Trying hard to raise my DD bilingual but feel like I am failing. Please tell me what to do.

[MixedFamily]

I am Italian and DH is English, we live in the UK and DD was born here.
She is 4yo and I have only ever spoken in Italian to her ever since she was born. I have supplemented this with lots of books in Italian, cartoons in Italian, games in Italian etc. We go back to Italy 4-5 times a year and we have family there that DD loves, although we usually only spend a week there as due to work we cannot stay much longer.
She understands Italian and English in the same way but only ever speaks in English and will sometimes use Italian words with me within an English sentence (so sentence and construction is English but then she might say the name of the object or the color in Italian etc). Her vocabulary is very good but she seems to struggle to spontaneously speak Italian and isn't able (or doesn't want to) build full sentences.
I was expecting this would be hard work as she goes to nursery full time here and I am really a minority but had thought that by 4yo she would be more or less fluent in her second language and at least able to have conversations with the grandparents back home whereas they speak to her in Ita and she always replies in English.
I am feeling a bit disappointed and wonder whether I have done it all wrong. I never subscribed to the approach or forcing her/pretending I don't understand her to get her to speak Italian only as I don't think it would work with DD personality and also don't want her to associate her second language to something too hard or unpleasant.

Keen to hear your stories and any tips you might have. Thank you!

This happened with my son. He didn't speak a word of DH's language until he was nearly 4 but when he did it was really good. My DD was babbling in both languages from the off.

sounds fine to me. If she's responding in english she clearly understands everything you're saying, so surely she is pretty much bilingual? She's still very young, I'm sure it can be a bit overwhelming trying to sort your thoughts out at that age let alone switch between languages. I still struggle with my second language. As long as she understands then I'm sure she will get the confidence to speak it when she's a bit older.

but yes anything else you can do to supplement it so she sees it as a language that can be spoken by anyone, not just the way mummy speaks, would be great - tv shows for kids, books to read, italian meet up, etc. Even just random tic tok/insta videos of italian kids saying stuff so it might 'flip' in her head 'Oh kids like me say those words too!' Next time you go to italy encourage her to play/interact with other kids, not just adults.

Yes zero issues re understanding because I only ever speak Ita with her and obv she has always understood me etc, same with relatives and tv programs.
DH speaks a bit of Italian and he tries to say simple sentences to her in Ita as well although his grammar isn't always good. But he also encourages her in Ita and says words/sentences to her in my language.
She does engage with the italian kids, it's just that she mainly replies to them in english even though they are speaking to her in italian.

I think that's perfectly normal as for all she knows, everyone is like you and Dad - they speak Italian but understand English.
Maybe try and encourage Dad to use simple Italian for things around the house like talking about food, daily activities?

You are doing great! Keep going but yes it's hard word.

I was that child it is normal becuase she goes to English school and spends most of her time with English language.
My parents both spoke Arabic and had family on the sane street who also spoke Arabic but I spend 6-7 hours speaking English daily at school and all my friends spoke English so I did tue same. Understood but chose to respond in English.
Now I am in my 30s I can speak a bit but not fully and my understanding is stronger so I get by just about. Full emersion is the only way to learn a language proficiently I.e being in that country.

Do persevere. My DP all but gave up when DS was around 2, and the older DS (now 11) has got the greater the gap is between his vocabulary and linguistic ability in language 2, so he is even less likely now to speak it. We send him to grandparents for a little while in the summer, but he can use only very basic vocabulary etc. I am hoping to persuade them to send him to activities with other children this summer, which I think will help a lot

I heard of someone who had a toy cuddly monkey that "didn't speak English ". So when the kid wanted speak to the toy, they had to speak the second language. Sounded like. Fun way to get them started speaking, without having to pretend that you yourself don't understand English

Does anyone recommend doing the thing where I stop replying/pretend I don’t understand her anymore? Seems a bit harsh but wonder if that is the way?

It's tough.

My husband has been speaking to our two in Hebrew since they were in utero. As toddlers they both said an equal number of Hebrew and english words, but as DD has got older (she's 4, DS is 2) she tends only to reply in English. She can, however, translate things for me.

Our Turkish friends had the same, but when they went to Türkiye, their 4-year-old son came out with perfect sentences in Turkish, which inspires hope.

We tried that but it didn't work! DD looked at DH like he was mad!

