The Globetrotter Parent

Dining at the old Kuwait souq

2011-12-11T08:42:00.001+02:00

I've already written about how we avoid fast food outlets in Kuwait (and everywhere else), so now I'll write about a place where we do go to eat every now and then - the old souq in Kuwait city. Here, not only do you get mouthwatering traditional middle eastern food like humous, lots of olives, special salty pickles, lots of veggies, a cheese whose name I don't know (but it's really good!), enormous wads of flat bread, and grilled lamb or chicken covered in some kind of yellow spice that I can't identify. You get it on real dishes. Only the beverages are served in plastic cups (they're not allowed to serve them in glasses outdoors).

Here is where you sit. I think we were the only westerners there that day. Oh, and the menu is all in Arabic and the waiters don't speak English, so for non-Arabic speakers, the best way to order is to just point to the things that the people at the table next to you have ordered.

And best of all, what is possibly Kuwait's only playground that is new and in good condition is right next to the eating area!

Judging Kuwait by its playgrounds

2011-12-05T09:12:00.001+02:00

Since having children, I have learned about the importance of public playgrounds. Playgrounds give children something to climb on, swing on, slide down, and run around. But they're not just for children. Playgrounds are a meeting place. They are the place where you bump into other mommies and daddies and grandparents in the neighbourhood, where nannies can meet up to chat every day, and where your children get to meet other kids. In our travels, I have met many people and made many friends in neighbourhood playgrounds and I have failed to meet people and been prevented from making friends in places where they were no playgrounds.

The number of play areas in a country as well as the state of a country's playgrounds says something about that country. In Italy, for example, there aren't many public play areas at all (although this is changing) because Italians view the family unit as a pre-emptive force. Children stay at home (or in the restaurant or wherever) with their parents and brothers and sisters (and maybe cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents). The state has no role in entertaining children. There is no room for a neighbourhood playground in this scenario.

In Madagascar, there are no public playgrounds, because the country is far too poor to think of spending public money on such luxuries. Children play on the street, in the dirt. This might sound romantic but in reality it is not. Their are no parks, so children play on the street where they breathe in noxious car fumes all day long. Their clothes and bodies get filthy from the red earth, the children rarely bathe and their clothes don't get washed. Disease spreads. Asthma is common.

In France (or at least in Paris), the playgrounds are numerous and of good quality. Practically every church or public square has some kind of a play area, and sometimes even a sand box. There are also the major play areas in the Champs de Mars, the Jardin du Luxembourg, and the Jardin des Tuileries (including trampolines), to name a view, not to mention pony rides and merry-go-rounds (but you have to pay for those). It is a convenience that I will never tire of boasting about. Where is the first place we go when we hit the ground in Paris, once we check into our apartment-hotel? The local playground!

In France, if any part of public playground equipment gets damaged, it gets fixed, promptly. If the play equipment is starting to look worn out, the local city hall takes it all down and builds another play area. All play equipment has a sticker on it indicating what age the equipment is appropriate for. What do French playgrounds say about the French? For the French, children have their own sphere of activity separate from their parents and extended families, and providing activities in that separate "children's sphere" is part of the job of the state.

Kuwait is interesting when it comes to playgrounds. The country is stinking rich, and the weather is decent for playing outdoors at least six months of the year. So you would think that this country would be the ideal place for lots of good playgrounds. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. There are many playgrounds, especially on the Gulf Road, and many families frequent these playgrounds. However, all the equipment looks about 20+ years old and is badly in need of repair. 20+ years. Hmmm. That would take us back to before the first Gulf war. So it would seem that before the Gulf war, the Kuwaitis were very keen to have lots of great space for kids and families. Since then, they have left it all at a standstill. None of it has been maintained and nothing new has been built. Amazing how a war can affect the mindset of a people.

It's not only the run-down playgrounds that need a facelift. The public hospitals are on shoestring budgets. The beaches have been full of sewage for the past 10 years. There is litter all over the desert....

What does the state of Kuwait's playgrounds tell me about Kuwait? It tells me that while Kuwaitis, for whatever reason, no longer think that their country is worth investing in. The war seems to have made them cynics. After all, why build a playground when it risks getting bombed?

The Bambino's nursery in Kuwait

2011-12-04T10:04:00.001+02:00

So we decided not to enroll the Bambino in one of the nurseries frequented by expatriate children here in Kuwait. We figured that while he is still so young and his mind like a sponge, why not put him in a nursery with Arabic speaking children instead? So he goes to a private, upscale Kuwaiti nursery. The children wear uniforms (they're only two years old!). The teacher-child ratio is one teacher for six children. The materials are from Neinhuis. The languages of the classroom are English, Arabic and French.

The nursery being the most "authentic" Montessori nursery in Kuwait (other nurseries in Kuwait call themselves Montessori but are more "Montessori-inspired" than actual Montessori), there are very few "toys" in the classroom. The closest thing you get to toys are stacking blocks, puzzles and an abacus. This being the toddler class, these toys are acceptable.

There is a practical life section, which real glass pitchers of water and bowls to practice pouring and transferring with a spoon.

There are also the standard Montessori mathematic and sensorial materials, like the pink tower and the cylinders. These materials are actually meant for age three and up but the school decided to put them in the toddler room as well.

And here is the Bambino during his adaptation period at the school (no uniform yet - that came a week later).

We recently had parent-teacher interviews. You read it right - a parent-teacher interview regarding our two-year old child. Never before have we encountered a nursery that gives parent-teacher interviews for toddlers. Not that I'm complaining. It's always fun to hear how my two-year old boy acts at his nursery when we're not there. Oh, and this "interview" didn't take place at the school, in the classroom, as you would expect them to. No no. We received a formal invitation to a tea at the very chichi Le Notre Restaurant and had the interview there.

So far, we're happy with our decision to put him in the posh Kuwaiti nursery. Now if only I could understand the Bambino when he tries to say something in Arabic!

Bahrain

2011-11-25T18:01:00.001+02:00

So, when we entered Kuwait on August 31st of this year, they let us in on visitor's visas valid for ninety days. That means that before December 1st, we had to leave the country to get another visa; hence this week's quickie trip to the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Based on our trip, I have been able to make a few comparisons between Bahrain and Kuwait.

1. Bahrain has fewer lunatic drivers than Kuwait. The speed whimsical and erratic behaviour of cars on this freeway to Manama City pales in comparison to drivers on the Fahaheel Highway of Death in Kuwait.

2. Bahrain has pubs that serve (gasp!) alcohol.

3. Bahrain has a Trader Vic's Restaurant. And they serve alcoholic beverages.

4. Bahrain has Kumon. And since I've recently enrolled the Bambina in Kumon and there's no Kumon Centre in Kuwait, it looks like we're going to be doing it by correspondence with the Kumon Centre in Bahrain, which is why we visited there during our trip. It's run by Fiona, a lovely Irish woman who did a great job of encouraging the Bambina to do our worksheets every day.

5. Bahrain has a slightly nicer, less polluted skyline than Kuwait.

6. Bahrain is greener than Kuwait.

7. And finally, there are just as many Ferraris, Infinitis, Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs and other very expensive cars in Bahrain as in Kuwait (all owned by locals of course. We poor expats get a rented Toyota.)

Avoiding Fast Food on the Road

2011-11-14T17:19:00.001+02:00

Call it a parenting quirk of mine, but in all our travels, we have never, ever, stopped at a Mcdonalds. Or even driven through. This means that my 7-year old daughter has never been to Mcdonalds. Or Burger King. Or KFC. Or any other restaurant that serves meals in throw away containers, with the exception of the time she had a slice of oven-baked cheese pizza in a food court in Sun City, South Africa.

How have we managed to avoid it? Well, it was easy to avoid in Madagascar because there were no fast food restaurants there at all. In Europe (and we have spent a lot of time in Europe), fast food outlets are abundant - French people love "Mac-DOE", as they affectionately call it. And here in Kuwait, there is a fast food chain restaurant of some kind about every 100 metres. It's not surprise that obesity is such a problem in Kuwait, there is even a Wikipedia entry on it!

The answer is that we just don't go there. In France, we just didn't when we were living there and we don't when we visit. We find a real restaurant or brasserie that serves food that our kids like, and we go there. Sometimes, we go there again and again if we can't find anything else. In Italy, the food is so good, why go for fast food? In Kuwait, we don't eat out much anyway and when we do, it's usually Pizza Express, a UK restaurant chain that serves wood oven pizza the way they make it in Italy (or pretty close ;-)). It's eat-in and the food in served on real plates with real cutlery.

I know people who think that we can't, realistically, maintain our "abstinence program" in Kuwait, or who ask,"why continue with it? Doesn't a fast food boycott just make your lives inconvenient? And after all, everything in moderation, right?"

I can see greater, long term inconveniences in taking my kids there. You see, my original reason for not taking the Bambina to Mcdonalds was only partly ethical and nutritional and more to do with keeping the whine factor to a minimum. I knew that once she had been one time, she would ask, beg, and plead to go again and again and again.

Are all kids like this? No (so please don't write in the comments that I must be wrong because your children never did this and you go to MacDonalds once a year, no problem). But my daughter is and so is my son. I'm very happy to avoid this trap.

As for the "everything in moderation" argument, that only counts for things that are actually *good* for you in moderation - like salt or brown sugar. Mcdonalds isn't. As a nutritional matter, Macdonalds meals are too calorie-dense, too high in fat, too high in sodium and not balanced. The fact is that there is no good reason to have a meal at Mcdonalds if your kids will enjoy a meal elsewhere. Not one. Macdonalds is not good for nutrition, not good for calories, not good for agriculture and not good for the environment.

And the reality is that Mcdonalds is just one option when you're on the road with kids. You don't need to take your kids to Mcdonalds at the Pantheon in Rome. Take them for some yummy pasta and sauce at a local trattoria instead. In Paris, take them for a delicious burger at Hippopotamus. The beef is excellent and they even have mashed potatoes and green beans on the side as an alternative to fries.

Even on a highway in the States, surely stopping at a diner or other truck stop and getting a burger is better than stopping at Mcdonalds (or Burger King or Wendy's or KFC...). At least at the truck stop, the hamburger patty is more likely to come from just one cow and not 20 different ones. Here in Kuwait (and throughout the Middle East), Pizza Express is a good alternative. There are also some good Italian and seafood restaurants. And there is delicious Middle Eastern food if your kids are open to trying new tastes. Wherever you are with your kids, finding a local restaurant, or even just a place where you can sit down and eat food on real plates, will almost always be a better choice nutritionally and environmentally.

Wordless Wednesday- Habits that could make me go broke in Kuwait

2011-11-09T11:42:00.000+02:00

Camping in the desert of Kuwait

2011-11-04T17:28:00.001+02:00

It's certainly not one of the more beautiful deserts, but last week we decided to spend the night in the Kuwaiti desert with other members of the Amicale des Français au Kowëit (that's the association for French people living here, in case you didn't pick up on that). Some observations:

- About three-quarters of the desert is covered in trash. What the heck is with that? I expect to litter in poor countries like Madagascar, where the government doesn't have the money to provide garbage collection services. But a rich country like Kuwait? Not only is there trash everywhere, there are no "Don't litter" propaganda campaigns in this country like they used to have in Canada in the 1970s. In Canada, we don't need those ad campaigns anymore. We stopped littering a long time ago. The Kuwaitis need to get with the programme!

- On the way there, we drove by lots of tents where, presumably, Kuwaitis spend their weekends (the Canadian equivalent would be the cottage in Muskoka, or the cabin in Waskesu).

- The wind was as strong as on a winter's day in Saskatchewan. Try putting your tent up in that.

- There is about one dune in the entire desert. That would be the one that we camped out in. The rest of the place is entirely flat... like Saskatchewan.

- No toilets.

The Bambina railed against the idea of going. Said she wanted her own bed. But once she was climbing up and running down the sand dune, she was having a blast. She also met some other French kids, which is good, because right now the only French speaking person she has to talk to in this country is the Frenchman and I worry that her French is going to deteriorate as a result.

The Bambino was happy sleeping with his parents and sister in one little tent. He probably wishes every night could be like that.

We've moved!

2011-10-30T13:47:00.002+02:00

Good-bye Madagascar, hello KUWAIT. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the reason that there has been radio silence on this blog for the past few months is because...we were moving! (And then because I just couldn't get my butt in gear quickly enough to start blogging again).

Kuwait is a tiny country on the Arabian peninsula, nestled between Saudi Arabia and Iraq (guess we won't be taking any long car trips while we're here...).

Highlights and lowlights of moving here:

1.) The reconnaissance trip from Madagascar involved taking THREE airplanes: Antananarivo to Mauritius, Mauritius to Dubai and Dubai to Kuwait. With a 2 year old (and a 6-year old, but traveling long distances is about as old hat for her as riding her bicycle around the block three or four times).

2.) Flying Emirates. Need I say more?

3.) The Emirates Lounge at Dubai International Airport, including this enclosed glass kiddy-space.

3.) Visiting a lot of potential places to live, like this swank villa:

And then deciding to take a three-bedroom apartment.

4.) The heat! In summer, it's 46 degrees Celsius in the shade! It's gotten colder since then. We're now freezing cold when we step outside in the morning and it's only 25 degrees. Of course, in shopping malls, it's still around minus 10 degrees Celcius with the air conditioning.

5.) Checking out schools - the Lycée Français de Koweït, the American School of Kuwait and the American International School of Kuwait, among others. The Bambina had to take a test for both American schools. I was a little worried because she had very little experience reading in English and had never written a thing in English during her entire school existence thus far, having always been educated in French up to now, but she passed the tests, no problem (apparently, she could read at her grade level in English. Who knew??). Phew!

The lycée français did not impress us at all and the Bambina isn't going there. It was so obvious by talking to the principals and even just looking at their website that they are content with their "captive market" of francophone families and their school will therefore remain "good enough" (read mediocre) but not great.

6.) Staying at the Marina Hotel for three weeks while finding a place to live. When we finally moved out of it and into our apartment, the Bambino, poor boy, kept asking to go back "home". He missed having all of us sleep in one room and a swimming pool just outside the sliding door.

7.) The pollution here: worse than in Madagascar. Think Beijing. Or Jakarta. The beach here looks ok but there is sewage leaking into the Arabian Gulf and besides being disgusting to swim in, it really does smell bad sometimes. So we settle for the pool at a club.

More on life in Kuwait coming up in later posts.

Things that make my kids seem weird to North American kids

2011-05-06T09:47:00.001+02:00

It occurred to me yesterday as we were eating breakfast that although my children have a Canadian mom and speak English, there are some things that North American kids would definitely find different about them:

- The Bambina's accent (when she speaks English - I think it's a mixture between Brooklyn and East London)

- The Bambina insists on wearing a dress or skirt every single day. She hates jeans and all pants in general. Even in winter in Europe, she will typically wear leotards and a dress rather than long pants.

- The Bambino typically wears a shirt with a collar and cotton shorts or pants. His best American friend is always in a T-shirt and sweat-shorts.

- Neither of my kids has ever been to McDonalds (although there are plenty in Europe, there are none in Madagascar), nor have they heard of Burger King, Taco Bell, or KFC.

- The Bambino asks for "mano" with his pasta (mano = parmagiano, Italian for parmesan cheese).

- At age 6, the Bambina knows how to write in cursive but doesn't really know how to print!

- Neither of my kids drinks cow's milk - ever!

This is not to say that my kids are purely European. In fact, when European kids (and adults) hear my kids speaking to me in English, they assume that my kids are American. When my kids ask for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or drown their French fries in ketchup, this is more of the North American coming through.

And then the Bambina turns to her father and speaks a perfect, accentless, Parisien French, and people get really confused. :-)

Expatriate lunches and dinners, and why I loathe them

2011-05-01T20:48:00.004+02:00

If there is one thing that I really dislike about expatriate life, it's all the lunches and dinners. There are so many of them, at least one a week, and sometimes more.

So why do I continue to go, you ask? Well, a few reasons. First of all, there ain't much else to do in Antananarivo, Madagascar on a weekend, unless you leave the city to join nature. There are no cinemas, no parks, no playgrounds, no museums that have had any upkeep in the past, oh, 30 years. There are no outdoor cafés. You can't even walk around town, because apart from the fact that you will be very quickly surrounded by street beggars on all sides, there are no sidewalks, the traffic is scary and the pollution is enough to give anyone instant asthma.

So we visit each other. (And sometimes the "club olympique", which is just a campout with a swimming pool, tennis courts and some stables with horses - but we don't like the food there).

Visiting each other reduces our own boredom and especially the boredom of our children, who would be otherwise locked in our air conditioned houses watching dubbed Hannah Montana French satellite TV all day long.

Why don't I enjoy these lunches and dinners as much as I should? It's not like I don't love our dear friends (bless their hearts). It's just, well, me.

For one, I'm a vegetarian. Almost. I do eat beef and duck and lamb and poultry, so you could argue that I'm very far from being a vegetarian. But I don't each shellfish or any sea creature that lives on the sea floor. I also don't eat tuna. I don't eat ham or pork. I won't touch fois gras (goose or duck liver paté). And I generally don't eat fish unless I am right next to the sea and the fish has been caught the same day (and it's not tuna, of course).

If I go through this laundry list with my hosts, they will inevitably give me this strange look and try to review each item to understand why I won't eat it. Since I refuse to get into a long discussion about levels of mercury in tuna with someone who hasn't even read up on the issue, it's just easier to say that I'm a vegetarian.

The problem is when either I forget to tell them that I'm a vegetarian, or they forget that I am one, or (more often than not) they haven't forgotten but (quite understandably) they don't want to have to adapt their fantastic menu to my fastidious tastes. The French can't imagine a meal without fois gras and the Americans can't imagine a meal without shrimp. So I often end up just not eating half the stuff that is being served.

The second problem is with dinners - late dinners. Well before motherhood, my brain was wired to go to bed no later than 10:30 pm. At 11 pm, I'm a zombie. Post-motherhood, I'm the same way, plus add the fact that I have an todder who, since birth, has woken me up at 5:30 every morning - for the day.

In Antananarivo, when someone invites you over to dinner, you arrive at 8, you talk for what seems like an eternity, and you start the meal at 10 pm. At 10:30, I'm ready to hit the sack (keep in mind that I have been up since 5:30 am) but it would be rude to do so, as most people haven't even finished their main course by then (I have though, because I generally have only been able to eat the rice and vegetables).

"Well, then, why don't you explain to your hosts your problem", you ask.

You're right. But I need to do this when I accept the dinner invitation, so that they are really forewarned. This is what happened the last time I had to explain at the actual dinner (I was solo that evening, as the Frenchman was in Paris on business):

Me: "Thank you so much for having me over. I had a wonderful time."

Hostess: "You're leaving already? It's only a quarter past midnight." (I am not kidding. She considered a quarter past midnight on a Thursday night to be "early" for leaving a dinner party).

Me: "Well, yes. My 18-month old son wakes me up at 5:30 every morning so I get tired pretty early. And I have to get enough sleep in before tomorrow morning."

Hostess (who is French, by the way, which really does explain a lot): "5:30? This is not acceptable. Can't you just give him a bottle?"

I'd like to mention here that I don't understand how on earth a bottle solves the problem. You want me to get out of bed and go to the kitchen and warm up a bottle of milk for my son? At 5:30 in the morning? Are you fricking kidding me?

Back to the conversation:

Me: "Well, I do nurse him when he wakes up but he stays awake after that. His day starts then. He's just wired that way."

