Children really do change you!

Ilenia, thank you for sharing this very positive experience. Your observation about this journey is very perceptive, I think. I, too, believe that the challenge of raising bilingual kids is actually about more than the child's language development; simultaneously, it's about the growth of the parent's spirit in many ways.

So I loudly applaud this breakthrough for you!

And, by the way, from your writing, my impression is that your English is excellent. Don't let this be an obstacle when it comes to connecting with other English speakers.

I send empowering wishes from Japan to Germany! Keep moving forward, Ilenia! 

Hi! I have finally found some time to write.

We just came back from a 3-week trip to Italy! We hadn't come back home in 3 years, and it was also Sofia's first time there, so it was really exciting to meet the whole family and our friends!

I would not call it a "vacation", since we were going back and forth every couple of days from mine and Andrea's parents' place (it's a 100km trip), thus, Sofia had her routine a bit messed up, but overall, I think she had great fun!

She is still in a very friendly phase, so she was very happy to meet new people and to have all the attentions to herself! She also got a lot of presents, which didn't hurt!

From our multilingual perspective, of course, she had a big immersion of Italian. 

Keeping the English routine we were used to (on average 3 hours a day) was a bit difficult, though. Before going there, we decided we would have talked to her in English during the travels, but the car makes her fall asleep very fast, so I do not think she managed to grasp a lot of English there. 

Moreover, our families are not fluent in English, so we were not comfortable talking to Sofia in English while they were there. It was the first time they met her, and it was important that they could create a bond with her. 

The second week we were there we worked from home (our work allows that, which is something we are really grateful for), so we stayed just at one place, and, since Andrea's parents were working too, we managed to speak English for 4/5 hours a day.

And then, of course, every time we were alone with Sofia, we immediately grabbed our English-puppet and switched (if the duration of the English session was worth it, I mean. Of course, if it was just for half an hour then I guess she would have been more confused than benefited from that).

Furthermore, I found a sort of English play-group online. They usually meet in person in Trento (where my husband is from), but only during the school year (from October to May). During the summer, instead, they organize these meetings online, which, for babies/kids from 0 to 2 years are just half an hour (attention span is very low anyway, plus I did not want to expose Sofia to too much screen-time  since she already "has" to deal with it when we videocall our families from Germany). 

It was a good opportunity to meet other parents who are trying to introduce some English from an early age, and the "teacher" gave us some nice suggestions for books and songs we are definitely going to try!

Regarding Sofia's progress, it's still early to say anything, since she does not speak yet. But she understands different things in both languages. She can react in a proper way when you ask her to "say hi" or "clap her hands" or "how the dog goes" in both Italian and English, even if you are not showing her the gesture, and this is very exciting! 

I am a bit worried because in a month she will start going to the Tagesmutter (which is a sort of small kindergarten, in which one person takes care of 4-5 kids). She is German and she does not speak English, so Sofia will start learning German (which is, of course, unavoidable), but we will have less time to spend with her, so it will become harder to keep a strict routine for both Italian and English.

It will probably be the most difficult year in that sense. Next year she will start instead in a bilingual kindergarten (German/English), so at least we would not have to worry too much about English.

So, overall, I think we are doing fine! Let's see what this journey will bring us next! 

Here we are! Time is always too little, but our multilingual journey has not stopped, even if I am not tracking down the progress as often as I would like to!  

Anyway, last update was more than 6 months ago! Lots of things happened!

First of all, we managed to come back to Italy in September as well, just in time to celebrate Sofia's first birthday with the whole family! It really was a special day! 

We could spend some more time with everyone there, and Sofia had a second Italian full immersion! 

We also brought her to the sea, which she enjoyed a lot, especially playing with the sand!

She is a very social kid, always looking to play with other little kids. I really hope this side of her personality may accompany her even when she will be older; it would come in handy for our multilingual purpose as well I think! 

In mid August she started going to a Tagesmütter here in Jena. There she is fully immersed in the ML, for 8 hours a day. This means we had to keep up with both Italian and English during the remaining hours (which are not that many, considering she also has to sleep at some point, even if she does not seem to be very fond of it ).

I was a bit worried at first, but now I think we found a pretty decent rhythm. We are using English for around 2.5h each day and Italian for roughly 3h per day, during the week. In the weekends instead, we usually speak Italian for most of the time and still keep 3h-3.5h of English.

We are trying our best to use the two languages in different contexts as well. Thus, for instance, we try not to be always in the "Italian phase" when we go grocery shopping, so we can have the chance to point to the various items in the shop and tell her the names once in Italian and once in English. 

We are doing heavy use of background music, for both the languages and then, of course, we try to read aloud as much as we can.

She is very keen on musical books. For Christmas we got her one little book with English Christmas songs, where she could press a button and listen to the music and words. She adores it! 

Unfortunately I was unable to find an equivalent one in Italian. It seems like all the musical books either do not have words or they have a separate CD for listening to the actual song, which make them lose a bit the appeal of letting her start the music she wants. 

We also started a sort of advent calendar but for the whole year.  Every Saturday (if she behaves) she gets to open a small present (a book of course) and then we read it together. I hope this would encourage her love for reading. Her attention span is still not ideal (and some of the books might be for slightly older kids I must admit), but she is starting to pick the books up from the shelves and bring them to you, then sit on your lap and listen for a while. It's one of the best moments for me! 

