korean; his parents speak in Spanish with each other, and he knows his mother talks to him in Korean for all the reasons you mentioned on your video. He understands it but he only speaks Spanish for now, and is also learning English (he's 7 y-o).

I am sure you are on a better path raising your son bilingual than I was when my children grew up in Denmark. I am their German father. But I didn't speak much German with them. So they didn't learn it as well as I would have hoped.

Our now 15-year-old son grew up in the UK until he was twelve. At that point we decided to move to Germany because of Brexit. My husband and I are both German so in the UK we decided to speak only German at home and English everywhere else, unless we were with people who spoke German too, or English at home with visitors, so I guess we did the people based version you described. We regularly visited German relatives too, for several weeks every year. When my son was about to join nursery I noticed that he pretty much understood everything in English that suited his age and to make his transition into a purely English speaking environment easier, I started speaking in English with him at home during play sessions. This worked well and he felt at home in the nursery right away at 2 years and 9 months. After that it was again mostly German at home but it didn’t help that we as his parents are more or less bilingual too (after many years outside of Germany at that point) and it was way too easy to slip into English just repeating something someone said or talking about what happened during the day. We were on a slippery slope. 😅 When our son started school at the age of four this got more and more as he learned new vocabulary there that he didn’t know in German. So I got into a habit of talking to him mostly in German and then instantly translate his English replies back to him so that he would at least have a passive knowledge of those expressions. Nevertheless by the age of 12 his German was nowhere as strong as his English which we really noticed every time we went to visit Germany: he was shy about answering questions as his language reaction was in English and he wasn’t able to be as quick witted in German. In the UK I never took the time to teach him how to read or write in German. I would have liked to send him to some Saturday school thing for that but it was too far away and would have eaten up the whole day. When it became clear that we would move to Germany with him, some months beforehand I started to teach him a little about reading German with the help of some books for primary school children. He picked up quickly how easy German spelling and pronunciation can be. We registered him with a German Gymnasium and were hoping for the best. 😅Amazingly three years later his German is almost as good as his English, even without much intervention. At the beginning he spelt almost all German words with English sounds - a nightmare for the teachers but they were lenient, he’s not the only child ever in Germany with another language being stronger. Initially it was a struggle, I had to translate some of his homework for him, especially history. They put him into a DAZ course at school (German for foreigners) but that wasn’t what he needed as he still had German grammar naturally in his head. So after six months they let him simply get on with things. I could already tell after three months that he had got more used to everything when he came home after school saying, that school was boring. He had internalised the new lingo and procedures and everything became more normal. He still struggles with some German expressions these days but he’s on a good way and doing well at school. We still speak a mixture of both languages at home and our son uses spoken English at lot while gaming with friends from various countries. My husband uses English while speaking with colleagues and his company’s customers. But I can feel that I get a bit rusty when speaking, I don’t have enough exposure. So, looking at our experience I would recommend to you to be a bit more active about your son’s English when he gets old enough to read and write and spends more time outside your English speaking home bubble. English lessons in school will bore him to death by the way 😆 but if you keep the ball rolling he should at least get a good grade in that subject easily.

I just watched or rather listened to an exhibition some linguist friends are creating. One of the exhibits allowed for listening to children growing up bilingual (Schwyzerdütsch and French) and the interesting sentences they form, switching grammar and language inside of one sentence. In that study parents use their different mother tongues and the child (3-4 years) was still mixing them up. In Switzerland that happens rather often. French colleagues of mine were native French speakers and usually mixed German Fachbegriffe right into their French. But they never used French in their German, while working in the German speaking part of Switzerland. I did the same thing with subjects that I learned abroad. The 'foreign' expression simply came to mind a lot faster than the corresponding expression in my mother tongue.

