Some home-exchanging families will be be taking their children with them on holiday. When evaluating whether you want to accept a home exchange request or not, the question of children is something that requires consideration.

If you are not a parent yourself, you will need to think about the suitability of your home for potential exchange partners and their kids. For example, do you have a lot of breakables? Do you have expensive carpets that are difficult to clean? Are there any unprotected high-points from which a young child could fall? Do you have an open fire or a swimming pool? Do you have crockery that can be used by all, or do you only have precious plates and glasses?

Do you have a bath-tub? This can be an important consideration as sometimes children are not yet able to use the shower. Do you have any toys or games, whether they be computer learning games or physical toys?

If you are a parent hoping to do a home exchange with a user from a child-free home, it’s also very important to think about your compatibility. If you have babies, you’ll be able to take all the paraphernalia that you need with you, and also contain the possible mess made. However, with toddlers upwards, you’ll need to make an assessment. Will they be able to manage with the facilities in the prospective home? Is there a high-risk of breakage? Will they be amply entertained with the pass-times available? Will they be within close enough reach during the night-time?

The best thing to do is to look at the photos of the prospective house, and then have a talk with the prospective home exchange partners. You need to ensure that both parties will be comfortable and that the prospective home meets your family’s needs!

Home exchange is a great opportunity to go on a cultural holiday. This can be a fundamental part of enriching your children’s development. For those culture vultures out there that really like to explore the history, old buildings, grand churches and the archaic historical sites, doing a home exchange in a rustic part of Europe is a brilliant opportunity.

But do children really enjoy it? There is plenty to be gained from visits to cultural sites, and it’s evident that they can really capture their imaginations in a way that all the interactive media in the world could never do.

However, if they’re really little, then they’re not yet capable of making these mental leaps, and can end up getting very tired, bored and unhappy, especially when they’re far away from what is familiar.

So a way of combining educational visits with something more fun is to go to a farm. There are some really impressive antique farm houses that are still alive and kicking in mainland Europe, especially in France. It’s a great chance for little children to make the connection between the brightly coloured cartoon animals in their young learners books, and the bigger, life sized, smelly noisy real farm-yard animals. Not only do they get to learn the names, sites and smells of all kinds of farm-yard paraphenelia and life-forms, but they also get to see the processes behind the scenes. These can be really fascinating, engaging, and children tend to thoroughly enjoy themselves.

So if you’re hoping to do take advantage of the cultural nature of a home exchange, then bear in mind a farm trip as a fun and educational day out for the children.

What´s the best way to bring up a child?

I haven´t got the faintest idea. Nor do I trust the opinions, formulas nor the instincts of the majority of people.

So what do we do? How do we give our children every opportunity possible to grow, develop and become better versions of ourselves? Or just better…people. (It´s not really about perpetuating our own selves into immortality, is it, grumble grumble… All this they told us about furthering our own genes was a big trick! A trap!)

But seriously, it´s difficult. I know a few people, brilliant, wise, kind, people who have horrible devils for children. Wild, untameable children. There is definitely something that is out there to defeat us. Some rogue gene that we never knew we carried, but that bode its time and struck just at the moment we made our lives more complicated then they had ever been before.

And even if they are calm, well behaved little devils, every day we are confronted with difficult decisions. Be lenient, be strict, explain candidly or sugar-coat until they are more emotionally developed. Make them happy or make them responsible, let them make their own mistakes, let them learn from other people, oh god oh god it´s all so confusing.

But one thing that we can do is expose them to lots of different ideas, sights, sounds, smells and people. Taking a family on holiday is usually expensive. And it´s so important that children have the chance to see a different country. They find it so overwhelming and wondrous when they do get to see other parts of the world. Filling them with awe not only helps them develop intelligence, knowledge, a bank of experience, but it also spurs on their imagination. But with home exchange this is all possible, on the cheap!

For me, the most important thing of all is that they learn that people from other cultures are not WEIRDOS. Taking a child on a foreign home exchange can be so fruitful for their development that they can even begin learning a new language. But even if this doesn´t happen, they learn an incredible amount about different cultures and countries. They learn that people from different places aren´t simply a “concept”, but a living reality of people. People who are just as normal as they are.

This is a fundamental aspect of a brilliant mind. Being open. And the best way to help your child maintain and cultivate their unjudging innocence, is to flood them with pictures and pieces of the world around them. Home exchange puts you in touch with the world and helps your children connect.