Hostess, with look of shock in her eyes: "You're still breastfeeding him? But isn't he is too old for that."

Me, shrugging my shoulders: "er, I don't know. People don't seem to think that he's too old for a bottle, and breastfeeding is the normal way to feed a baby..."

Another guest, now listening in on the conversation pipes in to say: "So you're a militante."

Me, shrugging shoulders again and trying to smile: "I don't know what that means. In any event, it's not the nursing that causes my son to wake up. My six-year old also wakes up at 5:30. Fortunately, she's capable of taking care of herself. It's just the way our brains are wired in our family. And of course, the 18-month old needs to be looked after once he's awake."

Understand that I don't generally mind being questioned about nursing my 18-month old. After all, what better way to educate people? But when I've just told you that I have to go because I am extremely short on sleep, why are we having this conversation? I told you that i had to go. I told you my reason. Why are you now launching a discussion about the fact that I "still" breastfeed my son?

The third problem that I have with lunch and dinner parties is that the conversation generally bores me. There. I said it. I find about 90 percent of the discussion during lunch and dinner parties dreadfully boring.

Am I the only one? I don't know. I'll be the first to admit that I'm borderline Asperger's when it comes to small talk - it's not just that it bores me - I am incapable of participating in it. I have no idea what to say. And the problem is that most stuff for me is small talk. I care very little about the hotel you stayed in when you went to Toliar (in the south of Madagascar) last year and certainly not enough to listen to you talk about it for half an hour. I care not much more about the cute little restaurant that you discovered while you were there. I'll be happy to talk to you more about that should I ever decide to book a trip to Toliar (which is unlikely ever to happen), but I have no desire to hear all about it for twenty minutes now. I'm happy to talk about that little boutique you discovered up last week for about, oh, thirty seconds and then I will try to change the subject. I don't give a rat's ass about where to buy great shrimp, not least because I don't eat it.

I would love to talk about politics (especially French or US politics) but apparently I'm not allowed to. Religion is another topic that fascinates me but apparently that's taboo, too. I'm always happy to talk about someone's kid of whatever age, even if the "kids" in question are already adults. "What grade? What school? What does she plan to do when she graduates this year?" "Where do they live now?"
Fortunately, people are always happy to give forth when it comes to talking about their kids and I never get bored by it, but I can only milk that topic so much.

As an expatriate and a mom of bicultural children, the topic of schools and education fascinates me, but I have the impression that many people aren't so interested in that subject. Most French people accept that their kids go to the French school, wherever they live, without thinking much about alternatives, and most American people accept the American school in the same way.

I love to talk about the ins and outs of people's businesses. Give me a factory or store owner anyday and I will ask about how they select their inventory, how hard it is to get and train staff, and who designed their products. It's not often you get to meet this kind of person though, and when you do, even if he or she is keen to discuss the business in detail, others around the table don't understand why you keep bringing up questions about the nitty gritty of running some store or factory at a dinner party.

Yep, just say it. I've got Asperger's. Or I'm just too academic about things.

My saving grace is the Bambino. He is often present for lunches at people's houses, and I therefore often have to excuse myself from the table because he needs some attention for whatever reason. It's a great way to escape! If there are other bigger kids hanging around, I like to talk to them too. At a lunch a few weeks ago, I had a great bunch of French kids asking me all kinds of questions about bilingualism and trying out their English on me. It was much more interesting than the discussion among the adults about that hotel in Toliar....

Easter on the Island of Lemurs

2011-04-28T12:51:00.000+02:00

We spent this Easter in Nosy Komba - the island of lemurs.

The island of Nosy Komby (pronounced nossi koomb)

The dining terrace of our hotel.

The very unsafe balustrade of the dining terrace. Tripadvisor will be hearing about this.

The Mozambique Channel

The Bambina took delight in holding a chameleon.

The Bambino loves tortoises, turtles, dinosaurs...pretty much all reptiles, actually...

The Bambino meeting the locals.

We took lots of photos of the lemurs too but the Frenchman has them on his iphone and I haven't had the chance to download them yet.

The positive side of expat life in Madagascar

2011-04-18T13:18:00.002+02:00

Expat transfer season is coming up soon. With that in mind, we can't help but wondering whether we'll stay or be sent somewhere else. We've had our fill of Madagascar and love the idea of moving to yet another country, but as I contemplate our last two years here, I realise that, however much we complain about the dirt, the pollution, the poverty and the lack of choice for schools in this city, we still have it pretty good. So if we do end up staying (and the chances are good that we will), at least there'll be more of these positive aspects of life in Tana:

We live in a residence (some people call it a compound) with streets that are paved and guarded, and kids can walk, run and ride their bikes anywhere they want within the residence. The residence gives them a freedom that they would never have back home in Paris or in pretty much any other modern city. My six-year old Bambina leaves the house by herself and takes off on her bike and I don't have to worry about it.

Horse-back riding lessons for children and adults of all ages, at reasonable rates and not too far away from where we live. The Bambina has a lesson every Sunday morning and the Bambino likes to try out a pony whenever we go.

Lots of rain and every now and then a rainbow.

A heated swimming pool in our back yard and lots of opportunity for friends to come over and play - school gets out at 12:20 three times a week.

Lots and lots of yard space.

Very cheap manicures, pedicures, massages and haircuts. A haircut for the Bambina costs about 2 euro. A pedicure costs about 10 euro. A message costs about 5 euro for an hour!

English class at the French school

2011-04-14T08:07:00.002+02:00

I've already posted once about the Bambina's English class at school. She is in "CP" (first grade) at the French primary school here in Antananarivo and her class has "anglais" twice a week - English for French kids.

I stated in my previous post that I believed that this class would be, at best, a complete waste of time for the Bambina and at worst, harmful to the Bambina's French-English bilingualism.

So now I'm reporting back. The times that the Bambina has talked about her English class at school, she has said that it is very very boring. That was to be expected. But she has also said that the teacher makes mistakes. Last week, she said that the teacher, a Malagasy who almost certainly learnt to speak English at a French school, is teaching the students the parts of the body in English. In doing so, she points to her head and says "ED". "Repetez, les enfants : ED".

So the teacher is telling the children that the word for "tête" in English is "ed". Not "head" - "ed". And she is getting the children to repeat this word over and over, thereby engraining this hideously incorrect pronunciation into each child's brain.

Ever wonder why the French speak English so poorly? Now we know.

But not only does this teacher drop her "h's" when she shouldn't, she adds one when there isn't any. The Bambina has an Australian classmate, Ella. The English teacher calls her.... you guessed it... "Hella". What the hell?

All of which leads me to conclude that these English lessons aren't just harmful for my little Bambina's bilingual capacities. They're not doing the other kids any good either. The children are learning some English, yes, but bad English. English that later on will cause listeners to think, "this person doesn't speak English very well."

Questioning our school choice

2011-04-12T08:28:00.000+02:00

I'm feeling anxious today. Recently, the Bambina has seemed not quite herself and her teacher at school agrees that something is not quite right.

Sunday night, I reminded the Bambina that tomorrow there was school and her face went from content to crestfallen within a second. When I asked her what was wrong she said "I don't like school".

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because" was all she could answer. And then "I can't explain".

"Okay, let's review your typical school day and see what it is that you don't like. What do you do first?"

"First the teacher reads us a story. I like that."

"Okay", I say. "Then what."

"Then we read and write. I like that, too. Then there is recréation. That's okay but kind of boring because there's nothing there." (There's no playground equipment at the Bambina's school, if you can believe it.)

"Continue".

"Then we have mathématiques. I don't like that."

Uh-oh, I think to myself. She's not even seven years old and she already is having problems with math...

"I don't like working on the ardoise. I hate it. I want to do math on a piece of paper with a pencil."

The ardoise is a little slate that each child has, just like in the olden days, to do quick sums on. I had no idea that this could be an obstacle to learning.

"Then there's sport. I don't like sport. It's boring and tiring. Then English - also boring."

No surprise there. The Bambina is bilingual and has to sit through English lessons for beginners. Yawn.

"Then we have théatre. That's also boring."

I actually think that the Bambina could like a theatre class if it was done properly but in this case, judging by what they have "performed" for us, I can see her point. In the last performance, they stood around acting like sheep for ten minutes. And that was it.

And then there's art but we don't do much art like we did in kindergarten. We just learn about artists.

I'm happy that the French have taken it upon themselves to imbue knowledge of Kandinsky, Picasso and Robert and Sonja Delaunay, but it sure would be nice if they would also let the kids actually do some art!

"Mommy, if they canceled everything else, even recreation, and just let me write all day, I would love it. I just want to write."

Not sure what to do with this was. Academically, she is doing fine. Her grades are good. But she seems bored or at least uninterested. Is she in the wrong school system? Maybe I should take her out of the French School and put her in the American School? At least she would get to do more art and would be allowed to do math with pencil and paper instead of on a slate.

I'm afraid that if we continue in the French School it will be more of the same, year after year. On the other hand, I might switch her to an American school, and the problem still might not be resolved. And then if we ever do want her to switch back to the French system (say, because we move back to France and we can't afford a foreign private school), she may have a very hard time reintegrating.

And then there is always the possibility of putting her in the Primary Years Programme of an international school (when we move to another country, that is. There is no international school here in Tana). But having read the description of I'm not sure whether to love or hate it. (Any thoughts most appreciated, of course).

Why we love visiting Paris

2011-04-05T22:02:00.000+02:00

The Bambino and I just returned from Paris less than two weeks ago. As usual, we enjoyed every minute of it. Here are some reasons why.

Carroussels abound. The Bambino liked riding on this one right beside metro Jean Jaurès in the 18th arrondissement. He went on it at least six times a day!

And the one in front of the hotel de ville was also a real treat, for the ride and for the gorgeous surroundings.

You can find a clean, safe, and fun public playground in pretty much every neighbourhood in Paris. There are no parks or playgrounds where we live. We rely solely on our own and other people's houses for this kind of recreation in Madagascar.

Flower shops, boutiques, ice cream stores,... civilization!

...and of course bakeries. The Bambino asked for a croissant every single morning of our trip.

Travel with Toddlers, AKA When Will This Hell End?

2011-03-31T12:42:00.002+02:00

Traveling to and from Paris this past week with just the Bambino (now 23 months) reminded me how difficult travel with toddlers can be.

The flight back was eleven hours. He slept for two of those hours.

He's too little to be interested in movies or even the short cartoons that the flight entertainment programme has to offer kids (who ARE these under-twos who will watch TV for longer than three minutes at a time? It's not that I'm against TV for kids that age. Mine would just never watch that long!).

His picture books are too short to last more than a few minutes each.

His toys were nothing new.

And after his two-hour nap, he wasn't tired in the least. In fact, he was fuuuuull of energy.

What kept him busy in the end? Some French maman had the ingenious idea of bringing a bag of toy cars for her three-year old son. The Bambino was thrilled to play cars with this older boy. Phew.
In between running up and down the aisles, pulling peoples eye-blinders down, covering people's TV screens and generally being a complete nuisance, that is.

In the end, I played the completely laissez-faire, slacker mom and let him run around while I remained seated in my chair, enjoying games of Solitaire and Air France's version of Trivial Pursuit.

Until he ran into the Business Class cabin and started trying to wake people up in there. The flight attendant didn't like that too much and "suggested" that I not let the Bambino run around by himself. Fortunately, meal time was just ending at that point, so I looked at her innocently, pointed to the meal tray in front of me that had not yet been cleared away, shrugged my shoulders and said, "What can I do? I'm trapped." ;-)

Imperative for parenting in some parts of the world - a driver's licence

2011-03-18T14:34:00.000+02:00

After years of living single in New York, London, and Paris, and then years with children in Paris, Rome and now Antananarivo, Madagascar, this Globetrotter Paris is - finally - going to get a real driver's licence.

You're probably wondering how it is possible that I don't have one. Well, basically, I never got one in high school or university and then I was always limited for time as a full time lawyer and even more limited for time as a lawyer and mom. And when I finally stopped working as a lawyer, when we moved to Rome, well, I was NOT going to try to learn to drive in Italy. No way.

So now I am getting a driver's licence in Madagascar,

where there are no traffic lights,
where there are no stop signs,
where there are no signs for anything, really
where even the marking on the pavement is so faint that you can't see it
and where traffic jams and air pollution abound.

It's imperative. We have a driver here but our next city will probably be a place where getting a full-time driver is not so normal, practical or cheap so, well, I may have to actually, er, drive. Sigh.

Adventures in mud

2011-03-07T11:19:00.001+02:00

We often head out to the Club Olympique de Tananarive (the COT) on Sunday simply because, well, there's not much else to do in this city on Sunday. When we're in Paris, we head to the park. There are no parks here. Or we go to a museum. No museums here either.

So, if we're not exploring this grand island, we head to the COT, play tennis (well, the Frenchman plays tennis), swim, eat lunch, and hang out with friends.

Except that we're in the rainy season. And yesterday it rained. Hard.

And since Madagascar has a lot of dirt (red dirt, mind you) and very little pavement, well, there's a lot of mud here after a rainstorm.

Needless to say, our kids had a lot of fun!

South Africa - Part 3: The Spier Wine Estate

2011-03-01T13:32:00.000+02:00

Imagine that you're in France and you stop at a wine estate in Bordeaux. If they're open, the owners will let you taste some of their wine - maybe - and then you may buy a bottle or two.

While you and your spouse are tasting the wine, your kids are.... doing what? Running around and making a lot of noise while the owners say "Attention" every minute or two because your little ones are about to step on and/or break something? Or maybe just being bored and asking "Can we go yet" every minute or two.

Now let me compare this scene with Spier Wine Estate, about a 45-minute drive from Capetown, South Africa.

You arrive in a HUGE parking lot. There are at least 50 other cars there. The first thing you bump into on exiting the parking lot is a large market with all kinds of South African crafts.

Then you walk by a deli that sells Spiers wine and lots of yummy foods (think ham, cheeses, jams, relishes, pickles, chips...) and there is a huge picnic area out back where you can eat their food. There are two play areas for the kids, both with all-natural wooden equipment. There is a duck pond. There is a restaurant where you can have lunch or dinner with their wine. And then you can also taste their wine for a small fee.

Oh, and there's a hotel there, too, in case you would like to make the Spier Wine Estate your base for exploring the winelands of the Western Cape.

When it comes to marketing wine, the French could maybe learn a little from the South Africans, n'est-ce pas?

South Africa - part 2: Just a Short Anecdote

2011-02-26T07:43:00.001+02:00

I was pleasantly surprised to see this sign in the Two Oceans Aquarium in Capetown:

"Dads, change your baby's nappy here." How likely would you be to see a sign like that in your country? In France, unlikely. In Canada, maybe.

In some places where we travel, the nappy-changing room is at least a separate room from both the men's and women's washrooms. This is acceptable.

In other places, the baby-changing station has been placed in the women's washroom. The person who made the decision to put it there was highly presumptuous, not to mention sexist. Who says that it has to be me who changes the Bambino's diapers when we're en route?

This museum has gone the other way and pointed out dads in particular. My brother would object and call this social engineering. I say that changing stations in women's washrooms are already their own form of social engineering. A little reverse social engineering never hurt anyone.

South Africa part 1 - Pilanesberg Game Reserve & Sun City

2011-02-22T12:49:00.001+02:00

Things I learned during the four days spent in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa:

- Seeing animals in the wild is a very different experience than seeing them in a zoo or on a nature documentary. It's breathtaking.

- It's important to choose a game reserve with a high density of animals. Children get easily bored in the car when there are no animals around. The Bambina preferred to play on her Nintendo DS while she waited for us to spot the animals.

Kruger National Park has more animals than Pilanesberg (or so I'm told) but there are also many many many more people there, so you have to deal with the crowds and all the cars.

- Don't be surprised when you discovered that the kids very obviously prefer the day spent at the completely artificial, 100 percent plastic amusement park, Sun City, complete with mega-high water-slides and tidal wave pool, over the hours spent on safaris gazing at wild animals on the game reserve.

Formula marketing again.

2011-02-10T13:58:00.001+02:00

Seen in our local Jumbo store: this sign in the infant formula section.

The manager at the Jumbo store doesn't seem to think it's a problem. After all, the sign is just there to tell people where the infant formula is.

And what about the cute little white baby sucking down the bottle of formula? What kind of message is that sending?

The International Code on the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes says:

There should be no advertising or other form of promotion to the general public of products within the scope of this Code.

and

there should be no point- of-sale advertising, giving of samples, or any other promotion device to induce sales directly to the consumer at the retail level, such as special displays, discount coupons, premiums, special sales, loss-leaders and tie-in sales, for products within the scope of this Code.

Interestingly, Article 9.2 of the Code also specifies that:

Neither the container nor the label should have pictures of infants, nor should they have other pictures or text which may idealize the use of infant formula.

I would argue that this sign is a "special display" and that, given that the Code prohibits photos on the containers of the cans, a display sign with a warm and fuzzy photo of the mother with a baby drinking from a bottle should also be considered a "promotional device to induce sales" of the infant formula at Jumbo.

Of course, given that there is no real government or law enforcement agency here in Madagascar these days, I doubt that much if anything will be done about this infraction.

The hazards of household staff

2011-02-07T11:35:00.000+02:00

Our cook lives in a house smaller than ours, without indoor plumbing (so no toilet or sink to clean) or tile floors. She's not used to having to lock the cupboard doors under the sink, where we keep the bleach, cleaning products and insecticide sprays, and sometimes I find the safety lock on the cupboard doors open.

One day we were looking for the Bambino, who had disappeared from our living room. This is where we found him.

Hey, anybody home?

2011-02-02T19:26:00.000+02:00

Herein lies the essence of what makes neighbourhood life in a developing country different from your house in suburban North America or Europe.

Walls and Gates. Metal, stone or brick. Two metres high with sharp glass or barbed wire on top and thorny bushes on both sides at the bottom (except of course at the gate, so people and cars have a place to enter, if the guard posted out front lets them in).

Barriers that keep intruders out - but that also keep out little neighbours who are just looking for a playmate on a lonely summer afternoon.

More Ramblings on Chinese Mothering

2011-01-20T14:23:00.000+02:00

Since my last post on Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, the debate has been raging in the United States on Amy Chua's new book. One blogger at Seattle Pi speaks positively about how western parents could learn from Chua's approach:

I'm not advocating cutting out all play dates and forcing your kids to play piano and violin in lieu of sports, but I do believe that there is a large core of truth in her approach. Assuming greatness in your child and teaching them to reach for the stars, rather than being praised for the barest of efforts makes sense.

This is similar to how I see it. Can't we draw the good from this style of parenting rather than jumping on the judgment bandwagon? Take the best and leave the rest, as they say?

Others have come out negatively. Dr. AnnMaria de Mars, who posted last week on Why American Mothers are Superior, quipped:

Dr. Chua is raising her children to fit into the Ivy League mold.

Me, I’m raising my children to be themselves and to mold the world to fit them.

Dr. Chua insists that parents have misunderstood her point, and explains herself more fully this week in a Wall Street Journal blog:

Jokes about A+s and gold medals aside (much of my book is tongue-in-cheek, making fun of myself), I don’t believe that grades or achievement is ultimately what Chinese parenting (at least as I practice it) is really about. I think it’s about helping your children be the best they can be—which is usually better than they think! It’s about believing in your child more than anyone else—even more than they believe in themselves.

