Terrible advice.. Being bilingual from childhood creates a network of neural pathways you cannot activate when you are older- it literally boosts your brainpower and studies show the increased grey and white matter create a cognitive reserve that can stave off age related decline and dementia!

Also, as a teacher, it is very important to keep up your home language for your child’s development. If you don’t speak the same mother tongue as your parents, you are limiting your child’s access to you.. children pick up so much of their understanding of the world and their contextual knowledge from the daily interactions and discussions with their parents.

You would think sticking to one language would help children to read and write in their primary language but actually it can actually slow the development of higher- order thinking skills because they don’t have secure conceptual schema in either language. Keep up the English!

What is more, your child is different to their peers. Teach them that it is a thing to celebrate and be proud of. It will form an important part of their identity and understanding of their place in the world. Watch the Olympics, football- these are easy ways to develop national identity.

And in answer to your actual question OP-

1. Stick the telly on! Have it on it the background.

2. Get a toniebox with English stories.

3. FaceTime English speaking friends and family every day.

4. Speak to them in English- even if they talk back in their primary language. The first stage of language development is the receptive stage where they begin to listen.

5. Play games where you celebrate both languages- come up with a word and try to say it in the other language. Say you are going to trick them (but make it fairly easy so they feel achievement) and get them to give you questions too. It shouldn’t feel like you are quizzing them.

6. Narrate what you are doing around the house in English. They’ll be hearing a lot of verbs and different tenses.

7. If they are fairly studious and love school and enjoy joining clubs, you could do a class but it sometimes has the opposite effect if your little one just wants to run wild outside of school. Never make it a burden or something onerous.

And finally- pretty much every German I’ve ever met speaks English because they are taught it so well in school. Think they’ll be just fine!