Im German, living in Canada. My kids (8/11) only speak German at home since they were born. They are fluent in English and German. Its a gift. And you don't need a strategy, don't overthink it, just do whatever you feel is best.

your child will learn german no problem even if you only speak english at home i am from australia came to the netherlands when i was 4 we would speak english at home till i was 8 and watched mostly english tv i had no problem learning dutch it did help my dad is dutch and raised here in the netherlands

I was born in Switzerland to German parents, who could not speak Swiss German (which you might think is similar to German, but really is not as every German will tell you that has been to/moved to Switzerland thinking it was just like moving to a different Bundesland). Hence, proper German was th only language spoken at home, but I picked up Swiss German on the street and while playing with friends (it was a time before the wonderful day care facilities of today existed). When I was 5 years old my father had the opportunity to work in Michigan (USA) for two years and our whole family moved. We still spoke exclusively German at home, as my mother did not speak English very well at all, but me and my bothers all picked up English organically on the street, in kindergarden, and school. Our parents did support our English language developing by sending us to some additional tutoring (especailly me), so that I could keep up more easily in school. After two years living in the US we moved back to Switzerland and I started primary school. Some schooling challenges did start occurring for me at this point. As I had completed Year 1 and half of 2 in the US, I was well ahead of my Swiss class mates in maths, but as you know speaking out numbers in English in German (especially those 21 and above) is very different. Hence, I struggled quite a bit in my first couple of years in Swiss schools due making what seemed like errors in my spoken (but not written) maths in class and the challenges of having to learn writting German (Swiss German is only spoken, not a written language). I completed all my schooling and went to university in Switzerland and the English I picked-up as a 5-7 year old coupled with the English I took throughout secondary school in Switzerland has served me very well during my studies. In fact, it made me confident enough to apply to US PhD programmes, recieving 3 offers. Fast forward, I graduated with a US PhD, worked 2 years as a Postdoc at a US Ivy-League university, and now live and work in the Northeast of England with my wife and two kids. As her parents and relatives do not speak English at all, it was imperative that our kids learn to speak Swiss-German and after some research we settled on the same method as you guys. My kids are not 7 and 5 and are completely fluent in both languages and are doing very well in primary school, including their ability to speak the regional Gordie accent (...just google it...). The key to makng that method work, I think is having some regular daycare arrangements. Both our kids went to nursury for at least 3 days a week during school time, which is where they learned most/all of their English. We still only speak Swiss German in the House and it is completely natural for them (in fact, they switch seemlessly between Swiss-German and Engish when friends of theirs are over to play, just like I switch from Swiss-German to German when speaking to my parents or brothers in the presence of our wives/girl friends). In fact, because we also exclusively read bedtime stories in German, my 7 year old has started to pick-up how to read in German and is now reading German at the appropriate level he would if he were going to primary school in Switzerland. Given my experience, both as a child and parent, I think I can vouch for the method you guys have chosen and personally recommend it to colleagues asking me about it. It is of course significantly easier if both parents speak the same but different language from the country they live in. Friends that are themselves bilingual couples in a foreign context have it much harder and find it much more challenging for their child to pickup the different languages.

I'm a teacher at a school and in university we were taught that unless you are not on a mothertongue level of the foreign language you shouldn't speak that language at home with your child. Especially during the phase when they acquire speech and the undertstanding of it. I consider myself pretty fluent in English, I'm at b2 to A1 level but I would not and have not spoken to them in English. When my kids were young (like 3-4 years old) I liked to show them Dora the Explorer cartoons and ni-hao Kai-Lan. And when my daughter was 4 years old she stood in front of that supermarket door and said. "magic door open up" That was pretty cool. Sheis now 13. She visits a bilingual school and some subjects are taught in English. We watch films and shows in English and she understands most of it. Im Northrine Westphalia English in elementary school is taught in first grade already but they do not get very deep into the subject of grammar. They pretty much have to learn everything from the beginning when they go to another school after the 4 years of elementary school. I envy those who were raised bi- oder multilingual. I'm pretty much into languages and would have loved to be fluent in more than 3 languages.

