Linda e la sua famiglia sono americani, ma vivono a Roma. Pero’ ora se ne vanno a Bali per un po’. E’ bello pensare a questa famigliola che affronta il mondo compatta e aperta a cio’ che portera’ il futuro. Non e’ necessariamente vero che quando arrivano i figli si smette di viaggiare, e loro ce lo ricordano. Grazie Linda.
My husband and I are Americans and we have been living in Rome for 10 years. Although all three of our daughters were born here, we have always spoken to them in English. With our oldest child, when she started school at 3 years old – we decided on an international English speaking school. Although we are here long term in Italy, we wanted to be very involved in her education and the environment where she went to school. It was important for us to be able to have a close relationship with the school and in being able to help her with her studies. Although we are fluent enough in Italian (my husband is much more fluent than myself), at that time when we made the decision 5 years ago, I was not that confident that I would feel comfortable with my child going to Italian school.
Now 5 years later – both of our older daughters have been going to this English speaking school (although our middle child is being home educated by us this year). Our youngest who will be 3 years old in March has had a Romanian nanny since she was 6 months old and who only speaks to her in Italian. However, although my daughter’s initial words were in Italian, she now only speaks in English. She recently started at an Italian nido as we thought it would be a good idea and in the few short weeks we have already started to hear her speaking a few words in Italian although her predominant language still remains English.
My husband, daughters and I are now moving to Bali for one year starting in August and so our children will be attending another international English speaking school, but that also teaches the local language Bahasa Indonesia. Once we return, we are not sure how our children’s education will continue as my daughters are extremely resistant to going to an Italian school, but realistically and financially speaking – we cannot continue for all three of our daughters to go to this private school for the rest of their schooling as it is very expensive. So we have some hard decisions to make before we return to Rome in August 2010.
My family background is Puertorican so at some point I would like the children to learn Spanish and my husband is Jewish and would like to spend some time in Israel and have the children learn Hebrew. So our daughters’ multilingualism has just begun!
We do not anticipate ever living in the US again – our daughters have never lived there and are not interested in it. They are, however, interested in living in the UK so that may be a possibility. Who knows what the future will bring. I must say, I am very happy that they are living a more international life than many of my friend’s children in the US and that they are seeing different parts of the world – I think this is important in so many ways. They are used to being friends with and around bilingual/multilingual children as almost every child at their school speaks more than one language.
Linda menziona un paio di punti molto interessanti, e sicuramente vicini all’esperienza di tante famiglie. La scelta della scuola e’ spesso difficile, per lo piu’ bisogna fare dei compromessi guardando a costi, qualita’ dell’insegnamento e bilinguismo. E’ anche piu’ difficile di quanto si creda assicurare lo stesso tipo di esperienza a fratelli e sorelle di eta’ diverse, e’ inevitable, ma credo sia spesso difficile da accettare.