Question for those in/from Multilingual Homes

[Caliga]

Hard to tell with her.

Are you not able to understand her when she talks? 

[The Brain]

From what I have seen personally learning two or three languages simultaneosuly is no problem for kids. It's worse for their older relatives who feel stupid when a 4 year old is fluent in three languages.

[DontSayBanana]

I know-- I came close to putting up "English Only" signs all through the house.

FWIW, I've got the wife on-board with making German his 3rd language.  She had wanted it to be Italian .  Thankfully she wasn't pushing for French

Deutsch über Alles. Es ist gut genug für mich.

[derspiess]

Why German?  I assume, with your name here, there's some family connection or just a very strong interest?

I think it would be useful for him for academic or business purposes.  I guess my family heritage is a small part of it. 

Plus it would give me the opportunity to scold him in 3 different languages when he gets older

[derspiess]

Are you not able to understand her when she talks? 

Sometimes 

Espec. when she chooses to use the wrong words for some things & then refuses to stop doing it-- e.g., one birthday she asked for "weights" so I got her a set of weights to use for working out.  She got mad at me when she opened them up, because she actually wanted bathroom scales.  She even said "no, I wanted weights, not.... weights."

[viper37]

Okay, so before Tommy was born I granted the wife permission to speak to him in Spanish.  We've been scrounging for info on the best way to go about bringing him up learning both languages.  Maybe there's no right or wrong way to do it, but I figured I'd ask here & other places for some insight.

Tom is just over 14 months old now & has been developing pretty normally.  His motor skills are normal & seems to be on target with everything else.  He's been picking up miscellaneous words, and can understand many more words/phrases in both English and Spanish.  He sort of shocked us yesterday when the wife asked if he wanted to watch another episode of Pocoyo & he promptly responded, "Si".

We started using flash cards (letters, numbers, pictures) with him almost as a joke a few weeks ago (seemed too early), and he likes them so much now that he'll bring them to us, like he would a book he wants us to read.

What feels weird to me is that the wife does the flash cards in Spanish, and I do them in English.  I wonder if we should just do one language to start with so he doesn't get too confused, or if we should just continue throwing them at him in both languages and let him sort it all out.  Any thoughts from anyone who is either raising kids in 2 languages or came from a multilingual household?

Maybe the wife & I are overthinking things (e.g., she's already freaking out on what his 3rd language should be )

that's a common misconception that teaching kids more than one thing ends up confusing them.  Most studies have determined that kids of this age are real sponges and learn just about everything you throw at them.

Yes, if he's young, he may get a little confused and sometimes say dog, some other times perro, but as he grows up, it will settle in place, usually by the time he reach school.

Many parents here have some fear that if their kids learn english at a young age, they won't be able to speak/write french correctly, but it has been proven to be quite the opposite.

In fact, I remember posting an article on the old Languish about bilingual and multilingual children becoming more intelligent than others.
I already feel superior to a whole bunch of languishites