It's the last part that's hard. How do you get your child to understand that she can do something when she is convinced that she can't or that, if she can, it's not worth the effort. I would love to teach the Bambina, age 6, to tie her shoelaces. That's going to be a hard task here in Madagascar because she doesn't even where shoes with laces most of the time - just sandals or even flip-flops. Getting her to care enough about learning to tie shoelaces by herself is going to be difficult. Yet I think she is capable of it and I know that if she did learn, she would be proud of her achievement.

David Brooks of the New York Times raises another important point that I haven't seen articulated as well in any other critique of Dr. Chua's parenting approach. In an Op-Ed, he accuses Dr. Chua of being "a wimp" because she refused to let her daughters navigate the complicated terrain of girls' sleepovers:

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Brooks goes on to write:

Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

I agree with this, which is why even though I draw a lot from what I have read about Dr. Chua's way of parenting, I can't see myself limiting my kids exposure to the social scene as much as Chua did.

That being said, I don't think that sleepovers are the be-all-and-and-all of the pubescent social experience. And sometimes, the sleepover scene can also be damaging to a girl's self esteem - if she is made to do things that she normally wouldn't do, made fun of, or just left out.

At the end of the day, there probably isn't one way just like there isn't one child. I like the idea of parenting a child to be a free spirit, western style. I also like the idea of setting high standards for my child letting my child know that yes, she can do it. Both western and Eastern approaches can make a contribution to a good parenting style.

Why Chinese Mothers are Superior

2011-01-12T09:21:00.000+02:00

I just caught this article by Amy Chua in the Wall Street Journal. The article is actually an excerpt from Amy Chua's new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Here are some things that the writer says her children were not allowed to do:

have a playdate
be in a school play
complain about not being in a school play
not be the #1 student in every subject except gym and drama
play any instrument other than the piano or violin
not play the piano or violin

This list looks pretty different from standard western parenting practices. Chua goes on to say:

"It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model."

Ever since the Bambina started elementary school last September, I have pretty much let her take it at her own pace when it comes to learning to read. She hasn't started getting written homework yet but she is supposed to do about 15 minutes of reading per evening. Well, I've pretty much ignored this dictum, because I couldn't be bothered harassing her about it after school, because I've never been a big fan of homework anyway and because I wanted reading ultimately to be something the Bambina just feels like doing for leisure and not a chore.

But Chua's essay has had me in a frenzy. Maybe I'm being too lax about her academic progress. After all, my daughter already has a lazy disposition: she'll always do the least amount of work required to get away with something, meaning that even if she can do something, she'll never reach the goal because she won't be motivated enough, so she may never reach her full potential.

Another thing that hit me was Chua's assertion that western parents want their children to enjoy what they do but....from the Chinese point of view, a child is never going to really enjoy doing something until he or she gets good at it. The Bambina's teacher at school has told me that the Bambina can read but that the Bambina has to want to read and so far, she is not so motivated to do it. In the instances when I have watched the Bambina read, she does it syllable by syllable and it's a very slow process. How will the Bambina ever enjoy reading a book for leisure if reading continues to be tedious and slow for her?

Inspired by the Chinese model, today I insisted that the Bambina do half an hour of reading with me. I gave her the choice of reading in French or English - she chose French. I insisted that she read three easy books with just one or two lines on each page and then three pages of a harder book with a paragraph on each page.

She ended up in tears twice - book too hard, she doesn't want to read with me around, and she kept insisting that she couldn't read and it wasn't worth insisting that she could read because it just wasn't true. Yes, she could read individual words, but not books, she argued. It's too difficult.

But we got through it and she was smiling in the end. This morning in the car on the way to school she said to her friend, proudly, "you know, I can read now, I mean really read!"

This must be what Chua was talking about. Sometimes, we really do know better than our kids and sometimes we have to insist that they can do it even if they insist that they can't.

I told the Bambina that she and I are going to be doing reading after school every day from now on.

I may start drawing more inspiration from Chinese mothers.

Skiing at Les Gets

2011-01-09T11:17:00.000+02:00

We are back home in Madagascar, having spent the Christmas holidays in France, first in Paris and then some skiing in the French Alps, at Les Gets. The British website Ski Famille describes Les Gets very aptly:

When, twenty years ago, we started looking for a resort which would be ideally suited to the needs of families, Les Gets shone out.

The picturesque village of Les Gets is about as far from a purpose built resort as you can get. Real people live in Les Gets all year round, the land is still farmed and you can wander round the weekly market every Thursday to purchase everything from the latest fashions for mountain folk (think 1950's Eastern Block chic) to alarmingly smelly cheeses. More sophisticated retail opportunities also abound!

They're absolutely right. We loved it there. It's not just a ski resort. It's a real mountain village, complete with town hall, market stalls, skating rink, and good restaurants (can you say cheese fondue, raclette, and tartiflette?). And did you know that Father Christmas lives at Les Gets?

Ski vacations are expensive enough as it is, so we tried not to pay a fortune for lodging. We stayed in a two-star hotel (the Hotel Christiania), which has a nanny service for kids too small to ski. The hotel has a very cozy and convivial atmosphere. Just a warning: the rooms at this place are small. BUT you don't have too spend to much time there. Guests tend to spend a lot of time hanging out in the hotel's cozy lounge, around the roaring fire. The price per night is per person and includes breakfast and dinner. The food was scrumptious - at least as good as the food served in any four-star hotel. If you do end up going to Hotel Christiana, you can tell the owners, John and Nicola King (a Scottish couple) that you read about their hotel here!

The Bambina started out in the beginners ski class at the Ecole de Ski Française. The classes consisted of ten children each and were offered in French and English. Normally, I would have been inclined to put the Bambina in the English classes but since none of the English teachers were native English teachers and the Bambina speaks French just as well, we decided to put her in the French classes. She graduated to the level of "flocon" (snowflake). There was a "ski garden" for children as young as three years old but the Bambino is only 20 months old so he'll have to wait a couple of years.

We definitely want to go back to Les Gets soon!

You know you live in a developing country when

2010-12-15T08:57:00.000+02:00

1. You pay top dollar for bottom of the barrel no-name imported brand canned and packaged food at the grocery store - when you can get them.

2. Your tap water is so full of chlorine that the kids' bath has a light green tint to it.

3. Your kid speaks at least two languages, and sometimes three, depending on what country you're living in at the time.

4. You have grown an affection for scenery filled with dirt roads, gutters and rice paddies.

5. You never walk anywhere anymore and you're no longer used to driving in vehicles that are not 4x4.

6. You expect to get a stomach bug about once every three to four months.

7. You buy meat the same day that the animal was killed and you age it in your refrigerator.

8. Your definition of a "really good restaurant" has evolved to being a restaurant whose food doesn't make you sick.

9. A chauffeur drives your kids to school every day.

10. You count down the days to Christmas vacation months ahead of time and can't wait to experience cold and snow.

Things our kids have seen and done this year

2010-12-02T07:58:00.000+02:00

Our kids have seen a lot this year.

This summer, they looked down on this gorgeous view of the Dordogne river in the Périgord region of southwestern France. Even on a cloudy day, the scenery was beautiful.

They saw the countryside of Madagascar, too, which is beautiful in its own way.

They saw the Eiffel Tower a few times, and took a boat ride along the Seine river in Paris.

And scenes from a city in the developing world have been part of their daily life this year.

They saw their share of cameleons, tortoises and lemurs.

They've gone for a ride on a taxi "pousse-pousse".

We haven't been able to continue the Bambina's swimming lessons here in Tananarive so instead, the she's been learning to ride a pony. The Bambino likes to just sit on the pony once in a while.

And they did a fair bit of swimming in the Indian Ocean (the Bambina did snorkeling and diving as well).

Our end of year treat: skiing in the Alps!

Cozying Up to the Lemurs

2010-11-28T16:47:00.000+02:00

Sometimes family travels take us to places that we never dreamed of. These photos were taken during a weekend at the Vakôna Forest Lodge in Andasibe, Madagascar. The lemurs were so used to having people around them that they regularly surprised us by leaping onto our shoulders, head and back and staying there for a bit. The Bambina was so afraid when a lemur went to leap onto her shoulder that she stepped backward and put her foot directly in the swamp.

The International Family's Never-Ending Dilemma : Is my child in the right school?

2010-11-17T14:10:00.000+02:00

The number one question of the international family: Where should we send our children to school?

The number two question of the international family: Have we put our children in the right school?

Basically, the question is always on our minds.

Here in Tananarive, Madagascar, the choices of schools is VERY limited. You can send your child to the French school or you can send your child to the American school.

Pros of the American School, from our perspective:

- Great way to consolidate my children's English.

- It's close to home.

- It has small classes.

- It is more open to creativity and different learning styles than the French system.
- Thinking with an open and critical mind is just as important as coming up with the right answer.

- It has a great community feel to it.

- If offers lots of extra-curricular activities.

The American School has its disadvantages, too, though. It's very expensive. Their pre-K and kindergarten facilities are not great (in fact, they're downright shabby and small), some of the teachers are not native English speakers, and for an natural-mama type like me, their vaccine requirements are a little over the top.

Pros of the French school:

- Teaching the Bambina to read and write in French is something that I can't do and that the Frenchman won't do. This is close to being a deal-breaker point.

- It has an excellent kindergarten programme.

- Truly excellent teachers in kindergarten, first and second grade.

But the French school is a 30 minute drive away in the morning. And in the long run, French education may be rigourous but it also has the reputation for being narrow, closed-minded and not great for building confidence in children.

We chose the French school because at the time, the Bambina was only five years old when we arrive in Tana and the kindergarten at the French school was visibly better than the one at the American school. Now that she's in first grade, I'm sure that the American school is just as good, if not better. Neither school is perfect. Either one would leave us questioning our choice.

For our next expatriation, my prayer is that not only will we not be in a francophone country, but that we will be in a country where there is no lycée français, at that we will have no choice but to put the Bambina in a reputable international school that offers French for native speakers. Alternatively, sending her to a local school, should we be living in a developed, anglophone country (Australia, Scotland, the United States or Canada, for example) would also be interesting.

A Montessori school for the Bambino would be a cherry on the cake.

7 Globetrotter Family Travel Tips

2010-11-03T09:42:00.001+02:00

1. Check everyone's passports once every six months. You never know when you're going to be on the road and you don't want to discover one week before your ski trip in the Alps that your five year old's passport has expired!

2. Book appointments, dinners, babysitters, kids' clubs, lessons and playdates ahead of time. This is especially true if you are going to be staying in a large city for any amount of time. The time that you get to spend in the city is precious. You don't want to waste hours sitting in an apartment or hotel room because you have no babysitter or because you would like the kids to do something but they've already been to the park today, the museum workshops are all full and your kids friends are in school. You get the picture. Plan as much as you can ahead of time.

3. Bring your own airplane food for the kiddies. The Bambina won't touch airline food and I can't say I blame her. Aside from having a stale, refrigeration-like taste, it's rarely food that I like and it's full of preservatives.

3. Bring entertainment for the luggage wait. That Nintendo DS that you've been complaining about since last Christmas when your spouse insisted that your kid have one? Well, thank your lucky stars it exists just for times like this!

4. Bring a car seat or book a weight- appropriate car seat from the car rental or taxi cab company. Be sure to tell them that it must be already fully and correctly installed when the cab arrives to pick you up. We have had the unfortunate incident of a taxi showing up with a brand new, weight-appropriate car seat - uninstalled - and with no manual to show how to install it.

5. Think twice before you take an only child trekking in the mountains - or anything else that requires physical endurance. Without the distraction of a playmate close in age to your little one, your child may start to complain that he or she is tired oh, about two minutes into the hike. Hiking with another family has worked well for us.

The same goes for museums or art exhibits - unless you have a child who is particularly into cultural visits, he or she may quickly get bored and start to complain, thereby ruining the visit for everyone else . Try to find another family with one or more children the same age for these kinds of visits.

6. If you have an infant or toddler, bring a mei-tai baby carrier (Ergo, Kozy and Babyhawk are a few brands) on the trip with you, along with the stroller. It's very handy during when boarding the plane, during a luggage wait and for walking in quaint towns with cobblestone roads that make pushing a stroller difficult.

I don't recommend carriers such as Baby Bjorn, as the baby's weight is on your shoulders rather than your hips, and they therefore only work for small babies (that and the fact that the baby is essentially being supported on its genitals...).

7. Pack a sweater for you and each child. Always. Even if it's a beach vacation in the Bahamas!

Bon voyage!

Bilingual babies are less easily confused

2010-10-19T20:39:00.000+02:00

BBC news recently posted an article about a study showing that bilingual children are less likely to get mixed up when forced to multitask.

The original study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The abstract describes the study as follows:

7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with matched monolinguals. Whereas both monolinguals and bilinguals learned to respond to a speech or visual cue to anticipate a reward on one side of a screen, only bilinguals succeeded in redirecting their anticipatory looks when the cue began signaling the reward on the opposite side. Bilingual infants rapidly suppressed their looks to the first location and learned the new response. These findings show that processing representations from 2 languages leads to a domain-general enhancement of the cognitive control system well before the onset of speech.

Of course, the study only dealt with bilingual children who were exposed to two languages from birth, in a one-parent, one language environment. It would be interesting to study children who were exposed first to one language from zero to three years and then to a second language from age three, as a result of language immersion at school, for example.

Nestlé at it again

2010-10-14T09:27:00.003+02:00

I have been meaning to post on this story for quite some time. I have already written how Nestlé's Nido is harming African babies. Now I see that it's not just the Nido that's the problem.

A few months ago, I walked into a store that happens to be the official distributor for Nestlé products here in Tana. I saw this display.

The idea was obviously to display ALL Nestlé products together. The first thing that struck me was that the Nido had, once again, been placed in close proximity to the baby formula, Guigoz 1 and 2, but at least this time they were on different shelves.

Encircling the products was a yellow ribbon with a teddy bear decoration throughout and the following message:

"Nestlé - pour une croissance saine".

Translation: Nestlé: for healthy growth.

Apart from Nido, Guigoz formula and baby cereal, the display contained Kit Kat, Choco Crunch cereal, and Quik chocolate powder. All these products are supposed to be for "healthy growth". Surely they must be joking.

Behind the cashiers was a posterboard clearly intended for employees of the store. The posterboard had the Nestlé Nutrition logo on it and showed what employees are not allowed to do under the International Code on the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. No promotions. No point of sale advertising. No special displays. There were diagrams indicating all these prohibitions but the writing was all in English. Have I mentioned that Madagascar is a francophone country?

I asked to speak to the manager of the store. I was led to his office. He was a pretty nice French guy. I had a friendly conversation with him and then said "I see that you are making an effort to adhere to the International Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes."

I then explained that the display was in contravention of this Code. He expressed surprise and said that he would contact Nestlé immediately, as it was they who put up the display.

I thanked the manager, went to purchase my things, and left.

The next week, lo and behold, I got a call from Nestlé Nutrition.

"We would be interested in knowing why you think the display contravenes the Code. We are not marketing breastmilk substitutes. We are marketing all Nestlé products together."

He wasn't joking. This was his argument.

"Listen", I said. "If you are going to follow Nestlé's own watered-down interpretation of the Code, you will, at a minimum, remove the Nestlé Guigoz first stage infant formula from the display. And if you are going to follow my interpretation of the Code, you will remove the first and second stage Guigoz from the display."

He still didn't understand what was wrong with keeping them in the display.

"It's advertising", I said.

"But it's not advertising the formula in particular", he replied.

"That doesn't matter", I countered. "Putting baby formula in a display that says 'for healthy growth' is advertising the formula, whether or not you put a KitKat bar and breakfast cereal beside it."

He said he would like to meet me so that I could show him the relevant portions of the Code and he could explain to his superiors. I agreed and we met up the following week. By that time, the Nestlé Nutrition man had already faxed a photo of the display to his superiors in Kenya and Mauritius and asked for their opinion.

His superiors agreed with me and told him that either the milk had to be removed from the display or the ribbon had to be removed. He removed the ribbon.

I told him that he should also put the Nido milk with the other powdered milk being sold in the store rather than in the same area as the infant formula. He refused. He said that he wanted to keep the Nestlé products all together.

"But you know", he said to me, when we were back in his office at Nestlé Nutrition, "we don't really focus on stores. The stores are already informed and are generally compliant, with the odd exception now and then. Our main job is to inform hospitals about the Code, when we deliver them our infant formula for newborns".

Now ain't that a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Which water bottle for your globetrotter kid?

2010-10-06T09:34:00.000+02:00

We live in a developing country, which means that we don't drink water from the tap, which means that there is no potable water at the Bambina's school, which means that she has to bring a bottle of water with her every day to school.

So the question is, which kind of water bottle should she use?

This question is also relevant for globetrotter families who are on the go and want to have one or more bottles of water on hand for the kids.

One obvious answer is your standard disposable plastic bottle of Evian or other bottled water. But they get grody after a while and they are difficult to wash. Plus have you ever looked at the water inside a bottle of Evian after your child has drunk from it? There are food particles in it because kids backwash.

Another possibility is a hard plastic bottle like the kind you can buy in our local Jumbo grocery store here. The Frenchman bought one of these for the Bambina last year and I nearly had a keniption. Besides the fact that your water ends up tasting like plastic, the bottle itself was made in China, reeked of "new plastic" and was probably leaking polyvinyl chloride and/or Bisphenol A into the water. That and the fact that it leaked all over and broke after about two weeks of use meant that we had to search for another bottle.

An alternative to plastic is a metal flask with a drinking spout. There would seem to be two kinds on the market - those made of aluminium and those made of stainless steel. Decathlon, the French sporting goods giant, sells an aluminium one (pictured above). The Frenchman was very keen on buying these but I determined from the coding on the bottom of the flask that it was, indeed, made of aluminium and I had some reservations. Aluminium in unlined water bottles leaches into the water, leaving a metal taste, not to mention possible concerns about alzheimers disease in the long run. No link between aluminium and Alzheimers has been proven - yet - but it's just not something that I want to have to worry about.

Aluminium cans with a lining, such as a the famous Sigg line, come with concerns about what, exactly is in the lining. Sigg swore that the lining in their water bottles contained no Bisphenol A - until they changed their minds and admitted that all bottles sold before August 2008 did have Bisphenol A "but only in tiny amounts". Great.

Rather than worrying about what may be in the lining of an aluminium bottle, you can always get a stainless steel bottle instead. Stainless steel is made of chromium, iron and nickel. Stainless steel bottles don't generally have lining inside, as stainless steel doesn't leave a metal taste in your month and there is no danger in ingesting the molecules (iron is good for you!). There are a few brands out their but we bought the Crocodile Creek brand at Le Bon Marché department store in Paris.

When are the Europeans going to get with the program on baby shoes?

2010-09-29T13:07:00.001+02:00

Just when the Bambino was starting to walk, we noticed that his right foot seemed stuck at two o'clock, while the left one was at twelve. We found this to be a little disconcerting, and the Frenchman even starting talking about putting the Bambino in foot braces, eventual surgery, etc.

"But you need to get him in some real shoes!," our French friends all told us when we showed them the Bambino's pose. This advice seemed so obvious to them that they were surprised that the Bambino, at thirteen months, was still in Robeez style slippers. I had to explain that we Anglo-Saxons tend to view barefoot as best.

