Across the street from Grandpa's house -James' dad moved here from London thus the reason we chose Nice- there is an international bilingual school called the ABC School. We thought it would be a good idea to look into it for Taylor so he could start learning French without being totally lost in an all French school. Their mode is every other hour is in English, therefore every other lesson he gets a mental break.Well it wasn't too expensive so we enrolled him starting January 1st. He's been there four weeks and is starting to gather a few phrases here and there and making some friends. Nikita seems to be his favorite. :) He still fights learning the language but this weekend we started going over simple verbs and pronouns like, I have, you have, he/she has, and I am, you are, he/she is. He's not totally resisting but I'll have to be creative about this or find him a fun tutor to help him get off the starting block.
I hear from other mother's with children in similar situations that they worry about the child's sense of confidence. I agree. We went to a park early in January and T didn't want to go in. I asked why and he said, "Because the kids all speak French." It broke my heart because this was not the Taylor I knew. I reminded him that he had a friend in NY who basically spoke only Spanish and hardly any English and they didn't have any problem playing together and being great friends. He agreed and in we went.
Well, he tried with a group of kids and it wasn't super successful until eventually he found another little girl who didn't speak French either. But, she only spoke Dutch. Funny. Alas, they played together for over an hour until we had to leave. Success.
I see that in the group situation the other kids aren't being mean, it's just they don't know how to relate to a child when they don't understand what he's saying, so it's just easier to go back to their group and ignore him/her. But once it's only one child facing another child they always find a way to connect.
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