Ben and Marina record a new podcast about the battle for our baby’s language skills, why we want to leave Madrid, the trouble with summer in Madrid, and baby timetables in Spain.
Comments welcome!
Notes from Spain: Ben Curtis on Travel, Life, Culture, Spain
Podcasts and comment on travel, tapas, learning Spanish and living in Spain, plus beautiful Spain photos.
I’d go for the “tiny fishing village”, specifically Hondarribia (Fuenterrabía) as it’s quite small and peaceful but it’s close to a major city like Donosti.
But yeah, Asturias would seem like a great place to live. I certainly agree with Ben that the food (I might add sidra as well) is a good reason to move there.
My wife has not slept for about five years. Dani is 5. Coincidence? Anita is 3 and added to the problem. I can sleep through an earthquake luckily.
Good luck on the battle.
Our experience was that kids learn the easiest word from the two Agua is easier than water for kids.
RE the place to live.
Gijón by the beach or Villaviciosa/Ribadesella are great. Llanes gets a lot of tourists true but is beautiful and not too seasonal. Great beaches and you would have them to yourself during the weekdays. At weekends it gets full all year. Bars and restaurants are excellent too.
I’ve already told you… Gijón. It’s big enough but small enough. Good communications with the rest of Asturias and Spain. Many things to do and places to visit. Beaches… If you have any question just ask.
I loved listening to your podcast, first time on your site but going to have a look around now! We love visiting Madrid but that’s because its a very different comparison to living in the Canary Islands where we chose to bring our two children up – it would be very different to live there rather than holiday
You two are hilarious with your word competition!
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I have always spoken only English to my daughter and her father has always spoken only Hebrew, so she switches easily, depending on who she’s talking to. If you both always speak ONLY your mother tongue with your children, they’ll naturally and automatically learn both languages. And with a little encouragement, they’ll also speak both, depending on who they’re talking to (rather than always defaulting to the country’s more common language). It helps to provide playgroups in English, if possible, to balance out the Spanish Leo will hear everywhere.
Please don’t worry about it, or he will start associating the choice of language with anxiety too.
Leslie and I really enjoyed your podcast. We hope you keep us posted as you search and find your Asturian haven. We also miss you guys.
I have a student from Gijon (who now lives and works in Madrid)and he makes the point that a provincial capital often has very good public services (schools, transport, health system)without the overcrowding of Madrid. And friends who’ve moved to small towns have found out that what they save on housing they end up spending on using the car all the time, the anxiety of not having a doctor nearby (imperative for baby medical emergencies) and frankly, boring. Living on the edge of town of a provincial capital can give you green, peace and quiet, and still have access to all the services you need.
PS.. I totally agree about being sick of hot Madrid summers and I’m thinking about moving to somewhere on the coast of Cataluña, maybe Tarragona if I can’t afford Barcelona.
Families get mighty miffed if offspring vanish, even more so with grandkids. Both of you will want to visit/be_visited_by your roots & friends occasionally. You need broadband. You need facilities.
So… a city, with AVE to Madrid and easyJet/Ryanair to the UK. Any city will come with all the rest.
Good luck with the move.
I have to agree with Chiny. However communications seem to get better each year, and if your new abode is big enough, you may become very popular as a holiday destination for relatives. There certainly are magnificent views and beautiful countryside up there, but I wonder if your child will grow up feeling English, Asturian or Castilian?
Thanks for all the comments, all read and appreciated. The ‘far from grandparents’ issue is important, but then again we’ve always been far from my side of the family – it’s hard but you get used to it.
Thanks for the advice on Asturias too, I think we will end up somewhere fairly big – Gijon or Oviedo looking most likely for now.
And don’t worry, we won’t make Leo too anxious about the language – I agree the key is for us both just to keep sticking to our own languages firmly, and letting him work it out… while making sure Marina doesn’t steal too many words of course
Another point you might want to consider is – will your new residence be suitable for a teenager’s life, say 15 years from now. You might move once more before then… But if this is for long-term planning, then this could be important. I know parents who have moved out to the boonies in the 90s, by the time their kids were teenagers, it was not the happy place to be. It is difficult to imagine one’s needs ten years from now, but things do change. I find suburban life best for our family.
