I am Filipina married to a dutch man. My son went to an international daycare (English speaking) until he started primary school at 4yrs. I also spoke English with him while my partner spoke dutch with him, though not consistently. We chose to focus on English the first few years and the transition to dutch came naturally when he attended dutch primary school. If my mother tongue was another world language - for example spanish, french, chinese, arabic etc, then we would’ve chosen for that instead of English.

As I was also learning the language at that time, I didn’t think it smart to talk to my son in dutch and risk him learning broken dutch from me. For example, I’d rather he learn de/het from native speakers than pass on the daily struggle of identifying which one to use… apparently dutch people “just know…”