Enrolling your kid in a Flemish school in Brussels

Finding a school in Brussels is always a challenge (unless you are an expat and can afford to enroll them into one of the international schools). Flemish schools have a somewhat higher reputation in terms of quality than the French-speaking schools, so they tend to fill up faster. Also, there are much less Flemish schools in Brussels, so that adds to the challenge of finding a good one that is not too far away from your house.

Since my husband is Flemish and both kids are being brought up billingual Spanish-Flemish (picking up some French along the way) we have chosen the Flemish-speking education system for both. Baby Pingu goes to a Flemish creche and Bibu goes to a Flemish "basisschool" (kindergarden and primary school). We recently learnt that brothers or sisters of pupils at Flemish-speaking schools born in 2012 had priority to be enrolled at the same school as their big siblings for the school year 2014-2015, provided they became enrolled until Friday 15th November 2013 (end of this week)

There is a website (also evailable in French and English) that explains the whole procedure -also if your kid has no bigger brothers or sisters- on how to enroll him or her to the school year 2014-2015. I have no clue if anything like this exists in the French-speaking education system in Brussels. I could only find this website which provides more info.

One word to the wise, hurry up!

 

Lice attack!

Well, I think it was a question of time, and the time came for lice to attack.

Along with the rentrée came the notes from school saying that there were lice found in kids in the class of Bibu. It's quite common and every few weeks we get these notes, but it has never meant much for us, other than spraying Bibu's hair with a "lice-repelent".

That was up to now. Last weekend I asked Mr M to check my hair, as it was feeling a bit itchy. Lo and behold, he found a lice in my hair! Despair! Being long haired (for Belgian standards, at least) and I suspect, having the blood type that attracts all kinds of insect bites, I knew I was an easy target and that probably the lice came from my oldest son.

Sure enough, both kids had them. It was a question of getting the anti-lice lotion working ASAP and combing through (lots of fun). Since I am always on the look for more natural, less chemical laden stuff, I came accross this anti-lice lotion (sold in pharmacies and in places like de IU)

It's an oliy lotion, made of plants extracts, which supposedly blocks the lice airways so they can't breathe anymore and die (nice) You have to put enough lotion on the hair so that it's all oily, give it a good massage and then leave it on for 10 minutes. Then rinse it a bit, slather on your normal shampoo, wash as usual and spend extra time rinsing it, as otherwise the hair will still look oily afterwards. Towel-dry the hair and then spend some time combing with the special little comb provided to extract any surviving little beasts.

It's recommended that you do a second application a few days later, just to be sure. We used it on both kids and so far they seem lice-free. It's supposedly only for kids older than 3 years old, but I used it also on Pingu and it was all OK. I would still recommend you check with your doctor or pharmacist first, as it's an essential oils-based product and it can provoke allergy.

So, this was our first foray into the land of Belgian lice (haha). I know it's extremely common when you have school-age kids, but still, not nice AT ALL. I think I would still do a preventive treatment maybe once every two weeks or so while the lice season lasts.