French speaking nursery, English speaking parents - how long for 2.8 year old to be fluent?

[Rantmum]

To any MNers with a similar experience - we are moving to a French speaking area and ds will start nursery there. My ds will be 2.8 when he starts nursery and I was planning to put him in for 5 days, but on reflection wonder if this will be too much for him at this age. DH and I speak very poor french although we intend to take classes to brush up, so I had thought that maybe a daily dose of immersion at this age will ensure that he is fluent by the time "real" school starts - any thoughts? Will 3 days initially be enough under these circumstances?

Oh she's not yet 2, so ages to go (although I was secretly hoping to get her started at 3 and have been trawling the web for reviews of Jolly Phonics pretty much since she was born).

How old's yours?

Ah but Franca, the sooner she gets into books the sooner I'll be able to cook a proper meal/write a letter/spend more that 2 minutes in the toilet etc etc etc. So you see, it's purely for selfish reasons

Brangelina - she's 2.6.

Franca - like Brangelina says, it's a way of occupying children usefully...

I was on holiday with some Belgian children at Easter. Belgian children seem to learn to read even later than French ones, and the mother (who is French) was complaining that her children spent too much time watching TV because they couldn't read, and it was then hard to break the habit. I think I go along with that sentiment.

Yes, undersand completely. I want to get the books in before her Dad gets her on to computer games....

Great idea! As an English-as-a-foreign-language teacher myself and English mother to 2 young dcs, both who attend French-Swiss school, the more "exposure" the better! Mine are both bilingual, I'm proud and happy to say, and it seemed to come effortlessly. Such an advantage to have 2 languages right from the start!

Well, horses for courses, as they say . It's difficult to occupy the undertwos... Brangelina, dd used to hold on to my legs for the whole time I cooked dinner until she was a bit older than 2.
My children seem to spend a lot of time playing. But they are nearly 5 and 3, and in the last year they've really learnt how to play together. Also on the days dd is at nursery, there isn't that much time to switch on the telly, apart from the half an hour before going to bed.

I didn't have a choice. I had to leave dd with a maman de jour when she was 18mos so I could go back to work. So as she learned to speak, dd would automatically speak english to me and french to her maman de jour. I don't know why. Delighted with the way things had worked out, when ds came along, I put him with the same maman de jour & voilà, same result!

that sounds perfect sauce!

Do you only speak English at home Sauce? We speak both at home (DP is Italian), so DD doesn't bother speaking English to me at all as she knows I understand Italian. She has yet to utter more than 2 words in English, although she understands absolutely everything.

Franca - I suppose my one consolation is that Italian telly is generally quite dire, so hopefully DD won't get sucked in .

Brangelina - but you speak English to your DD?

I speak English (only) to my daughter, our family language is French and my partner only speaks French to me and her. But she speaks just as much English as French. Weird how they all do different things.

Yes, we do speak english at home but french too, sometimes. The dc love to take the p*ss out of our accents!

My very good Italian friend speaks italian with her dc, english and french with her husband (who's Iranian & who's english is as good as mine) and french with me. Then with our other mutual mum friends (lots of Italians in there), she speaks italian and french. (I've picked up a lot of Italian listening to them btw!) She's complaining that the children are now speaking to her in french more and more, rather than italian. It's difficult.

Yes, I do only ever speak English too her, plus most of her books are in English and I do most of the reading anyway so even the Italian ones are simultaneously translated, all her Baby Einstein DVDs are rigourously watched in English and even my cats are spoken to in English. But to no avail! She hears me speaking Italian to DP (who speaks very little English) and everyone else so has sussed she doesn't need to make the effort. It all really went downhill when I put her in nursery, she went from 50/50 exposure to 80/20 in favour of Italian. Sigh.
I expect she'll start speaking more English when she's older and realises that her cousins won't understand her otherwise.

That's one reason why I wanted to avoid childcare - so that I could be sure my daughter got to hear lots and lots of English before going to school.

We have loads of Maisy DVDs in English only . And ditto books, mostly they are in English (except Babar of course).

Yes, well childcare is a necessity in my case, have mortgage to pay so must work. I did stay on mat leave until 9 months and even when I went back to work you get bfeeding time off so did part time hours until DD was 1yo.

I'm not really that worried, I do travel back to the UK quite frequently for work and wangle it so I can bring her along and we stay with family, so she is also getting a fair amount of English only exposure, threfore it's probably only a question of time. I'm just impatient to hear her actually speak in anything but Italian.

As an aside, curiously enough, when she hears French spoken she turns her head. I worked on a French project before going on mat leave and spoke French pretty much all day, every day during my pregnancy, so maybe she recognises the sounds? I did wonder if I should capitalise on it but there are no French nurseries where I live, so that idea's been binned for the moment.

There are definitely theories about children picking up language while in the womb. Years ago I saw a programme about an English child who had suffered brain damage at birth and couldn't learn to talk. Only when he went to France and heard French did he learn to speak - French being the language his mother had spoken in pregnancy.

Sure, I know we are lucky to have had the choice about childcare and exposure to English. But your daughter is definitely learning - I've seen children in my own family have a "breakthrough" on the second language in their teens, and become perfectly bilingual.

on the luxembourg thread my dh asked me to add a few words.

He grew up in lux and also went to the european school. Highly recommended even if it means going on a waiting list and paying. He is comfortable in 5 languages like most of his cohort. Kids start a first foreign language aged 5, a second aged 12, a third aged 14, and a fifth if desired aged 16 as well as doing certain core subjects in their first foreign language eg history, geography and or economics.

Other options apparently include the international school of luxembourg, the american school and just as many other german, french, italian, portuguese nurseries.

Luxembourg can be a little on the boring side culturally, socially but it is a brilliant place to bring up kids.

PS luxembourgish is the official language of sorts but everybody speaks french and french is the lingua franca for just about everything....