We are an English-speaking American family with 2 children, and have recently moved to Germany. The length of our stay is indefinite, and we've decided to try to integrate culturally and linguistically as much as possible while we're here. For that reason, we're all learning German. My wife and I are enrolled in a language class and doing self-study. My older son (age 10) is in a German public school where he's receiving some special language instruction and is also doing self-study. He, and we, are learning at what I'd consider to be a normal pace, but at best we're still only around the A2 level.
Our younger son (age 3 1/2) was diagnosed in the U.S. with mild autism, the most prominent symptom being a heavy language delay. His command of English has been improving steadily, but is still well behind the normal level for his age. He's enrolled in a German public Kindergarten where the teachers and staff speak exclusively in German. He's been there about 7 weeks.
We'd hoped that he would start picking up basic German from the school staff and from the other children. However, his teacher says that he still doesn't respond at all when she speaks German to him. He ignores her completely. When she tries again in English, he responds. He does seem to socialize and play with other children, but the interaction is completely nonverbal. He seems to be happy and enjoys going to school (a lot!), but we obviously want to try to improve the situation if we can, and give him the best chance of a successful future, whether it's here in Germany, back in the U.S. or elsewhere.
We've read about the One-Parent-One-Language approach for raising bilingual children. The snag is that none of us are anywhere near fluent in German yet, so it would be really hard for either of us to play the German parent with him. It would be harder still to use only German with our older 10-year-old son since our conversation with him is much more sophisticated and well beyond our current skill level.
Does anyone else have experience with this kind of situation, any advice, or recommendations for further research? Some focused questions might be:
- Whether, or how, to implement an OPOL strategy when neither parent is a fluent speaker of the host language and are themselves learning
- How the OPOL strategy fits with autistic / language-delayed children
- What other strategies may exist in the scenario where the whole family is learning the host language
- What the relative tradeoffs and consequences may be between his ability to communicate with us, his ability to communicate at school, and his overall stress and comfort levels
