Reasoning With A 4-Year Old

We were off for the last few days, leading to the poor kidlets hearing a lot more reminders to please speak German, for-Pete's-sake! Even The Husband got into it and at some point had a brief conversation in German with the kids! Something about which kid wanted more of what for lunch, but it was pretty impressive. If he keeps this up, he'll be bilingual in no time :)

O is still very much going with the flow. I'm not sure there's much point in reminding him to speak German just yet, though he might as well get used to it. The good thing is that the increased exposure to German over those last few days has led to him picking up a bunch more German words. So all is good. For now.

And then there's S.

She continues to have good and bad days when it comes to speaking German. 'Good' as in trying to speak it more than refusing/forgetting to. 'Bad' as in arguing about it, sometimes going as far as not speaking to me and going to Papa for everything, just so she does not have to speak any German at all. Stubborn little mule that she is.

During our days off she started out neutral and went into obnoxious mode pretty quickly.... not much fun for anyone, but I'm trying to be persistent. At the same time, I don't want to remind her or give her the look every single time she says something in English. It's a fine line and I'm sure we don't have it all figured out at this point, but I definitely don't want to make her feel like she's doing everything all wrong all the time. And I definitely don't want her to think of her bilingualism as a chore or a bad thing.

But then yesterday morning she said, "I wish I only were an English kid! Then I wouldn't have to speak German all the time!!!"

Ouch.

Of course, at barely 4 years old she is too young to understand the advantages of bilingualism, nor would she care if she did understand. To her, being able to possibly study at a German-speaking university is frightening 'cause of course, she's still under the impression that she's going to live with Mama and Papa forever and ever. Advantages in the labour market? Who cares! Same with the other good things bilingualism brings, good things such as being more open to the world, understanding other people and cultures better, learning (other languages) better, warding off dementia and that kind of thing.

What does get her attention is when we speak about the good things that happen and that she can do because she knows German.

For example, if she didn't know German, Nikolaus wouldn't be coming to our house in December; she wouldn't be able to talk to Deutschland-Oma and our German friends and relatives, just like Papa; we wouldn't be able to listen to her favourite CDs Lotte will Prinzessin sein & Lotte und die Monster and Nena (whose music I, of course, listened to when I was a teenager); we wouldn't be able to read all her great German books; she wouldn't be able to go into the little corner store and buy herself some Smarties next time we're in Germany; on the playground in Germany, she wouldn't be able to just speak to the other kids and play with them; and she wouldn't have much fun when we attend the monthly outings of a local German group.

The result?

For the rest of the day she made a very good effort to actually speak German. Not just with me, but also with O and Papa! And once again I noticed that she's actually quite good and at times can say fairly complicated things without too many problems.

She's back in full-time English daycare as of today, of course, so by the time she comes home, we'll probably have to resort to a lot of "Deutsch bitte!", but I'm very proud of her. It was a great accomplishment for her and gives me hope that we are indeed on the right track.