Bilingualism and home education

[SauerKraut]

If you live in a different country and your children are speaking your language at home- and being taught to read and write in it- and another one at school, then do you think the advantage of having the second language is more important than a parent's desire to home educate?

I think it as important. But wouldn't the children learn the language anyway whether you home or school educate? Learning the native tongue should be easy to include in home education.

They'll just pick it up. I just read to them & write out words & phrases as asked.

Not at the same level as they would reach in the second language at school- in fact, it would become the primary language for some subjects,ie any which are not discussed at home, and they would end up with two possible working languages

not sure I understand sk!! my kids are bilingual & are equal in both.

ok, I mean that my kids are able to speak English like native speakers, obviously- but there are some topics for which they only know the correct vocab in the school language- unless we also discuss these topics at home.

see what you mean - but this is fine. Just get them to explain the work & see what vocab they need to have. I find that they don't even have to learn the word it's just accepted. Plus helps me learn more vocab as well!

To answer your Q SauerKraut, I would go for having a second language any day but of course it would depend on how you feel about the education being offered by the school. DS (almost 6) is fluently tri-lingual, at home we speak English (me) and Portuguese (DH) and we are teaching him to read and write in both languages, he has no problem whatsoever. He attended (until recently when we moved to Brazil) the local school in Venice, Italy so he was also learning to read and write in Italian. The teachers reported that he was well above average in his ability to pick it up and possibly the fact that he was already learning in other languages helped. He has never confused any of the languages and now that we have moved he will be going to a bi-lingual school - is that an option for you? Where are you?

We are in Switzerland. Bilingual school is not an option for us- home education, however, is- and always will be with our lifestyle. Dd1, 8, is having socialization problems in school. It panics her and we can't decide if the wonderful opportunity to learn a second language should override our desire to keep her away from the place.

We live in France and for us we speak English at home, and I try to teach dd how to read and write in English. At school she speaks French and is learning to read and write in French. She is a little slow due to limited time on our part to sit down with her at home and practice. I also think that her little brain is working overtime at school as not only is she learning the curriculum there, she is also learning French, so I feel it's a bit much asking her to do more work at home. I'm sure it will come eventually.

Can you not join forces with another parent SauerKraut? If there is a child from that school who lives near you, why not volunteer to take that child to school in the mornings, and they could pick both children up in the evenings? That way both children have a real chance to get to know each other.

When we first moved here dd knew not one word of French and my experience was very much like Hausfraus, she was very the most confident of children anyway, and I had to take her to school in tears, she had no-one to play with during the break and very often I would pick her up in tears too. She became a very unhappy little girl. But then we started taking the little boy across the road to school too, and they would pick them both up. The result is that the two of them became firm friends and she picked the language up very quickly after that.

They are still very good friends, and she has even promised to marry him when she is grown up! As for her French, there is nothing to differentiate between her and a French child now. She sometimes speaks English with French grammar, but her standard of English is still high.

Sorry, the second para should read "she was never really the most confident of children"

Dear Rhubarb and Hausfrau, thank you both!. We have been there and done all that and now possess several t-shirts -smiley face but I don't know how to do it. We have been in CH for 5 years. When we arrived, our kids were ages 4,3,2 and expecting- all 4 practically CH-grown. We have had a mixture of both your experiences language-wise. 3 out of 4 have absolutely no problem following the local school system, that is to say we expect no probs for dd3 who is still only 4- the problems dd1 has been having are purely social and she has always had them. She speaks Swiss German perfectly and is far ahead of what would be her class in High German and she is currently home educated. We have decided, however, that the only way forward is to put her back a year so that she can become more confident around large groups(which panic her) with kids younger than herself, including, obviously, her younger sister. The best solution would be full time home ed but then she would miss this wonderful opportunity to be fully bilingual. She is fine one to one and has several good friends.

Large groups scare the hell out of my dd too, she plays best in ones and twos, which is why it's so good for her to have this one best friend. He sticks by her and they always look out for each other in school. Can you not team her up with a similar quiet pupil? Ask a friend over to play with her just to nurture the friendship?

just want to say we've had the same experience, and yes, the child does really need to go to school to pick up the language properly. dd's Spanish slipped a lot this summer (she's only 3) when she took 6 weeks off nursery, even though she did have a reasonable amount of contact with spanish children.

She will be going back to school in the year below after these coming holidays, so in Feb. We have two weeks for skiing here at the end of Jan. Inbetween times she has been having private German lessons- much better than in school!- but of course she misses out on the daily contact with the language. The problem is that we live in a village so she already knows all the other children very well, and they tend to just ignore her unless she puts herself forward, which she rarely does. The parents here believe kids should make their own decisions and so would never make their dcs play with anyone they didn't choose to.

Sk - don't have experience of this - but would it be possible to just have private tution for your children in their community langauge ?

That way you can continue to speak English at home, but have someone else teach them another language (by a native speaker and as though they were learning it at school) ?

I think this way they would aquire a very good knowledge of the community language and you can home teach in all other subjects.

What do you think ?

Sorry, SK, hadn't read your last post, you are doing this alreday