I’d say the very fact that the in-laws want to visit you the whole time as soon as you have kids is reason enough to move away to some abandoned village in the Asturias, preferably one that gets cut off for half the year.
I missed your interesting and funny podcasts…Great we can enjoy them again!
Michael – whom some of you met on the last GME – is 25 now but didnt sleep for 2 consecutive hours until he was 5 (By the time he was 15 you couldnt get him out of bed!!) sogill and I have some sympathy. However we had waaaay more space than you have and one of us could sneak off to the far corner of the house and grab a nap when things got too much. With two kifd under five we had the normal parental experience of passing like ships in the night on the landing, thus rendering the necessity for contraceprion redundant over that period!!
I had to look twice…a podcast, hooray! Very funny to hear the competitive language training. My kids spoke quite a scrambled mix of Spanish and English. Some things just sound better in English and some in Spanish. When my son, Pablo, went to his nursery in London he actually converted some of the non-Spanish kids to calling certain things by the Spanish word. Passing the nursery rocking-horse, I heard a little girl from Pablo’s class, (with her French mum and English dad) saying “caballo!”. The mum asked her what ‘horse’ was in French but she had no idea! I think this mixing of language adds a cultural richness. Eventually they’ll manage to recognise which is the most appropriate word to use. The good thing in this case is that Spanish and English are easy to distinguish for kids because they sound so different. They might find Spanish and Italian, for example, harder to separate.
Anyway good luck in Asturias. Please make lots of podcasts up there!
Gíhon & Ovieda are the only laces in Asturias I know: stayed in Gíhon for a few days before the GME. I thought it a tremendous place. As well as the easy access to beaches, it had a commercial area that was large enough to remain only half-explored in 5 days. there’s also the *wonderful* ‘Atlantic Botanic Gardens’ very nearby. Gihon is an industrial city the closest I have ever come to an authentic Spanish city that seemed untainted by the side-effects of tourism – unlike Oviedo where there was plenty evidence of this.
Jules (of the forum)
Thank you so much for the new podcast! I have missed them very much. Good luck on your move. I know it will be fine for you three. On the linguistic battle, Sharon was right, not to worry. My wife is a Linguist and a teacher and also comes from Europe. Our children learned Polish and English at the same time as small children. Children has an innate ability to “code switch” and can learn language. That said, it will become more incumbant on Ben to keep up with the English as the forces of Spanish in country will be the stronger influence. I would suggest that if you want your child to learn English as well as he naturally will learn Spanish then you will have to consider educating him at an English School. In the mean time, it is crucial that you both read to your child all the time. One in Spanish and the other in English. Don’t worry, he will never be “confused” he will simply learn both langauges at the same time. This is a very interesting new direction for your pod cast. There is no need to feel competitive. Your son will only benefit by having a multi-langauge and multi cultural household. By the way, my children now are trilingual. One speaks Spanish and the other Korean. Go figure! We didn’t plan for that at all!
Are there schools in Spain with language immersion programs? In the US, we have those schools and they teach the language by teaching most of the classes in that language.
@vs – there are schools like that, I think it’ll help a lot if we send Leo to one!
Hello Ben & Marina! I have been enjoying your NIS podcasts for about 6 months now and am also starting to incorporate them into my Spanish classes here in the States! I particularly appreciate this podcast as our daughter is now 18 months and we are also trying to raise her biligual (both my husband and I speak Spanish as second language). It’s been so fascinating most recently as her language is really starting to take off. We, too, are finding that she simply chooses the easiest word between the two lang. as her preferred choice for now. She also combines a lot of her basic words with sign language which helps us bridge some gaps. Finally, as a pair of working teachers, my husband and I can totally relate to the sleepless nights and minimal social life….. always a trade off, no? Best of luck with Leo & the exciting move- look forward to more updates!
@Kate – Glad you are having similar experiences – who needs a social life anyway?!
