Category: parenthood
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Golden week archery
”Golden Week” is a stretch of consecutive holidays in Japan, that combined with a weekend a day or two of PTO can be like 10 days off. Lots of people take the opportunity to return to their hometowns to visit family and friends, and others go sightseeing… many many people come to Kyoto. And with…
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Raising kids in multiple languages
Multicultural parents face lots of social pressure regarding their kids language abilities. Here is how my thinking on child language acquisition has evolved over the years.
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Advocating for the teaching of knowledge to kids
Having been in the Canadian education system for a few years now, I am very impressed with the high-minded ideals of the early education system here. Things like teaching critical thinking, creativitiy, breaking down a problem, LID, etc are challenging and interesting, and meant to get a jump on the future. However it is pretty…
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You don’t tell me when I should speak English — multicultural parenting and language rights
Last month, this story from Wales: The most perfect thing I have ever seen just happened on the replacement train bus service between Newport and Cwmbran: White man sat in front of a mother and her son. Mother was wearing a niqab. After about 5 minutes of the mother talking to her son in another…
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Are we a “hapa” family?
Family portrait by MAUD. In One Big Hapa Family Jeff Chiba Stearns investigates why there is such a high rate of interracial marriage (95%+) amongst Canadians of Japanese ethnic heritage (otherwise known as Nikkei). Through interviews with his family and other Nikkei in British Columbia, Chiba Stearns explores the historical experience of the Nikkei in…
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Teaching our children minimalism
Obviously we do not force an austere, monkish existence on our children. Yet, we still think it is important to instill in them certain values: a wariness of consumerism, sustainable thinking, recognizing joy in objects. I can give you three examples of how we have been teaching these lessons: 1. The Rock Collection 3 year…
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Family complete #achievementunlocked
This is where it all started. Above is my completed family of four, standing in front of the college dorm where I met my wife in 1999. As we only have a couple days left in Japan, we decided to take a photo. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate and it was pouring down, so we…
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Paternity Leave Lessons Learned (in Japanese)
Next month an article of mine will be published in an Osaka-based newsletter. The article is based on a blog post from a few years ago: End of paternity leave and a lesson on negative support. It is all in Japanese (edited by my lovely wife), but for those interested, click on the more link…
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Big Day
Click to see all the pics on Flickr It has been a long 40 hour day. Today my second daughter Maya was born at 7:24 on 31 Jan 2012 at 3070g and 50.0cm. The birth took about 7 hours. My wife was amazingly brave. No meds, all natural, just like last time. I did the…
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Homeless
About I week ago I mentioned on Twitter that the condo we live in has been sold. The new owner wants to move in as soon as possible, thus we have made an agreement to leave by October 29th. This decision has forced our hand somewhat. After considering our options, we have decided to have…