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Just found this site and thought it might be good for sharing ideas and experiences.  We are an English family living in Barcelona, Spain.  Our two children of 5 and 3 years old were born here.  We always speak English at home, a mixture of Spanish and English when we are in the company of friends, and the kids are taught in Catalan at school.  Our 5 year old daughter gets on very well with all three languages.  Our younger son is more delayed in his speech generally, but overall he is a much more English child!  He went to a Spanish-speaking nursery for a couple of years and now goes to the Catalan school, but he barely utters a word in either of those languages.  Unlike our daughter, he actually gets angry with us if we try to speak to him in Spanish or Catalan!  It will come in good time, I'm sure.  And I love that they will grow up to be trilingual.  

However, we're in a bit of a limbo situation now, and a move back to the UK is potentially on the cards.  It's not going to be an easy, clear-cut decision for us to make.  One of my major concerns is that the children will lose their Spanish (at least in the case of my 5 year old daughter who has a good command of all three languages).  I view the Catalan as a useful bonus as long as we live here, but elsewhere it doesn't serve much purpose.  I am therefore wondering what would be the best way for us to maintain and improve their Spanish if we went back to the UK.  Has anyone else found themselves in a similar situation?  

We have toyed with the idea of my husband making a decision to only speak to them in Spanish, if we moved back to the UK.  But this might feel quite fake.  He is very fluent (we both studied Spanish at university and he has worked here in a Spanish/Catalan-speaking office for 6 years), but obviously not native.  I don't think I could do this with them, as I have nearly 5 and a half years under my belt as a SAHM only speaking in English with them, and that would be too big a change.  Nor am I as fluent as my husband.  His vocabulary is generally much more extensive, but when it comes to home-, children-, health-related vocabulary, I'm sure my vocab beats his!  Another idea might be to decide that on a certain day of the week, either Saturday or Sunday, or maybe even the whole weekend, we only speak to each other in Spanish within the family, and gradually encourage our son to respond in Spanish.  Or maybe there is another way that I haven't thought of yet.  I really don't know what would be the best approach, all I know is that I would be gutted to see my daughter unable to speak Spanish anymore after several months living back in the UK.  

Any experiences that you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Rachel 

No we didn't move back yet, we are still waiting for a job opportunity to come up to enable us to make the move…  Meanwhile, the kids have settled really well into the new school year and we are going with the flow, making the most of what we have here.  Maybe by Easter, who knows…  Thanks for the links, I will have a good look through them – when I get time!  Like many things, until it becomes urgent (i.e. like we get a date to move back to the UK), I won't get round to prioritising it!  Well at least for now, without any changes from us (still just speaking English at home), they remain trilingual by default ;-)

Cheers.