Mixing languages is a most natural human linguistic behavior. Most languages are mixed. When languages come into contact with each other, they are bound to blend together. There's no such thing as a pure language.
In my family, I make it a point to code-mix when I speak to my children. As a result, they freely switch from Mandarin to Japanese to English. At any given moment, they may happen to be speaking in Japanese, and there's something they want to express which happens to be simpler to say in Mandarin, then they would just insert that part in Mandarin into a Japanese utterance.
Some people are afraid that mixing languages may confuse children. But mine never seems to find any problems in figuring out what situations or which people called for straight Japanese or straight Mandarin with no code-mixing.
That all changed when they started going to an "English-only" eikaiwa school where Japanese is strictly prohibited.
Whenever they came across something they wanted to express but didn't know how in English, they paused and asked me: "Uh... How do you say ... in English"? This happened frequently enough for them to get tired of speaking English and give up speaking English altogether.
I wasn't worried, though. I was sure they would figure out very soon that even though it was not OK to mix languages while they were in the eikaiwa school, it's OK when they were at home. And sure enough, they did.
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