The almost swearing song

The kids brought this one home today:

...pican pican los mosquitos, pican con gran disimulo,
unos pican en la cara y otros pican en el cu...
...ando era chiiquitito, me mandaron a la calimba
y ahora q soy mayorcito me mandaron a la mier...
....manita la pequeña, se caso con un recluta,
y al cabo de 9 meses la llamaron hija de pu...
...blico una revista, que una tia en bicicleta,
se cayo por el camino, y se le vieron las te...
...lo digo te lo digo, no te cases con mi hija,
si te casas con mi hija, te voy a cortar el pi...
...can pican los mosquitos......

Los Xunguis: Catalunya’s better version of Where’s Willy

Our kids have always loved puzzle books, where they have to find some character, objects or work out who the bad guy is.

The latest series they’ve fallen in love with is called “Los Xunguis”, who a race of very naughty monsters, usually up to various types of nonsense.

You can order them on Amazon or find them in most book stores in Sant Cugat. Their latest favorite is called “Los Casos de Xunguiholmes”, where, as as you can imagine, you have to solve various Xungui-related crimes.

Mary had a little lamb

Our five year old at the dinner table today:

"We're eating lamb?"

"Yes."

"Is it dead?"

"Yes, I hope so."

"Where is the wool?"

"Umm, we took it off first."

"Is the lamb an animal that is in peligro de extincion?"

The somewhat sad resolution to our own school bullying case

Our older son was pretty miserable last year due to two kids that would continually taunt him during recess. He was continuously stressed out and suffered from very low self-esteem. We were considering changing schools, but first wanted to make sure that we helped him with his issues so that the next school wouldn’t have the same problem.

This year school has been great and our son is super happy and hasn’t complained about bullying at all. We asked him the other day why they weren’t bullying him anymore and his answer was “There’s a new Chinese kid in our class and the bullies bother him now.”

I think one of the reasons that Spain is far behind the curve on dealing with school bullying is twofold: first, it’s a society that has a very strong group instinct. My guess is that in order to develop such a strong group feeling, non-conformists need to be punished and humiliated. In North America, this would probably be considered psychological bullying. Here it’s called “formación del grupo”.

Secondly, the US has had some incredibly tragic events (such as the Columbine massacre), which caused many school to implement and fund anti-bullying policies, such as the Olweus program:

One of the largest of these initiatives is the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, which has been implemented in several thousand U.S. schools. It is a comprehensive program that includes forming an anti-bullying committee, training staff to intervene immediately if they observe bullying and meeting with students and parents when problems occur.

In fact, a recent study showed that the percentage of kids who reported being physically bullied in the US declined from 22% in 2003 to 15% in 2008.

The Lleida school bullying case

There was a sad story in December about the case of a 10 year old boy who had been suffering from four years of bullying at school, which was so severe that it ended up putting him in hospital several times due to injuries and anxiety.

In the end, rather than dealing with the perpetrators, the school ended up sending the victim to a different school. Problem solved, right? Except perhaps for the poor kid that is on the next rung up on the totem pole.

This is still pretty typical for Spain. There isn’t really the recognition of the psychological aspects of bullying, and the burden of proof for victims is very high. There are a couple schools in Barcelona with good anti-bullying practices, such as the American School of Barcelona.

Child traumatization time again

Soon it will be time again to scare the bejeezus out of the 3+ year-old population via the collective Catalan insanity known as "colonias".

Near the end of the school year, the preschoolers get sent (without parents) for 3 nights to a farm somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, where they will supposedly become self-sufficient and self-confident.

At our school this is not optional, and you pay even if you don't want your kids to go. Luckily our friendly doctor at the CAP wrote us a note saying that our children would be traumatized if they went, so we got our money back.

The strange thing is that despite the efforts of Catalan parents to instill independence into their kids, most likely the kids will still be living at home by age 40.

Perhaps the kids of North America need to escape the claustrophobia of their overly safe and protected lives.

Attack of the Cromos

Our kids have been talking a lot about cromos lately, which appear to be a Spanish hybrid between stickers and collectible cards.

Talking to people my age, it looks like while we in North America were collecting stickers, kids here were collecting cromos, which are like stickers, except for the sticky part. There's also some kind of game that kids pay that involve hitting the table and having them flip over, but I didn't quite follow the explanation.

If someone has a better explanation, please let me know.

Scamming your way into a concertada school via Celiac disease

There are a couple super-exclusive concertada school (partially state supported, so cheap and good, perfect for any self-respecting Catalan) in Barcelona that parents are willing to do just about anything to get in.

All concertada schools have to (by law) use a points system for accepting students in order to ensure fair access for normal kids. Of course, this is Spain, so the next obvious step for people is to figure out how to scam the system.

The latest scam is to get a doctor's certificate (from a friendly enchufe doctor) saying that your kid has Celiac disease. Since this requires special meals (gluten free) for the kids, the parents can get an exception from the points system to jump the queue for their kids. The supposed justification being that the parents need to take their kids for lunch, so they require a school near work.

In the case we heard about, the parents were too lazy to actually take the time to take their kid out for lunch, so the school figured they'd been scammed and kicked the kid out.

Deniability and three year olds

Our three year old seems to have regressed to his terrible twos. Unfortunately, now he's taller, more dexterous and able to get into all kinds of things he is not supposed to get into. Hunting around in my home office for "regalitos" is his new favorite activity.

His latest:

"Did you take all the files out of the filing cabinet!?" I ask him in horror.

