My Family Archives - Bilingual Monkeys

My Bilingual Kids Are Now Teens and This Is the Key to Our Success

September 5, 2020

I took my daughter to the doctor this morning. Yesterday at school, during P.E. class, she felt a painful twinge in her left leg—probably a pulled muscle. It doesn’t seem to be anything serious, and will likely heal on its own in a few days, but the school wanted us to have it checked. Naturally, I don’t wish for my children to injure themselves, but I must confess: it was a welcome chance for us to spend a little time

Play This Great Indoor Game with Your Kids (And Get Them Eagerly Reading, Too)

May 7, 2020

The other day at The Bilingual Zoo, one mother (thanks, Judit!) described a game she was playing with her young son in the house and how much fun it was for them both. And, at the same time, how it got him reading eagerly in their target language. Reading about her experience, I fondly recalled the times I played this game with my own kids when they were small. And I thought: “Yeah, they’re now teenagers, but I bet they

Can This Difficult Time Also Be an Opportunity for Your Family?

April 2, 2020

What a surreal six weeks since my last post. The swift, worldwide spread of the coronavirus has abruptly upended the lives we had grown so accustomed to living—and has even stirred deep pangs of existential anxiety about survival itself. (Full disclosure: I have a congenital heart condition—which I only found out about two years ago—and though I’m still reasonably healthy, this probably puts me at a higher risk of more serious illness.) Still, as trying as this time is, in

My Daughter Hits the Biggest Milestone of Our Bilingual Journey Together

February 10, 2020

My daughter, Lulu, will be 16 in a few months and this blog has followed her progress as a bilingual child in Japanese and English (trilingual, if we count her growing Spanish, too) over the past 8 years. There have been a lot of large milestones over these years—both in her language development and in her rising maturity—and I’ve shared many of them, including… “I Can Help People”: I Interview My Daughter on Being Bilingual (March 22, 2013) Big Breakthrough

I Did Something the Other Day That I Thought I’d Never Do

December 26, 2019

The other day I took my son to the library. No, going to the library isn’t the thing I thought I’d never do. In fact, I used to go to the library all the time—every week, like clockwork—to borrow books to read to my kids. So it isn’t the library itself—it’s why we went to the library. For the sake of the minority language The library is downtown, sitting in a small park, and the parking lot is some distance

This Is the Bottom Line for Success at Raising Bilingual Kids

December 12, 2019

Two threads of my life, both of them months in the making, have suddenly come together with the same message. The first thread involves my 15-year-old daughter and an English speech contest (recitation contest) that took place on Saturday. This event was the culmination of a long process that began in the spring, when her English teacher at school encouraged her to take part. When Lulu, now in her third and last year of junior high at a public school

Reflections on My Five Weeks in Europe, Part 5: Back to Japan, and Back to Our Key Habits and Routines

November 1, 2019

One of the core principles for successfully raising bilingual or multilingual children (key question #6 in 45 Key Questions Every Parent Raising a Bilingual Child Should Ask) is this: Effective habits and routines that can provide the child with ample exposure in the target language, and create regular opportunities for him or her to use this language actively, must be made and sustained—and reshaped, as necessary—over the years of childhood. In our case, for example, some of my long-running habits and

Reflections on My Five Weeks in Europe, Part 4: The Sweet Joy of Playing with Small Children

October 29, 2019

The adorable three-year-old girl was sitting on the stairs, telling me all about her “babies”—her dolls and stuffed animals that were adorned with band-aids (“plasters” she called them, in the British English she spoke) because, she said, they were ill or had gotten injured. And at that moment, in my very first homestay of the trip, I flashed on my own daughter when she was the same small, incredibly-cute age and I suddenly missed that time terribly. A large lump

If You Like Blueberries and Bilingual Children, You’ll Enjoy This Blog Post

August 22, 2019

Over the years, my family has followed an annual tradition, each August, of driving out to a large blueberry patch that’s located in the countryside about 90 minutes from Hiroshima. We spend much of the day there picking blueberries and breaking for a picnic lunch. This tradition started when Lulu was two. In fact, we originally stumbled upon the blueberry patch by accident when we were out searching for a larger fruit farm, our original destination. Here’s Lulu that first

How Translation Tasks Can Be Doubly Productive for Your Bilingual Kids

August 12, 2019

As my children get older (my daughter is now 15 and my son is 12), I’m trying to increase the amount of opportunities they have to engage in translation activities: in effect, stretching their ability in two languages simultaneously and deepening their grasp of the more subtle differences between them. I wish we had more time for writing because this is now the area where more practice is needed, and I’ve found that translation tasks are very effective toward this

This Key Strategy Can Empower Your Child’s Bilingual Ability Throughout the Childhood Years—and Even for a Whole Lifetime

May 30, 2019

In the recent post Make the Most of the “Golden Years” of Your Minority Language Influence, I introduced the challenging new stage of my family’s bilingual journey. Now that my kids—Lulu, nearly 15, and Roy, 12—are both in junior high school and are leading busy, increasingly independent lives in Japanese, I’m afraid my presence in their days, and the English exposure that goes along with it, is far more limited than it was when they were younger. In fact, the