Hello from the UK
Jan 9, 2017 3:50:43 GMT 9
Post by Henry on Jan 9, 2017 3:50:43 GMT 9
Hi all,
I'm Henry, originally from the Netherlands but having lived in the UK for more than a decade now. I've joined this forum because my (British) partner and I are in the early phases of adopting children domestically in the UK. All my family are Dutch so I am keen that our future children also learn to speak Dutch - and who knows, we may even move there at some point in the years to come.
The question I'm trying to find an answer to is how best to do that. Ideally, I'd like to go for the OPOL option but that might not be the best strategy. We will most likely be adopting a sibling group of children who are slightly older (not sure yet how old, but anywhere up to and including age five). They will currently be placed in the care of social services and have been placed for adoption as they can no longer live in their own families, for a variety of reasons (such as neglect or violence at home).
In other words, these children would come with attachment issues and a lot of time and effort will be necessary to build a family. I wonder, therefore, whether speaking a foreign language may in fact be a barrier to that process rather and rather than helping them learn a new language, making the building of a new family more difficult. Or that they have negative associations with their new language as they grew up.
It turns out what we're setting out to do is quite uncommon in the UK and we have not found much information on this very specific situation. So I hope that on this forum I might not only find some helpful information about raising children bilingually in general but perhaps some pointers to helpful advice and information how to do this with slightly older, adopted children who come with the need for some extra care and attention.
Looking forward to reading more on this forum!
I'm Henry, originally from the Netherlands but having lived in the UK for more than a decade now. I've joined this forum because my (British) partner and I are in the early phases of adopting children domestically in the UK. All my family are Dutch so I am keen that our future children also learn to speak Dutch - and who knows, we may even move there at some point in the years to come.
The question I'm trying to find an answer to is how best to do that. Ideally, I'd like to go for the OPOL option but that might not be the best strategy. We will most likely be adopting a sibling group of children who are slightly older (not sure yet how old, but anywhere up to and including age five). They will currently be placed in the care of social services and have been placed for adoption as they can no longer live in their own families, for a variety of reasons (such as neglect or violence at home).
In other words, these children would come with attachment issues and a lot of time and effort will be necessary to build a family. I wonder, therefore, whether speaking a foreign language may in fact be a barrier to that process rather and rather than helping them learn a new language, making the building of a new family more difficult. Or that they have negative associations with their new language as they grew up.
It turns out what we're setting out to do is quite uncommon in the UK and we have not found much information on this very specific situation. So I hope that on this forum I might not only find some helpful information about raising children bilingually in general but perhaps some pointers to helpful advice and information how to do this with slightly older, adopted children who come with the need for some extra care and attention.
Looking forward to reading more on this forum!
