DC grammar- one for linguists

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My kids are 5 and 8. We live abroad. To avoid outing myself, I’ll change the languages used (apart from English). I speak English with them and my husband. English is their mother tongue. DH speaks German with them. School is also in German. However, we live in a bilingual place. A lot of DC’s friends have French as a mother tongue, so they hear it often and understand a little but can’t speak it. I speak French when out and about, and not German. So it’s a real mish mash of languages.

Their English grammar isn’t great, mainly past tense. I speak to the them exclusively in English. They watch English TV and films, and I read English books to them every day. So I’m not concerned about their exposure.

DC 8 mainly makes errors with irregular verbs- I drinked, I buyed, have you tooked etc.

DC 5 consistently says- did you gave, I didn’t said, did he ate etc.

I correct gently, for example ‘did he eat the chocolate? Yes he did’.

So my long-winded question is- are children in the UK making similar grammatical mistakes? I know my children will catch up, and they are lucky to have English as their mother tongue. I’m not worried about that at all. I am just curious if they are at a similar level to UK children or not. Is this a phase all English speaking children go through?

No, that would be unusual at their age, assuming you mean in spoken English (errors in written work would be more common). Things like I drinked would be v v odd at 8 in native English speakers. (It would also be unusual in the English spoken by the students at the international school where I work,and many there are bilingual)

However, it is a stage that some younger children go through, if that would make sense with their level of English exposure?

No, 1st language English speakers in UK do not make past tense errors at that age.

Certainly not unusual pre-Reception (my son used to mix up his pronouns - "She said she's Grandma was picking her up" - but past that you don't often hear those kind of mix-ups. Very understandable in your situation though - I wouldn't worry, but would just keep gently trying to up their exposure to English when you can.

Interesting to read the replies, thanks!

I teach English as a third language (after German and French) at secondary level. The children here make the same mistakes as my DC, especially with the past tense. So it must be difficult to master.

I do sometimes wonder how my DC would speak if we lived in the UK. But that’s not an option (or desire) so I’ll keep on exposing them to the language as much as I can.

My bilingual kids make the same sort of mistakes. Bit older than your two.

Ds2 used to regularly make errors until he was about 6.

Look I did-ed it!
I went-ed to the park.
I goed by myself.

Ds3 is 7 now and he still makes the occasional error. Very occasionally though.