 |
| Getting the feathers ruffled... |
Of course I started a bombardment of questions but shouldn't those answers come automatically from the Direction before I need to ask? In the end I also had to ask for the list of things E would need when staying there too.
Today is day 3 and I told the Director my thought and feelings about our rather confusing welcoming. I felt rather embarrassed to do it but I couldn't NOT say anything either. There was no apology but rather an half- hearted attempt of finding excuses and a promise of talking to the other staff. We're in France so I don't know why I actually expected a "Sorry about that", that would be to admit a fault! And that doesn't happen around this corner of France!!
Faced with the challenge of teaching E three languages and confiding E to this (so far) disorganised crèche makes me want to pack my bags and move to Italy. The fact alone, that there are no kindergardens here with experience of multilingual kids makes me want to move... so let alone fussy answers and leaving your kids with a bunch of nameless people (Update: I now know the name of three out of four team members)!
At the moment we have no other alternatives so he'll be continuing for a while longer but I will put E on all waiting list for the other crèches. The problem, as with everywhere, is the lack of available places. Sigh.
As you can gather I feel A LITTLE upset right now but as with most things, it will pass.
7 messages:
agghh agghhh and more aggghhhh.
I'm pleased you said something, but as you said, the French won't appologize (easily). I'm surprised there are many multilingual families where you are, it's terrible where I live. Let us know how it goes
oh and, he is great, little E. Already on his feet?! :o)
No, maybe I didn't write that well but there are NO international families here as I'm aware of anyway. I've called all organisations dealing with children to ask if they knew of playgroups, kindergardens etc frequented by multilingual kids but they just did not understand why I would want to adhere or find such things...
Siiigh!
That sounds really frustrating, Astrid! The two different creches that I had my girls in were pretty organized. There weren't many multilingual families, but there were a few due to Corse being their first or second language. They always had lots of paperwork to fill out and info to read about how the creche was run. I'm pretty sure that's mandatory. I hope it goes better for you and little E. He is so adorable! I know I haven't written in my blog for over a year now (maybe I'll pick it back up one of these days. We actually moved back to Canada for his birth, but will move back to Corsica next fall), but I have a little boy now, too. He's just two months old, but it's a nice change from two crazy girls!
Hi Cara!!! I'm so happy to hear from you!! I was just thinking about you yesterday and checking your blog.
Anyway, CONGRATULATIONS to the whole family for the arrival of the new baby boy. What's his name? I bet his big sisters are very proud and happy to "help" out :) And please do blog, I'm sure I'm not the only one missing your updates!
As for Emilio and the crèche... well we'll see how it goes. If we're not happy we'll look for an Assistante maternelle while waiting for a place in another crèche.
I hope you're all doing really well in Canada and that you're surrounded by all your family and friends! When you get back to Corsica we should try and meet up. We'll probably be going to Calvi next June... but I guess you're just about getting started on the big move back to France by then?
Astrid, Emilio is so adorable!! I love his hair :-)
I've done some research on the language thing myself. I know I am getting ahead of myself but I like to be prepared! With Ale speaking Italian and me speaking Spanish and English, we decided the OPOL method would probably work best for us. In other words, Ale will only speak to our child in Italian, I will speak to them only in Spanish and they will learn English in school. In order for it to work though, you really have to stick to that. There are other bloggers out there using this method and it seems to work.
Here are some posts by my friend Karen on raising her daughter biligual in Campagna:
http://karenuccia.blogspot.com/search/label/Bilingual
Since Ale's parents don't speak a word of English, it's imperative that our kids speak the language. I'm not too worried about them learning Spanish. There is plenty of opportunity for that here and it's much easier to learn than Italian.
Thanks for the link Piccola! I had a quick look now but I'd definitely be reading more closely later on.
We're using the same method and I only speak Norwegian and L only Italian - and then French at the daycare centre.
I've just bought a book off amazon about multilingualism to study how to continue this challenge :)
Hi! E is adorable! :-)
We follow the OPOL too, and that's always worked well for us. The kids have German (their third language) in school. You'd think that it would be really confusing for them, but they're doing just fine. I think that their brains are just so flexible when they're that small that they just go with the flow and soak up everything around them.
It may not be a total disadvantage that the teachers aren't experienced with multilingual children. Otherwise they might tend to switch languages whenever E doesn't understand something, and that might slow down the learning process.
We keep seeing non-German-speaking kids come into our school here, and the ones who seem to do the best are the ones that don't get any extra help or translation from the teachers. It may not be the easiest transition, but they're a lot better off a lot sooner and end up learning the language a lot more thoroughly than they might otherwise.
Post a Comment