Apologies for being absent for so long but it has been a pretty crazy couple of years.
Been very occupied with educating and raising our little one (almost 4 now) in multiple countries and adjusting to another European war.
The UK is not doing particularly well right now which has kept me very occupied.
How are things in the land of the stars and stripes and Canadaland?
You’re up late! The US is well, thanks. Glad to hear the little one is doing well! How’s she doing? I imagine preschool is a big thing now?
Canada still only has 1 lonely Cheesecake Factory.
My aunt passed away a few weeks ago.
Welcome back. Just a little too late for RPS.
Living the dream
trying to survive post-Trumpism
Oh us? Nothing really. We were just spending all our time saying how much we missed you and wish we were living your life and not ours because we hate ourselves.
ketamine clinics are popping up everywhere and online too
Life is a lot more complicated (and expensive) in Europe due to the war in Ukraine.
Not sure about the US (also high inflation), but in the UK there has been a material impact on the standard of living due to the high energy prices.
Prices seem to be stabilising now so we’ll just have to see how that develops.
Just finished some late work over here (been a busy end of year season here for actuarial folks due to IFRS 17)
Yes. The little one is in pre-prep nursery and about to start reception next year.
Learning English & Portuguese and quite happy running around with her friends.
Sorry to hear about that.
My wife’s father was diagnosed with dementia last year and we are currently helping out her mother with the financial and legal situation regarding long-term care and POA decision-making. Its generally not been an easy process.
Sorry to hear that, hope you guys are doing OK
Did you teach her both as her first language, or did you speak English to her and then later start teaching her Portuguese? Curious if you just randomly speak English or Portuguese words to her while she’s learning.
My wife talks to her in Portuguese at home, and then she does full time English at school. We kind of combine both now a bit more at home but she much prefers Portuguese at home still.
The prevailing view from the people I talked to regarding how to best encourage bilingualism at home (in our case) was native language at home (Portuguese) with the additional language (English) full-time at school.
Once she is a bit older (7), we are planning on her doing Spanish and French, as you can learn those from Portuguese (all latin derived languages).
Wife & I agreed that those four languages would be enough of a challenge for the little one (and something to aim for). I will be very happy if she is fluent in all four by the time she goes off to University.
Agreed, that would be incredible. So when’s the next one due!?
We ultimately decided not to have more children.
Even one was very tiring (first 3 years) plus the costs (long-term) are enormous (private school, IB school, undergraduate, postgraduate) now due to inflation (education inflation has been off the charts) over here
in Europe.
My brother had two (he makes a bit more ££ than I do) and he is struggling a bit. Costs have just exploded over here in the UK.
Oh you don’t need to tell me, I think my wife and I have officially capped out with 4. Doing the annuity math to fully fund college education in the US is depressing. Your equity returns basically just offset tuition inflation, rather than really appreciate anything.
Regarding multilingualism, I believe research shows that most children can cope quite easily with four different languages and not experience any major difficulties. We had neighbours whose at 6 year old spoke Dutch and Swedish at home, English at school and quite passable Mandarin as well. And if you speak with educated Chinese-Malaysians, they all seem to speak a minimum of four languages - Malay, English and at least two Chinese languages. Malaysian Indians seem to be similarly polyglotal. They all sen to say it’s a combination of what they spoke at home, with neighbours and at school and none of them think it’s unusual. I think as much exposure as possible and at early an age as possible is a big help.
Welcome back! @Marcie and @ao_fan are missing! Other than that, inflation sucks, politics are still politics. Wife and I popped out a 2nd kid. Pretty sure we’re done for similar resource consumption concerns.
My brother in law is American but lives in Germany. He predominantly spoke English around the house to his kid, while his wife predominantly spoke German. The kid went to a German school so his German is stronger, but his English is pretty good.