how long did it take your children to settle into school and learn the langage?

[indiajane]

Hi!

We moved to Austria in January and planned to stay here till September. Our two school aged children have been going to school here. They have an extra german lesson every day and the first 6 weeks went ok, but now the eldest (age 8) is very tearful and begging on an hourly basis to go home. The other (age 6) is not begging to go home but has to be prised into school each day.

They spoke no german at all before they came here - and don't appear to be picking it up at all. The headmaster has already taken dh aside and expressed concerns that ds1 is isolating herself from other children and has given up trying to communicate .

I'm not sure whether to abandon the experiment and go back to the UK. I think the oportunity to learn another langage for the girls at this age is a great one but I don't want to make them so unhappy.

Can anyone tell me if there is light at the end of the tunnel or if 9 months isn't long enough to learn the language and therefore not worth staying on for?

Well, rather irritatingly DD1 said that she wasn't sure about whether or not she wanted to.

Honestly, I must have the patience of a saint at times

My mum pointed out though that she was probably only saying that because she thought that it was what we wanted to hear so when I probed a little deeper (away from dh) she admitted that she was really glad.

The knowledge of our leaving has made them even more unsettled at school though so this, the last week is going badly already.

Don't think I'd bother sending them in for this last week at all TBH.

Good luck with the move back and getting resettled in the UK. Wonder if you'll all be off to Bulgaria next!

He's already mentioned 4 months in Bulgaria.

I said

NO

My daughter (at the time 7)less than a school year Sept -June my son at the time 3 (still not completely fluent but still better than me!

January-September = two terms of school.

No child of 6 or 8 can become fluent in a language in that time, and the 8 year old would definitely have required special support from the school in order to become fluent within a year. Factor in the lack of incentive both on the part of your own children and the other children in the class to become friends, given that your children would not be staying, and I would say that putting your children into a local school was doomed from the outset.

So don't think you failed in any way along the way - you probably just didn't have enough information at the outset to make an informed decision.