How traumatic is elementary school in a language you don't speak at all?

It's kindergarten. She will be able to do it in French. She will also not be the first child in the program whose family speaks English at home. I'm not a product of that system, but several of my cousins are, and none of them spoke French at home. Give it a shot. There are many more potential upsides than downsides to this. And you will die of the cuteness when she starts speaking French with a tiny, perfect French accent.

Just to respond a bit to ninjablob's comment above, because it relates to my field of work, "knowing a lanugage like it's part of your being" isn't something that the scientific consensus considers negative, or even undesirable. Translation organizations have various names for this kind of innate capacity to mentally translate and switch between languages, but, to use the UN terminology, "perfect command" of a language is both desirable and much simpler when language instruction begins at a very early age. There's a gulf of difference separating the development of language skills at age 5 than at age 10, and there's a monumental body of research dedicated to human development and language acquisition. There's little in the literature that suggests that harm comes from immersing a child in a new language when they're still in the so-called 'sensitive period', but plenty of research on the difficulty (and potential implications of) doing so after the critical phases of acquisition have passed. The difference between the two is the difference between learning an additional first language and (struggling to learn) a second language. Age 5 is by most measures squarely within the sensitive period. Were your daughter 10, and not 5, this would be a more difficult dilemma. Check out http://www.psypress.com/journals/details/1048-9223/ if you want to explore a bit more. In any case, any of the options you propose are equally valid. I wish you well in your new city!

I moved to Germany when I was 10, and was put in a german school without knowing any german. I really hated it. I became fluent in german after a couple of years, but it was *work* and honestly i think it has made me shyer and hide in the background even more than i otherwise would have. I remember me and my parents struggling over my homework for hours and hours and feeling like a failure and stupid. That part probably only lasted a few months to a year but that's a long time as a child. My sister was 8 and more outgoing and picked up the language a bit easier but it was still work for her and took at least 6 months to adjust. The idea I hear a lot that kids are resilient and pick up a language easily felt like a large part of the problem tbh (and was a narrative i was very aware of failing) It certainly can be true but it can also be linked to kind of not taking children's lives and problems seriously? (I think there's this idea that there's a 'magic time' for language learning, where kids just have to immerse themselves fully and they'll speak the language without any extra effort or input. This for sure is partly true, largely, I suspect, because at a young age children are spending a lot of time and getting lots of guidance basically still learning their native language. The flipside of this idea though is the idea that if children don't immerse themselves right now they'll be losing something they can never regain, wasting an opportunity they don't fully understand (for instance I remember my parents getting angry with me for wanting to make friends with english speaking children at school- because how was i going to learn, when honestly it was a lifeline for me). I think the whole childhood is a magical language learning time view can be really counterproductive and cause lots of unnecessary anguish: I know lots of people whose parents immersed them in a language at a young age, which they spoke for a while but then forgot entirely, or whose knowledge was really rudimentary and quickly overtaken by children getting regular lessons in the same language at school (this particularly so for 'prestige' languages taught by rich parents with the idea of children learning languages young as a kind of lifehack*). Similarly I know lots of people who have learnt to speech languages with great degrees of fluency in their teens and adulthood. Which is not to say that the french language school is a bad idea it sounds like it could work really well, but just to give some perspectives against the common ideas that it'll (1) necessarily be easy, or be hard but at a time of life that doesn't really count (2) make her 'fluent' in a way that can never be undone *I think the whole thing is also really linked to ideas of naturalness and nativeness and what counts as speaking a language fluently in a really pernicious way (that is also really pervasive and runs deep)- i will concede that it is easier for people who learn a language young to not have an accent that bares traces of other languages the person speaks as like the primary marker of really *knowing* a language like its part of your being, which i think should be fought against)

I'm going to second the other commenter who said they wished they'd been put in immersion sooner. I started learning French when I was about 10 and it was an uphill battle. Kids who were younger than me took it up like a sponge, which I resented at the time. Later, in college, I got a scholarship that paid me to go ahead and get my science degree as planned at my state school (in a state where students usually flee to more popular states/schools), but to also get a bachelor's degree in French language. To incentivize this deal, I also got to be an exchange student for a year and live with a host family. I was 18, had been learning French for about 8 years without any element of immersion, and moved in with my wonderful hosts feeling like I knew a lot of the language other than how to actually be conversant in it. OMG I cannot express how immediately and totally the difference between immersive and non-immersive language acquisition became clear. Night and day. I still talk about that period feeling like I could feel my brain making new connections and generating skills on an almost day-to-day basis. I was telling this to one of my instructors at the time, and she very casually responded (paraphrasing), 'now you're remembering what it was like to learn English as an infant.' That has stuck with me ever since! At 5, your daughter is a mental sponge of such plasticity that there's almost no way to relate as an adult. She's biologically adapted to language acquisition during this period in her life, and though, yes, she may feel awkward or shy for a while, in a very short time she will recognize that she can now talk like a whole bunch of other people. Even better, she'll likely get to the state--quickly--that takes adults years, decades to reach, in which her thoughts happen in English and French, rather than her French being a game of trying to listen, translate and then respond. It's the difference between a mother tongue and some high school French. In ten or fifteen years, she will almost certainly thank you for gifting her une deuxième langue maternelle.

Being bilingual has so many upsides. Yes, I had a tough time growing up, especially during puberty, but speaking 2 languages fluently has so many advantages. I moved to the US at age 3. According to my mother, I cried everyday for a month, but was fluent 6 months later. Having seen many kids who don't speak the local language, I'd say they are all resilient until about puberty. After that, kids seem to have more trouble making friends, which I feel is the key to learning a language. It also helps if the kid is not around other kids who speak his language. The other thing you need to watch out - even if you speak your mother language at home, your kids will use the language which is easiest for them. This is especially true if there is more than 1 kid at home. I spoke Japanese at home and with my very few Japanese friends, but my Japanese was very poor and I had a strong American accent which I was teased about when I moved back to Japan at age 12. Retaining the language requires effort. After I moved back to Japan, my parents basically forced me to speak English, volunteer as a translator, take the TOEIC test, etc. It helps, and most people can't tell that I haven't lived in the US in over 20 years. Again, there are bumps. I remember very few of them about moving to the US, but I remember so many things which happened after we moved back to Japan. I was teased, I was called a foreigner, I cried every night for 2 years wanting to move back to the US. However, after high school, there have only been advantages.

To your question, my mother and maternal grandmother both learned English (this is in the US) by being dropped off at school on the first day of kindergarten. Neither ever criticized that experience. We have another daughter who is 18 months, and I'm sure she will become bilingual with no effort at all. I am the parent of two bilingual children of elementary school age in the US. Please believe me when I say it is not effortless. It is blood to the end. You talk about how you and your wife want her to become bilingual as soon as possible, but your daughter says she doesn't want to speak French. You cannot make someone learn a language they don't want to. My wife and I have enough of a challenge on our hands where our kids actually like speaking their L2. I wish people would not say that children "pick up" language - that implies an ease that just is not there. If your daughter wants to speak French, she will. If she doesn't, she won't. That would not be the end of the world and she can always decide to learn French or Persian or no foreign language at all later in her life. If you are determined to send her to the French school, I think that you and your wife need to make a plan of "if she is still miserable after X weeks, we pull her out". Maybe give it four to six weeks to see if she truly doesn't want to speak French.

Short answer: don't hesitate, send her to French school. Long answer: I live in Montreal and have two kids in French school. My partner is francophone, I'm anglophone but the two of us "met" in English so we've always spoken English at home. The kids' daycare was officially bilingual but anglo in practice so my two were much more adept in English than French when they started school. Both of them had about 1/2 dozen non-French speakers in their kindergarten classes out of groups of 20. The kids don't care about language at that age, they just play. Within a few months all the kids were functional and within a year they were all more or less fluent. At this point my biggest problem is me not fitting in: my 1st and 3rd grader correct my French accent and other errors all the time, the ungrateful sprogs. More than once I've had conversations in French with their friends after school only to find out a few months later that the kids are from anglo families. Typical Montreal moment when the two anglophone parents realize 15 minutes into a conversation in French that they're both anglophones. We are in the Maguerite Bourgeoys school board and the biggest issues for me have been on my side: when I volunteer in the school I must speak French at all times, all instructions for homework are in French of course, and all official communication with the school is in French (it really helps if you can speak some French to do parent/teacher night - in my experience many of the teachers don't speak any English). In addition the rules/politics are sometimes frustrating. My eldest was told that he couldn't read an English novel in the afterschool care (totally ridiculous...), there are NO English books in the school library, the "English classes" are a joke - a couple of hours a week with the poor teacher who wheels a cart from room to room teaching children with wildly different levels of English ability. But frankly that stuff is more of a hassle for the uniligual franco kids - my kids get plenty of English books, tv and conversation at home. For me it was an easy, easy choice. I have friends who sent their daughter to a "bilingual" school in the English system. She's now finishing grade three and her spoken French is just terrible. Other friends sent their kids to regular English schools and they are learning French, but it's just not the same level. My kids switch effortlessly between the two languages, both speaking and reading. It has helped me too, BTW. When I first moved here from Vancouver I spoke next to no French, and I'm quite good now. Nothing like reviewing verb tenses with your 8yo to remember how to conjugate l'imparfait! Also, and this gets a bit political, many of my anglo/allophone friends that grew up here had terrible experiences with the French school system and have opted to go for the English system for elementary instead. I think for many of them there is a strong cultural desire to do this, and to protect the anglo schools in a way, which, for the most part, have falling enrollment. Many of my friends who moved here from "away", or who are in mixed (anglo/franco) relationships have opted to send their kids to French school. We don't seem to have the same link to the English school boards. And of course, it's pretty amazing to see your child become fluent in another language so easily. The politics have changed and mellowed out since the 70s and despite the irritations I listed above the school is used to working with parents who don't have French as a first language. French school, all the way.

i moved to the U.S. at age 9 and didn't speak a word of english. i don't remember the language barrier being traumatic or anything, and i was on the shy side of the spectrum too. i imagine kids even younger will adjust fine. it seems like she "wants to speak English like people speak" because that's what the people around her speak, so she just wants to fit in. i think the immersive part of the school will take care of that issue, and then she'll want to speak French like the people speak.

My son has gone to a Spanish immersion school since kindergarten. We love it and it's been wonderful. In retrospect, I honestly cannot even remember what we told him about it beforehand! Huh. He loves it. His school is 80+% native Spanish speakers, but the vast majority of those kids also speak fluent English by the time they enroll in kindergarten. So he was in a similar situation as your daughter, it sounds like (his classmates are already bilingual and he was truly learning a language from zero). It's a 90/10 model school in case you're interested, but to be honest that 10% in kindy is barely relevant. It's mostly the "specials" such as PE and library that are in English. All grammar, math, science, etc. was taught in Spanish; the primary teachers didn't speak in English to the children. It's such a huge advantage to learn so early and get the accent down - I watch these kids, and they attempt proper pronunciations and accents so unselfconsciously. It also made my son a much better reader in English, almost instantly. I'd highly recommend it to anyone.