As a stay-at-home mom, I've been the primary caregiver for my daughter since the day she was born. Our family resides in the German-speaking part of Switzerland and my husband is native to the region. However, I'm French, and we made the conscious decision that I would raise our daughter exclusively in French while he would do the same in german.

From the beginning, my daughter and I have had a wonderful linguistic journey together. Every conversation, every story, every moment was shared in my native language. It was a bond we cherished, one that felt unbreakable.

But then came that memorable day, around her first birthday, when I decided to take her to the convenience store with me. As we stood at the top of a flight of stairs, I calmly asked her to join me. To my shock, she screamed defiantly, "NEIN."

I was taken aback, to say the least. It was the first time she had ever taken such a strong stance and defied me. And if I'm honest, I couldn't decide which aspect of the situation surprised me more: the fact that she had chosen to assert herself so boldly, or the fact that she had done it in German. I always assumed that the day she would tell me "NO", it would be in French. 

I must admit that the German response did irritate me a bit. Despite my best efforts to instill the love of the French language in her, it seemed that German still held a considerable presence in her vocabulary. It was a stark reminder that, while I had worked diligently to ensure French remained her primary language, it was, in reality, the minority language in our household.

However, this incident did not discourage me in pursuing my efforts in preserving our linguistic balance and as I'll share in my next post, my efforts were rewarded during our last trip to Guadeloupe. But for now, I'm eager to hear more delightful and amusing multilingual stories from all of you. Please, feel free to share your own experiences in the comments below.