Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. —Nido Quebein Think of it this way: Raising a child to be bilingual is about odds and each family’s odds of success will be higher or lower depending on their particular circumstances and how proactive they are about shaping these conditions in effective ways. My experience as a teacher at Hiroshima International School demonstrates that the odds of a Japanese child successfully becoming bilingual are