Raising kids the local way in Hungary

Perhaps I should not even try to give my opinion on this subject as my son was an adult when he was in Hungary.

I have spoken to several mothers of smaller children , ex pats who,s child was in school in Hungary.

My statements come from the horses mouth.

I had an American friend who,s husband was from Canada.

Her in-laws were Hungarian , her FIL had escaped Hungary at age 15 back in 1956.

She had given birth to her two boys in Budapest.The eldest was 8 years old.

He did not speak Hungarian or Yiddish.

Her FIL had been paying for years for the boy to attend the American school.

He was doing fine there.

Due to outside circumstances he could not longer support paying for the schooling.

Mt friend enrolled her boy in a regular Hungarian school;

He was put back about 2 grade levels because he did not understand Hungarian.

His self esteem sank.

She decided to enroll him in a Hebrew school; He also had a difficult time there due to not speaking Yiddish.

She and her husband were very upset about how their son was reacting to all the rejection.

They packed up and moved back to Canada.

At the US embassy , I chatted with a fellow American/Hungarian lady;

She had her 12 year old half black daughter with her; The girl needed a new passport.

Nice young lady but very upset about school  situation.

Her Hungarian was not good and the other children made fun of her daily.

She lived with her mom and Hungarian grandparents.

The women was divorced from a US black military man.

They moved to Hungary to help care for the women,s elderly parents.

Even so, once they got the girls passport in order, they were heading back to the US because of the school situation.

We also knew a Hungarian couple a good 25 years ago who had a young daughter, about 12. They had a nice retirement, bought a nice home and shipped over a nice car;

The children in the countryside school teased the girl to no end, making fun of her accent even though she spoke Hungarian. They sold out and left Hungary.

One more family who,s experience was not good.

In Las Vegas my husband worked with a Hungarian Gypsy man at a taxi company.

Nice couple with 3 teen age boys.

They sold everything in the US and moved to Hungary. The man,s family lived in the 8th district.

In fact we once went to visit his mother to drop off a gift from him.

Nice lady.

OK, so they got to Hungary and enrolled their boys into a normal school in the 8th district.

The boys were made fun off too; Everything from their accents to the fact they had nice trainers and clothing. Heard it directly from the parents in the US after they moved back to Las Vegas.

Ran into the couple in a dept; store and they told us all about how terrible their boys felt in Hungary. They also had no choice but to leave for the sanity of their children.

4 tales from 4 different families.

My kids are fluent Hungarian and English speakers.

The Hungarian woman at the embassy should have spoken to her kids in Hungarian continuously.  We were determined our kids would be bilingual.  Some people did not want to teach their kids "the old country" language.  It's a total mistake.  It's a skill they need to learn when they are young - like riding a bike or driving a car.   

They did have problems in school and our older one still has a slightly odd Hungarian accent but she's more or less lived here all her life albeit in a dual language household. On the other hand, they did all their education here in the government system.

We hear stories of my kids getting a hard time from officials for having different accents, even now they are or are nearly adults.   I find that entire thing really odd.  I hardly notice if people have accents as everyone around has a different accent to mine.

Part of this is to do with years of Hungarian political nationalism and xenophobia.  A lot of Hungarians (the videki) are incapable of speaking English, German or anything else and so only heard government media.  It might improve now Fidesz is out but it will take some years to overcome it.

MP is going to kill the existing state TV and re-establish it.  Yay! I'd recommend to him to subtitle TV programmes in future and not to dub them.  It will force people to learn they are not living on Mars and speaking other languages is just normal.