A kids life in France, from a parents point of view

I've often wondered what our children would have been like if we had decided to stay in the UK. Would they know more or less? Would they have been happier there? Given the choice would they have wanted to come to France? Well, they had no choice in the matter, they were too young, but even if they had been old enough I'm not sure that they would have had the choice anyway. Our eldest found it very hard in the beginning, as he had already been to school in the UK and also his English was pretty well established, so when we dumped him into a french school it was a pretty scary thing for him. We had considered a bilingual school, but felt that it would be more beneficial to be thrown in at the deep end in place where he had no choice. He had to communicate with the french kids & teachers, or not talk at all. It sounds very cruel, but believe me it was the best choice. The twins found it much easier. Apart from their own "between twins only" alien language, (which only they understood), they spoke neither English or french as they were only about 18 months old at the time. They all slotted in rather well, and their second language quite quickly became an even first with English. We did, however, make it a strict rule that unless we were doing homework, we spoke only English at home; I didn't want them to lose their English. The only problem now, of course, is that they keep on correcting us, which can be very embarassing!

The school day over here is very long for them. The eldest leaves at 7.20 am and is not back until 5.30 pm, although he doesn't have school on Wednesdays. The twins leave at 8.00 am and return at 5.45 pm, and they do have school on a Wednesday morning. In the winter, they never see the shutters on the windows open . It's dark when they leave, and dark when they come home! However, in the lovely summers we have, they often play in the garden, (we have a large one, 7200m2), until 11 pm, providing there's no school the next day! I was slightly worried about them learning to read and write in English, but needn't have. As soon as they acquired that in french they taught themselves it in English. Really, it shocked me too! One day they had the TV remote to see what was on, and they just started to read the synopsis!! Great, I thought, I don't need to worry about that now! They've just started to learn English in school and guess what...They get full marks each time, handy that! And how do they feel about their life in France? And what about their friends? And what did they think when we visited the UK for the first time in 10 years? That's another story for tomorrow!