The "babies need shoes to learn to walk" theory holds tight in many European circles, despite that fact that orthopedists worldwide (including European ones) recommend barefoot or close to it. In France, I'm convinced that holding true to the "they must wear shoes" view is a way of propping up the children's shoe industry. And we're not just talking about any shoe. Your typical French, Spanish or Italian shoes salesperson will recommend a shoe with a thick, stiff sole and a high ankle for your toddler, so as to "support" the foot, as if mother nature hadn't equipped small children adequately for learning to walk.

Even standard baby websites in the French language give this dated advice. For example, Infobébés has a whole page on shoes, in which it advises to choose a shoe that is "high enough to support the ankle", that is laced rather than in velcro, and that is "not too stiff" (well, at least they got that part right).

Netenviesdebebes suggests soft-soled shoes for infants who haven't learned to walk yet but fails to consider the possibility of no shoes at all. It goes on to say that once baby has learned how to walk,

on préférera alors des chaussures qui maintiennent le pied et la cheville : bottes, boots, bottines par exemple.

Translation: we prefer shoes that maintain the foot and the ankle: boots or booties, for example.

Well, it took Europe about twenty years to get on the no-smoking-in-restaurants bandwagon, so I expect about the same amount of lag time for progressive thinking on baby shoes.

The ray of light: we took the Bambino to visit the chief pediatric orthopedist at Necker hospital in Paris, to have his crooked gait checked out. The doctor said that we should just wait another year and the Bambino's foot will likely adjust to the right position all by itself. He didn't have an opinion on any kind of particular shoe for the Bambino but he did say that barefoot was definitely best.

Asking the right question about vaccines

2010-09-17T13:59:00.001+02:00

I've just read an excellent post on vaccines, by Ayla over at Primal Home. When someone asks her, "Why don't you vaccinate?", she responds, "Why do you vaccinate?"

A long time ago, when I asked someone once why she didn't vaccinate, I got another very similar response. It went something like this:

- Name the disease.
- Explain how one gets the disease.
- What's the prevalence of the disease where you live?
- What are the consequences of having the disease and what are the chances of having the most severe possible effects of the disease, assuming that a child is not malnourished and is living in fairly hygenic conditions?

Now,
- Name the vaccine for the disease.
- What other vaccines are in the same shot?
- What are the ingredients in the vaccine?
- What does the manufacturer's insert say about the side effects of the vaccine?
- What are the chances of a severe adverse reaction from the vaccine?

It was really only when I was able to answer these questions that I was able to answer the question of whether to vaccinate or not.

6 Things Every Globetrotter Parent Should Know

2010-09-16T14:13:00.006+02:00

A couple of years back, PhD in Parenting posted on 10 Things All New Parents Should Know. I thought her advice was really helpful and I even sent the link to a newly pregnant friend just last week.

As I pondered PhD in Parenting's post, I thought of my own globetrotter version. People tend to rely on their relatives, friends and doctors for advice on coping with parenting questions. Not all the information they get is accurate and some of it is harmful. So here is my top 6 list ('cause 10 would be way too long!) of what all parents trying to raise their children in a global culture should know:

6 Things Every Globetrotter Parent Should Know:

1. Baby care norms differ radically from one continent and even country to the next one.

Moreover, what's considered the norm where YOU live is not necessarily the objectively right way.

My favourite example: In Canada and the States, the health industry tells us not to share a bed with our infant, because it can lead to smothering, SIDS, baby falling off the bed, etc.

Yet, here in Madagascar, most moms sleep with their baby. They don't do cribs here. And I don't ever hear or read about any babies dying of SIDS or getting smothered here. Funny that.

The point is, never assume that information from doctors and well-meaning friends where you live right or even mostly right. Indeed, there are a lot of things not right about modern conventional western parenting ideas. Babies have not always drunk cow's milk (whether or not adapted into formula), and still don't in many places in the world. Newborns are not wired to sleep in little cages far away from their moms, and don't in many (most) places in the world. Most baby boys in the world do not get the tips of their penises cut off. The list goes on...

2. Contrary to what many "granola" mamas seems to think, Europeans are not necessarily more into "natural family living" than North Americans. If you've ever been on the discussion forums of mothering.com, you'll know what I mean. "I wish I lived in Europe. The breastfeeding rate is much higher there. And everyone gives birth with a midwife. And you get one year's maternity leave!"

Allow me to set the record straight about Europe:

Europe is not a monolith. When you hear granola moms going on about how much more enlightened Europeans are, they're usually talking about Scandinavians. The Dutch and the Germans are nearly as "crunchy" but only in certain respects. Maternity leave is only about 12 to 16 weeks long in Germany, for example.

As for the French, well, don't be surprised to see a French maman smoking and drinking during pregnancy, formula feeding by choice (40 percent do) and sending her baby to daycare at the age of three months without so much as wincing because "baby needs to learn to become autonomous".

The Italians have a higher neonatal breastfeeding rate but 90 percent have weaned by the time baby is four months old. Italians typically start baby on solids consisting of pasta and parmesan cheese at the age of four months.

As for the midwives, they are a highly medicalized profession in Europe. In France, they even have to attend medical school for a year. Most European midwives will not allow you to birth in anything but the gynecological position, i.e., lying flat on your back with your legs in stirrups so that they can perform a routine episiotomy. You might as well have an OB.

And forget about home birth (except in the Netherlands, and the home birth rate is dropping there). The home birth rates in European countries hover at around one percent.

3. Your child will not become confused or speech-delayed because you speak to him in another language. I've already written about this but let me reiterate: there is no evidence whatsoever that bilingual children have a higher rate of speech/language delay or any other speech or language disorder than monolingual children.

4. Bilingualism is not an automatic fact resulting from a parent who speaks another language. It takes work. Yep. The fact that you speak English or Spanish or French does not automatically mean that your little one will grow up speaking it. In fact, your child will need about 24 hours per week of exposure to your language in order to speak it like a native.

5. There are NO required vaccines for international travel - other than yellow fever in some countries in central Africa. Polio is not a required vaccine for travel in any part of the world, neither is the vaccine against typhoid, tuberculosis, or any other disease.

6. A global child starts with the parents who have a global mindset. Children learn from the attitudes of their parents. Open-minded parents who are interested in learning about other cultures, who are willing to try speaking the foreign language that they're a little rusty in, and who like meeting and talking to people from other parts of the world are more likely to have children with a similar mindset.

On the other hand, it's hard to expect a child to be interested in learning French or Spanish when the parent won't even consider watching a foreign film.

English as a foreign language

2010-09-07T18:25:00.000+02:00

The Bambina had her first day of school last week. She's in grade one, or I should say cours préparatoire, as it is called in the French system - CP for short.

She attends one of the French primary schools here in Tananarive. The school is pretty much like any public school in France, with a few bells and whistles added to make it adapted to Madagascar, including one to two hours of Malagasy lessons per week at school. That's something that the expat parents don't like at all. They're only here for a short time and what use will the Malagasy language be to their child once they have left Madagascar? Why can't the kids learn another language instead, say the expat parents. English for example. And they would like the kids to start the foreign language ASAP, in CP (grade one).

So after much pressure from the parents' assocation, this year, for the first time, all the kids in CP will be getting English twice a weeks, 45 minutes each time. The parents are thrilled.

Except me.

My daughter is already bilingual. At best, English lessons at school will be a Complete Waste Of Time for her. At worst, she will learn English as a foreigner would learn it - bad accent, bad grammar, and outdated vocabulary. I was happy with her learning some Malagasy.

Which brings me to another point. I am pretty much convinced that introducing English lessons twice a week will not put a dent in the kids' English speaking abilities later on in life. If you want your kid to speak good English, try immersion. Or at least put the cartoons on in English at home. 45 minute lessons on colours and numbers won't do much. They'll learn colours and numbers anyway when the serious lessons begin in at around age 11.

Proof of this point of view: just look at the Dutch or the Scandinavians. Dutch and Scandinavian people my age had no English in school until age eleven or twelve - yet they are almost all bilingual. The difference is that their parents watched TV in English and read books in English - something that the French are reluctant to do.

Madagascar: It's less of a shock the second time around

2010-08-30T14:22:00.000+02:00

We've just returned from our two-month vacation in ~~paradise~~ boring France to our home ~~in the dirty, polluted, third-world city of Antananarivo~~ on the paradise island of Madagascar.

Seriously though, last year, when we arrived here for the first time, it was a bit of shock for all of us (even, dare I say it, the Frenchman). This time around, I think we're all happy to be back "home" from vacation. Here are thirteen things I love about living in Madagascar:

13. The vast sky - kind of like in Montana or Saskatchewan. It was the first thing I noticed (after the shacks on the street, that is).

12. We may have the odd case of malaria on the coast but there's no yellow fever here.

11. There's no polio, either, and very little typhoid fever, I daresay.

10. There are some very good restaurants and it's been about eight months since I've felt sick from food I've eaten.

9. Cheap domestic help - we have a nanny, cook and chauffeur.

8. Horseback riding, complete with lessons (English saddle though, which kind of sucks).

7. Lots of neat stuff made out of wood, straw and/or pretty stones.

6. It's close to Mauritius and South Africa, among other great places to visit that are hard to get to from Europe and North America.

5. Did I mention that I have a cook? Who stays until 7PM to clean the kitchen while I get the kids ready for bed?

4. Beautiful, clean, white sand, EMPTY beaches.

3. We might not have parks or playgrounds here but we do have an enormous backyard, as do all our friends who host playgroups every week.

2. Real whales at Isle St. Marie (everything we've heard about it, at least - we're waiting for the Bambino to grow a little before we visit).

1. The size of our house - it's about three times the size of our apartment in Paris.

Vaccines again

2010-08-02T22:39:00.000+02:00

Before we moved the Madagascar, under pressure from our pediatrician and the Frenchman, I allowed the Bambino to get the Hexavac shot. This shot includes vaccines against diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, hiB and hepatitis B. The Bambino was two and a half months old!

I immediately regretted the decision.

Two days later we moved to Madagascar. Within the week, Joshua had a horrible upper and lower respiratory infection. That's pretty unusual for a baby less than three months old who is not in daycare and who is normally still full of antibodies from mama's placenta. It took him two weeks to recover.

I later read that the hexavac shot had been taken off the market in Europe in 2005, ostensibly owing to the ineffectiveness of the Hepatitis B component of the shot, but more likely because some infants in Germany died after getting the hexavac shot.

I also read this 2000 study, which found that the odds of having a history of asthma was twice as great among children vaccinated with the old diptheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine than among unvaccinated children and that the odds of having had any allergy-related respiratory symptom in the previous twelve months was 63% greater among vaccinated children than unvaccinated children.

More recently, a study from Canada found that the risk of asthma was reduced to half in children whose first dose of DPT was delayed by more than 2 months.

Both these studies involve the old whole cell pertussis vaccine rather than the newer acellular pertussis vaccine but is there really necessarily a difference?

The Bambino has had no shots since that hexavac shot at two and a half months. He is now fifteen months old. Notwithstanding the aforementioned studies, we are prepared to give him the vaccines that are mandatory in France - that is to say, a combined vaccine for diptheria, tetanus and polio - because the Bambino will not be admitted to a French public school (be it in France or in one of the public French schools abroad) if he has not had been vaccinated against diptheria, tetanus and polio, or a note from the doctor saying he can't have it.

The problem is that the manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, took the DT Polio vaccine off the market in 2008 owing to "side effects". They never said what those side effects were. I do know that the DT Polio vaccine was the only one on the market without no aluminium and no thimerosal. We are left with the combined pentavac or hexavac shots but both contain more vaccines than the three obligatory ones. The pentavac contains the vaccine for pertussis and hib and the hexavac has hepatitis B to boot.

So we are left in a situation where we are willing to give are son the obligatory vaccines in France but we have no way of doing this without also giving him vaccines that are not obligatory. Keep in mind that should we choose to give our son the shots containing non-obligatory vaccines, we have no recourse against the French state should our son suffer any serious side effects from them.

Is this situation the result of joint conspiracy between the French state and drug manufacturers in order to force us to give our children more vaccines than French law requires? I don't know but our pediatrician has found a couple of imperfect ways around it.

One way is to have our pediatrician write a letter stating that the Bambino cannot have the DT Polio vaccination because it is no longer available on the market in France and all other shots contain vaccines that are not legally obligatory. This would be put in the Bambino's health and eventually school records.

Alternatively, we could give the Bambino the adult booster DTP shot, called Revaxis. This solution has the upside that, since it is a booster shot, the amount of virus in the shot is much lower than the one for children, ironically. The downside is that the package insert stipulates not to give it to children younger than six years of age. So if the Bambino received the Revaxis vaccine and then had a severe reaction to it, we would have no recourse against the manufacturer or the French state.

The other downside to the Revaxis shot is that it contains 350 micrograms of aluminium, about 50 micrograms more aluminium than the hexavac shot.

The Bambino is not yet in any kind of collectivity so we're holding off for now.

"But aren't you afraid he'll catch polio?" I hear you asking. Having looked at the statistics (just check out the vaccine's package insert), I'm just as afraid of side effects from the vaccine.

Traveling with Cloth Diapers

2010-07-22T22:35:00.001+02:00

I use cloth diapers whenever I can. I'm even using them during our one-month vacation in Paris. But here's the thing: I just don't think I can travel with cloth diapers - not exclusively anyway. Jennifer Margulis has written a blog entry on traveling with cloth diapers and has described how to make it work but I'm not wholly convinced. For one thing, I fear the diapers may take up too much space - they're much bulkier than disposable diapers. Margulis suggests bringing prefolds but 20 prefolds take up a lot of space in a suitcase and here's the thing: that number is not going down so you are not going to gain more space in your luggage as the days go by. Then there's the fact that you have to carry around the smelly, dirty diapers, at least until you have access to laundry facilities. Ick. And then you have to use of an afternoon or more of your trip doing laundry. Plus I don't use the dryer to dry my cloth diapers so I would also need a rack or line to hang the wet diapers out to dry and ideally some clothes pins, too.

On the other hand, having used cloth for more than a year now, I cringe at the sight of disposables. I hate their feel and their smell. And they are so NOT cute on baby (it's IMPORTANT!).

So I have been looking for a compromise. As G-diapers contain Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP), I don't consider them a compromise. I might as well buy Pampers as far as I'm concerned. Same goes for Gro-Via - their eco-friendly disposable inserts contained SAP the last time I checked.

I have recently discovered the Hamac. It's a French-made hybrid diaper. On the outside is super thin, impermeable microfiber. On the inside, you choose either (1) an absorbent hemp and cotton washable insert or (2) a disposable insert. The disposable insert is made of paper - no plastic and NO SAP. It's basically like a giant maxi-pad. The bambino went through two of the disposable inserts on an outing today and they worked okay - no leaks and they seemed to fit well. I need to use the Hamac more on the Bambino to see if it really will work for a two week vacation in the south of France, though.

Starbucks is Going Downhill

2010-07-20T23:19:00.001+02:00

We're in Paris for the Northern hemisphere summer and enjoying the sights, sounds and tastes of Europe once again.

Now, we love the cafés and fine cuisine in France but once in a while, we also love grabbing a sofa at the world's ultimate globetrotter coffeeshop: Starbucks.

I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks' filter coffee. Actually, I'm not a huge fan of any filter coffee but the burnt taste of Starbucks' filter coffee is even worse. However, I do (usually) love Starbucks' gourmet coffee drinks made with espresso coffee. And I love their mugs. And the wooden stir sticks. And the Very Expensive chocolate chip cookies. And the sofas. And the Ella Fitzgerald playing in the background. And that it's no smoking. So yes, I generally really love Starbucks.

But not today. In fact, I think the coffee shop for globetrotters is starting to fail us. It started when I walked into the Starbucks on boulevard des Capucines in the 9th district in Paris this morning. I joined the line, only for the cashier to let me know that they could not accept debit cards that morning. Fine with me but the friend whom I was meeting was not there precisely because she had waited in line for ten minutes before they told her that she couldn't use her debit card and then she had to leave to go find a bank machine and get some cash.

Then I placed my order. I asked for a tall decaf cappuccino with caramel syrop on top, "sur place" ("for here") and in a mug.

"We don't have any mugs, only the paper cups," the cashier said.

Now keep in mind that, as we were talking, I was looking at a big Starbucks poster just behind the cashier which said the following about the company's commitment to the environment:

C’est notre engagement à exercer notre activité de manière pérenne dans le respect de la planète et de ses habitants : De l’achat du café à l'investissement dans les communautés locales en passant par la réduction de notre empreinte sur l’environnement. C’est agir comme nous l’avons toujours fait, en nous efforçant de faire encore plus. C’est se servir de notre envergure de manière utile.

I pointed this irony out to the cashier, who shrugged his shoulders and said something to the effect of, "I know. You're right. But what do you want me to do? I'm just a peon employee."

Then I headed to get a seat and while I was waiting for my friend to show up from the bank machine, I pulled out my iphone and tried to get wifi so that I could update my Facebook status. Only I needed a login userid and password. So I went to the cashier to ask for the user id and password.

"You have to pay for it," she says. "And anyway, it's not working today."

This really took the cake for me. Starbucks is a North American outfit. They are supposed to know about customer comforts. They are supposed to know about good service. WIFI NOT WORKING? WIFI THAT YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR???? WTF???

And then, just when I thought that things couldn't get worse, I took a sip of my cappuccino. Only it wasn't really a cappuccino, as the barista had filled the mug (they finally found one) with milk to the very top. So it was a latte. With too much milk in it. Sigh. Screw it. Tomorrow, I'm heading to the closest brasserie.

Circumcision: What Every Globetrotter Parent Should Know

2010-06-25T06:52:00.001+02:00

I'm amazed at the number of sophisticated, educated, international (but almost always American or Canadian) parents that I come across overseas who choose to circumcise their son.

All true globetrotter parents should be aware of the following facts about circumcision.

Most men in the world and the great majority of men in Europe, Central and South America and Asia are not circumcised. Only 10 to 15 percent of men throughout the world are circumcised, the majority of whom are Muslim.
Routine infant circumcision was introduced in the United States in the 1800s to prevent masturbation. Victorian doctors knew that circumcision desensitized the penis.
No medical association anywhere in the world supports non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision (male or female) on medical grounds or "hygenic" grounds.
The claim that male circumcision protects against HIV is based on studies in Africa. In Uganda, researchers began with a total of 4,996 men and randomly divided them into two groups, circumcising one group (2,474 men) and leaving the other group (2,522 men) intact. After 24 months, both groups were tested for HIV. Of the circumcised men, 22 tested positive (0.9 percent). 45 men in the uncircumcised group (1.8 percent) tested positive. Of all the participants, a total of 1.3 percent tested HIV positive; the other 98.7 percent remained HIV-negative. Despite these tiny percentages, researchers derived a 55 percent risk-prevention figure from the difference in results between the two groups.
Similarly, the Kenyan trials began with 2,784 men and randomly divided them, with 1,391 undergoing circumcision and 1,391 left intact. Two years later, testing showed 22 new infections among the circumcised men (1.6 percent) and 47 among those left intact (3.3 percent).
Circumcision is by no means akin to a vaccine against HIV-AIDS. Claiming that circumcision prevents HIV-AIDS is irresponsible and gives rise to a false (and dangerous) sense of security.
The United States has the highest rate of medically unnecessary, non-therapeutic infant circumcision in the world and yet the HIV infection rate in North America is twice the rate in Europe.
Circumcision offers no protection at all to gay men.

