moving countries..screwing up my daughter??

[mrsmazarib]

hi there, some advice would be gratefully recieved ! we moved to the middle east last year to live with my husbands parents, my 5yo daughter who had no previous knowledge of the language, picked it up within 2 months, no problems and is trying to teach me. she settled into school really well, she has made friends and loves her teacher, every where we go people tell us they have never met anyone like her; and of course I believe she is gifted !
we have decided to move back to the UK next month, for various reasons, with a view to returning in 1-2 years, when we will have our own house and I feel will be better equiped to live in this country. All my family and friends in the UK want us to return and although my daughter has settled in pretty well, she misses her granny and her life in the UK and is so excited about going back. I am getting her enrolled in the local school to start after the easter break, I thought this would give her a bit of time to settle in before the year starts after the summer. I have been teaching her the alphabet, I have always read to her every night and she is aquiring english pretty well as far as I can see. I know she will be a bit behind her class with english, I dont expect it to be a problem free transition, but believe she will manage fine. All my husbands family though are full of woe and have basically told me that we are ruining her life (education here is considered the sole purpose of life, bugger creativity of any sort), and that to return after a year, she will be completely lost, she will not pick up the language, it will be a big problem for her...all is lost ! i dunno..are they correct? i feel that education is also about learning in life, being exposed to different people, culture. i feel her life will be richer for knowing different languages, different ways of life. she is a confident wee girl, she loves to talk to people, to meet new people, she is flexible. my husband will continue her learning in his native language, and we have bought some books from the school to learn to write and read. what do you think? does anyone know of any research on language aquisition and how this affects the child? are we screwing up her future by putting her at a disadvantage in her class? anyone got personal experience of this?
please, your thoughts and advice are much needed !

do you speak English to her? If she lived in the UK until she was 4 and speaks English with her mother, she will have no problems adjusting to school in the UK. If she is behind in English now, as you fear, once she is immersed in it at school, she will very quickly catch up. The question is when you are planning to move back in 1-2 years time and make your permanent home in the Middle East and she is settled and happy, whether there is a great deal of point ingoing back to the uk for a couple of years. However, that is obviously dependent on your working/financial interests etc

It will not harm her educationally, I cannot see howM she will also be with her English family so it is going home in a way and not a total wrench. If she goes back to the Middle East afterwards, it will also be a kind of home coming for her.

I expect you would like to keep up her English so another 2 years in the UK at an English language school would make it easier for you to do that. It will give her a stronger base.

We lived in France for two years and my dd settled in very well at school, made loads of friends etc. Unfortunately we had to move back to the UK and although she was behind when she started school - she started in Yr 2 and couldn't read at all, she soon caught up and is now way ahead in terms of reading and writing. However the move really upset her and in fact her best friend in France was traumatised by it, a fact that still upsets me today.

Within 2 years my dd had lost the language skills she had picked up in France and today she can speak only basic French whereas over there she was fluent. We had said we would keep up with the language and we did enrol her into French lessons and bought French books, audio tapes, DVDs etc but to be honest she was so busy in catching up at school and trying to fit in that keeping on top of her French skills was low down the list in her priorities.

I regret moving back. However you say that you will be going back within 2 years which is different. I think that exposing her short-term to the English language and to this culture will be good for her and yes, she will be thrown out of sync for a while but I think she will benefit in the long run. We knew we weren't going back to France and that was hard for all of us, esp dd. If we did what you were doing, it wouldn't have been as bad or traumatic as it wouldn't have been permanent.

Go for it, your dd will be bi-lingual and the experience will be good for her. Children do adapt quickly and you will be giving her an experience that cannot be taught, that of being flexible, adaptable and adventurous.

I used to be the guardian of a Russian girl who started at a private English school age 14 with very little English indeed. By the end of the first term she was beautifully fluent with not even a hint of an accent. Did extremely well in her exams. German friends of mine brought their three children - 8, 5 and 3 - to the UK to live, put them straight in the local primary/nursery with no advanced tuition in English and, within a few weeks, they were fluent. The older one was a little behind on the written work but, given that your DD is only at the stage where they are just learning to form letters and simple words, that's not an issue People pay a fortune for a good English education and, if she's a gregarious type naturally, she'll fit right in.

Your husband's family are not fearful for her education or language skills in the slightest. They're just saying that they'll miss you/her/DH... understandable.

She'll be absolutely fine. Stop worrying and ignore the hand wringing.