Raising a trilingual child can be so amusing.
Maria is mixing everything and every time she speaks, she chooses the language with no apparent logic.
Reading time: 3 minutes
Financial skills level: zero ?
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I see that she is using more Italian to ask for anything that she wants: this is mostly because either me or my mother (both Italians) are mainly providing what she needs.
She is using Spanish for the singing: she watches cartoons in Spanish most of the time. Her father and his mother (abuela) talk to her in Spanish.
English is not a language we are teaching her at the moment: as parents we are both trying to be consistent and always address her in the same language, our mother tongue. This doesn’t mean that Maria is not exposed to English as Eddie and I talk to each other in English and some of her cartoons are in English too. She uses this language to give “some orders” like “Come” for example… I guess it is mostly as I always call Eddie for the meals by saying “Eddie Come please!” 🙂
The only time that Maria uses the 3 languages indistinctly is when she counts playing hide and seek: it is fascinating to see how fast she is counting to go and look for her father or grandfather!
Here some tips/strategies that we are adopting for raising our child trilingual:
– We keep the language consistent. This is pretty easy for me: since the first time I saw her, I couldn’t speak anything but Italian with her. Eddie has some small difficulties as English and Spanish are interchangeable for him: he is a truly bilingual.
– We read to her in the different languages
– We encourage Maria to speak with people in different languages and we encourage the people to speak to her in their language and not in English: most of our neighbors talks in Spanish with her
– We try to have a caregiver for Maria who is either Italian or Spanish. English is the language that she will pick up eventually as she lives in the United States so we want to give her as many possibilities to be exposed to the other 2 languages. We are lucky because part of the year we have my parents joining us from Italy and taking care of Maria. Otherwise, we have an au pair girl.
– We are exploring options for bilingual schools or after-schools. We are also considering homeschooling…
Some books that we bought for Maria
Spanish:

We love this book as this hen looks a little like my husband’s mom. She is a little clumsy and forgetful too, but she make up for her faults with a huge heart and love for her kids.
I personally love it also for the environmental- friend paper that is used.

El Caballero que no tenía Caballo
This book is really funny! And it has a great lesson not to stop at the appareance and also to find the braveness inside yourself and in the others.
The final is very plot twist!

Grandmothers are very important in our family. And what grandma says is always a useful lesson. This book teaches how to behave properly, how to be kind and care about others.
These lessons are universal.

It is a classic: the story of this hungry caterpillar teaches the day of the week, the numbers and the food. It is so cute and we like watching the english cartoon in Youtube
Toys

LeapFrog Learning Friends 100 Words Book – Bilingual e-book
The music is engaging, there are a lot of words and sentences to learn and you can easily switch from english to spanish. Best present she got from her aunt!
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