And now, some biological facts that everyone should know:

Every normal human being is born with a foreskin. In females, it protects the glans of the clitoris; in males, it protects the glans of the penis.
Before the foreskin can be cut (or crushed) off, it has to be torn away from the glans. This act is akin to ripping your fingernails off your fingers.
Circumcision removes 50% of the skin of the penis. Depending on the foreskin's length, cutting it off makes the penis as much as 25 percent shorter. Circumcision cuts off more than 3 feet of veins, arteries, and capillaries, 240 feet of nerves, and more than 20,000 nerve endings. The foreskin's muscles, glands, mucous membrane, and epithelial tissue are destroyed, as well.
Circumcision removes the most sensitive part of the penis.
Circumcision reduces sexual pleasure. The foreskin slides up and down on the shaft, stimulating the glans by alternately covering and exposing it. No additional lubrication is needed. Without the foreskin, the glans skin, which is normally moist mucous membrane, becomes dry and thickens as a result of continual exposure, thus reducing its sensitivity.
One of the most common myths about circumcision is that it makes the penis cleaner and easier to care for. This is not true. The glans of the circumcised penis are subject to abrasion and exposed to dirt and bacteria, leaving the urinary tract vulnerable to infection.

Parents who are faced with the decision of whether or not to circumcise their son should have all the relevant information made available to them. Yet the sad fact is many American and even Canadian parents, including those who live beyond North American borders, choose to circumcise purely out of a sense of tradition and so that baby "looks like his father", and doctors do little or nothing to educate them.

Please, if you're having a baby boy, inform yourself before you decide to circumcise.

Some sources:
The Case Against Circumcision
The Truth About Circumcision and HIV
Policy Statement of Doctors Opposing Circumcision

Language Etiquette

2010-06-21T15:58:00.001+02:00

I come across a lot of two-language families. For example, the mother is Italian and the father is American, or the mother is Australian and the father is German, or there is our case - I'm English-speaking Canadian and I have a French husband.

The question always arises - which language should we speak to our children in? For me, the answer was and is simple - English, English and English. I speak to my children in English, read to them in English, sing to them in English, play with them in English, and listen to the radio and watch television with them...in English! Call me stubborn but they don't get much English exposure anywhere else - I'm basically IT - so I do everything with them in English.

So far (knock on wood), I've been lucky. The Bambina speaks to me exclusively in English, this despite the fact that she has a French father and is in a French school.

Some people are taken aback that I speak to my kids in English even when we are with other non-English speaking people. I attend a playgroup twice a week, once with my daughter and once with my son. Both playgroups are francophone. No matter to me. When I am speaking to my child, it's in English. We often have people over here for lunch on the weekends and the conversation with them tends to be in French. Any discourse with my children remains nevertheless in English.

If the Bambina has a friend over, I still speak to her in English. If I am talking to both of them, I say it in English and then in French. (Actually, the parents of the child are inevitably thrilled that I am speaking English to their child so there is no objection from them there).

I may be in the minority on this one. I've talked to other moms in two-language families and have discovered that they are reluctant to speak to their children in their own language when they are around other people. One Italian mother told me that she simply refused to speak Italian to her children at (French) playgroup because it would exclude others from the conversation. Um, your talking to your son about his lego tower. What makes you think we need to be included in this conversation??

Another (once again Italian!) mother told me that she thought it would be rude (gasp!) to talk to her children in Italian when they were with other people.

Well, you know what? It might be rude but my answer is that my children's bilingual ability takes precedence over showing good manners. Call me rude, I don't care. In ALL the cases I have encountered where the parent in a two language family switches languages when around others, the child ends up speaking to the parent in the dominant language rather than in the parent's minority language.

Here is a typical discussion that takes place on this matter:

Other mom: I speak to him in Italian but he'll only answer me in French.
Me: But I just heard you speaking to him in French.
Other mom: Well, yeah but when we're with other people, I speak French. Otherwise the other person won't understand what I'm saying.
Me: Hmmm. I don't think he'll speak to you in Italian unless you speak to him exclusively in the language.
Other mum: Well, he understands everything I say and I guess that's good enough.

Fair enough. If bilingual comprehension is your goal, then that's all you need. But if your goal is for your children to be bilingual and you are in a two-language family, you need to keep it exclusive in your language when you talk to your children - no matter where you are.

Getting Burned by Sunscreens

2010-06-17T19:46:00.002+02:00

During our summer travels, I have come across many parents who simply cannot understand why my kids wear sunsuits rather than normal bathing suits at the beach and pool.

"But doesn't it work just as well to slather them in cream?" they ask.

Here are a few reasons why I avoid putting sunscreen on my kids.

- Most sunscreens protect primarily against UVB rays - the rays that cause your skin to burn. They do not protect against UVA rays. When you see a package that says SPF 50, they're talking about the protection against UVB rays. The protection against UVA rays will be more like SPF 10, at best, but of course the packaging doesn't say anything about that. So basically, the sunscreen will protect your child against sunburn but not against melanoma cancer ten or twenty years down the road.

- Most sunscreens contain parabens and/phenoxethanol, preservatives that are believed to be carcinogenic. Parabens is also a hormone disruptor.

- Many sunscreens contain a synthetic filter called oxybenzone. Oxybenzone is a chemical that sinks through the epidermis to filter out the sun's rays. Some of it ends up in your bloodstream and acts as a hormone disrupter, reducing male sperm reproduction in boys and causing early menarche in girls. That's not something I'm keen to slather on my children.

- You can't trust anything claimed on sunscreen packaging, so you can never be sure what to buy. Here are some prime examples of products and players that typify what’s wrong with the sun protection business.

- I do put sunscreen on my kids' faces - the kind with no chemical filters and no parabens or phenoxethanol. It wears off after an hour. I can't imagine how burnt my kids would get if I put that stuff all over their bodies.

I just came across this article on sunscreens a few weeks ago. It reiterates a few of the concerns that I have raised.

Still not convinced that sunscreens don't do what they are supposed to do and can do more harm than good? Check out the Environmental Working Group's Sunscreen Guide. Make sure you read about their 9 Surprising Truths. I was particular interested in what they said about European sunscreens:

Sunscreen makers and users in Europe have more options than in the United States. In Europe, sunscreen makers can select from among 27 chemicals for their formulations, compared to 17 in the U.S. Companies selling in Europe can add any of seven UVA filters to their products, but have a choice of only three when they market in the U.S. European sunscreens could earn FDA’s proposed four-star top rating for UVA protection, while the best U.S. products would earn only three stars. Sunscreen chemicals approved in Europe but not by the FDA provide up to five times more UVA protection; U.S. companies have been waiting five years for FDA approval to use the same compounds. Last but not least, Europeans will find many sunscreens with strong (mandatory) UVA protection if proposed regulations in Europe are finalized. Under FDA’s current proposal, Americans will not.

So, my kids get sunsuits as their principal sun protection. Here is a photo of the Bambino in long-sleeved version of a sunsuit from Skin Savers. If you order one for your toddler, make sure you get the long-sleeved kind. You would not believe how easily their little arms burn, even with cream on them.

Here is a photo of the Bambina in her sunsuit from Konfidence swimwear. It looks great on her and she loves the fact that she just zips it on rather than having to pull it over her head.

The UV Hoodie made by Konfidence is a great option for when we are out on a boat and the sun's rays hit hard. Both the Bambina and the Bambino wear one when they are not in the pool or sea and they are in direct sun. They keep you cool and protect completely against UVA and UVB rays. All you need is sunscreen on the face.

Guest-posting on Infant Formula Marketing in Madagascar

2010-06-02T20:22:00.000+02:00

Hey everybody, I'm guess posting on Blacktating this week on the subject of infant formula marketing in Madagascar - Nestlé and Blédina say they don't do it but they do!

No, he won't take longer to learn to talk.

2010-06-01T14:17:00.002+02:00

Raising bilingual children is sometimes believed to cause language delay, though evidence does not support this position. Raising children bilingually neither increases nor reduces the chance of language disorder or delay.

I read this in this article on Multilingual Living today, an internet resource site for bilingual and multilingual families, and I couldn't help nodding in agreement. For both my children, people would tell me that of course, my children would start talking later because they were being exposed to two languages (or in the case of the Bambino, THREE languages) simultaneously and it would take longer for them to absorb it all.

This supposition is, in a fact, nothing more than a supposition. It sounds logical but there is simply no evidence that supports this conclusion. It certainly didn't hold true for my kids. The Bambina was using around six to ten obvious words at 17 months (more, if you consider all those babytalk words that we might not understand) and was talking in complete sentences at age two years - well within the norm.

The Bambino said mama at six months, papa (bahbah, in fact) at seven months, and now, at 13 months, says bah (ball), dide (outside) baba (baby) and some others. In addition to mama, he says maman (French version) and mummy (anglo version). The nanny says that he says some words in Malagasy as well (the nanny speaks Malagasy to the Bambino). And to think that I know monolingual kids who started talking only at two or even three years of age!

The difference is that, while little monolingual Mikey might know 50 words in the one language he knows, Bilingual Beatrice will more likely know 25 words in each language. She may seem like she's behind because you only recognize the words she says in your language, but in fact, she's not.

Anjajavy

2010-05-26T14:39:00.003+02:00

We spent our 24 May long weekend in Madagascar's only Relais & Chateau hotel - Anjajavy - L'Hotel.

The pluses:

- You eat breakfast while watching lemurs swing from tree to tree. The kids watch the lemurs in amazement.
- The weather during the winter season is perfect: not too hot and not cold at all. The ocean water is warm.
- You get to stay in a palisander bungalow with two floors, so the kids get their own room upstairs.
- The restaurant meals are 4-star quality and there is fresh fish every day. Both Bambina and Bambino gobbled up their fish at each meal.

- The beach is stunning and you can do pretty much any water activity you want (but you have to pay extra for water skiing). The Bambina has turned into a real diver and spent most of the time with her mask on.

Some minuses:

- The mosquito net had holes in the top of it, and there was a captive mosquito inside our nets on each of the

three nights we were there.

- Resorts are a relatively new thing in Madagascar - too new for things like kids' clubs or even a fully developed spa. And the political crisis in Madagascar means that hotel owners won't be making any big capital investments in their hotels anytime soon.

- Like all Relais & Chateau hotels, Anjajavy is expensive.
- You need a private plane to get there.

Any TEFL teachers out there?

2010-05-18T09:41:00.010+02:00

Since January, I've been teaching English in our home to French and Malagasy people. I've also been teaching English to a group of grade 10 students at the Lycée Français here in Tananarive.

This is the first time I've tried teaching since I obtained my Certificate for English Language Teaching to Adults from Cambridge University (CELTA) at International House in Rome, back in 2008 (I got pregnant after that and no one would hire me, and then I had the baby and we moved to Madagascar, so it took me a while to get back into teaching).

Some observations:

1. ) I try to use the communicative approach but students really resist this method. They want me to stand up in front of the class and just talk and explain to them. They don't want to try to speak the language themselves. I find it especially a challenge to use this approach when students share a common language (usually French, in my students' case) because as soon as you tell them to talk about something in pairs or to the class, they start off in their common language! Grrrr. What's more, since they know that I speak French, they often will try to speak to me in French instead of trying to say it in English. Grrr.

2.) The teenagers at the lycée have a decent to good speaking level. In many cases, their English is better than their parents' English. Now, I am dealing with the more advanced students but nonetheless I am impressed when I think back to my level of French back in grade 10. One of my students has read the Twilight series three times, in English.

On the other hand, their written English is not so good. Their regular English teachers also use the communicative approach for teaching, so maybe the poor writing skills is evidence that this approach is good for learning to speak but not for learning to write.

3.) The present perfect tense is perhaps the hardest grammatical concept in English to learn. Even my teenagers at the lycée don't seem to fully "get it" and I am becoming persuaded that unless you have grown up with English or have moved to an English-speaking country for good (see, I've just used it twice, no make that three times!), you will never fully "get it" as a non-native speaker (unless you're Spanish-speaking, 'cause apparently Spanish has the same thing).

Actually, there is one thing harder than understanding the present perfect - undertanding when to use the present perfect tense (e.g. I've gone) and when to use the present perfect continuous (e.g., I've been going). It might seem obvious to you as a native speaker but to a non-native speaker who hasn't been immersed in English and who is learning the concept as part of an English lesson, this is tedious and complicated stuff.

4. ) I'm not in the right market. I have been trained to teach adults. In fact, adults don't care too much about their level of English anymore. But they really really really care about their kids being able to speak English fluently. I've been asked again and again and again to start a class for kids but the thing is,

teaching children is not the same as teaching adults, and I haven't been trained to teach kids;

teaching children would mean that I would have to give lessons when those children, and therefore my children, are not in school, meaning when my own daughter was home and I had things to do with her; and

I honestly don't think that language lessons are that much use to a child under seven years of age. As small children have minds of sponges, they get much more from the immersion approach, not the lesson approach, and the immersion approach requires more than one or two hours per weeks with a "teacher" for the child to get anything out of it. Proof: Dutch people my age speak pretty good English, yet they only started learning it formally when they were around eleven or twelve years of age. Their advantage comes not from taking lessons when they were only five years old but rather from watching television shows and movies in their original language version (no dubbing!).

But I will be the first to admit that I could make much more money out of teaching English if I taught children!

Any other TEFL teachers out there? I would love to hear what you think and how your experiences compare with mine.

Christmas in May

2010-05-09T09:32:00.000+02:00

It's poinsetta season here in Madagascar. This photo was taken at a birthday party yesterday in the backyard where the party was taking place. These trees are blooming everywhere here, though. The Malagasy are very surprised when I tell them that for us, the poinsetta is a Christmas plant.

The Bambina shows no amazement whatsoever at these kinds of plants. I think she's become to used to it all.

Organic, homeopathic products, dirt cheap?

2010-05-03T08:04:00.000+02:00

Do you like to buy beauty products that don't contain parabens, phenoxethanol or other nasty stuff? Do you find that these products can sometimes be expensive? What if I told you that you could get all natural, organic beauty products for dirt cheap?

I've recently discovered Homeopharma. Homeopharma is a Malagasy company that specializes in homeopathic medicines as well as organic body care products. And now they are exporting, at least to Europe. I don't think their products have hit North American or Asian shores just yet. I have just bought their children's shampoo (see photo at left). The shampoo contains no preservatives. The ingredients are mostly plants, although there is some sodium laureth sulfate in it.

I do have a couple of concerns with their products. The labelling is not top. Their website says that all their products have been certified as organic by Ecocert, yet the Ecocert label is absent from their beauty products' packaging. The list of ingredients on the children's shampoo that I bought includes "parfum" (fragrance), with no indication that this fragrance is natural rather than a synthetic one containing phthalates, a harmful chemical known to disrupt the body's endoctrine system. The label on the product does say "produit 100% naturel" (100% natural product), yet this cannot be true given that at least one of the ingredients is sodium laureth sulfate, a synthetic chemical.

Needless to say, this company needs a little more sophistication. But it's an interesting start and their products are cheap! The shampoo cost the equivalent of US$ 3.50. The homeopathic medicines (a smattering of which you can see in the photo) cost about the equivalent of US$1 each. That's here in Madagascar - the prices are probably a bit higher in Europe.

Colours where we live

2010-04-29T13:56:00.002+02:00

Sunset over Tana

A store at the marché artisanal

This plant has red leaves - all year round.

The beach at Nosy Bé

Buying at the Source - Factory outlets in Madagascar

2010-04-26T06:44:00.004+02:00

You can buy this princess constume in Europe for about 30 euro. It was made here in Madagascar. We visited the factory recently and bought it for the equivalent of about five euro.

There are other factories here as well. There is a factory that makes clothes for Jacadi. Take a look at this dress. Jacadi is selling them at 69 euro a piece in Europe. It's made here in Madagascar. We bought one at the factory for a friends of ours back in Paris, for 15000 ariary - the equivalent of about 7 euro. Actually, we bought another one too because at that price, why not?

Here's another gorgeous one, also for 69 euro. It cost us 7 euro, once again.

While at the factory, I took a peek at the actual factory floor. I wanted to know what the working conditions of these people were like. The workers were mostly women - about 200 of them sitting down in chairs at sewing machines. The factory floor was well-lit and the chairs looked decent. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take a photo. They work about 45 hours per week. And they probably make about 150 euro per month.

Should we feel guilty that we are exploiting people in a third world country when we buy these clothes? My university friends would say that we should abstain from buying things from any of these places. My thinking, having witnessed the conditions here as well, is that people would be far worse off if these factories didn't exist. No, the working conditions are not perfect, but they are not what I would call Dickensian either - they get overtime, weekends, statutory holidays, and a ways that allows them to feed their children and buy school supplies. They are unionized. Do conditions need to improve for the workers? Yes. They need better wages and a shorter workday for starters. As the economy of the country evolves, so will working conditions and wages.

Of course, as wages and working conditions in Madagascar improve, their products will become more expensive and the people in the developed world will, in turn, have to pay even more for them than now.

Adventures in Baby-Led Weaning

2010-04-15T08:32:00.001+02:00

It's been five months since the Bambino has been eating solids regularly. This time around, we didn't bother with preparing any purées or buying special baby food. We didn't bother doing anything, really. We just handed him the softest morsels of the food we were eating - pears, bananas, plums (when each of these has been in season here in Madagascar), potatoes, beans (I do smash the red kidney beans a bit with a fork because I don't want them to get stuck in his throat, chicken (cut into small pieces), red meat if I can get it tender enough, well-cooked broccoli, cauliflower and carrots.

The advantages of this method:

(1) Far less work in preparation - in fact no extra preparation at all - baby just eats whatever you're eating. We have been taking some small precautions in preparing our own meals - no salt added during meal preparation (we just add it at the table) and no egg white in the meals until now.

(2) No texture issues and no long-term addiction to purées. The Bambino does not appear to have any of the texture issues that the Bambina had and still has - he will eat mashed potates and cut up whole potatoes. He will eat food mixed together or separated. And he loves anything with sauce on it. Compare this with the Bambina, who has an aversion to any liquid food - so no sauce on pasta, no gravy on meat, vegetables cannot touch meat, rice must be plain. Apparently, if you let them explore the food themselves from the beginning, kids are less likely to develop these kinds of food hang-ups. I have friends whose three and even four year old won't eat solid food - only purées - because that's what the child was fed as an infant and he or she never got used to anything else.

(3) You are respecting your child as a separate human being who can feed him or herself at his or her own pace rather than treating your child as an oriface into which you shovel food. A lot of children have food issues later precisely because they resent "being fed".

(4) Your child gets used to being an automous earlier on - with hands mind you, not utensils (at least not yet for the Bambino).

The disadvantages - it's extremely messy. Lots of food ends up on the floor, especially in the beginning (age 6 months) when baby is really more interested in exploring than actually eating anything.
And, contrary to what the Gill Rapley says in her book on Baby-Led Weaning, this method does not necessarily make for a less picky eater in terms of taste preferences. The Bambino will not eat plain vegetables. He doesn't have a texture issue with them - he won't touch them if they're puréed either!. He just doesn't like the taste. But then, neither do I. If I am honest, most vegetables have to be sautéed in lots of butter (or olive oil) and garlic, salted, and / or covered in a lovely sauce and mixed with noodles or rice or potatoes for me to eat them. The Bambino seems to take after his mom in this regard (but I do try to avoid putting salt in his food).

Here on Gill Rapley's Baby-Led Weaning guidelines if you're interested.

The BCG Vaccine - is it worth getting?

