When I talk with my kids I sometimes feel puzzled. (My kids are bilingual but only speak in Japanese with me)

At times I feel their Japanese intertwines with English and that’s when it begins to puzzle me. 

The other day, my three-year-old son said, “Yesterday’s tomorrow, I’m going to pee in my underwear!” I was like, “What?” I think he meant that he couldn’t hold his pee anymore and was worried about peeing in his underwear, which happened at our friend’s house a couple of months ago and that he was saying that accident was going to happen TODAY. 

My six-year-old daughter asked me “How do you say the opposite of next week?” At that moment my mind went blank. She caught me off guard. I’d never wondered what “opposite of next week” would be. And that it’s simply “last week”. In Japanese those are written as “来週” and “先週.” “週” means week. “来” means come. “先” means earlier in this context. “先” is also used to convey the meaning of the future. Combined with the fact that I learned those Kanji when I was a child and had not yet developed a sense of time, I didn’t even understand the meaning of her question at first.