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Our son Aaron is nearly three years old. He was born in Coban (Guatemala) and his native tongue is Qui'che. When his birthmom relinquished him to the hogar, they began teaching him Spanish. He was there for four months, came home with us, and we began the "total immersion" process with English. ;) SO he's pretty much on this third language in seven months. Which is a lot for anyone!
That being said, I'm wondering if anyone else has run into these two issues: One, when he's excited all three languages will run together. Secondly, although he was "age-appropriately fluent" in Qui'che, it's been almost as if he's had to regress and build back up again with English; none of which bothers us or is causing us concern in any way--my husband, older son and I are taking the "it's like teaching a baby to speak" approach to the situation and my older son is really good with him ("Say 'bus', Aaron. Busssssss.") However, I have been curious to know if anyone else has seen this kind of thing and how they handled it.
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I do not have a child who was born into a different language, but I do know that children have minds that are very well suited to learning a language....when a child is born, it can learn any language in the world. This continues for a long time. I had a friend who moved here from Vietnam when she was about 10 and she said in school, the first couple months she didn't understand anything, then the pieces came together.
I lived in Russia and my host mother told me that her friend in the US has a young boy who says most of his sentences in a combination of both languages and the older he gets, the more consistent he is with his language. I don't know if this helps, since I dont have any first hand account, but this is consistently what I have heard.
My Daughter is older by 10 years. What she does is start a conversation in one language and end in the other language.
I notice this alot when she is talking on the phone or when she is with friends in the car, so I guess I would call it excitement!
The School Book Clubs, from when we were young now have Computer CD Roms that help the Phonetics part in both English and Espanol!
Most of my friends immigrated to U.S. from Russia or Ukraine like I did. Their children were born here and their parents started out by speaking only Russian at home. By the time kids are 3, though, they start going to American kindergarten and learning English. I see two trends: some kids speak Russian and fill in English words, and for others it's a reverse. Kids who are older (once again, those that I know) understand when their parents speak to them in Russiam, but answer only in English.