2010-03-16T11:10:00.001+02:00

I found this box of unused vaccines against Tuburculosis (aka the BCG vaccine) sitting in our refrigerator yesterday. In the days prior to leaving for Madagascar, the Frenchman, being French, was intent on getting the Bambino jabbed with the BCG vaccine. I think that France is the only country that actually even recommends this vaccine anymore. You certainly never hear about it in the UK, Canada, the States or Australia. (Oh yeah, I think they maybe still recommend it in Romania. And Mexico).

I managed to convince the Frenchman to give a pass on this vaccine for the Bambino, for a few reasons. Yes, there is tuberculosis in Madagascar. But the BCG vaccine is not known for being that effective in preventing transmission of tuberculosis. Clinical trials in the UK have shown an efficacy of about 60 to 80 percent (which is already not great for a vaccine). The efficacy rate falls as you get closer to the equator, sometimes to zero percent effectiveness. No one really knows why. But according to the World Health Organization, the BCG vaccines currently in use are produced at several sites around the world and are not identical to one another. And it is not known whether the vaccines produced at one site are more effective than the vaccines produced at other sites.

Since 2007, a new and apparently improved BCG vaccine is being used. I haven't seen any data to suggest that it is, indeed, any more effective than the old vaccine. And lookie here, The World Health Organization questions the safety of the current BCG vaccine. From the WHO site:

BCG is widely used and the safety of this vaccine has not been a serious issue until recently. There is concern that the use of the vaccine in persons who are immune-compromised may result in an infection caused by the BCG itself. Also, even among immune competent persons, local reactions, including ulceration at the site of vaccination may result in shedding of live organisms which could infect others who may be immune-compromised.

The other thing that bothers me about the BCG vaccine is it can result in false positives on future tubuculin skin tests - which means that if your child ever wants to, say, work in the health care industry one day, he will have to get an X-ray to prove that he or she does not have TB! The skin test won't suffice.

And then there is the post-vaccine bump, puss and permanent scar left on your child's arm.

My cousin Wolfgang, who happens to be a microbiologist and a travel doctor in Berlin, doesn't have a problem with the BCG vaccine per se but he does recognize its lack of effectiveness. When I talked to him about whether to have the Bambino vaccinated, he recommended testing the Bambino for TB once a year, instead, using the tuburculin skin test. If the test result is negative, no TB. If the test result is positive, the child then gets an x-ray to ensure that he has simply developed immunity to TB (this is what usually happens when you are exposed to TB) and does not actually have TB. If the child has developed TB, then the TB gets treated. Most of the American parents that I have met here have chosen this route for their children.

Since arriving in Madagascar last July, I have surveyed lots of families of a few different nationalities about the BCG vaccine. So far, all of the French parents that I have met have had their children vaccinated with the BCG vaccine and all but one of the non-French families have refused the BCG vaccine for their children (the one non-French vaccinated child I know was born in Mexico, where they give the BCG vaccine routinely at birth) -yet more evidence that the way you parent really is a cultural thing, even when it comes to vaccines!

Circumcision and HIV/AIDS - Is the link really that relevant?

2010-03-10T11:26:00.000+02:00

If I see one more article suggesting that all infant boys should be circumcised so as to reduce their chances of getting HIV/AIDS, I am going to scream. Honestly, think about this one people. Circumcision is an excruciatingly painful procedure for most babies who undergo it (no, the EMLA cream does not work and most parents don't bother asking for the penile block). Moreover, the procedure removes a tissue containing something like ten thousand nerve endings, reducing sexual pleasure by thirty to fifty percent.

As for those studies that conclude that it reduces transmission of STDs such as HIV, I urge you to read more about them. Their conclusions are of questionable value, both in terms of the sample size of the men who did end up getting HIV and in terms of their applicability to North America and Europe.

But let's just say that circumcision really will reduce your boy's chances of getting HIV in the future. Please ask yourself this before you have anyone mutilate his penis:

Would you have your baby girl circumcised for the same reason?

Seriously, if it could be shown that circumcising your baby daughter would reduce of her chances of getting or transmitting HIV in the future, would you have her circumcised? Because the pain is the same or worse for a boy and, as with female circumcision, removing your son's foreskin will deprive him of a great source of pleasure in the future.

Here's My Mommy Card. Give me a call!

2010-02-16T12:22:00.006+02:00

My sister just sent me this article from The Globe & Mail (Canadian newspaper) about "mommy cards" Here's an excerpt:

In the past few years, "mom cards" of all descriptions have been showing up at baby groups, soccer fields and playgrounds. Some are printed with cutesy one-liners ("Get your mommy to call my mommy") while others are emblazoned with damask or leopard prints. But the basic information is the same: the mother's name, phone number and a job title such as Rugrat Wrangler or Annabelle's Mom.

A second-wave feminist may bristle at the notion of a woman labelling herself solely as a caregiver. But the women who use them say the modern-day calling cards celebrate a new identity.

I have thought about getting a "mommy card". Part of me thinks it is definitely a useful tool. I show up at a playgroup, meet some other moms and rather than forcing another mother to pull out her mobile phone with one hand while she balances the baby in the other arm, I just hand her my "mom card".

The other part of me would feel like an idiot handing them out. "My name is Caroline and I'm a mom. That's what I do."

Hmmm. This would go down especially strange with the French mamans who I meet here all the time. They are expatriates who have come to Madagascar owing to their husband's work and, although (generally) they are not working at the moment, I think the idea of a mommy card would make them cringe. I understand their point of view. Being a mother is something that I AM, whether I am working in an office, teaching English, or with my kids. It is not something that I DO. It is not my profession, or my hobby, or my side job. I wouldn't give myself the professional title of "mom" anymore than I would call myself "wife to the Frenchman", "Canadian", "woman" or even "human being".

Which brings me to an interesting cultural difference in parenting and identity. If you ask a North American stay-at-home mom what she does for a living, her response may well be "I'm a mom". Anglo-saxons women don't seem to have a problem with having their maternal role usurping their entire identity, at least temporarily.

The French (and I might add, the Germans and the Italians) would find the response "I'm a mom" to the question of what they do bizzarre because, as I have already noted, you are a mother whether or not you decide to stay at home to look after your children. (How many working dads respond "I'm a dad" when asked what they "do"?). Also, in saying that you are "a mom" to the question of what you "do", you are necessarily describing yourself exclusively in relation to someone else - your children - as if your role in life depended on that. If I answered, "I'm the Frenchman's wife", to the same question, it would seem seem strange and even archaic. Should it not seem equally odd identifying what I do by my status as a mother?

If you ask a French stay-at-home mom (and there aren't that many of them) "what do you do?", she may answer "I have chosen to stay home and look after our children" or "I'm on parental leave" (they get up to three years of unpaid congé parental - not bad) - an accurate description of what she does with her day. But I have never heard the line "je suis mére" to the question of what a French mom does.

So I am ambivalent about getting a mommy card. The concept goes against my feminist sensibilities but hey, their practicality may outweigh the philosophical considerations.

Proof that those growth charts don't mean much - they change according to country!

2010-01-07T13:43:00.000+02:00

So, we finally got our globetrotter Bambino officially weighed. It had been a while. I never bother with the baby well-checks. I would have to find a competent generalist or pediatrician here first, which I haven't succeeded in doing,** so the Bambino hadn't been weighed since our arrival in Tana at the beginning of July.

Then when we were checking in our luggage at the Morondava airport last week, the Frenchman had the brilliant idea of weighing the Bambino on the luggage scale. It worked fairly well. The Bambino weighed in at 9.8 kg (around 21.5 pounds?), with diaper and clothes on, so probably around 9.5 kg without.

Then yesterday, I took the Bambino to a local dermatoligist (who is a very good doctor. I would choose her as our pediatrician if she wasn't already a dermatogist!). The baby's arms and chest had been covered in a rash for a week and I wanted to be sure it wasn't anything more than heat rash.

"It's heat rash," she said, as she was going gaga over this beyond cute, big, bouncy, wasa baby.

"He's so big!", she exclaimed.

"Which reminds me," I said. "Could we get him weighed on a real baby scale?"

So the dermatologist had the baby scale brought into her office and we undressed the Bambino and put him on the scale. Sure enough, 9.5 kg.

"Wow! He is so big for an 8 month old baby!" the doctor exclaimed. "Bravo!"

"Er, you think? Because he is exactly average weight for his age on the CDC growth charts for American babies."

"Well, yes but the Americans are fat." (She honestly said this.)

"And he is in the 75th percentile on the tableau in the French carnet de santé," I went on.

"So you see? Even in France, he is big. And by Malagasy standards, he is enormous!", she said.

And it's true. Malagasy babies are tiny. Now, part of this really is due to malnutrition, but even the well-fed ones are not that big. Plus the Bambino really is a very tall baby. The Malagasy tend to be on the short side.

All of which leads me to believe that those growth charts that doctors are so obsessed with don't really mean that much. So much depends on the baby's ethnicity and genes.

I should add that the Bambino was 4.2 kg at birth -that's around the 90th percentile on the CDC charts - so he has slipped way down in weight. A typical pediatrician would have probably told me a long time ago to start supplementing with formula, notwithstanding that it is obvious from just looking at the baby that he is doing fine (see photo).

The Bambino was never destined to stay his birthweight percentile anyway. We're all tall and thin in our family.

**The one generalist I have met here told me that I should be retracting my son's penis on a regular basis. Isn't that advice from something like 30 years ago?

Car Seats and Baobabs

2010-01-04T13:34:00.006+02:00

We spent the end of the year in Morondava. Morondava is southwest of Antananarivo (that's the capital, where we live), on the coast.

This is a photo of the Frenchman and the Bambino.

We were taking a large van from our hotel in Morondava to some baobab trees approximately 25 km away (that's about one hour's drive on the roads we had).

Note that:

- there are no seatbelts;

- there is a big bar at the top of each seat, which baby can bang his head into in the event of a crash;

- don't even ask about the possibility of a carseat.

I'm trying to think what the righteous ladies on the "Family Safety" board at MotheringdotCommunity would say to all of this but of course their advice would be surreal in this context. If you have ever read their discussions about the merits of the Britax carseat, or why you shouldn't get a Maxi-Cosi, or how long your baby should stay rear-facing, you'll know what I mean. Travel in Africa makes you realise that if your only decision is whether to buy a MaxiCosi or a Britax, your child is already very fortunate. Most small children here, if their family owns a vehicle at all, will be in a parent's arms in an old and completely unsafe car (or worse - on a motor bike) with not much for seatbelts and nothing in way of carseats or airbags. (Oh, and their lungs will be black from the pollution that their car and all the other cars on their road produce).

The Frenchman held the Bambino's head forcefully against his chest and we all made the journey in one piece. Here are photos of us and the baobabs. They're amazing trees. Their fruit has more vitamin C than an orange and more calcium than cow's milk. Who knew? Some baobab trees are thought to be thousands of years old. Six baobab species are unique to Madagascar.

And finally, to mollify the ladies at MotheringdotCommunity, here is proof that a globetrotter mom really can nurse anywhere in the world that she finds herself with her baby.

Oh Christmas Tree!

2009-12-14T07:12:00.001+02:00

I have always liked seasons, the sea of orange, yellow, brown and red leaves that paint a Canadian forest in autumn and the peaceful snowfalls creating a white blanket everywhere I look during the Canadian Christmas season.

And so it is with great sadness that the Globetrotter announces that we will be spending this Christmas in Madagascar. The not-so-Christmas-y atmosphere will be all the less so because I am not even sure that we will be Getting A Tree. Getting A Tree creates big ethical problems here. You see, in Canada, the United States and even Europe, there are farms where trees are grown for the very purpose of serving as a Christmas tree one day. You therefore don't have to worry about deforestation when you Get A Tree. Better yet, you can buy a tree still planted in a pot and plant it in your backyard after Christmas.

Here in Madagascar, you have two options:

1) Buy a Christmas tree that has been cut down in a forest, thereby contributing to the massive deforestation efforts already at work in this country, or
2) Buy a Chinese-manufactured artificial tree, made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is not biodegradeable, pollutes and and is replete with phthalates, dioxin, ethyl chloride, etc. etc. You get the picture. What's more, apparently, many artificial trees contain lead. Eek.

Last week, I mentioned that we needed to think about Getting A Tree, and the Bambina said, "We don't need a tree. We can put the presents somewhere else."

That's my girl.

Well, in the end we did end up Getting A Tree - a special Madagascar tree. Here it is.

The same trees are planted just out side the luxurious Colbert Hotel in downtown Antananarivo. It's not a pine tree but I like it because it's simple, it's local and we will be able to plant it in our yard after Christmas.

2009-12-03T13:37:00.000+02:00

Local weather forecastAntananarivo, MDG

Five-day forecast

Tomorrow

04 DecThunderstorms

Saturday

05 DecThunderstorms

Sunday

06 DecThunderstorms

Monday

07 DecThunderstorms

Tuesday

08 DecAfternoon Rain

High:	24°
Low:	17°

High:	25°
Low:	17°

High:	26°
Low:	17°

High:	25°
Low:	17°

High:	26°
Low:	16°

Yep, I think the rainy season has started.

Getting used to insects, spiders, Other Things.

2009-11-30T12:51:00.000+02:00

It's hard to get your children to maintain an open mind about things in life that they have never seen before when you yourself scream when you see THIS swimming in your pool one morning.

Can anyone tell me what it is? The Malagasy have a word for it but don't know what the translation is in French or English. I'm not even sure that it's an insect. It might be a small animal. Yikes!

On another note, I took this photo just outside the Jumbo grocery store. The photo doesn't really do them justice. Trust me. They are HUGE. We are talking the size of my hand. I don't think I have ever seen spiders this size before. I haven't shown them to the Bambina yet!

The cockroaches are also the size of the palm of my hand but in my earnest bid to get rid of them from my kitchen as soon as f-ing possible, I didn't bother taking a picture.

Nestlé's new way of harming African babies

2009-11-27T07:49:00.004+02:00

This globetrotter parent has noticed that if there is one thing that pervades the world, it's the Nestlé brand. And if there is one thing that Nestlé like to sell, it's infant formula.

Nestlé and other infant formula manufacturers have, or so they say, committed themselves not to market their infant formula for babies under the age of six months. Now, in my opinion, if they really wanted to adhere to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, they wouldn't market their infant formula at all (including the formula for babies 6 months and up) and it would be available exclusively in pharmacies and not in grocery stores. But I digress.

Knowing full well that they are unable to advertise their infant formula for younger babies, Nestlé advertise other products instead. Here in Tananarive, they advertise their powdered whole milk, called Nido. Note that "Nido" means "nest" in Italian and is very close to the French word for nest as well ("nid"). So not surprisingly, the Malagasy people (most of whom speak French) tend to think of Nido as milk that is meant for babies.

But it's not. Nestle Nido is just plain old whole milk in powder form with some vitamins added to it. It has not been adapted for babies.

Yet the other day, I asked our driver, as we passed by a huge wall ad for Nido, "Is Nido milk for babies?"

"Yes", he replied. "You give it to babies if you can't breastfeed."

Then I asked our cook, "Do the Malagasy give Nestlé Nido to their babies when breastmilk is not available?"

"yes, yes", she replied.
I explained to her that Nestlé Nido was, in fact, whole milk, and not infant formula. She was very surprised and kept asking, "Are you sure?".

Then I said to our nanny, "Would you give Nestlé Nido to a baby?" She gave me an unequivocal yes and was also surprised when I told her that Nido was not infant formula.

Nestlé don't appear to be doing much to correct this mistaken belief about their product. They of course do not expressly state anywhere in their advertising that Nido is for babies and to their credit, their advertising portrays a glass of milk on it, not a baby bottle. BUT (1) a can of Nestlé Nido looks just like a can of infant formula for babies (same 400 gram metal can with plastic top), (2) the name "NIDO" is suggestive of babies and (3) they don't say anywhere on the packaging or in their advertising that it is NOT for babies, except in the FAQ of Nestlé Nido's internet site.

Worse, in the shops here in Tana, Nestlé Nido is placed on the shelf right alongside infant formulas.**

And as the Nido whole milk powder also happens to be cheaper than real infant formula (in the shop where this photo was taken, the Nido cost 14000 Ariary whereas the Nestle Guigoz 2ème age cost 18,000 Ariary), people have no hesitation in buying Nestlé Nido for their infant.

One final anecdote from my friend Natasha, an American here in Tana who has a nine-month old baby. One day, Natasha was telling someone that before arriving here in Tana, she had purchased a year's worth of infant formula in Switzerland and had it shipped here. She didn't want to be stuck purchasing infant formula in Madagascar, as she had no idea where the formula that is sold here might have been manufactured (much of it comes from Kenya or China, I am told).

The person responded, "Oh well, if you ever run out, you can always buy some Nido." Dooooooh!

** Funnily enough, in the large grocery stores in Tana such as Jumbo and Leader Price, where Europeans tend to do their grocery shopping, Nestlé Nido can be found in a separate aisle from the infant formula, alongside other whole milk powders.

Exploring nature in Madagascar

2009-11-18T12:03:00.000+02:00

Madagascar is a great place to give children an appreciation for nature. It has a unique ecosystem. There are species here that exist nowhere else in the world, not even in continental Africa. Lemurs, for example, only exist because the island of Madagascar broke off from the African continent a few million years ago and none of the lemurs' prey ended up on the island with them. Madagscar has no venomous snakes for the same reason - none of the snakes' prey ended up on the island with them.

We visited Lemurs' Park, just outside Tananarive, a couple of months ago and while the Bambina was a little hesitant at first about getting near the lemurs (they are wild animals, after all), by the end of our visit, she was practically playing with them.

We also saw plant species that you don't find elsewhere, like the vanilla plant (yum!), a "crown of Christ" and yellow bamboo trees.

Next, we visited a crocodile farm.

Bet you have never seen so many crocodiles all together where you live...

Globetrotter Parent says no! to cultural vacations with small children

2009-11-06T21:54:00.000+02:00

When people find out that I have this blog, they sometimes ask me for travel advice. In particular, they like to ask me what kinds of trips they can take their small children on that will expose their under-six years old children to "culture" and "history". After all, the mind of a small child is like a sponge, so their child should be able to absorb all that knowledge easily, no?

Actually, funnily enough, we don't travel a whole lot, except to move residence. And when we do, it's usually to head to a beach. My advice on how to give small children a cultural experience: wait as long as you can. Wait until they're older and for the time being, stick to places where there is a pool and / or a beach.

You may be surprised that a Globetrotter Parent such as myself would give such advice but seriously, how much is a four-year old going to really get out of the Roman forum (heck, without a guide explaining to me what all those broken stones are supposed to be - I don't get much out of the forum) or even the Colosseum? We lived in Rome for three years and my daughter still has no inkling as to what the Colosseum was for. I do not regret not having explained Roman history to my completely uninterested three-year old.

Your eight or nine year old will appreciate the Parthenon in Greece and the Pyramids in Egypt much more than your four-year old. Your twelve and thirteen year old even more so. Trying to stuff culture and history into a mind whose preoccupation is with getting fed, running around, and playing in water is an uphill battle. Leave it be for now.

"But my five year old will love the Eiffel tower!" I hear you say. Yes, and your nine-year old will love it even more.

That doesn't mean it's not worth taking your child to Egypt on vacation. But how about taking them for some swimming and snorkeling and leaving the scubadiving - and the pyramids - until they are old enough to think the activity worth the effort?

