I am the secretary of a small group that exists to help multilingual families and we have discussed these issues with literally 1,000s of parents over the last six years. Naomi’s approach is a good one if it will work for you, but I suspect that your husband’s has some emotional resistance to speaking Portugese for some reason rather than having just not thought about it. If you try Naomi’s way and he agrees in principle but still lapses into Italian and forgets a lot, you could also try the following:

- Go to Portugal on holiday for at least two weeks, to family or friends who speak Portugese but not Italian, get your husband back in the habit of speaking Portugese and then work hard that he retains that new habit when you get home.
- Invite someone who speaks Portugese but not Italian to come and live with you or stay with you for a few weeks (a Grandma? aunt? niece? etc).
- See if you can arrange to meet Portugese speaking friends at home, I don’t know where you live but there are some Portugese playgroups or language schools in London that he could take your daughter to – again to try to get him in the habit of speaking Portugese to her.
Essentially we find that surrounding yourselves with a Portugese speaking environment somehow will help you make this transition which some people find a lot harder that you might expect for emotional reasons.
Finally, I would like to suggest that if you are yourself able to understand Portugese relatively well, you see if your husband can at the same time, switch to speaking Portugese to you. You would answer back in Italian. Thus you would be having truly bilingual conversations. It may feel odd at first but it certainly can work for some people. This would help redress the balance between languages for your daughter, increasing Portugese and it is always better to speak a language that you speak very fluently to your child. It is also better because she would hear (more complex and more varied) adult to adult speech in Portugese and not just relatively simple speech directed at children.
PS I am lucky as my partner has always spoken only French to our children but my efforts to get him to speak French to me have always failed as we spoke English from the first times we met and we have not been able to change this even when we are in France – even when I speak French to him and the children!

I have found that writing down an action plan, posting it and reviewing it weekly as a family is very effective in reaching your goals. Once it’s down on paper, there is a level of accountability for all involved.

Best to you amiga!
.-= Beth Butler´s last blog ..Bilingual Games for Children from Boca Beth =-.