I was also raised bilingual. My father is from Northumberland (Northern England) and my mother is an English teacher, but we live in Germany,so it was just natural for me to learn both languages. Just like you mentioned at the start how you wouldn't speak German at home, I also exclusively learned English for the first three years of my life, until I was sent to a childminder (Tagesmutter), then 'Krabbelstube', and from 4.5 to 5 onwards I was in Kindergarden. I continued to only speak German at home until I was maybe around 9, when, because of school, I spoke a lot more German than English. With my brother I nearly always speak German, while with my father I tried only speaking English again from around 12 or 13 (I am 18 now), when I noticed how much I was actually forgetting English words. While I can have a conversation in English, my language skills are very basic when it comes to very specific topics, that you need more specialised words for (like sciences and generally just fields that I have not talked about with my parents at home). Also for around the last 5 years I have not watched much German content on RU-vid, partly because there is just a wider variety in English, but also because I wanted to keep at least my passive vocabulary at a decent level, even when my active vocabulary is not so great, as you might be able to gather from my comment here. Edit: It is probably also very noticable how German my sentence structure is, with all the commas and subclauses(

I'm sure you'll have many more experiences like the one at 22:00 during the first 3-4 years of child hood :-D (At least we had, and I don't think that neither us nor our kids are out of the ordinary in any way) As to your question at 22:33 - maybe the same way I learned/improved my english: (1) Started listening to english radio stations (BFBS first, later AFN as we moved down south) at a young age (they just had the better music on rotation :-) (2) Watched movies or shows in english with german (or other) subtitles (3) Read books in english if possible. As a result of (2) I also picked up a good amount of swedish on the way. My dad was living in Sweden for >30y and especially when I was younger I was with him touring Sweden during the summer holidays. Since I liked to watch movies un-dubbed and the scandinavian countries regularlys do *not* dub and just slam subtitles on, I indirectly learned swedish since I could follow the english audio and matched that against the swedish subtitles. Add to that the fact almost every Scandinavian knows at least basic english, so that helps too. That and being from the northern part of germany :-)

Hi, you are on a very good track, no worries. And gosh, he is so cute! One word of advice from the experience of friends of mine (bilingual kiddos, German/ French, in northern Germany, in the 80ies before easy access to French literature, movies, radio etc. online): All three boys are perfect native speakers in German and French. However, in writing and everything that reaches an academic level, they are hesitant (and even think I have an advantage over them after having lived, studied and worked in Belgium and France for two years each, I am C2 level and teach it but am nowhere near accent free, on the phone folks think I am Belgian or Senegalese :-)) - which puzzled me a little bit. It's just the reduced practice in writing and reading that limits their self confidence at the highest level. And all kids are very bright and accomplished in a very nurturing household. The cure? Well, you are a researcher, you'll figure it out :-). (but for starters, lots of reading in English as well will help Jack to mitigate that last level threshold of perfect command of his parents' native language). It's a challenge for much later, but if he has passion for literature in both languages, you can probably circumvent that minor trap.

Both my husband and I were raised bilingual using the heritage language method. We have picked 2 other languages along the way and our daughter is being raised trilingual. We are using a version of heritage language because we do used to using our first 2 languages interchangeable and German is reserved for Kita. She will say one word in all 3 languages.

To give some professional insight since i learned/still learn this in my apprenticeship to be an Erzieher (in a few months nearly finished) for Kids is no problem to learn 2 or three languages but the only thing that is important is that he knows where he has to/can use which language. If that is clearly seperated where he sues what he doesnt get confused and can easily differentiate the languages. Also Kids even long before they speak they can identify there native language by hearing someone speaking it, they can differanciate that out of 100+ languages no problem. Syo i liek, that you raise him bilingual its just such a need skill to have to speak 2 langues fluently without accent and it is for sure no problems ince kids leanr so much easier and faster until they are 3 years old. Hop that brings some Value aswell love the content on German Kita and relating stuff since i work there. Grettings out of the Black Forrest :D

I think your method is the best in your case. I think the parents should talk to the children in a language they really master. I'm German, my wife is French, so we chose the one parent one language approach, with the extension I usually spoke French with my wife. Additionally to that they went to french pre k group one afternoon a week. Result: They are all fluent in speaking, but not perfect in writing, they learned reading and writing french at school.

