Language: The Key to Inclusion

• Grammatical development is largely complete. Occasional errors may still occur, such as with the irregular verb conjugation “gegangen” – “gegeht.”
• Speech development is fully complete by approximately 5.0 years of age. The exception is what is colloquially referred to as "lisping," which can still occur up to 6.0 years of age.
• By the time a child reaches preschool age, he or she can understand all sentences and more complex concepts.

• Listen to your child carefully and patiently, and always let them finish speaking.
• Try to make eye contact with your child when you want to say something important. To do this, get down to your child’s eye level so that your child can listen more attentively and, for example, watch your mouth movements.
• Confirm what has been said correctly by repeating it and, if necessary, adding more information (“Here comes the bus.” “Yes, here comes the bus we always take to Grandma’s house.”).
• Don’t correct mistakes in pronunciation or sentence structure by asking your child to repeat the words correctly. Instead, focus on what your child is trying to tell you, and “casually” repeat what they said in the correct form (“We went to the playground!” “Oh, you went to the playground!”).
• Don't make fun of unusual neologisms or point out errors in sentence structure and grammar.
• If your child stutters, try not to pay any attention to it or comment on it. Give your child time to finish speaking, and then just keep talking to him or her.
• During conversations, reading aloud, etc., avoid background noise, such as a TV or radio playing in the background.

Multilingualism does not pose a risk to language development.

Multilingual development varies greatly from child to child. It depends, for example, on the age at which children begin to be exposed to the respective languages, the extent of that exposure, with whom they interact, and the environment in which they are raised.

Successful multilingual development does not mean having to be equally proficient in all languages. The key is for the child to be able to participate in all meaningful interactive situations and to have sufficient proficiency in the language of the environment to enable educational success.

Parents should speak to their children in the language they themselves know best and in which all emotions can be expressed. In most cases, this is their native language.