Raising a bilingual child offers some intriguing benefits for a parent. One is being gifted with children’s stories in two languages. Since my wife and I are raising our son in a “one parent, one language” household (my wife speaks to him in Japanese and I speak to him in English), he is attuned to relating things back to us in the “correct” language, even though he knows both his mother and father speak and understand both languages. This morning, I was regalled with a thrilling tale, embroidered with the kind of whole-body gesticulations of which only ten-year-olds are capable, of my son’s epic Mud Ball Battle a couple of days ago with neighborhood kids, which culminated in one particularly ill-bred boy hurling a massive mud ball into a large puddle and splashing everybody’s clothes with muddy water. My wife then walked into the room and asked what we were talking about. My son immediately launched into the same story (embroidered with the same powerhouse gesticulations), this time all in Japanese.
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“Mystery readers will find it a compelling read from beginning to end.” -Midwest Book Review
Past the Isle of Dogs 
A mud-ball fight Turned out ones sour for me when one of the other kids wrapped (accidentally?) a stone into one of them and hit me plain on the head with it. We both had the same name (first and last), so the ensuing police report was kind of confusing literature. After that there were no more mud-ball fights anymore in our neighborhood.
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How about a couple of English-speaking parents moved to Quebec (military) and their 2 sons aged 3 and 7 became bilingual (with French) without their parents’ knowledge? They never spoke French in front of us, so when the kindergarten teacher asked why we parents were English but our son was French, I looked at my then-5-year-old and asked him, could he speak French? “Of course, mom”; I guess he learned at daycare! Even more surprising, when my older son at 16 got his first job, I excitedly asked how the interview went, and he answered, Great, except at the end he asked if I could speak English because they had English clients. “You mean, the interview was all in French?” “Of course, mom.” The parents were the last to know, 😉
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That’s so cool!
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