Do you know @neelalee? She used to host several TV shows, also started a RU-vid channel. Her husband and she got two Spanish-speaking au-pairs for their son at a very young age. Then they moved to Romania and he attended an English-speaking kindergarten. He is now a first grader and fluent speaking and reading in German, English and Spanish.

A friend of mine is from Finland and married to a Russian. Both talk in English and live in Germany. Their kids speak all 4 languages fluently, and mix them sometimes to funny sentences when then talk to each other. Mainly when they feel a certain word e.g. in English, might describe something better. It's stunning to see them switching the languages when they discuss with the parents. About 20 years ago I saw a similar family at Tokyo Airport (he was German and she Japanese). The kids were about 4 or 5 years in age. Everyone at the launge was stunned watching and listening them. If it works with 4 resp. 3 languages, it works for sure with 2.

Is a gift that you give your children when you speak another language. We speak, High German! Spanish, English and Swiss, because we live in Switzerland. The children started talking later, but they have a larger vocabulary

I have many friends/colleagues from abroad (Czechia, USA, Italy, Netherlands , Syria just to name a few) who became parents here in germany. One thing which was common with all of them was that their kids learned speaking german faster and better than their parents as soon as they entered kindergarten... independent of the language spoken at home. Also, billingual classes in english are quite common in german public secondary schools. I had both geography and history being teached in english from 5th to 10th grade. tldr: Don't worry!

My tip would be that start watching, well everything, in german with english subtitles (or the other way around). Thats how i (mostly) learned english. it helps with understanding and teaches the written form of the language as well.

My daughter ( german) and her husband ( english) speak only in their languages to the children. But both parents speak only english with each other. My daughter speaks it fluently. Living in Germany they found a bilingual Kita. One Erzieher was german the other from an english speaking country. The 6 years old son now speaks fluently in both languages, the 2,5 years old one understands both. It helps that they meet the english family 4-5 times a year. Now the older one stayed for one week with his english grandma and all were fascinated how good his english is. Now going to school in his first year he will learn english there. And he will learn reading and writing english in Grundschule.

My German immigrant mother raised me with both German and English, which means I had British English in my nursery school in Chicago. The one she did not want to send me to, but I insisted on because the other children on our block were in school. Of course my English thrived there. I went to Germany each summer and that is where my German developed. Later on I had it in school with monolingual children. When my German immigrant husband and I had our daughter, we created a Heritage language after school program at her school which she was in as long as she was at that school. In school she took Mandarin and Spanish. In a different school for high school, she has taken German as a foreign language with classmates because that was our best alternative until this year, her senior year, where she is taking an extra Saturday German school class to develop her vocabulary and learn more complex grammar forms. They offered her the C1 test for German university, where she plans to go next year. This class is through the DANK Haus Kinderschule in Chicago. Most of my daughter's classmates are no longer taking any language in their senior year. They only needed two years, and those who did not continue take electives. Mostly those who went on exchange to a German speaking country in their junior year are still taking German. My daughter had her Austrian exchange partner come and stay with us from Wien in the fall of 11th grade, and then she went in January and spent most of the rest of the school year there. She also went back in the summer in time for the end of their school year celebrations and ball, and then to hang out. So, German comes easily to her, and her German is close to native like. She also knows a lot of Austrian words and expressions. We live in a University neighborhood and most of our good friends are from other countries, and are multilingual, so that is the milieu in which our daughter is growing up. One family is Finnish and Egyptian/German and the daughters speak Finnish, German and English, and are taking French in school . The older one has been learning Arabic in a course, which is the language she is least fluent in. Other friends are Austrian and Turkish and their children speak English, German and Turkish and are taking French in school. Another couple are Polish and German, so their children speak both languages, and are taking Spanish in school. Another family speaks Hebrew and the children are bilingual in Hebrew and English and take German in school, which their parents speak fluently. Most of the parents I have mentioned speak multiple languages like my husband, who has German, English and then to a lessor degree Greek, Latin, Italian, French and Russian. Right now he is learning Ukrainian on Duolingo, and my daughter is trying to teach herself French. She will be using it this summer in a class trip as well as the Spanish on trips to Costa Rica and Spain. We feel that people should know many languages because it helps us be global citizens. Also, being in a mommy group when my daughter was young with parents from several countries lent itself to my learning about other parenting methods. That is, another piece of linguistic plurality is learning culture and customs going along with languages. I have enjoyed looking a the series Generation Helikopter Eltern to look at how our parenting values fit with the German ideas of parenting being expressed in the show. www.zdf.de/dokumentation/generation-helikopter-eltern I am enjoying your series as well because being from Illinois, and having our families in Niedersachsen as well as a home in Northern Germany, I can relate to your German-Midwest USA connections.

