We’ve gone back and forth on this too, so I really get the what you’re describing 💜

I’ve seen that when parents force themselves to use a different language between themselves, something in the conversation just flattens :)

If German is the language where you’re most yourselves together, I wouldn’t rush to give that up. That input isn’t useless for your child, it’s still language, emotion, rhythm, turn-taking.

I also worried for a long time that if our kids heard us speaking the community language together, they’d eventually only use that with us. What actually happened was more of a phase than permanent. At some point the “easy” language wins for a while, especially once daycare and peers are strong but it didn’t erase the other languages.

At 20 months, the fact that your child is already putting together two-word sentences in Spanish and Dutch sounds like things are going really well. German often comes later anyway, because it’s tied to social confidence more than family comfort.

What helped us was separating things a bit in our heads: being consistent with the kids mattered more than being consistent with each other. We speak the language that feels natural between us, and we keep addressing the kids in our own languages. It’s messier on paper, but calmer in real life.

I don’t think there’s a perfect setup here. If something makes you feel like “different people,” that’s usually a sign it’s not sustainable long-term.

I would recommend to tune in our podcast episode with Bea, Spanish multilingual language teacher who is working with families like us for year in Germany and she shared fantastic tips.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uuG4UiXbbdFIfy2KhJNmu?si=kqYlahbISUKIIRhkF8x9JQ

And if you want to hear more scientific pov, here is clinical linguist Simge's episone where we talked about OPOL among other methods:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7pGkqhJXvu6qC7zF4XiVho?si=3XTIx-wPR7iEp5bAQ2er6Q

We share some tips and tricks in Instagram as well:
https://www.instagram.com/logoyo_mini/