So, my son is almost 2.5 years old. We're raising him trilingually with German (me), Finnish (dad), and English (the world). He has been speaking in full sentences since before his 2nd birthday, mainly in German. He would say things like "ich möchte ____", I want ____, like to go home, to eat, candy, etc. Or he would say "Ich habe gepullert," I pottied, that sorrt of thing. He would even say a few sentences in Finnish like "Missä sinä olet?" where are you? and other things. Lately, though, it seems as if he's not using sentences as much and mainly what he does when he wants something is to go up to me or dad and grab an arm and say, "yeah. Yeah? Yeah!" It's almost as though he's realized that this is a sure fire way to make us understand that he wants something because then he can just drag us over to what he wants and he'll get it because often times Dad wouldn't understand him when he would say "ich möchte" or I would miss it because German isn't my native and I have major issues picking up "baby German" unless I'm really paying attention really hard.
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It doesn't help that his speech is...weird. He usually misses the first letter of the word, either by misprounouncing it ("Bon-bon" is "Mon-mon") or skipping it ("Olke" instead of "Wolke," and that also sounds the same as every other worde he uses ending in -ecke.). There are some other issues he has, like with the word for car in German and Finnish: Auto. He has always said Autem. I can count on one hand ther number of times he's said "AutO." I've also noticed a lot of times when he speaks, he says the word fine, but he doesn't open his mouth at all and mumbles it like a bad ventriloquist, which makes him a lot harder to understand.
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I'm thinking that due to the multilingualism, he's kind of given up on using full sentences because he can't rely on us actually understanding him all the time. He will combine a word of a thing he wants, like if he wants to watch Thomas, he'll say "Eisenbahn, yeah?" (Trian, yeah?) but he won't say "I want to watch the train." He has spoken in sentences recently, like when he wanted to leave with his dad and we told him he had to stay home, he told me in English "I be righ back," which was hard to understand but I immediately recognized it because that's what my husband and I always say to each other when we leave.
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So, I'd really like some advice as to how we can encourage him to use more of his words and actively speak in full sentences instead of just pulling on our arms and going "yeah. Yeah? Yeah!" I've thought about just ignoring him until he uses the correct words, but I know that would be frustrating for everyone involved. What we've started doing is asking him to tell us what he wants and we go through a list. Do you want this? Do you want that? And he'll tell us no, no no until we get to the right one, when he'll say yes. Then we try to make him say it in a sentence, "I want this...I want that..." It works most of the time, but is there anything else we can do to encourage him to use his words?
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(I did talk to his doctor about his speech at his 2 year check up just to make sure he wasn't abnormally delayed and she said that the range of normal around 2 was so varied that you really couldn't tell. Some kids are only saying a few words while others are talking up a storm. The fact that we're raising him with three languages only makes the waters murkier.)
). He also has a few words in each language (usually picks a favorite language for each word) and has some in both (for instance, cheese/Käse b/c he likes it 
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), but recently he's started to speak more and more words. I think it's b/c he now goes 2 mornings/week to a bilingual preschool. He also has English playgroup one morning/week. Seeing that the older children speak a lot must be a huge motivation.