"No I didn't, because you didn't see me do it."

Perhaps he will have a future at Goldman Sachs...

Pepé Pagapoco y hoy tampoco

The title of a kids story yesterday I heard on the Radio 5 yesterday about a man that never pays for anything. The kids loved it and it was very well told by Esther de Lorenzo (and I think it's an original story, since I can't find much in Google about it).

The villagers eventually lose patience with Pepe Paga Poco and decide to cast a magic spell that makes anything that he takes without paying grow legs and run back home. He eventually becomes desperate and goes to the bank and tells them to pay for everything (and becames Pepe Pagatodo).

Link to the MP3.

Manners for bilingual kids

One of the challenges I've found in bringing up children speaking English in Spain is that they need to be more polite when in English-mode. Say "What!?" when you didn't understand something works fine in Spanish, but doesn't work so well in more up-tight cultures. Getting them to say "Please" and "Thank you" is practically impossible. It's still kind of cute when my 3 year old says "What? What?" and "Come on!", but I imagine it will become less cute as the years progress. My kids are also sounding a bit too Canadian, with the Catalan multipurpose "Eh" creeping into their speech patterns. ("Huh" is also becoming a favorite)

Luckily they are still young enough so that the "casual-use-of-swearwords-for-emphasis" isn't an issue yet, but probably will in the next couple years.

Feeling old today

Question from my six year old: "Daddy, were you born in the time of the Greeks or in the time of the Romans?"

Myths and misconceptions about learning a second language

An interesting paper about best practices when teaching a second language to children.

One point that struck me regarding English speaking kids who are put into French immersion in Quebec:

English-speaking children in late immersion programs (in which the second language is introduced in grades seven or eight) have been found to perform just as well or better on tests of French language proficiency as children who began their immersion experience in kindergarten or grade one.

Combined with this report, it makes you wonder about the wisdom of forcing immigrant children into immediate Catalan-only immersion:

The first predictor of long-term school success is cognitively complex on-grade-level academic instruction through students’ first language for as long as possible (at least through Grade 5 or 6) and cognitively complex on-grade-level academic instruction through the second language for part of the school day, in each succeeding grade throughout students’ schooling. Here, we define students’ first language as the language in which the child was nursed as an infant.

I'm happy to know that my children will be able to blame our move for any upcoming academic failures.

Diversity in action

The theme for the school carnival was diversity, so they had the kids dressed up as different cultures.

Eg, there was a bunch of kids dressed up as Chinese yelling:

Manifestación!
Chinitos en acción!

Okay. I suppose it's an improvement over Moros y cristianos.

Baby snatching epidemic in the US

When we our kids were born in the US, I remember the elaborate security measures that they took to prevent any possibility of our baby being taken from us. Special bracelets were installed that would automatically set off alarms, close airlocks, release the hounds, SWAT teams, etc.

It's good to know that the zeal for protecting babies has reduced the chance of having your baby stolen from 1 in 400,000 (5 times less likely than being killed by lightning, which is the gold standard for unlikely events) to less than 1 in 1,000,000.

I'm sure that in Spain, the watchful eye of grandmother would prevent any harm from coming to the baby. (Except perhaps death from overheating by having too many blankets)

Looking on the bright side of schools in Spain

At least they don't call the police to arrest twelve year old girls that doodle on their desks:

A 12-year-old Queens girl was hauled out of school in handcuffs for an artless offense - doodling her name on her desk in erasable marker, the Daily News has learned.

[...]

Alexa is the latest in a string of city students who have been cuffed for minor infractions. In 2007, 13-year-old Chelsea Fraser was placed under arrest for writing "okay" on her desk at Intermediate School 201. And in 2008, 5-year-old Dennis Rivera was cuffed and sent to a psych ward after throwing a fit in his kindergarten.

I didn't even know they made handcuffs for 5 year olds. Only in the US, I guess.

An unreasonable fear of coconuts

Run away everyone! It's "El Coco!"

Mothers have been were scaring their kids on the Iberian peninsula with stories about brown hairy blob-shaped creatures since the middle ages. Strangely enough, when Portuguese sailors discovered the coconut, they named it after the creature (not the other way around).

There's a lovely lullaby that goes:

Duérmete niño,
duérmete ya,
que viene el coco
y te comerá.

Sleep child,
Sleep already,
Or the coco will come
and eat you

The kids who say 'ni-ni'

On the radio there was a feature the latest sociologic trend in Spain: The ni-ni generation. It stands for neither-nor, as in neither in a job nor in at school.

There was a study back in 2009 that found that 54% of Spaniards between 18 and 34 have no hope for the career prospects. Considering that the unemployment rate for youth is now 39% (EU27 average is 19%), this isn't all the surprising.

The high school dropout rate in Spain is around 30% (vs 12% in Europe), so it's pretty easy to guess where those unemployed kids are coming from.

Why are they dropping out? Here's a clue:

Repetition rates in lower secondary education across OECD countries

El hombre del saco

If you want to scare your children in Spain, the 2nd most popular choice (#1 will be the topic of tomorrow's post) is a man who will put your child into a sack and take him away:



There was a great version of it on Contando Cuentos last week.

Contando Cuentos on Radio 5

There's an excellently read 5 minute children's story on Radio 5 (99.0 FM in Barcelona) at every day at approximately 4:40pm.

It's the highlight of our drive home now.

You can catch up on the stories at rtve.es.