English-as-mother-tongue speaker here, currently living in a German-speaking country, also with two kids who have been raised with both English and German spoken in our household, giving them a huge edge at school with near-perfect English scores since day one ..
My experience with the Germans not wanting to speak German with you while you stumble over everything, is simply that they want to exercise their own English, and its just not as fun for them to wait for your marble-mouthed nonsense to parse. ;) But its not, in my experience, due to any xenophobia or general prejudice - more of a fact that its a lot of fun to speak a non-native language with a native-speaker. Germans are after that "I can speak English well enough!" acknowledgement, which - unless you've really, really studied hard for it - you won't really get to experience, either, speaking German .. for a few years, I imagine.
But, its really important to keep up your skills no matter what your friends and family do to dissuade you. I'm at the point, 15 years into life in a German-speaking country, where I can speak near-flawless German with strangers consistently, but any time I try with someone who is familiar with me, it turns into an embarrassing mess .. But I encourage you to keep trying, its really fun!
My experience with the Germans not wanting to speak German with you while you stumble over everything, is simply that they want to exercise their own English, and its just not as fun for them to wait for your marble-mouthed nonsense to parse. ;) But its not, in my experience, due to any xenophobia or general prejudice - more of a fact that its a lot of fun to speak a non-native language with a native-speaker. Germans are after that "I can speak English well enough!" acknowledgement, which - unless you've really, really studied hard for it - you won't really get to experience, either, speaking German .. for a few years, I imagine.
But, its really important to keep up your skills no matter what your friends and family do to dissuade you. I'm at the point, 15 years into life in a German-speaking country, where I can speak near-flawless German with strangers consistently, but any time I try with someone who is familiar with me, it turns into an embarrassing mess .. But I encourage you to keep trying, its really fun!