Online Language Learning for your Teen (or maybe even you)

2009-11-01T05:37:00.000+02:00

Is your teenager interested in improving her skills in speaking a foreign language but somehow can't get beyond the tedious classroom grammar lessons? You might introduce her to Livemocha, an interactive online community that includes lessons, chat and motivational tools to keep you (or your older kid) on track in learning a language or two. It's aim is "to build confidence, comprehension and conversational skills." Livemocha allows you to test your knowledge of a language, take online lessons and best of all, talk with native speakers. It's focus seems to be on conversational skills, which is precisely what most foreign language lessons in school fail to provide.

You have to be at least 13 years old to participate and no, it's not free.

Which School?

2009-10-27T14:16:00.002+02:00

I get a lot of emails from people asking me which school they should send their child to. Usually, the person is considering between two schools that teach in different languages. The latest email comes from Erin, an American mom in Rome who wants to know if she should take her kids out of the private American school that they currently attend to put them in the French school that French kids in Rome attend.

It's hard for me to answer such questions without knowing all the family circumstances and the language abilities of the kids, so I ask parents to consider the following factors in making their decision.

Location: One of the most important considerations in deciding on which school your child will attend is where you live, where the school is and what methods of transport you have at your disposal. The school you have chosen could be Montessori, have Chinese language immersion and serve organic lunches. If it's across the city, then it won't be much use to you unless you own a helicopter.

Is there any connection with your family or with where you are living?: As an expatriate, would I ever send my children to the school where the Spanish kids go? Not unless we were expatriates in Spain or another Spanish-speaking country. I'm not Spanish or even Hispanic and neither is my partner. We don't speak the language, don't know the culture and wouldn't be able to offer an iota of help to our kids. There is simply no family connection to the Spanish language or culture. I would rather send my kids to an English school and get them really good in their mother-tongue than put them in a school where they have no connection with home or where they live.

Keep in mind that I am not talking about language immersion schools that are AIMED at non-native speakers, such as French immersion schools in Canada. I am talking about sending your kids to the French school where the French kids go or the Spanish school where the Hispanic kids go or the Japanese school where the Japanese kids go. Your child will suffer unless there is some kind of, well, reason to send them there, like that you happen to live in France or Spain or Japan, or you used to live there and you don't want your child to lose the language that they have learned, or that you are French or Spanish or Japanese.

If your family is bilingual, which school will maintain the weaker language the best? I speak only English with the kids and my partner speaks only French with them. The Bambina is in the French system because, without the support of school, French would be her weaker language. Papa is simply not home enough to ensure that she is is getting sufficient exposure to French.

Considering choosing a local school if you speak another language at home and if you are going to be living in the country for a long time. Why not? You live there. Your child might as well learn the language of the street.

Language immersion schools work best when there is support at home. If you are just a North American family living in North America and want to put your child in a French or Spanish immersion school that is aimed at non-native speakers, consider how much support you will be able to offer your child. My experience with language immersion kids is that, without the support of a family member who speaks the language, these children end up not being able to speak the immersion language well and, worse, not being able to read or write their native language well. In the absence of a good support system at home, I would choose a plain old good quality traditional school over a language immersion school.

The Globetrotter's Guide to Starting Solids

2009-09-28T13:30:00.008+02:00

The Bambino is five months old and we are starting to think about when and how we might introduce him to some solid food. You would think that there would be one and only one correct way to start a baby on solid food. In fact, this is apparently not true. It actually depends on where you live.

For the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Anglo-Saxons generally, the traditional first food is rice cereal at age four months. How many parents still do this? Not sure.

The more educated Anglo-Saxons are well aware that the World Health Organization recommends waiting until six months before introducing solid food. They might also realize that rice cereal is nothing but empty calories with iron fortification added and start the baby on puréed fruit and veggies at six months.

The most informed Anglo-Saxons have caught onto the Baby-Led Weaning movement, the latest trend in solids. Ditch the rice cereal, skip the purée phase altogether, and offer baby soft pieces of food that he can feed himself (banana, avocado...).

I should add that we Anglo-Saxons are great believers in freedom and autonomy, including for babies and including at the dinner table. So even though most Anglo-Saxon parents initially spoon-feed their baby, they tend to allow and even encourage their baby to feed herself early on. I have included a photo of the Bambina at age 10 months, eating some yogurt.

Let me emphasize that this kind of liberty is, as far as I know, offered uniquely to Anglo-Saxon babes. I have yet to meet a little French, Italian, German, African or Asian infant under one year old (or, dare I say, in some cases, even under TWO) being anything but spoon-fed or finger-fed by an adult.

France
The French are very keen on introducing baby's palate early to the finer delights of French cuisine. When baby is between the age of four and six months, doctors recommend preparing baby a "soup" in baby's bottle - a mix of puréed vegetables and milk. This way, (1) the movement towards solid food is more gradual and 2) Baby learns to appreciate salty food before sweet food.

Of course, this method assumes that baby is being bottle-fed. It also assumes that this mixture would actually taste somewhat good, which I personally cannot imagine, but I digress.

Italy
Pasta in super tiny pieces (kind of like cous cous), offered at four months. With some parmigiano sprinkled on top for taste and additional iron. The kid will be eating the same meal (with pasta chunks gradually increased in size) for the next five or so years of his life so he might as well get used to it early on.

Madagascar
Prepare some rice with a little extra water than you would normally add. Boil it until the excess water becomes kind of creamy and thick. Drain the rice. Give baby the residue.

Now, my thinking on this is, I would never eat that, so why would I offer it to my baby?

Mexico
This information does not come first-hand but I have a friend who spent many years in Mexico and had a baby there. One day when the baby was a little over three months, the baby's nursery caregivers informed the baby's mother that they thought that baby was ready for solid food and so had started baby on chocolate that day! I don't know about the health benefits of chocolate at three months but I can certainly identify with wanting to try it out. Yummy!

Babygroup à la française

2009-09-20T05:29:00.021+02:00

Let me just start by saying that until last week, I had always believed that the very idea of a babygroup was anathema to your average French maman. First, by the time your average mom is ready to attend a babygroup, maman is already getting ready to go back to work (and she's looking forward to it). There are very few French stay-at-home moms.

Secondly, I'm trying to remember the last time I heard French mothers talking to each other about their babies, starting solids, or teething. I can't.

I have heard French moms discuss Sleeping Through the Night. It's the first thing they mention when they see your baby: " Est-ce qu'il fait ses nuits?" they ask, their voices carrying undertones of quiet desperation, in case your six-week old is not yet sleeping 12-hours straight.

But apart from the question of Sleeping Through the Night, which is an obsession of all occidental mamas, I don't think that most French moms enjoy discussing babies the way we Anglo-Saxon moms do. They would rather focus on getting their bodies back into shape, getting their perineum ready for sex again (French social security actually pays for the six sessions of ré-éducation at the physiotherapist. Not bad, eh?), getting ready to return to work, etc. Sitting around with other moms to discuss breastfeeding obstacles or which infant formula one's baby is drinking? What's the point?

So imagine my grande surprise when I discovered that here in Tana, there is (gulp)a French babygroup. Actually, it's a playgroup of mixed ages, including babies. Having now attended the French Playgroup, I have taken it upon myself to write up the following list.

You know you are attending a babygroup à la française when:

1. Half the mothers, er, didn't bring their baby. They left the baby at home with the nanny. They just came for the company.

2. You're the only one breastfeeding. If there is by chance another mother who is still breastfeeding her 10-week old, she will probably get up to find a more private place to do so. Heaven forbid that anyone see her breast bared in a non-sexual context!

3. At least one mother is smoking (I am trying really hard to imagine the reaction of my Anglo-Saxon mommy friends to someone lighting up a cigarette at a playgroup but it's hard to imagine it without laughing).

4. The topics of conversation include anything but babies or children. The idea is to have some enlightened discussion about something (anything!) else, such as where you will be going on vacation, where you have been looking for work, the new house, politics. We Anglo-Saxons might be able to learn something from the French about conversations concerning things other than teething, solids and crawling.

5. Should you start to actually talk about the babies, the discussion will be about which infant formula to buy.

6. You show up in a T-shirt and sweats and find the other moms wearing pencil skirts, high heels and blouses.

7. All the mothers are thin and have perfect bodies, even the ones who have just recently given birth. Also, there is a bowl of cookies on the table but no one is eating them except you.

8. None of them have ever heard of, or care about, Dr. Sears, Dr. Brazelton, Dr. Weissbluth, Dr. Ferber, Dr. Grandsenne, Dr. Rufo or any other famous doctor, American, French or other, who has written some treatise on raising a baby. However, their own child's pediatrician is God.

All this to say that parenting is definitely cultural.

Cloth versus disposable around the world

2009-09-16T16:24:00.005+02:00

Back in Canada when I was growing up, lots of parents used a cloth diaper service for their baby. Every week, you handed the truck driver your bag of dirty diapers and in exchange, you received a bag full of folded clean ones, all ready for your little one to sully.

When I was pregnant with the Bambina in France five years ago, I said to the Frenchman, "so I guess we'll just sign up for a cloth diaper service, n'est-ce pas?."

When it was clear that he didn't know what on earth I was talking about, I said "you know, the truck comes by every week and you hand over your dirty diapers and you get clean ones."

The Frenchman wondered at this point if I was not from another planet rather than just another country. "Zees does not exeest in France," he said. And he promptly went out to buy a jumbo pack of size 2 Pampers in preparation for the arrival of our daughter.

And at the time, he was right. Diaper delivery services didn't exist in France. So, imagine my surprise when I checked out the May 2009 edition of Parents magazine (purchased in Madagascar in August!) to find .... an article on cloth diapers! Not only do cloth diapers and diaper services now exist in France, they are actually becoming... dare I say it , trendy??

Of course, just as parents in the West are starting to consider cloth diapering as a serious option once again, arguments against using them are rearing their ugly head. In 2005, a study carried out by an advisory board to the UK Environment Agency concluded that cloth diapers had equal the impact of disposable nappies. I still don't believe it. The study assumed that you would be washing your nappies every day in 90 degree celcius water on the mega-long cycle and putting them in the dryer for drying.

Which brings me to the next point (for which I would like to thank Green Living Tips) - When you use cloth nappies, you can control how much you damage the earth - you can wash them every two or three nights only, you can wash them at 40 degrees celcius (totally sufficient), you can buy your cloth diapers used (why not? They're even more absorbant than the new ones), you can use hemp or bamboo nappies instead of the environmentally less friendly cotton ones, and you can dry them in the sun - the best natural disinfectant going.

You don't have these options when you use disposables.

Here in Madagascar and the rest of the developing world, avoiding disposable nappy use is even more important, for a few reasons:

1) Disposable diapers are expensive here.

2) You can only buy disposable diapers in packages of about 30, making it difficult to stock up. That's not an assuring situation when you consider that stores run out of stock quickly here. If you run out, you won't necessarily find more when you need them (or you might at least have to hit a few shops to find them). Also bear in mind that in the event of another coup d'état, you may not be able to shop at all for a few weeks...

3) Discarded disposible diapers contain human waste. Human waste that sits in landfills (especially landfills in developing countries) can contaminate the local drinking water with harmful bacteria and viruses causing intestinal illnesses, polio and hepatitis.

All that being said, I do put my baby in a disposable diaper whenever we are travelling and as his final diaper before he goes to sleep at night.

Nannies in the Colonial World

2009-09-14T13:45:00.007+02:00

The typical expericance with nannies in former colonies can be described as follows:

1. Move into house. Say hello to the cook, the gardiner, the chauffeur and the nanny. They come with the house. You cannot fire them. (Well, you could try, but it would be hard and you would be in the bad books of half the local families, so not worth the risk). Welcome to your household for the next five years.

2. Hand the baby over to the nanny.

3. Kiss your baby good-bye.

4. Expect to see your baby again when he is five years old, unless you ask nanny before then if you might be permitted to, er, maybe hold or even (gasp!) feed the baby.

5. Expect nanny to take offence when you ask her this. After all, who are you to interfere with her job of raising your child. Go and find some other colonial mothers to play cards with!

6. Expect the baby to be speaking nanny's dialect better than your language by the time baby is two years old.

This is the scenario that people had warned me about and sure enough, our nanny, who has just started today (she didn't come with the house) seems kind of surprised that I, er, still expect to be with my 4 month old baby quite a bit and that (gasp!) she can't feed him (he's "still" breastfed, as she noted.)

"And when will he start to drink milk from a bottle?", she asked me.

"Never", I replied.

I think she realised then that I wouldn't be a typical neo-colonial mom.

Preparing Your Child for Life in the Third World

2009-09-10T18:56:00.008+02:00

When I told our almost-five year old daughter that we were moving to Madagascar, I thought that I had been pretty thorough. We looked for Madagascar on the map, together. I showed her photos of lemurs. I showed her aerial photos of the capital city, Antananarivo (Tana, for short). I told her that the people there speak Malagasy (or malgache, as it is referred to in French), and that their skin was a different colour from ours (most are of Indonesian/Polynesian descent; some are black African).

What I didn't tell her was the following:

- The city is dirty. The roads are very dusty and there is garbage everywhere.

- The city is very polluted. You can't walk down the street unless you don't mind inhaling car fumes that were banned in the 1970s in Europe.

- Poverty and misery are everywhere, staring at you in the face.

The first day after our arrival in Tana, we drove (or should I say, our chauffeur drove us) down the main avenue of the city.

Bambina: Mommy?

Me: Yes.

Bambina (staring all around her, wide-eyed): I think the people here are very very poor.

Me: yes, they are.

Bambina: Mommy, why are the buildings here all falling apart?

Me: Because people here are very poor, honey. There is no money to fix up and maintain the houses and shops.

Bambina: In Rome, the buildings were beautiful. I want to go back to Rome.

The next day, in the car, after passing the umpteenth child with extended hands at the window of our car, the Bambina blurts out, angrily:

Naughty mommy for not telling me that people in Madagascar are poor. Naughty!

And every day thereafter, moaning and growing that Madagascar (or at least Tana) was not beautiful, that everyone is poor here, that the people here wear dirty clothes and have no shoes, that there was too much dust everywhere, that she missed her old house, her old friends and her old city.

My daughter was suffering from culture shock.

Yep, I should have told her more about the poverty and misery before we arrived. I think she has only just recently forgiven me for this error in judgment. The next move, I'll be sure to prepare her a little better for the shocking reality of the third world (not that I'll need to now that we are here).

What has happened since I last wrote in this blog:

2009-09-08T20:58:00.000+02:00

End of March: My darling partner, the Frenchman, is released from house arrest (That's right, house arrest. The caribinieri had arrested him for suspected mafia activity. He was innocent, of course, but the Italian justice system has a nut loose. Poor Frenchman spent two weeks in a prison in Potenza over Christmas and then three months under house arrest in our apartment in Rome. Of course, he wasn't allowed any visitors or telephone calls while under house arrest so all he did all day was work on the computer (which explains why I was rarely able to update this blog...)).

April: The Frenchman's employer informs us that we are moving continents.

April 25: I give birth to a darling baby boy, the Bambino, in April, at home. I feel like a carwreck afterwards but am nonetheless thrilled about my little Bambino.

May and June: With the help of movers, I pack all our belongings. The Frenchman has already left to seek out a new home at our next destination.

End June: We leave Rome and spend two weeks in Paris (France, that is, of course).

Finally, in July, we move to.....

MADAGASCAR.

And so, the Globetrotter Parent will continue this weblog from her new island domicile...

(Now I just have to wait for someone to comment "I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it...")

The European Birth Experience

2009-03-01T12:06:00.006+02:00

My daughter was born in France. It was, I would say, a fairly classic birth scene, from a Western point of view: public hospital, epidural, electronic fetal monitoring, and I pushed the baby out while lying on my back (although they were nice enough to put the bed at a slight angle so that I was not lying completely flat!). I had to specifically tell the midwife that I would not consent to an episiotomy. Otherwise, she would have given me one as a matter of routine.

Oh, and their breastfeeding advice was the standard rubbish - the midwife told me to breastfeed maximum 15 minutes each breast every three hours - sore nipples and all that, you know.

There were some differences between my French birth and a standard North American birth. For one, there was no obstectrician present, just a midwife. I have learned from my experience in France and Italy that, contrary to what many natural birth advocates will tell you, women giving birth in countries who use midwives to manage low-risk births do not necessarily have more "natural" births. Not at all. In fact, what tends to happen is that the midwives are simply trained to be "general practitioner" doctors of childbirth.

Another small progressive aspect of my French experience: upon baby's exit into the world, the midwife immediately placed baby on my chest and left us for a while to bond. Also, the c-section rate in France was not too high at the time - about 20 percent in public hospitals, higher in private clinics. And in the hospital where I gave birth, they encouraged mothers to "room in" with baby - if only because the hospital didn't have the money or space to provide a separate nursery.

I haven't given birth yet in Italy but here is what I have learned so far from my yoga instructor, midwife and the many women whom I have talked to (not very scientific, I know!):

- As in France, Italy uses midwives for most births, but the midwives and doctors almost always work in teams (unlike in France where the doctor only shows up at the birth in an emergency).
- Most hospitals and clinics in Italy will encourage a woman to move around during the first stage of labour. The midwife is there to assist during the first stage.
- Electronic fetal monitoring is rarely used.
- Epidurals are not available at all hospitals and where available, it has to be "reserved" ahead of time.
- Women are encouraged or forced to lie flat on their backs during the second stage of labour, so that the midwife and doctor "can intervene more easily".
- Episiotomies are pretty much routine.
- The c-section rate is about 40 percent for all of Italy, much higher in the south (80 percent in some regions!) and much lower in the North.
- It is apparently difficult (at least in Rome) to find a hospital that will allow "rooming in" with the baby.

Personally, between an episiotomy and a cesarean, I think I might go for the cesarean. I'm hoping for neither one, though, as I have decided to forego the hospital battles and give birth....at home!

Birthing around the world - Le Premier Cri

2009-02-12T15:40:00.000+02:00

I finally was able to watch the movie, Le Premier Cri (The First Cry). If you haven't seen and you are interested in birth, this film is for you. This documentary about birth takes you around the world - to the United States, Mexico, Brazil, France, Niger, India, Russia, Japan, Vietnam - to witness all kinds of births - home, hospital, in the desert, in the sea, in a pool, natural, medicalized, cesarian, with a doctor present, completely unassisted, the works. Of course, along with the actual birth, you get to see how culture, wealth, religion and physical environment affect how and where women give birth.

Some reviews gave the director, Gilles de Maistre, slack for allegedly slanting the documentary towards natural birth. But as the vast majority of births in our world are still natural and take place at home, I don't think one can criticize the director for being representative in his choices of what to film. Also, Le Premier Cri does not, by any means, paint a rosy picture of all natural births. One bedouin gave birth in the desert and the baby was stillborn. Another woman had an unassisted birth in the United States and three hours after the birth, the placenta still had not come out. She risked bleeding to death. Fortunately, her friend (who was neither a doctor nor a midwife) managed to reach in and take it out!

Le Premier Cri does not pass judgment on how any of the births take place, natural or medicalized. And if there is one thing that you do learn from the film, it's that childbirth might be universal but just like everything else, how you go about it can sure depend on where you live!

Moving on...