Having moved our family of 5 to rural Asturias 15 months ago, I just wanted to mention the benefits of living near a small town. 1) Beautiful countryside on your doorstep, 2) Everyone knows you immediately, so plenty of opportunity for rapid integration, 3) Even in small towns there are English mother-tongue speakers, for bi-lingual child-rearing!, and 4) Great opportunities for getting dogs, chickens, donkeys … What could be better? Good luck to you whatever you decide. Asturias is a wonderful place (all of our visitors have been unanimous in this verdict!). Kate X
@Kate, sounds lovely! We still think we are going to end up in a slightly larger town at first, but who knows, dogs sound good… not sure we are ready for the donkey!
Plus there is the English school of Asturias. Lessons in Spanish and English, perfect for bilingual babies like yours.
Hi Ben, I have some suggestions with the bilingual thing. I’m bilingual. I was raised in the USA, but my family speaks Spanish. I have a lot of bilingual friends too, so I can speak from lots of experience.
The way my parents handled language was to teach us only Spanish. She let us learn English through older cousins, friends, TV and school, but the rule was always Spanish in the house. I spoke Spanish really well when I was little, but about the time I entered school I began avoiding Spanish (it wasn’t cool). It’s interesting that my classes were filled with bilingual children but they all spoke English all the time.. guess they thought Spanish wasn’t cool too. My parents spoke English well, so my sister and I would switch languages on them all of the time… they wouldn’t even realize until they had been speaking English for a while. It was a struggle to keep us speaking Spanish. They would yell at us to speak Spanish in the house and we would start in Spanish and convert to English half way through until they noticed again! lol. In retrospect, I wish we hadn’t been too bullheaded. My Spanish would be even better.
I have friends who had parents that spoke no English, and so they were really forced to speak Spanish in the home. Some of them speak Spanish equal to mine or a little better. They are also probably a little more comfortable with Spanish than I am. I know some of them dream in Spanish, which I have never done. I took Spanish in high school for four years and that helped me with writing and gave me an easy A. I have a very good accent and can pass for a Spanish native, and I obviously speak English well (…well judging by this post you might not think so).
I want to add that I am getting my masters in counseling (therapist) and this topic came up in my child development class. A child can learn both languages simultaneously without a problem. They figure out when you are speaking one language or the other and can separate them pretty early on. In this approach, it would probably help if you always speak English to your son, and Marina always speaks Spanish. Putting him in an English school would also help him retain his English once he gets into school, which is were most kids begin refusing to speak the unpopular language. If you are not putting your child in an English school, I would suggest teaching him English first and having a ‘no Spanish in the house rule,’ because he will pick up Spanish everywhere else. In my situation, it was little easier, because my parents and all my family spoke Spanish. Since you are the only Spanish speaker you really need to find a way to enforce the English.
I have a cousin whose parents spoke no English. They did not force him to speak any Spanish and just figured he would learn from the interactions with them. He always spoke to them in English, and they spoke in Spanish. As an adult, he could understand Spanish but could never speak it. He recently got a job where he had to speak Spanish, and he sounds like a Gringo. He has a horrible accent and can’t conjugate verbs correctly. Anyway, I hope all this helps. Good Luck.
wow that was long.. sorry.
@dianag519 – don’t apologise, thanks for the really interesting comment, the more we know about this right now, the better!
Hondarribia is a lovely town but when we stopped to ask directions from some people in the street they shrugged at our Castellano. They didn’t like English either. They did reply in French but gave the wrong directions. I have a feeling that they were Euskadi speakers and wouldn’t accept any other language. So another one for you to learn….
Thanks for another Notes from Spain podcast again at last! I find it interesting how children can learn two languages from a young age! I teach English and many parents are interested that their kids start learning English asap, the sooner the better. Some of my students go to Bilingual schools and others do not.
I find the ones who do go to the bilingual schools can understand and have a higher fluency when speaking English than those who go to the normal school and learn about 3hrs of English per week.
I listen to the Voces en Español podcast, and on there are 3 episodes dedicated to the topic “Raising Bilingual kids” which you and Marina may find interesting! Here is the link: http://spanish-podcast.com/category/podcasts/page/6/ (numbers 5, 6 & 7 – scroll down the page – near the bottom). They were recorded quite a while ago, but are still useful!