Hello from the UK

Hi Francesco, and welcome to the zoo!

I'm Marisa, a Spaniard born and raised in Spain who has been living in the US since 1996. My daughter was born here, so her ML is English. When she was born, I decided I'd raise her multilingual, so that means speaking to her only in minority languages, in my case Spanish and German (I studied German a long time ago, and I'm not as fluent as I'd like, but after all these years using it with my daughter, I'm actually able to speak it and understand it more than I originally thought I would!). My daughter also gets some exposure to French (her knowledge of this language is more passive, since I don't know how to speak it), and lately she's shown interest (and willingness, go figure!) to learn some Chinese. I can pretend I 'speak' and understand French, since both French and Spanish come from Latin, but when it comes to Chinese...not a clue. Still, I want to be proactive and give my daughter the chance to learn it.

I also wanted to say that I'm the only parent my daughter has (single mother by choice, in my case), so I'm the input source for both Spanish and German in the house. We don't speak the ML at home at all (that's something that she quickly got), so she's pretty good at switching languages when she comes back from school... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this continues in the future! She knows better, ha, ha.

Anyway, I had a similar concern to yours when I decided to teach her German as well. Like I said, at that point I wasn't fluent at all (I hadn't spoken it/used it for 20-something years when she was born)...so I did the best I could. I religiously read books in Spanish (I still do) in the mornings, and then I began to read German books to her either in the afternoon or before going to bed. Please keep in mind that because of my particular situation, I've been able to read during pretty much any meal and trigger conversation about the book contents because it's only my daughter and I, so she doesn't have to speak to other family members while we eat which, in some respects, has made this 'extra reading opportunity' easier to handle.  Anyway, I began reading books in both mls as often as I could. I also (originally) planned to use German at specific times during the day, for example, bath time, or right before I pick her up from school, although I'm flexible about this because sometimes she doesn't feel like talking/reading in Spanish in the mornings, for example, so we speak in German, and the other way round, but for the most part, I try to keep our routine (right now reading/speaking German during breakfast, reading/speaking Spanish at dinner time.... and now she does her own reading/writing on those languages when she comes back home...the 'perks' of having an educator as a mother, ha, ha!). I try to make sure she has a relatively similar exposure time to both languages. Obviously, I think we speak more in Spanish than German, but I was actually surprised to see how much German we've ended up using over the years. I know her German isn't at the same level of other German monolingual kids her age...but it's not bad at all, if you ask me!

I definitely think reading has had a huge impact on my daughter's linguistic background both in Spanish and German, so I'd strongly recommend doing this in both languages. I'd also play Spanish songs in the morning and German ones in the afternoon...and somewhere in the day I'd play some French songs and DVDs (and now Chinese ones!). When the time came that she was old enough to watch TV, I only played cartoons/nursery rhymes in any of the minority languages. She's barely watched any cartoons in English in her lifetime. Of course, that means I have to 'research' what cartoons are out there and find whether I can find the same characters speaking in Spanish, German, or French, for example, but I was actually surprised to see how (relatively) easy this was, and also importantly, how much she liked cartoons that were only popular in Spain, France or Germany and not necessarily in the US. After all, she just wants to watch cartoons she likes, and that happens in any language. Throughout the years, I've also purchased 'authentic' materials for her, so...let's just say that the good folks at amazon.es, amazon.de, and amazon.fr know me well.  It's kind of funny to see my shelves because you normally find the exact book in 4 different languages, and the same with the DVDs (unfortunately, I don't normally find the same DVD with audio in all of our minority languages, so I end up buying the DVD from different countries, but oh well...she gets to watch the movie in Spanish, German, and French. I still have to research the "Chinese market" more...).

YouTube has been a great tool both for the music component and the visual one. I'll be happy to share with you some suggestions for Spanish and even for Italian (I'm not very familiar with Italian cartoons, but I'm sure you can replicate what I did in terms of looking for popular cartoons in one language and see whether they're available in another; Peppa Pig is a good example, just to name one). I started without knowing whether I was doing the right thing or not, whether it'd work or not and, to this day, I'm not fully sure whether I'm doing the most successful stuff...but I definitely have a better sense of what to do and look for, and I'm sure the same will happen to you when you look into it. 

So yes, using//reading in both languages daily (now I'm also doing 'homework in both Spanish and German daily, which she seems to like...again, fingers crossed!), and devoting different times of the day to one language and then another, is what's worked for me. I wish I could be more fluent in German to provide better input, but she's making progress and using the language herself (now she's also begun to read it, although her reading skills are stronger in Spanish) and...play by ear. Once you see how your son reacts to your efforts, you'll be able to focus on what seems to work for both of you, and from then...trilingual success!

Enjoy those special moments with your son! Regardless of the language spoken, those are the moments we'll remember with our children.

Marisa