2009-01-19T18:08:00.006+02:00

It's been a while since I last posted! Lots has been happening in our little globetrotter family since then. For one, we have a globetrotter baby on the way this May! Baby might not get much of a chance to experience Italy, however, as it is entirely possible that we'll move to another destination before the end of this summer. On the other hand, my four-year old will have had her fill of Italy. In addition to expecting pasta at every meal, she now speaks Italian fairly fluently, albeit with an anglo accent. She will likely forget most of her Italian once we move from here but I am told that she will retain a predisposition for it later in life, should she choose to learn the language again.

In other moving on news, our friends Steve and Linda, an American couple living in Rome and parents to three girls, have announced that they are moving to Bali, Indonesia for a year. They aren't moving there for the beaches or the weather. They're going for the schools! Or should I say, one school in particular. Meet The Green School. Providing a holistic education for children from pre-school to year 8, this school combines ecological awareness and the pedogogy of Rudolph Steiner with the academically rigourous international baccalaureate programme. And the school is built almost entirely of bamboo!

The Green School has been making waves in the mainstream press. CNN International recently did a report on The Green School in its program Eco Solutions. The New York Times mentioned it in its travel section in September 2008. And a recent issue of Conde Nast magazine even recommends to its readers to visit the school as a tourest destination, stating "Harvest lemongrass, rambutan and tapioca alongside students in the garden, milk goats for the school's own organic ice cream, and enjoy a gourmet lunch plucked straight from the surrounding fields." I think I'll skip on the goat's milk ice cream and continue enjoying my gelato for the time being. But the rest of the school sure sounds good to me.

I'm just wondering if there are other families out there who have changed cities or countries principally for a school that they have chosen for their kids. Anyone?

What's a Third Culture Kid?

2008-07-29T11:35:00.003+02:00

Twenty years ago, Diane and Avi Schwarz, both native New Yorkers, decided that they loved Italy so much that they wanted to move there and start a new life. So they up and left, just like that. They rented a tiny apartment in Rome and had two sons, one after the other. The sons attended the local public Italian school and rapidly learned Italian, as children are prone to do. Meanwhile, home life and family activities and events were strictly English in language and American in culture. And of course, all family vacations have been to the States.

The Schwarz sons are now just completely high school in Rome. When the younger one is asked, "Do you feel American or Italian?", he answers "In Italy, I feel American. When we are in the States, I feel Italian."

The Schwarz sons are "third culture kids". Third Culture Kids are children who grow up away from their family's "home" country. Sociologists have found that third culture kids become both "a part of" and "apart from" their local environment, creating a "third culture" that does not wholly belong to either their "home" culture or the local culture where they live.

Third culture kids have their own particular issues that their parents have to watch out for. There are the obvious ones like ensuring that their child has a proper mother tongue. My daughter hears English from me, French from her father and Italian all around her. She's more or less trilingual. So which language is her mother tongue? (I'm trying to make sure that it's English!). How can I make sure that she is able to communicate in all three languages without rendering her not great in any language?

There are also more subtle issues facing third culture kids, relating to identity and the need of a "home". For a third culture kid, simple questions like, "Where are you from?" can require reflection. And often a third culture kids discovers, upon entering her passport country at age 16 to live (possibly for the first time in her life), that she knows a lot less about her "home" culture than she thought. She may have American parents, maybe even went to American schools overseas and speaks the English language like an American. But she realizes on "re-entry" that she doesn't like driving everywhere, she hates American food, it's too cold, she can't talk about anything with people and she doesn't understand why everyone dresses so badly.

Probably the best thing that we expatriates can do for our children is to make them feel grounded somewhere. Our daughter will probably end up feeling culturally more "French" than Canadian and although part of me is reluctant to let her grow up without knowing much about backbacon, beer, and baseball (sniff, sniff), the other part of me knows that I need to let her latch 0n to one culture, for her own feeling of identity, and as long as we're in Europe, it might as well be the French identity.

Can monolingual parents teach their children another language?

2008-07-24T12:27:00.004+02:00

No. If you do not speak Spanish fluently, you cannot teach your child Spanish. Any attempt to speak to your child in Spanish will, in addition to feeling wholly unnatural, end up in conveying a bad accent and lots of mistakes, to boot. Don't even try. Your job is to pass YOUR mother tongue on to your child, not a tongue that is foreign to you.

But here's what you can do. Tell your little one that YOU want to learn Spanish and invite him to learn it with you. Listen to Spanish songs (and later on, stories) on CD together. Look at photo books with Spanish words in them and try to say them together (ideally, in conjunction with a CD or tape providing the proper pronunciation as a reference). Watch Spanish Sesame Street together. Attend Spanish playgroups together. All of these activities will give you and your child a basic vocabulary. (I should add that you should take this route even if YOU already have this basic vocabulary but do not speak fluently).

Beyond the foregoing, you need outside help. Do you have Spanish speaking neighbours? Employees? A relative? Is there a bilingual or Spanish preschool near you? You will not be able to teach your child a language that you don't speak fluently but you can find the outside resources that will allow your child to learn the language.

Remember, a child needs between 20 and 24 hours a week of a language in order to speak at a "native" level. But even if his exposure doesn't add up to that many hours, your child has a good chance of obtaining fluent comprehension and/or a disposition for the language. And that's good, too!

6 Items that every globetrotter family should have

2008-07-20T11:35:00.003+02:00

One or more electric bikes - We own two. Might not be as handy in some North American cities where car travel is imperative, but here in Europe, having a bicycle for getting around makes life so much easier. An electric bike is a lifesaver in hilly cities like Rome, where a motorino is too dangerous for a child to ride on and driving in the city center is impossible.

A Leap Frog Globe - Fantastic for learning geography or just minute facts about places near and far.

An Ergo or Kozy baby carrier - For taking your under-3 year old anyplace where a stroller just isn't practical.

Friends who speak another language - Playdates with friends whose home language is not the same as yours will open your child's mind to the idea that his language is not the only one.

An open mind about new cuisines (and a closed mind to standard fast food) - This one is tough when your children are picky eaters. Last week, we introduced our daughter to Thai food. She wasn't too keen on it. The week before, she tried Indian, which she liked. We just keep presenting her with different kinds of food in the hope that one day, she won't always ask for pasta whereever we go in the world. :-) We never go to Macdonalds or Burger King, so she has never heard of those places. That way, there is no risk that she will want to eat there when we are on the road. :-)

Einstein Kids and Dora the Explorer DVDs - I'm not a huge fan of television but I have to give credit where it is due. These two programmes do a good job of introducing kids to other cultures. In fact, just last week, after watching an Einstein Kids episode about Igor Stravinsky's Firebird, our daughter said "Mommy, I would like to visit Russia. And I even have a snowsuit, so I wouldn't be too cold there.

Can TV teach your child a second language?

2008-06-18T15:00:00.002+02:00

I met 8-year old Dalia at a birthday party that my daughter was attending. Dalia was doing handsprings on the front lawn and when I caught a glimpse of her tumbling, I said my 4-year old daughter “Look at what that girl is doing! Would you like to try gymnastics one day? Doesn’t it look like fun?” (The alpha mom in me never takes a break…).

“I can do other stuff, too!” Dalia said, when she overheard me.

Now, this party was in an Italian home for a girl in my daughter’s French kindergarten, so I was a little surprised to hear Dalia speak to me in English. I knew that her family had just moved here from Egypt but I also knew that in Egypt, she had attended the French school, so how was it that she spoke almost fluent English?

After talking to Dalia about gymnastics, I asked, “And tell me, where did you learn English, Dalia? You speak it so well, just like an American.”

“In Egypt!”, she replied, as if this was obvious. I looked at her quizzically.

“But in Egypt, people speak Arabic,” I replied, scratching my head.

“Yeah, but whenever we watched TV or DVDs, it was in English.”

That would explain why Dalia not only spoke with an almost perfect American accent, but seemed to have all the current expressions down pat. But I was still incredulous.

“You’re telling me that you learned English just from watching TV and that’s it??”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” she replied, with a shrug.

Now, Dalia’s parents are diplomats, so that probably is not “pretty much it”. She has likely been in many social gatherings where she has heard English being spoken (this birthday party being just one example). And although her mom speaks to her exclusively in Arabic, Dalia has probably heard her mother speaking English (albeit with a slight Arabic accent) to other diplomats and expats, in Egypt and here in Rome.

Nevertheless, it sounds like television has played a big role in transmitting language comprehension and (surprise!) even speaking ability to Dalia.

I still don’t advocate letting children watch unlimited television, but Dalia’s case just goes to show, if they’re going to watch it, why not get them to watch in another language?

2008-04-06T21:25:00.005+02:00

Another Paris vs. Rome inquiry has landed in my Inbox:

Hi Caroline,

What a wonderful resource you seem to be. I am so glad I stumbled upon your blog. I am an American mom living in Paris with my 19 month old daughter and my Canadian husband....

We are considering moving to Rome and I'd love to hear anything you have to say: about living there as a mom, what's available for your daughter, preschools, pre-preschools etc...my daughter is not in creche here. I do counseling and coaching and work from home so my husband and I share babycare duties. But if we move, I would really like to get her into something group oriented...can you tell me anything about that?

Also, schools...what do you think compared to France?

Any info regarding neighborhoods would be great too.

Sorry to bombard you with questions. We just don't know where to start finding info! We moved to Paris on our own and took years to make it "familiar" but Rome is a blank state.

Any thoughts, opinions, suggestions would be so greatly appreciated!

Thank you!- Tamara

Tamara,

The Italians LOVE children but from a practical perspective, Paris is definitely more family-friendly than Rome, and that includes availability of childcare. Unlike in Paris, public daycare is not available in Rome unless you can show poverty of Dickensian proportions. Private daycare is available but quality ones are hard to come by, especially in the centre. There is a darling Montessori nursery at the Istituto Nazareth in Prati (via cola di Rienzo, 140). It fills up quickly, though. You generally would need to register your child by March to get her in for September of the same year.

In Italy, public preschool (scuola materna) starts at age three, as in France, and goes for three years. Unlike école maternelle in France, scuola materna consists mostly of unstructured play and does not have a formal programme of any kind that teachers must follow. So children in scuola materna will not necessarily learn their letters or numbers (often they end up learning that at home) and they certainly will not learn cursive writing as they would in the French system at age five.

As for foreign schools in Rome, there are a bunch of British schools, the French lycee, another private French école maternelle, Marymount International School, and the American Overseas School. Check out this site for English-speaking schools in Rome.

Neighbourhoods: I'm a big fan of living near the centro storico (historical centre). Prati is also a great area because there are lots of stores and it is walking distance to the historical centre and it is on the metro line. (Public transit in Rome is not great, by the way. Count your blessings in Paris.) Some people like Parioli, which is this upscale bourgeois district a little further away from the centre. It is accessible to a few parks but I don't see any other advantage to living there. You need to take a bus to the centre (not even a metro) and it is quite residential. But really, it all depends on what you are looking for. Probably the wisest this to do would be to decide where you want to send your daughter to school at age three (French school? British school? American school?) and find something close to it.

Living in Rome as a mom? Again, there is nowhere near the same network of English-speaking moms as in Paris, but recently, a friend of mine established Rome Mama. I'm hoping that it will flourish.

Best of luck!

2008-03-15T09:33:00.011+02:00

This e-mail arrived in my Inbox the other day:

Caroline,
I am a single mom to a wonderful 14 (almost 15) month old daughter. I was born and raised in California and am attending UCLA right now completing my BA in English Lit. I still have almost two years left, but I am strongly considering moving to Europe for grad school. My ex already said he would be supportive of my moving anywhere as long as he can have open visitation with our daughter where we live..... so I am trying to find leads on grad programs in or around London, Rome, Paris or the South of France with excellent Creative Writing programs..... any insight? Also which place do you feel is best to raise children.... best for single moms, best for expats? Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks,

Shannon*
Mommy to Taylor

Here is my response:

Shannon,

Congrats on being a student and single mom! I know that it must be hard sometimes to get the university papers done and take care of a toddler. Way to go!

For grad studies, if you want to study in Europe, then I would go with Paris. My considerations are as follows:
London is obviously best for language of study but London is incredibly expensive and it will also be difficult to get free, quality preschool or kindergarten for your daughter.

Paris has the American University of Paris and many (French) universities. Paris is a pretty family-friendly city - there are countless playgrounds and activities for kids available throughout the year. What is more, your daughter would have the right (assuming she was at least age three), to attend quality universal public and free école maternelle (French preschool /kindergarten) half- or all-day (virtually all children attend, so your daughter will have few or no playmates if you keep her out of it).

Paris also has an excellent support system for expat parents in a group called Message Mother Support Group. I haven't seen an organization like it in any other city.

Rome has the American University of Rome as well as John Cabot Univerity. Universal preschool also starts at age three here. The network for expats is much more limited than in Paris. There is nothing like Message Mother Support Group here. There is the American Women's Association of Rome but it tends to be focused on older women who have lived here for 20 years.

Good luck in your pursuits and let me know what you decide and if you have any more questions, just send me another email!

If you have a question that you would like to ask about taking your family abroad or teaching your child a new language at home, drop me an email at globetrotterparent@gmail.com!

*Names have been changed.

Bilingual children do better!

2008-03-10T17:56:00.003+02:00

You may already know that bilingual schoolchildren perform significantly better on standardized tests, are better at problem solving, are better at mathematics and, of course, language. But did you know that bilingual children also tend to read earlier?

Dr. Ellen Bialystok, a York University linguist, concluded from her studies that children who are exposed to a second language early in life learn to read at a younger age than their monolingual peers. In her study, preschool children were tested on their understanding of letters as symbols. The children who spoke English only could recite the letters but could not read without the help of pictures. On the other hand, the bilingual preschoolers understood written language without the use of pictures. The bilingual children scored twice as high on language tests as the monolingual children. Dr. Bialystok concluded that the bilingual children were simply better prepared to tie symbols to words and words to meaning!

Language Immersion - Can it work?

2008-03-07T17:33:00.009+02:00

Language immersion is getting popular these days. Mandarin immersion schools are popping up everywhere between San Diego and Vancouver. French immersion schools are available for children throughout English-speaking Canada. And of course, more and more Spanish immersion schools are appearing everywhere in the United States. But here is the 60,ooo Dollar (or is that Euro, nowadays?) question: does language immersion work?

Here in Rome, Italian parents are so eager for their children to speak another language that I often have the opportunity to meet Italian children who attend the French school or one of the English schools. The results are...not stunning. Most of the kids can understand the immersion language fine but their speaking ability remains limited.

This is not surprising. Even at a French or English school in Rome, the classrooms are filled with...other Italian children... who speak...you guessed it, Italian with one another. So the children are getting exposure to the immersion language exclusively from their teachers. In that environment, it is unlikely that the child will ever become bilingual as a result of immersion alone. He or she may eventually be able to speak the language somewhat fluently but even there, there are many, many cases where this simply does not happen.

Another risk of immersion is that the child learns to read and write neither the immersion language, nor his or her mother tongue very well...

My advice for those considering immersion education for their children is this: unless you can offer additional support for your child in that language either at home or in the local environment, don't expect your child to become bilingual!

Who can provide additional language-support to a child who attends an immersion school? Any mother tongue-speaker you can find. A parent or grandparent who speaks the language (as a mother tongue, mind you), an au-pair, a babysitter or a nanny. What is crucial is that there be someone in addition to just the teachers at school, either in family life or in the local environment (for example, if your child is in Spanish immersion AND you live in a predominantly hispanic neighbourhood where your child hears Spanish spoken every day), who speaks to your child in that language on a frequent and regular basis.

Why won't my child speak to me in English?

2008-03-01T17:29:00.002+02:00

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet many "transplanted" moms. Unlike "expat" moms who are just in a foreign country for a defined term, transplanted moms have effectively immigrated to the country and adopted it as their new home. Often, a transplanted mom's husband is a "local".

Of all the challenges that transplanted moms face, getting their kids to speak English often is the most difficult one to surmount.Take Andrea. She is from the United Kingdom, married to a French guy and lives in France. They have two school-aged daughters.

"I thought raising my kids in English would be automatic," Andrea says. "It never occurred to me when they were born that they might not be bilingual."But at age 12 and 10, Andrea's girls are nowhere near bilingual. While Andrea has consistently spoken to her daughters in English from the day they were born, her daughters, from their first word, have always spoken to their mom in French. Attempting to read an English book is too much of a chore to even bother and watching movies in anything but the dubbed "version française" is a challenge for them.

"Friends said that I should refuse to answer my girls when they asked me a question in French," Andrea says. "I called that 'language blackmail' and I refused to engage in it. Now I regret not having taken that approach."

Andrea is one of many transplanted moms who just can't get her kids to bother with English. They understand when their mom talks to them and that's about the extent of their fluency.

Here are some tips for avoiding this situation.

1. Recognize that your child needs a minimum amount of time per week exposed to English if she is going to learn to understand and speak the language fluently. Your child is not going absorb the English language by osmosis just because one of her parents happens to be an English speaker. Most experts in multilingualism say that a child needs about 20 to 24 hours per week of exposure to English to gain true fluency. Exposure, for this purpose, includes listening to a person talk to the child in that language, listening to people talk to each other in English, hearing it on television or radio, and the child herself speaking English.

Lots of moms complain that their child does not speak English but when you get the details of the exposure the child gets, it looks something like this: the minority language parent works full time and the child is in the local school or daycare where he hears the local language all day. He only sees the minority parent a couple of hours per weekday. Part of the time at home, the minority parent is talking to his or her spouse, in the local language of course. Then on the weekend, the family is with friends and relatives and of course the local parent has to speak the local language with the friends and relatives. Then there is the TV, which broadcasts in the local language... You get the picture.

If you want your child to learn your language, you are going to have to make an effort to make it happen. This may mean ensuring that you talk to your child as much as possible when you are home (more than you normally talk), getting a English-mother-tongue babysitter to pick your child up from daycare early and spend a couple of hours with her, and/or avoiding the relatives on weekends and getting together with other English-speaking families. Bilingualism is not going to happen if you are not ensuring adequate exposure in some way.

2. Always speak to your child in English. This piece of advice sounds self-evident, yet how often I heard my Anglo-saxon mommy friends in France tell their little one to "get into the poussette" (the stroller) or that it was "time for their afternoon gouter" (snack).It is easy to fall into the trap of using local language words for certain items but whenever you do that, you 1) send the message that using the local language with you is acceptable and 2) deny your child an important piece of vocabulary in English. Imagine your child showing up in your home country when he is older and not knowing the English word for "snack"!

3. Original version only! In our home, we have a rule that when we watch a film or television show, it has to be in original version. We watch French films in French, English films in English and Italian films in Italian. Dubbing is something you have to get used to as a child to like. Adults who watch dubbed movies do so because they grew up with dubbed movies. If your child does not grow up watching dubbed versions, there is a good chance that he or she will always prefer watching the original English version of movies and shows when he is older, even if another language is his dominant language.

4. Books, radio, DVDs...in English! Spend at least half an hour reading to your small child in English. And make it a rule that all animated DVDs are to be watched in the English version (all non-animated stuff in the original version, of course!). You don't need to iterate this rule to your child. Just make it so. He wants a DVD? It gets put on in English. If you have access to an English radio station, tune into it! And don't forget to watch the news on CNN or BBC in addition to the local news that your partner insists on watching at 20h00 every evening!

5. If your spouse understands English, consider speaking to him in English if you do not already (at least when your child is with you). It might feel artificial at first but switching to English when talking to your spouse can ramp up the English exposure for your child significantly. Remember, your spouse can still talk to you in his language. This tactic also reinforces that association your child draws between you and your mother tongue.