I was born in Germany. In 1952 my father took a job in Argentina. The family, my father my mother, myself (age 8), my brother (age 6) and my baby brother (age 3) spoke no Spanish. Arriving in Argentina, we had several weeks of basic language training to be able to get by. My father was working with some other Germans so at least he had the opportunity to communicate outside the family. My mother and we children did not have that opportunity. My mother was teaching herself Spanish with the help of our Spanish speaking maid and we two eldest children went to public school. Initially we spoke no Spanish and they spoke no German. We had some fights due to misunderstandings. At home we spoke German so as not to forget. Books were a great help. I was told that four years later, we children spoke essentially accent free Spanish. In 1956, my father's contract ended. Work was still hard to find in Germany so we moved to the USA. Again, no one in the family spoke English. The situation was similar. My father was able to speak German at work and the rest of us were left to fend for ourselves. We spoke German at home but English at other times. In my opinion, based on my experience, the best way to learn a language is through deep immersion. I took two years of French in high school but basically could survive. My father was never fluent in English, he tended to slip in Spanish and German words. The rest of us were often asked where we came from because they could not place our accents. My middle brother had the opportunity to work with a German company and travelled often to Germany while I had the opportunity to work with some Spanish speaking individuals. Other than a limited technical vocabulary, I was able to communicate easily. The three of us boys spoke German with our parents but after their passing spoke primary English among ourselves

I think your apporach is absolutely right. Jack will learn german as second mothertongue in kita/kindergarden and school. He is a little american boy and the only way to make english his mother-tongue as well is to speak it at home. Perfect approach for you guys. I think one might think he doesn't need english classes in school later, as he learned it at home. But in english classes, especially reading and writing and grammar and all that will be deepened. So I think english classes in school will be very important for him, instead of trying to let's let him do french and spanish. because his english skills, especially reading and writing, will also need honing to make him a full-blown natural speaker. Especially if he might go to the US to study or soemthing later in his life and will need to delve into academics.

I grew up bilingual and my parents both spoke a different language. As a child, I spoke a mixture where I switched fluently, so it was sometimes hard for "outsiders" to understand. But in school I never had problems because I learned in kindergarten that they are two different languages. To this day I speak both fluently, and in addition I learned English and French at school (and in my free time). My parents never thought about how they could teach me both languages, they just did what was best for them and especially for me. To this day, they speak to me in both languages. Doing research is always a good idea, but have in mind that you should do what works for you and your family.

