Little conversation starters

If you speak to your child in the L2, and they understand and respond in the L1, that's good. We should never lose sight of the fact that this qualifies as L2 success and if it never gets beyond this, you have accomplished something major: Your child understands a second language!

However, if you speak to your child in the L2, and they understand and respond in the L2, that's obviously much better. It's awesome. It's huge. But it's so awesome that I think a lot of people consider it the very definition of L2 success. It isn't. 

Best of all is when your child to speaks to you in the L2, and you understand and respond in the L2. That is, when your child actively initiates new L2 conversations of their own accord and in their own terms and about things on their own little mind. 

Ideally, there should be no difference in the frequency with which they do this in the L2 compared to the L1. 

A lot of very simple and concrete things can serve to empower children in this way. I'll have more on this later, but one thing that has worked for me from very early on is to seed daily interactions with spontaneous little conversation starters like the following: 

Hey Kleiner, weißt du, was mir aufgefallen ist? ("Hey little man, you know what I've noticed?" Then I point out some—any!—funny or interesting thing I have observed, and we talk and/or laugh about it.)

Hey Kleiner, weißt du, was mir eingefallen ist? ("Hey little man, you know what's just occurred to me?" Then I describe some—any!—funny or interesting thought, etc.)  

Hey Kleiner, weißt du noch, wie ...? ("Hey little man, remember how ... ?" Then I recall some—any!—meaningful experience, and we reminisce.)  

Once I had modeled these enough (first with the puppets), my son began to use them himself, and he does to this day. In my experience, if you make a habit of keeping the thoughts that follow these intros quite short (one or two sentences), the child is more likely to use them.