Andrew79

Dear all,

I am hoping to return to England soon with my wife and 3 kids. However, my oldest 2 children (4 & 2) speak excellent Spanish and just a little English.

Actually, rather a strange thing, they understand English very well, as when I speak with them in English they reply in Spanish!!!

These are my questions:
1) Does anyone else have children like this?!
2) How did your kids manage at school in England?
3) Do you have any advice for finding a school / settling the kids in to the new environment?

babsi

It shouldn't be a problem when you move back. Things will sort themselves out when they are amongst English speaking kids. They will have to speak English in that environment so they will.

petrichor

At that age your children will start speaking English quickly, especially if they already understand it. Other children won't understand Spanish, so they'll be forced to. It's a good age to move them back from that perspective, and as long as either or both of you continue to speak Spanish at home they'll grow up bilingual with all the benefits that includes.

Andrew79

Thanks very much for your replies. I know kids of that age learn very quickly, and best at their age rather than wait.

scot47

You may have to take steps to make sure they do not lose their Spanish. Kids learn foreign langauges very quickly - they also FORGET them if they are not used.

Consensus now is that being bilingual is a positive. 100 years ago "experts" held the opposite opinion ! I have two bilingual daughters and I think it is a plus.

Andrew79

Yes, I definitely want my kids to be bilingual. My wife speaks only Spanish with them, I speak only English. The reason they don't speak much English is because I don't see much of them during the week, mainly at weekends. It's yet another reason to return to England.

Every day, I'm up at 4.30am and everyone is asleep still. I take a 3 hour commute to work, spend 9 hours at work and 3 hours back again. By the time I'm home, the kids are back to sleep

I'd love to return to the old half hour commute!

scot47

The "One Parent, One Language" approach has become quite common in recent years. Some German-Australian wrorte a book about this around 20 yaers ago. I have forgotten her name and the title of the book.

Andrew79

Yes, I read a book about raising bilingual kids some time ago. I also don't know the name of the author. Anyway, I think it's true that young children can learn something like 5 languages at once.

Another approach is to speak only one language inside the house and the other language outside. This provides a kind of division of the languages.