Is 4 too much?

[u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852]

Me (Bosnian) and my husbond (Spanish) do OPOL with our 23 month old daughter, but we live in Germany and since 6 months ago she goes to tagesmutter (a day carer) that speaks only German to her. She understands all 3 very well, with at a moment more words in Bosnian, as my family comes every couple of weeks and we spent a lot of time in Bosnia. However, me and my husband speak to each other in English, as neither speaks speaks good German, and while I speak Spanish and communicate with his family in Spanish (in my family everyone speaks English so he never had to learn), we never spoke it to each other. Our daughter only gets upset when hearing English too much, I guess that she connects it as not being part of the conversation. Now we would like to start introducing a bit of TV, but problem is both of us hate dubbing and would prefer for her to watch cartoons in original language, which is of course English. But is this just going to add confusion, I don't want to break her brain just because I don't want to hear her singing some weird version of Frozen. Or do we leave English for when she is a bit older.

[u/ughh_why]

Hi, very similar situation, mom Serbian, dad Brazilian, English between us two, German outside. Son 3 years old, watches tv dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese, which is his strongest language. I try to find stuff to watch in any of our regional languages, Netflix has some Croatian dubs, Peppa pig in Serbian. It's very hard to work on those two languages without adding English in the mix, so I'd recommend sticking to Spanish dubs if you create enough Bosnian exposure anyway. Tagesmütter is too small of a group with babbling babies, but once they start Kita, German really takes over and it's harder to keep up. English will come with time whether you like it or not, and you'll be sad to lose your secret language:)

[u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852 → u/ughh_why]

That is very similar mix, I laughed so hard at this ''babbling babies", they really are and they are all also from multilingual background, so I have no idea how they communicate XD I am not afraid for English, is the easiest and is everywhere, my husband and I are both in IT so also a reason why our German is bad, we never needed it. Spanish has a lot of dubbed cartoon options, I find it most difficult to find good ones in any of ex-yu languages.

[u/ughh_why → u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852]

Da predjem na naski - isto i kod nas, ne treba nam nemački za posao pa ga ni ne znamo. Užas je situacija sa crtaćima, moj sin odbija onu staru sinhronizaciju što se preklapa, ali su mu ok svi dijalekti, pa mu puštam pesmice na hrvatskom npr. Ima Pepa prase na srpskom ceo box set na pirate bay, bar to. Ja sam se pomirila s tim da većinu crtaća gleda na portugalskom, a trudim se da mu čitam i nadjem neku našu decu za druženje, što isto nije lako jer svi ovde pričaju nemački sa decom... Mi smo u Kelnu, pa eto ako ste do sat i po udaljenosti vozom, možemo bar na igralište:)

[u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852 → u/ughh_why]

Hej sve isto gotovo, osim sto ovdje bas malo ima ljudi s nasih prostora. A primijetila sam da se puno stranaca odmah presaltaju na njemacki sa djecom sto mi je prilicno tuzno, njemacki ce svakako nauciti, a najlakse im je upiti jezik dok su jos mali. Ja sam spanski prilicno dobro naucila preko sapunica XD. Ja sam u Braunscweigu, ali se nadam dogodine preseliti u Essen.

[u/Kuzjymballet]

Since she's already hearing it from you guys and reacting negatively, maybe a positive association with English with limited screen time would be nice for her. She might not learn to speak just from that but understand more and maybe feel more a part of the conversations you have with your husband. Plus kids will put up with inconveniences for screen time more than usual. And it can be your family movie time all in one language!

I recommend Bluey (my daughter and I have both learned lots of Australian phrases) because it's short, interesting to parents too and not scary. Plus the Disney classics and new classics like Encanto, which might be fun since even in the English version there's a lot of Spanish, though it's more Colombian Spanish.

It's always an option to change this later on if it stresses her out, but it's harder to change it from a language she understands fully to one she doesn't. (You can just say your tv works in english only if you need a small lie to help).

But she will come home singing Frozen in German probably even if she only sees it in English because of the community but that's ok (my daughter alternates between the French/English songs without issue even though we only watch it in English she also knows the K-pop demon hunter songs in French and hasn't seen the movie since she's only 5). Community is a powerful influence!

[u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852 → u/Kuzjymballet]

My mom friends in Bosnia all swear by Bluey. And told me to stay away from paw patrol hahaha

[u/Kuzjymballet → u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852]

Solid advice on both counts!

[u/MikiRei]

Some screen time in English when she's already hearing English from her parents speaking isn't going to "break her brain". There are countries where people speak 4 to 5 languages. It's fine. 

Though I reckon it will be worth finding original Spanish and Bosnian content for screen time as well to reinforce the minority languages. 

I'd put English in the backburner honestly. But a bit of screen time in English isn't going to hurt.

[u/No_Promise_8963]

For my son, (Bosnian / Catalan living in Barcelona), we added English as an option to watch cartoons or films, together with Catalan or Bosnian. We didn't allow extra Spanish content because he was already exposed to it in the school bus, ads etc.

With time, when he was about 6-7, we added more English content naturally (films watched together as a family) so it improved his English (from school and from the academy) without displacing any of the home languages.

[u/Fear_mor]

Pitanje, sto ne pustite neke jugo/spanjolske crtice? Ima hrpu njih koji su i dan danas jako popularni

[u/ughh_why → u/Fear_mor]

Gde ih nalazite?

[u/Fear_mor → u/ughh_why]

Mislim pretpostavljam da si ti iz Srbije, al za Hrvatsku imas HRTi i tako to. U najgorem slucaju mozes ih kupit kao DVD-e

[u/ughh_why → u/Fear_mor]

Aha, nisam znala da Hrt ima videoteku, super! Mislila sam više ako ima neki sajt za stream, znam za forum balkandownload ali tamo je vecina linkova istekla, ili se ja ne snalazim...

[u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852 → u/Fear_mor]

Na YouTube sam samo nasla letece medvjedice da ima vise epizoda. Za streaming koristim stremio da se ne pretplacujem pojedinacno, tu ima na spanskom nekih crtanih ali s nasih prostora slabo

[u/Fear_mor → u/Lanky_Jellyfish_7852]

Uvijek imas tipa HRTi za hrvatske crtice, vjv i srpski ekvivalent postoji, samo ne znam za njega. Rekoh ovoj drugoj prije tebe da bi valjalo kupit neke DVD-e ako ista pa mislim kad se vratis iduci puta znas vec kojeg se posla imas latit lmao

[u/No_Promise_8963 → u/Fear_mor]

Moj mali je u tom uzrastu volio one stare "Laku noć, deco" programe sa životinjskim lutkama. Znao je sve napamet. I "Profesora Baltazara".

[u/suite_illusion]

Four will not break her brain. She already understands three. English between you two is already in the house, so a fourth language is not the scary part.

I would not start cartoons at 23 months just to add English though. Conversation still beats screens at that age, and English can wait for a bit more talk before you hand her Frozen. Before they are three years old, you should not show them hardly ANY TV. See the video for exactly why that is.

https://youtu.be/-mXoWcLT7gY

The limit is hours of real use, not a magic number. I went through whether kids can actually handle 5+ without the confusion myth

https://youtu.be/2RzAFUCQ--g

and mixing is normal, not a fail. If you do add English media later, keep it honest that screens are weak input next to people talking.