Multilingual toddler only speaks one language

[ItalianMUM89]

Hello! I am just curious to know how common it is among multilingual toddler to just focus on one language.
My 21 month old son is exposed to 4 languages (German, English and franch at daycare 4 days a week) and to italian at home. We live in a German speaking country.
He apparently undertsands them all (at least so I have been told by nursery) but he will only speak Italian and reply to them in italian even if they speak to him in german/english etc. Is this common? I myself am bilingual (italian/german) so I could potentially speak to him also in German but my husband would not understand it too well and in addition I am bit more fluent in italian than german so I decided to stick to italian. Do you think I should encourage its german or since he understands I should not worry becouse german will eventually come later (it will be the majority language)?

My Ds is 3.5 years. We speak only English at home, and he is at a German kindergarten and hears German day to day out and about/ with friends.

He’s been at kindergarten since September 2022 (just mornings). He seems to understand everything now, but he only speaks English still. But he didn’t say first word even in English until around 2 years, so at your son’s age he wasn’t even talking in any langauge.

I don’t have any concerns.

Many moons ago I did a dissertation on multilingual children under 5. Without boring you this is completely normal. And may continue until they are 5-7. What you may also notice later is that they will speak to a person in the language that person spoke to them in but usually only if this is consistently the same person and language. They may also borrow words from different languages whilst speaking one language if they don't know the word in that language. They don't know they are speaking two languages. Eventually it all sorts itself out and they become properly multilingual. Whatever you do don't stop speaking and exposing them to the different languages. This is the easy way for them to learn languages despite the confusion.

He is doing brilliantly to understand 4 languages and speak one at 21 months. Understanding comes long before speaking.
Just keep doing what you are doing.

Thank you so much for the answers@Caspianberg @chillie ! So nice to have also an opinion of a real expert@chillie that even wrote a dissertation about it! I am actually very happy with his language development (he has more than 300 words and also some senteces) that it is why I was thinking maybe to introduce more German. But apparently it is better to stick to one language per person so I will continue with italian.

Also, I don’t know where your based, but at our kindergarten, we have been told all
children without German as first language will get a weekly speak and language therapist from the age of 4.
They start school September after turning 6 here, so they assume this gives 2+ years also to make sure anyone is caught up before starting school.

I used to work in a bilingual creche where I regularly spoke to the children in English and they responded in French we used to have very strange conversations. I realised in creche it was because I was the only person who spoke English so they only ever heard my side of the conversation and not the response, which I presume is why they replied to me in French with some English words to help me understand.

I've moved on some years now and I now teach English in primary school to some of those children in the creche, they are all more confident when speaking English, so I do think being exposed to English at such an early age has paid off.

I am not so sure about his understanding in English and french but I have been told in German is good so I am happy about it. It is incredible how much they can learn at this early age. My mother told me I was mixing up German and Italian for a long time as a toddler (bit apparently I didn't have an obvious dominant language at the beginning) that is also why I was surprised he only speaks Italian and just chose a differentstrategy from me as a child (in German he has 3 words only).

This is normal. DS is exposed to 3 languages + English, he understands them all but only speaks English as that’s what we use at home. But when you put in someone who doesn’t speak English he’ll try the other languages.

@Caspianberg I have heard something similar here in Switzerland. I think they will decide based on his German language level at 4.

Bilingual here. My mother spoke to me in French, my father in English, we lived in UK. I spoke to them both in English, I am however fluent in French.

My brain does a weird interpretation thing without input from me, when I am in France, my thought process is in French, in England, it is in English.