Any young Expat families in Nerja?
Nov 10th 2016, 8:21 am
#16
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Joined: Oct 2012
Posts: 0
Re: Any young Expat families in Nerja?
The problem with post 6 is that kids will always take the easy option.
Give them a few friends that speak their own language and that's who they will play with. That's who they will talk to. That's the wrong way to do it.
Moving kids to a new school is bad enough, but a different country and a different language is tough. But it's the parents' decision so the kids have to make the best of it. The parents have to make the best decisions for the kids and that has to be to put them in a Spanish school with Spanish kids to force them to learn the language as quickly as possible.
Encouraging kids to play with other expats is delaying the problem. In fact it causes additional problems. The foreign kids club together and become isolated from the Spanish kids. They speak English in the playground thereby preventing the Spanish kids from getting involved. The foreigners stick together instead of mingling and integrating.
I'll probably get flamed for this saying this, but Spain still has a racist element to it, a lot of Spanish don't like foreigners, particularly the older generations and some of them pass this prejudice on to their kids. Couple this with their natural attitude to new kids and bullying tendencies and you find some of the foreign kids that don't mingle have a pretty crap time at school.
Not saying this happens at all schools but I'm speaking from experience having put my kids through the Spanish system.
Give them a few friends that speak their own language and that's who they will play with. That's who they will talk to. That's the wrong way to do it.
Moving kids to a new school is bad enough, but a different country and a different language is tough. But it's the parents' decision so the kids have to make the best of it. The parents have to make the best decisions for the kids and that has to be to put them in a Spanish school with Spanish kids to force them to learn the language as quickly as possible.
Encouraging kids to play with other expats is delaying the problem. In fact it causes additional problems. The foreign kids club together and become isolated from the Spanish kids. They speak English in the playground thereby preventing the Spanish kids from getting involved. The foreigners stick together instead of mingling and integrating.
I'll probably get flamed for this saying this, but Spain still has a racist element to it, a lot of Spanish don't like foreigners, particularly the older generations and some of them pass this prejudice on to their kids. Couple this with their natural attitude to new kids and bullying tendencies and you find some of the foreign kids that don't mingle have a pretty crap time at school.
Not saying this happens at all schools but I'm speaking from experience having put my kids through the Spanish system.
