I wrote a short while back about how James’ teacher at nursery school is starting to complain about the total absence of french words in James’ vocabulary. He has been attending ecole maternelle for over a year now and, to be honest, we sort of expected him to be chatting away to some degree (however small) in French as well by now. But to date we have yet to hear anything more than a ‘bonjour’ from him.

We can tell this is seriously starting to annoy his teachers and to make things worse some of his little French friends there are beginning to come out with an english word here and there…they have picked them up from James of course. I wouldn’t be too surprised if a complaint has been received from a parent or two about this.  Dear, dear me – James is really corrupting these poor little French people.

Short of banning all of our native language from being spoken around the home by everyone, an impossibility really, we don’t know what else to do about it. The child simply refuses to speak any language other than his own!.

The recent complaint from the teacher has a bit worried though; it looks as though we are going to start having the same problems getting James into mainstream school next year when he turns six as we did getting my elder son William into school. Will’s couldn’t speak French either. And the end result of all that is he has left and returned to Australia ‘to get his life back’.

Come next September should be interesting – if we are still here of course. James may be conversing with his little mates by then…but will they be chatting in his language by then?.