Living in a university city such as Jena and considering the fact that we first moved here because my husband got a job at the University means we also have some International friends and those who are Italian like us have been very supportive of our multilingual aim as well. Sometimes we forgot to do our English session before meeting with some Italian friends, and when that happened they all were willing to switch to English so we would not skip it! I think this is also important for Sofia, so she sees that not only mom and daddy are talking to her in English sometimes, but also other people do. 

Our "puppet-strategy" to switch between the languages is still the same. We use a puppet when we are in the English phase and we say bye to the puppet when we switch back to Italian. Sofia knows where we keep the puppet, she always puts it back in its drawer and says bye to him. 

Then, of course, she started with the first words! She is using a bit of everything, but I guess is normal! Depending on which language she is usually exposed to when doing something, she has learnt some vocabulary. Thus, for instance, she says "grandma" and "grandpa" in Italian, since with them she speaks Italian and we usually refer to them in Italian when talking with her. She says "hedgehog" in English because we have plenty of English books with a hedgehog in them, and so is more likely that she heard the name in English. She is saying "bye" in German because when we go picking her up from the Tagesmütter she says bye to her and she hears the other kids do it in German. 

But she understands everything in all three languages, which I guess is a promising sign for our multilingual aim!

This year we are also going to Italy for 5-6 weeks, thanks to our bosses who allowed us to work remotely! This is a great opportunity for Sofia (and for us as well) to spend some time with her grandparents and the rest of the family, and I am sure it will boost her Italian as well! 

We should try to fit in some English as well, even though probably not as much as we usually do, but I am not too worried about it.

This August she will also switch from the Tagesmütter to a bilingual (German/English) kindergarten, and this should also allow us to focus more on the Italian part of the journey! 

So...so far so good I would say! Let's see what comes next! 

Ilenia

Thank you very much Adam! 

Here we are again! 
As always, time has passed so fast and a lot of things happened since my last post! 

First of all, I am now in maternity leave (baby #2 is arriving in early January)! 

But, let's go in order. Last time I wrote it was before our Italian full 5-weeks immersion!
So, we managed to go to Italy from mid of May to end of June, which was a great period, linguistically speaking, because Sofia had a huge vocabulary boost at that time and it was great we were in Italian most of the time for that, so she learnt tons of words! 

We spent such a wonderful time, meeting up with friends and family, and we went to the sea as well. 

Keeping up with English was, of course, a bit harder but, even when skipping a few days here and there, we managed to keep it alive most of the time, especially when we were at the sea with no grandparents. 

Unfortunately I was unable to contact the English playgroup we found the year before in Trento; maybe they are not doing that anymore...

Anyway, when we came back to Germany, Sofia spent the whole July in the same Tagesmutter as before, and then in mid August she switched to the kindergarten. 

Unfortunately, it was not an actual bilingual (German/English) kita as it has been advertised (they are linked to a primary school, which is the actual bilingual institution, but the kita itself it is not apparently), so there has been a bit of a misunderstanding...

However, by going there we hope she might get some kind of priority when it will be time for the primary school (since it is private and places are limited). 

Of course the drawback for us is that we have to keep up with English as well as Italian at home, but we are managing so far!

Now, I think, she really understands the use of the puppet to switch between languages, and if, for instance, she wants to read an English book when we are in the "Italian-phase", she goes and grabs the puppet so we can switch to English. Of course, sometimes, she takes it as a game, so she would keep switching between "puppet" and "no-puppet", but we are trying to make her understand that if the puppet is around, he needs to stay around for at least an hour, otherwise it would be complete chaos!

We are practicing the "repetition" strategy when she says words in a different language with respect to the one we are talking at the moment (so, for instance, when she says "Hallo Daddy", we say to her "Hi Daddy") and then after a while she would say it properly. With new words it's a bit trickier because if she knows them only in one language then she would keep saying it in that language (example: we have a book with an eagle but she learnt the Italian name first, "aquila", so when she sees it she says "aquila", and I kept saying to her "eagle", and she was like "no, mom, aquila!"). So in these cases we simply explain to her that they mean the same thing, just one in Italian and one in English, and she seems fine with that!

She knows basically by heart now some books, in both languages so it's fun to read with her and let her finish the sentences. 

Now she is also learning some of the songs we are playing more often and she asks for the ones she likes the most and then sings along, which is very cute! 

Now that I am in maternity leave (if I manage to get rid of these seasonal colds that seem to be constantly accompanying me ) I would like to start an alphabet poster made with felt. I bought a felt panel, the letters and some characters, like animals and so on. The idea then would be having a board with the letters of the alphabet and then she can place the right character next to the letter (like an elephant next to the E, etc). We are already doing in a more abstract way with her playmat, since it has letters on it. So she recognizes "E" for elephant, "D" for daddy, and so on (and the same in Italian). 

My husband's parents managed to come and visit in mid September, for Sofia's birthday, so she had another whole week of Italian. My parents are instead planning to visit for Christmas. 
With the arrival of the new baby in January, we would be unable to travel to Italy till September 2024, but hopefully during Easter or in the summer they will still manage to come here, so we can have some more Italian exposure.

Let's see how it goes! 

P.S. Adam, I finally found the time to review your books on Amazon!! I bought them like 2 years ago, but better late than never! I hope it will help you!