I don’t have kids but my Spanish speaking friends are doing similar to you. Since we live in the US & kids will speak English in school, they choose to only speak Spanish at home so their kids become fluent in both!

you pretty much answered your question by yourself (bilanguage), but maybe you can talk about the concrete building method for your home pro/con -> isolation, costs…, not so common for homebuilding I believe in Germany. Or is it because a unique building site (hillside) ? Thanks

Congratulations! Raising a polyglot family is a challenge, but it also brings HUGE rewards!! I was raised polyglot and have also raised my daughters polyglot. I come from a "german" community in Paraguay. The general everyday language is Low German (aka Plautdietsch [PDT]) for about 90% of the community, while the formal [and church] language is "Hochdeutsch" (high German). Meanwhile the official language of the country is Spanish. Then there are at least six indigenous ethnic groups in the area, each with their own language, belonging to at least four linguistic families. During the late 1980's the lingua franca started shifting from Low German to Spanish for inter-ethnic communications. Our own private schools have emphasized to parents for many years, that families who speak Low German at home, should *NOT* start using High German when the kids start school at age 6-7. It is better for the kids to learn High German in school correctly, instead of incorrectly at home. Because correcting "Mir und mich verwechsel ich nicht. Das kommt bei mich nicht vor." is almost impossible. My parents, though born and raised in Paraguay, met and married during/after college in the USA and moved back to Paraguay. Shortly after me and my sibling where born we spent a year in the USA for my fathers Masters degree. So by age 3 I was exposed to High German at home, Low German with cousins and relatives, and English with the student co-op daycare. Through the work of my parents I was exposed to Spanish, and my first year and a half of schooling was also in Spanish. After formally learning to read and write in Spanish and German, I also taught myself to read English. When I was eleven years old, my family spent a sabbatical year in the USA. The very next day after our arrival us kids were put in public school in a sink or swim situation. During that year English became the predominant language in our family. But the moment we stepped of the plane on our return to Paraguay, us kids switched back to German. Even though we would often borrow words from other languages, because there is no equivalent term in the main language, my parents tried to avoid the mixing of languages. And since my early teens it made absolutely no difference to me if a text was in English or German. As a voracious reader Spanish has always been a struggle, mainly because of a seriously big disconnect between literary and common use Spanish (again especially for children's and leisure literature). When raising my own family, we decided to each use our own mother tongue with our children: my (ex-)spouse spoke Spanish and I spoke German. The challenge was the marital language to communicate between us (Spanish). My adopted daughter had been fostered by an English speaking couple before she came to us aged four, demanded that I speak German with her and was fluent within about two months. Though she is very prone to mixing the languages, in contrast to my biological daughter who does very little mixing. But both have an above average vocabulary in comparison to their peers. My own anecdotal evidence suggests that with proper distinction of reference person and/or situation children are able to cleanly separate and distinguish at least three to four languages. But for one person to teach/speak in more than one language will confuse or impede the learning of a new language, at least up to grades 3 or 4 (about age 9). During my schooling in the late 1970's and 1980's Spanish was taught starting in grade 3, and many of my peers had not achieved fluency when graduating high school. For my daughters in the 2000's Spanish classes started in grade 2 and in grade 3 Guaraní (the second official language of Paraguay) was added to the mix. And all three languages taught by the same teacher. Again for their peers, many fail to achieve fluency in Spanish by the end of high school. Fluency in Guaraní is a separate controversy, since the academic language bears almost no similarity to the common use language. I have heard from a Low German community in Asia, that especially in the first two or three years of schooling the teachers use a hand puppet to teach a second language. Thus maintaining a referential distinction between the languages.

We thought of raising our son (3,5 yo now) bilingual (Dutch/English), but we are both no native English speakers. I am Dutch, my wife Indonesian. Although starting with Indonesian my wife switched to mainly Dutch. But at age 2 our son started to speak English as well, which he learned himself listening to and watching English kids videos/songs on RU-vid. Since then we are actively speaking English to him besides the Dutch. Kids pick up language so easily when they are young. Thinking about letting him watch some German content as well (his uncle and aunt are living in Germany) :)