Hi Henrike – I’m glad you found this episode useful. In general, you will know that bilingual language development is not going well if your child resists speaking one of their languages. This typically tends to happen when they start school; whatever language is used among friends becomes the ‘cool’ language and the other is resisted. This is why so many Latino/a children in America understand Spanish fluently but don’t speak it – because they had to speak English in school and they wanted to speak it with their peers. To combat this, parents need to make speaking the second language (a) cool; (b) necessary; or (c) both. If you spoke poor English (which you clearly don’t), they would have to retain German to speak with you. If they happened to get shipped off to their German (non-English speaking?) grandparents for the holidays, this would probably help as well. If there’s a German ex-pat community with kids, you could try and get involved in that group. From what I’ve read it’s fine if your daughter mixes her sentences – even adults fluent in more than one language do this when they’re with a person who understands both languages. Good luck!