Third culture kids. Language development

[Ethny]

Hi everyone! I'm looking forward to hearing from parents who moved countries with kids.

When my kid was 2 we moved from Norway (which is not a country of origin for DH and me) to the UK. DD is now 4 and is using English as her primary language. She completely forgot Norwegian since she's not exposed to it anymore. She understands our local language that both DH and me are using at home (books, cartoons, friends from our diaspora, that's all present in DD's life). But still DD speaks to us in English and only occasionally uses words in our local language. She is attending nursery full-day.

Sometimes I'm thinking about moving to another European country (maybe back to Norway, or Netherlands, or Denmark). But I'm very concerned about DD's language development. What would happen to her English skills? Would it be harmful for her overall development (juggling with so many languages)? Should we consider only international (english) schools if we decide to move? My main goal is her being able to express herself (what if her english starts to fade away and any other language won't be developed enough).

If we decide to move it will be our last move in the next 10 years for sure. Moving earlier could be better long-term (she won't miss much). But maybe we need to wait 2-3 years more and use every opportunity to boost our local language (English will be covered at school) so her communication and self-awareness will be more developed.

I assume you and you DH have the same country of origin, which is not Netherlands or Denmark? So, you'd be moving to a new language for all of you?

Carry on speaking to her in your shared language. If you leave to start her in a new language environment at school/nursery at 4 she will likely forget english fluency very quickly. She'll also very likely relearn in very quickly and easily in either NL or DK at about 7 or 8. I imagine there will be a time where she isn't able to fully express herself. We had that happen with our DC and the nursery in DK provided extra support for them and for us at home to help them as much as possible.

I don't believe learning more languages at a young age can be actively harmful, as long as the environment and the transition is well managed and the child supported.

IME an international school is a bad idea unless the move is temporary because learning the local language is so important to feeling part of the local community.

Good luck, incidentally, in DK they also run summer school for children of EU nationals in their native languages which I highly recommend :) (I love the netherlands though and move there in a heartbeat if I could)

Yes, if we move it would be a new language for all of us. So we as parents won't be able to support DD in the transition.

I think being exposed to multiple languages only benefits children. I'm more concerned about learning a language to some extent and then abandoning it. I'm afraid she will abandon a part of her social skills and self-confidence with it. If she was fluent in our local language - I won't be concerned at all.

Maybe I'm overthinking.

The speech therapists who worked with me DC said that the best support we could offer was providing rich language input at home in our native language, so it shouldn't matter if you can't speak the local language. In the nicest possible way, I think you may be overthinking it. She's still young and in both NL and DK are fantastic places to live as a child. Knowing English is a huge help in learning Dutch and danish and she will most likely pick either up quickly.