Bringing up baby to be multilingual

Research has shown that children who are multilingual learn better. Assuming the child will go to nursery by the age of 1 it will learn German there and when it starts to speak to its parents in German they will be able to answer in the same language. If at home each parent uses their own language they will soon understand both.

There will be a time when the child thinks that the grandparents are stupid because they don't understand and will give you questioning looks! Eventually they will realise that said stupid GPs only understand English and will very patient with them. Enjoy.

nonnasusie my mother in law wouldn't DH learn Italian (why did she marry an Italian?) He always regretted it once we started travelling to Italy.

DD has a colleague working in Italy and married to a French woman. Their children speak English, French or Italian, depending who they are talking to. One of my GSs is learning Hungarian from his mother.

Nonnie - your post about grandchildren thinking grandparents are stupid, reminded me about our half-Swedish GD. Her mother always spoke to her in Swedish, but father in English She understands English perfectly but up to now (3 1/2) mostly speaks Swedish to us, which of course we understand little. When we don’t respond correctly, she repeats more loudly, as if we were deaf! On a recent visit, she started to figure out that we weren’t completely stupid and used a bit of English.
Interestingly, her younger brother actually speaks more English - seems to ‘get it’ that he can reply to Dad and us in English.

My daughter in law is Japanese. Both my grandsons are bilingual and speak English and Japanese. It’s amazing to hear them especially the youngest age 3. Its excellent that parents encourage this. Thankfully they are able to converse with me I would find it extremely difficult if they didn’t speak English.

Having had to learn languages the slow, tedious academic way I've always envied those with the opportunity to pick it up more naturally. I wasn't aware though of that potential downside, polyester. for your inner child.

My children are trilingual, as am I. They had Spanish with their father, English with me and Catalan at school. XgrandtanteJE65, I have to disagree with you, regarding the third language (not spoken at home) being the weaker one. If anything, it is the strongest in this house, as the children use it at school, where they spend most of their waking hours, and with their friends.
Regardless, they all even out in the end. Truth is, any language which is learned before the age of seven and which is in continual use, will be a mother tongue.

When we lived overseas there were several 'mixed' couples, where the child grew up with 3 languages. E.g. one parent speaking to them in German, the other in Greek, but parents talking to each other in English.

There were other 3 language mixes,too.
The children would often muddle them up for a year or two, but would sort them out eventually.
It's a great advantage for any child to grow up multilingual IMO.
Conversely, dds have friends whose 'other' parent didn't talk to them in their own language (Norwegian, Arabic, Vietnamese) and they're really cross with that parent for not giving them that advantage, when it's so much harder to learn a language later..

Farmor15 interesting our bilingual granchildren from the start always knew which language to use speaking to us ( English ) . They did not like anyone speaking French to them who did not have a proper French accent . Now at school they can do a bit of showing off during French leassons.