In the days before 24 hours news, people tended to worry less, let´s say. Going out bike riding in the country wasn´t riddled with so many dark fears of harmful predators lurking in the bushes. Similarly, the reign of the indoor multimedia exercise-killers wasn´t so rife. Video-games, DVDs, television, games consoles and the internet weren´t there to distract us and our children from getting outside into the clear air in order to enjoy being alive. But now, times have changed. It is often reported that our children are a little on the flabby side, unfit, and declining in strength and motivation. So taking your kids away on a holiday is something that can not only stimulate their interest in sport and outdoor activities, but it can also spark their interest in playing and seeing children and things from different parts of the world. Just by playing with kids, and showing them new sites, smells and sounds, you set astir their imaginations.

Home exchange is a very safe and cheap way of taking your kids abroad. You can watch over them in the home, go on bike rides together, go and see the local sites, integrate into the local neighbourhood so that they can make new friends…

In order to maximise your trip if you´re travelling with children, we suggest that you:

Plan lots of breaks in the activities that you do, and aim for less activities than you would if you were only going with adults.

Make sure you include plenty of stops for meals and drinks to stave off dehydration and keep the energy levels up.

Keep the adult activities for the morning, and do the less demanding children´s activities in the afternoon.

Take advantage of the local activities such as swimming, parks, playgrounds, theme parks, cinema or attractions.

Plan relaxation time for yourself. Remember to organise some activitites where your children are looked after by other people, or playing with other children, so that you can pack in a break for yourself too.

If your children aren´t yet at school age, you can always take a holiday outside of the peak seasons. Home exchange is flexible and you can do it whenever is convenient for you and your exchange partner. This way you can get cheaper flights, and attractions will be at off-peak rates.

Involve the kids in the planning of the holiday. Whilst taking a vacation is very exciting, it can sometimes make children a little nervous, especially if they find changes in routine difficult. So often it can be a good idea to show the children some photos beforehand, and get them involved in the planning. If you´re going to a foreign country, you can teach them some words and phrases before you go. This way, they can really get engrossed in the trip. They can point out to you things that appeal to them, and this way you can make plans that will keep everybody entertained.

So, Europe. What does it have to offer? France. Spain. Italy. Germany. England. Romania. Poland. To name but a few of the choice cuts of the continent. Whether it be the impassioned political fervour of the French, the darkly elegant style of the Italians, or the striking openness of the Dutch, you have to admit - there´s a wealth of culture over there. And how exquisite it would be to understand the seamless poetry of Dante, the tortured prose of Proust, or the emblematic tales of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra´s Don Quijote, in their original versions.

The best way to learn a language is to get yourself in a country where it is spoken. This way you really drench yourself in the culture, you are constantly absorbing new vocabulary from the road signs, the posters, the conversations you over-hear on the metro – and most importantly of all – you make friends you can talk with.

When I was a child, we did a house exchange with a Belgian family. We stayed in their house for four weeks. All my brothers and sisters were older than me, and whilst I had a fabulous time playing with the new doll´s house that I found, eventually I wanted some company of my own age. It just so happened that there was a little girl living in the house next door. Lea, her name was. She was taller than me, wore brown buckle-up shoes, and spoke no English. And we had the best time together. Even now, I remember going with her to buy chips from the local chip shop (chips dressed with a particular sweet and sour cream that I´ve never been able to find anywhere else in the world), dressing up to perform a play for her parents, and going cycling in the velvety forest with her school friends. While I don´t remember being conscious of speaking French, it was certainly the language we spoke in, and as all children do with languages, I took to it like a duck to water.

And I now see just how wonderful and welcoming that small community was. The neighbours especially, welcoming strangers into their houses, looking after a little foreign girl, helping the slightly eccentric English family make friends and feel welcome in a different city. For the rest of my family, living in that neighbourhood for a month was the perfect way to really practise their French and make exciting new friendships.

If you´re interested in European culture, and are looking for an opportunity to practise or to learn a new language, doing a home exchange is the ideal way to do this. You get delivered right into the marrow of the community – socially, culturally, and most crucial of all - linguistically.

So if you´re a dab hand for languages, or if you just want to practise some French asking for a croissant and a white coffee while you read the paper in a quiet café in Bordeaux, a home exchange ensures that you´ll make new friends and not only see, but really live the new culture.