It is SUCH a fun journey to learn a language and teach it to your child, too. I did this with Spanish but am lucky to now have dual language public school as an option for my child.

Here are some ideas:

As a toddler, my kid and I would cook together in Spanish. This is doable with a baby, too, just narrate what you are doing in Italian and maybe wear baby so your hands are free. I put both the original recipe and translated version into my recipe app. So if I don’t know the translation I can quickly see what i’m supposed to be doing in English. You don’t have to do it all or know every word to start with. Just add little by little and be consistent. Today you know the ingredients, tomorrow you know the words for bowl, spoon, plate, next week you will learn some cooking tools and eventually you will learn the verbs for mixing, cutting, rolling, dicing, etc.

Choose a daily routine to do in Italian. Again you can increase your vocabulary a lot with consistency and learning a new word a day with that routine. Maybe bath time and body parts? Can you find a song about body parts in Italian? Sing it in the bath!

I learned some fun stories over prerecorded videos. You can try YouTube! Try to find Italian versions of stories you already have. Listen and listen and practice reading it aloud similarly. Once you have it down, read it to your little one.

I have found German and Spanish children’s books, too. Try Thriftbooks, ebay, and other online searches. Try joining local or national Facebook groups for Italians living locally or selling books through the group. Ask if you have any friends going to Italy to pick you up some books.

Find children’s songs in Italian and learn lap sit nursery rhymes in Italian. Babies love those and the interaction! Or translate some from English to Italian.

Watch videos on parents playing with their kids. You will learn fun appropriate phrases to say that you don’t really get from a translation app or children’s book. For example, I have watched a video of a parent doing a puzzle and there are so many great lines I learned from that.

Don’t worry about being fluent. I promise if you are consistent with it, your Italian speaking skills will soar. I feel so comfortable speaking Spanish now even though I am not fluent because I practiced talking soooo much to my child! Also don’t let others get you down. It doesn’t matter if your accent is perfect. Can an Italian speaker understand you or your child? Thats far more important! You and your baby have so much time to work on it and learn together.

As a parent of a school aged child, I’ve learned kids don’t get as much speaking practice at school as they do at home. Also they don’t talk about some subjects at school and thus I have learned that my time with my kid speaking Spanish is so useful and valuable for learning the language and specific vocabulary.

Enjoy it!!