Help me help my 2 yo DS to cope with 3 languages and his frustration please

[SanneSannes]

DS is 2.2 yo, we speak german and dutch at home, whilst we live in the uk. His CM and the rest of the world therefore speak English with him. He is a very affectionate, cheerful toddler, but I see more and more that his understandably slower development language-wise frustrates him very much. How can i make things easier for him? Conscious that this is a very broad topic, maybe any suggestions of books that might be helpful for me to read up on this? Many thanks!

Sanne, my son did not speak, apart from "mama" and "no" until he was about 2 and a half. That was late, but the paed said boys often develop speech a bit later, and also, DS was very advanced in term of motor skills (walking at 10 months) and that can slow down speech. With hindsight, it was the dyslexia which could not be diagnosed until later ( he is still not able to express his thoughts as well as his peer, the words just don't come to him). He is 10 now. Very smart with maths and science, thankfully. All kids are just wired differently.

In your case, I would not get worried about dyslexia, autism etc too much though. As the one thing I know is that all children develop at a different rate. and most are fine.

Maybe jst pick one language for you, to speak to him. I completely switched to English.

The best you can do is just talk to him and interact, and read him stories and develop a love of books (my son has aways loved books).

As others have mentioned, age 2 is a very frustrating age to be, my kids were " difficult" and frustrated a lot at this age, especially about not being able to express their wishes. That bit is normal!

Many thanks everyone! Mariah thanks for the book title, I will have a look.

I also found online these articles on raising bilingual kids which I found interesting.

Hi Sanne, I speak Dutch to my son (also 2.2) and my partner speaks English, so only two languages, but my mum recently brought me book called 'Het succes van tweetalig opvoeden'. I found it quite interesting, even though it was mostly written with children in Holland in mind. I could send it to you if you like? Even though it focused on bilingualism, there were quite a few mentions of children with three (or more) languages as well.

Hi Marlus, that's very interesting, thanks! Just saw that you can order it online, so no need to send it but thank you so much for suggesting it! Groetjes!