I am in the same situation as you but with Spanish. I am British, living in Spain married to a Spaniard. We always did one parent one language. I have never done the forcing the kids to respond to me in English, and the couple of times i pushed harder for them to respond to me in English they just got annoyed and so it got us nowhere. Mine are 13 & 16 now. The 16 yo understands everything but doesn't really use it with me (but also has adhd and some other issues) the 13 yo doesn't really use it much with me out of habit but is bilingual. She tends to save it for when she doesn't want others to know what she's saying 🤣

Keep on doing what you are doing. Don't force it or make it a chore.

She's 4 - she might respond well enough to you saying to her 'say it in Italian', fitted appropriately to the context, or to repeating back once you've modelled for her if she's not quite sure how to say it?

My son lost his 2nd language when we moved back to the UK. Obviously a lot of it was still in his subconscious but he would not speak it, but would reply in English. So was still understanding it.
My husband decided to only speak to him in his language and after a few months, he'd caught back up.

My daughter went from being like your daughter to speaking freely and spontaneously within a single day (aged about 6). Keep going as you are, she will get there.
(I don’t allow any TV in the language they speak at school, though, because that is already so dominant, Netflix is set to my language.)

Only sometimes. She struggles to build a full sentence even when encouraged and gets annoyed at it often, unless she is in a lovely mood

@UninterestingFirstPost you give me hope. What triggered that, do you remember?

I think you're likely to see a jump from 4-5. My DD has just turned 5 and has come on a lot with her English over the past 6 months. We're living in Spain, DH is Spanish. Her default language is definitely Spanish. But she's started playing in English sometimes (imaginative play, giving toys voices etc) when she never would've done that a year ago. She's also been using more verb phrases and phrasal verbs when her English output used to be mostly limited to single words and nouns.

I have also never gone for forcing her to reply in English and don't think she would respond well to it. At this point it is too late for me or you to somehow pretend we don't speak English/Spanish so refusing to do what they ask if they're not speaking in the target language etc would just be sort of belligerent and confusing for them. We haven't done it before probably because it doesn't come at all naturally.

Keep going speaking to her in Italian. Keep visiting family there. Try to get all TV/films in Italian. I think when they don't have much contact with peers in the target language TV can go some way to replace that. My DD doesn't watch much TV but I think the English input she gets from Bluey and Paw Patrol has been positive for her language development.

I completely understand how you feel, I have gone through stages of being quite worried about it, wondering if she would ever start speaking English. I think there's a huge difference between language development for kids with both parents being native speakers of the minority language and only one being so. And that's not widely known. There's this idea that it will just be automatic and easy and it's not always the case.

Your situation is really similar to ours op, in that my husband has always spoken to our kids in his native language and we visit several times a year. I wanted to reassure you that we were in the exact same position, where they understood but would always speak English. Now they are pre-teen/teen and can hold full conversations in both languages. From what I understand this process is quite common in bilingual families. One thing I think really helped ours was watching lots of TV (kids cartoons etc), in dh's language. This really helped them build familiarity.

@UninterestingFirstPost she only wants to watch her fav disney movie currently and she has watched it and learnt songs in english, which is a bit of a shame as won’t accept it in italian now. Many other cartoons are in Ita though as I also set netflix in my own language

@Smittenkitchen thank you so much, it is so lovely to hear from people who have been in the same situation and to know there is some hope!

Is she confident enough (in general, I don't mean linguistically) that you could start thinking about leaving her with grandparents for a little while after you have to go back to work? A week or two with the family but without you there to reinforce her usual patterns might help her to feel that there is more purpose in using her Italian! But you'd have to be confident that family members wouldn't revert to English - I remember having to try so hard to convince a great auntie to keep using her language with our kids, because it was so easy for them all to switch to English, and we'd have to go through the whole process again every visit, but she did in the end - and they all got a huge amount out of sharing the language together.

@OhBuggerandArse unfortunately due their health issues that isn't possible, would love to be able to do that

This happened with a friend's daughter. One day (a fair few years older than your daughter) she just started speaking their language.

It will be sinking in, OP.

It's quite normal for bilingual children to have a preferred spoken language and be much slower at speaking the other, until they hit a certain age.

The key thing is that they hear both languages daily (if the brain hears the language before a certain age it can internalise it) and that they understand the second language even if they don't speak it very much. She will be able to speak it fluently in time. Probably in the next couple of years.