There is no one way to raise bilingual kids. Every family is different, and the context where they learn language can change. Previously I wrote about bilingualism expectations (and plurilingualism) in the context of raising our kids.

If you think about bilingualism in terms of time, there are generally two categories: sequential bilingualism and simultaneous bilingualism. In the first case, one learns a first language and then later learns a second language. In the second case, one learns (two or more!) languages at the same time.

Just looking at my household, in a family of four we have THREE different kinds of linguistic backgrounds!

• I am a sequential bilingual, going from English → Japanese when I was about 20
• My wife is a sequential bilingual, from Japanese → English in her 20s
• My first daughter was raised in Japanese until she went to preschool in Canada — a sequential bilingual similar to my wife but much earlier at age 5
• By the time my second daughter started speaking, the first daughter was already speaking English and Japanese in the household, so she might be considered the household’s only simultaneous bilingual

Why is this important? Well, like I said, raising bilingual kids depends a lot on the context of that particular learner. We need to be aware that each of our kids have a different context and thus our expectations should be adjusted accordingly. Like I wrote before expectations around bilingualism and raising kids are often out of whack. The framework of sequential-simultaneous bilingualism adds is another useful frame for aligning your expectations (and therefore effort) to reality.

Final note: the multilingual multiverse

There are many other frameworks for thinking about multilingualism. In this post looked at time of language acquisition. In my other post I wrote on heritage language learners and plurilingualism. There are also receptive bilinguals, those who can understand a language even if they cannot produce it. And then of course bimodal bilinguals who use language in at least two different modes, for example audio-oral language and visual-spatial sign language. And these are just super-categories! At a personal level there are so many other possible dimensions… fascinating!

We got the keys! 🔑

For the first time, we have a home of our own. 🏡

A few months ago we found a place and had our offer accepted. Earlier this week we finalized the documents. But now we have the keys to our very own townhouse. After many years of bouncing back and forth between Japan and Canada, and even moving within each country, the family are now settled down and committed to living in Surrey, BC for the foreseeable future.

You are all invited to come over for dinner! 😜

It has been six months since we moved to Surrey from Osaka. In that time we have explored our neighbourhood, the kids have gotten used to school, and I have re-connected with friends and family, and made a ton of new connections.

We lived in Kelowna for 8 years, which is plenty of time to build up our community network, including things like Digital Okanagan, Okanagan Developers Group, Kelowna Japanese Language Society, and Okanagan Asian Heritage Month committee, among others. For the past few months I have been looking for my communities here in Metro Vancouver. Although I have found a bunch, I think there is a lot more out there. Being much larger than Kelowna, there isn’t a single place you can go to get connected. Thus I have been conducting a lot of shuttle diplomacy by meeting people all over: Vancouver, UBC, Burnaby, Surrey, and even Fort Langley out in the Fraser Valley!

Coming out of the pandemic there is certainly a thirst for more in-person connection, and to build back better. The pandemic tore up a lot of the social fabric here, which also had the effect of exposing a lot of the rot in our underlying systems. In this way, the pandemic, and the reaction to it, are like a sequel to the economic crisis of 2008-9. The dissatisfaction with “how things are” has triggered a wave of grassroots organizing of people who want to make things better. These are my people. My goal is to find them and join them, to add my shoulder to the wheel, to help raise the barn of community.

These people exist across many different domains: tech, arts and culture, economic and social justice, politics, etc. A common theme I hear in speaking to people in these different verticals is a desire for thriving. What that word means can mean different things to different groups, but I have found with the various groups I have met that people have a sense that “something can be done here!”, of potential to make things “better”. There is an energy, and I have learned it is not just in a single group.

So I have been going out and trying to meet different groups, to potentially build bridges between them, looking for opportunities for collaboration and coalitions. Metro Van is much larger than the Okanagan where we were able to build some truly amazing community in the 8 years I was there. Here there is lots more going on, but it is also much easier to work in isolation with other groups. The big city affords anonymity, which can be positive but also a negative. However, as someone I met recently said, “Vancouver is too small for us to not know what one another is doing.”

Z-Space has been great for meeting new people. It is a hub for arts and tech in downtown Vancouver. Not only do I co-work there once a week, we run all sorts of meetups and events there (including the recent #LoFiWKND). Z-Space is an excellent example of how third spaces engender community building. back in Kelowna we had CoLab, our old Rocketlaunch space, and the Accelerate Okanagan government-run accelerator. I recently ran an event in Seattle at the Internet Development Studio offices, which are turning into a cool hub in the Pike Place Market area. V2 House, from the V2 community trying to build economic and cultural thriving for young people in Vancouver, is another example. I want to find more of these “club houses” and map them all out to make it easier for people to connect, whether they have lived here all their lives and just didn’t realize, or are new arrivals like me. If you know some, let me know!

There is much more cooking that I haven’t mentioned, but let me give you a couple more examples:

• At DWebYVR we are working on community-based technology agency (our version of “thriving”) but also discuss a wide range of commons-based topics such as cohousing and food security.
• there are lots groups on the Vancouver Lu.ma
• I recently connected with community resilience activists working on disaster preparedness (they are busy lending a hand in LA right now), something that Vancouver needs to be ready for. Mr Rogers said that when disaster strikes, “look for the helpers.” I want to find them before disaster strikes, thank you very much.
• Comrades in the Library Socialism movement have been gathering resources of folk doing all sorts of good in the community.
• There are co-ops like Solid State and Vancouver Co-Op Radio
• traditional political parties like COPE.

That is just a handful of what I expect to be heaps of mutual aid and solarpunk and utopian activators out there pushing for agency and opportunity and justice. I want to know more, and am actively on the lookout for people who are looking to make Metro Vancouver thrive. If you know of a group or a person, comment below, contact me on any of my networks, or email me!

I will close with an inspiring passage from the writer Kristen Ghodsee who was on a podcast talking about her book Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Bold Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life:

And they’re so important to the history of humanity. That was the one thing that just became so clear to me as I was researching this book, how so much human progress, so many of the things that we take for granted in the world today are the result of these radical social dreamers on the very fringes of our societies. I like to call them The Other 1%. So we have a 1% that’s the economic 1%, which is a statistical artifact of if you have 100% of the distribution of wealth, there’s always going to be a 1% that’s at the top. But the Utopian 1% is this group of people who have always been on the margins of our societies. They’ve always been out there dreaming up different ways of living and not only dreaming them up, but also trying to make them a reality. And it’s in these communities, many of which are just really crazy when you start to read about them, what they were trying to do and how they were organizing themselves and the massive Amounts of resistance that they faced. It’s in these communities from these communities that we begin to find our way forward through many historical challenges. And I would argue when I say in the book that they’re necessary for our survival, I think that the fundamental flexibility and creativity and adaptability of humanity, and we know that we are as a species incredibly flexible and adaptable and creative, that it comes and it has always come from this small percentage of the population that thinks differently about the way we should be living our lives.

Let’s connect up the Other 1% and organize community thriving together.

ADDENDUM: