Poor kid, he speaks too many languages

Two to three times a week P gets picked up in the nursery by his babysitter, Eva.

She takes him to the playground, the zoo, they ride buses and trams together. She puts her scarf and hat on him when bad mommy forgets to leave warmer clothes there for him. AND, she speaks German to him.

When she picked him up yesterday, one of the moms, hearing they spoke German (in an otherwise Hungarian nursery) asked her if P was bilingual. Eva proudly explained he was actually multilingual, to which the mom said: Oh, poor kid!

Now, for a little bit of background: I am Croatian, daddy is Serbian, we live in Hungary. We have friends to whom we only speak English. Ever since I was a kid and my cousins from Germany came for a visit I knew what a gift it was to grow up bilingual. Even then, when I had no idea what that meant, I knew I am going to try to give that to my children one day. I had no idea then that I am going to live in a foreign country and some of that will be given.

When P was around 8 months old we started with sign language. Most people thought I was insane doing that, saying it will slow down his speech development. Well, it didn’t!

P signing ‘more’ at the interactive fountain in Budapest:) They grow so fast!

Currently P speaks mostly Croatian at home, and even though Croatian and Serbian are very similar, he does know the difference very well. He speaks German to Eva. Since he was born I made it a daily routine to introduce English through singing and later reading books, and most of the cartoons he watches are in English. And naturally, he speaks Hungarian. He is past three now, and he still does not mix the languages. When Eva, P, and I are together we use three languages at the same time (Croatian, Hungarian, and English) and there is no mixing, he turns to me speaking Croatian, turns back to Eva speaking German, while Eva and I are speaking Hungarian.

I am not talking about best practices here, only something that works for us for now. I don’t think he is a ‘poor kid’, I think he is lucky!

What do you think?

Here is P reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar in English. It is too funny for words: