By far the best results in learn­ing the new lan­guage will be yielded in exchanges, in which nei­ther the host fam­ily, nor the teacher speak the children’s native lan­guage.

There­fore we urge all involved par­ties not to “assist” the child in his/her native lan­guage but to famil­iar­ize them in a patient and friendly man­ner with their new lan­guage. Every day spent speak­ing their native lan­guage is a wasted day and slows down the child’s learn­ing process. For that rea­son it is highly rec­om­mended to leave every­thing that the child could use in his/her native lan­guage at home, such as books, CDs, DVDs etc. The chil­dren should sim­ply for­get about their native lan­guage for length of the exchange in order to com­pletely immerse them­selves in the new lan­guage and its sound.

The chil­dren are chal­lenged to inte­grate them­selves to the best of their abil­ity, to accept the for­eign lifestyle habits and make the most of their exchange. They should com­pre­hend that they will need to adapt to the new fam­ily, not the other way around. The fam­i­lies on the other side take full respon­si­bil­ity for the for­eign child and treat the child like one of their own — with all rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties. The exchange child is part of the fam­ily — not a guest!

The chil­dren com­mu­ni­cate reg­u­larly with their bio­log­i­cal fam­i­lies, but it is rec­om­mended that this does not occur more than once a week. Vis­its back home would be counter-productive and are not encour­aged. The host par­ents choose an appro­pri­ate school for the exchange stu­dent together with Aven­turo. The child con­tin­ues to attend school, does his/her home­work, writes exams etc. The free time is filled with hob­bies, meet­ing friends, and of course the child spends hol­i­days, week­ends, par­ties and fam­ily reunions together with the host family.