S4 E08: Gideon – a quadrilingual high schooler with two awesome moms.

Last week, we heard from Gideon and his mom, Cece, about Cece’s transition. Today, I’m releasing the rest of my conversation with Gideon where we talk about his experience growing up in Calgary, attending a Mandarin-immersion school, learning different languages, why failure is a necessity to improve, and how older folks often underestimate his generation.

GUEST BIO

Gideon is a 17 year old Canadian high school student, raised by two mothers. He strives to provide a balanced youthful perspective; formed from his diverse friend group and unique life experience. He’s spent 12 years studying Mandarin under a Mandarin bilingual program and 3 years studying French whilst speaking Cantonese and English at home. Throughout all his studies he has been exposed and connected to many different East-Asian and North American cultures and holds it as a central part of his identity.

MENTIONED

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Host: ⁠Lazou⁠

Transcript

INTRO

LAZOU: Hey everyone, welcome back to Nuances are Asian Stories, a podcast where we explore the intersection of our Asian identity and how it shapes our relationship with our cultures and everything from our career choices to our views on different issues.

LAZOU: I’m your host, LAZOU, a new American who grew up in the only place a dodo bird ever lived, which is Mauritius.

LAZOU: If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, I hope that you do so. Last week was Trans Day of Visibility. And for the occasion, I wanted to bring back Cece Chow to talk about transition and how life saving it was for her to have access to gender affirming care. We also heard snippets from my interview with her son, Gideon, who is our main guest today. This is a relatively short episode with Gideon, is so far the youngest guest I’ve had on the show. I really wanted to hear his perspective on the debates around the younger generation, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, their activism, and the time they spend supposedly on their phones. Let’s get to our conversation with Gideon, and then at the end of the episode, you will hear some new music from me.

MAIN INTERVIEW

LAZOU: Today we have Gideon. Gideon is a 17 year old Canadian high school student raised by two mothers. He strives to provide a balanced, youthful perspective born from his diverse friend group and unique living experience. He spent 12 years studying Mandarin under a Mandarin bilingual program and three years studying French while speaking Cantonese and English at home.

Throughout all his studies he has been exposed and connected to many different East Asian and North American cultures And holds it as a central part of his identity. Gideon, Thank you so much for being here today.

Gideon: Thank you.

LAZOU: what has it been like for you growing up in Calgary as a Chinese canadian kid?

Gideon: I think my experience is probably going to be more different, because of the school that I was enrolled in. I was like really lucky to be in the Mandarin bilingual program where there’s already a lot of kids that were similar to me, that had a very limited English speaking ability. so I was able to grow and collect with them as opposed to navigating on my own, which I think is probably different for, a lot of other kids.

I don’t know. I think I’m just very lucky with the people that I was around in school and just born around.

LAZOU: You felt very welcome there. You felt like you belonged.

Gideon: Yeah. I never had to deal with the very common idea of the lunchbox where like, the first day of school you open your lunchbox and all the kids are like, Oh, the hell is that? I didn’t really have to deal with that or everyone had something very different from traditional things, but it would be normal for the rest of us.

LAZOU: So that’s from grade school to middle school. Is that it?

That you were in the bilingual program? And then high school you went to a French immersion

Gideon: it’s just English, but I did French or I’m doing French as an option right now.

LAZOU: Was that a huge difference when switched school?

Gideon: It’s different, but I think that especially past elementary and middle school, in high school, people are a lot more understanding, compared to like what you see in media and everything. I still have my core group of friends that I’ve grown up with, but it’s a lot easier for me to like meet new people.

LAZOU: So what’s that Mandarin bilingual program like, did you learn math in both Mandarin and English ?

Gideon: What happened was there was a school in the North that was doing it, and then a school in the South, and the school in the North had been doing it, for a long time. and then what we were later told is that the school in the South that I went to didn’t take any, of the curriculum or any help from the school from the North.

And so my generation was one of the first two test dummies of like making a curriculum and for the teachers to experiment with. we had a dedicated Mandarin time, but then also, like you were saying, like, math we did in Mandarin, and for a little bit of elementary school it was Mandarin and English for science as well.

LAZOU: oh, that’s awesome.

Gideon: Yeah.

Although I think it was funny because, I remember I think in middle school where there’s more like interaction between different groups, there was this one time I was trying to help one of my other friends that weren’t in the Mandarin program. And I just didn’t know how to say what to do because I only learned it in Mandarin.

LAZOU: Yeah, I remember I had some friends who went to study in China after high school, and they knew Mandarin, you know, studied it at school, but they were doing math in Mandarin For the first time and they were like, Whoa, this was hard. That’s pretty cool that you got to do that.

I interviewed your mom before about her experiences growing up and she talked a bit about the racism that she’s faced. Do you think things are different for your generation?

Gideon: For sure. It’s very different. Marginalized communities are a lot more visible now then there were before.

So it’s a lot easier to like, if there is someone racist, you just turn to your friends and you’re like, look at, look at this guy, this guy, what is it? What are they doing? You start to make fun of them for like, why do they think that? it’s 2024 and you’re still doing this. What are you, what are you, what’s up with that?

I remember there was this one time I was just walking with my friends walking downtown and there’s like a car full of people that drove past and there’s yelling Ching Chong, whatever. I think it was maybe not the best idea, but we responded in actual Chinese, and we’re just making fun of them, telling them uh, like, shut up, or go away.

There’s also a lot more just supports in place, common support, like in social media and just online.

LAZOU: So you’re not, intimidated by it.

Gideon: No, definitely not. There are some times where I can notice it, and be like, okay, well, that’s, crazy, but it’s not something that’s, like, a threat

LAZOU: Yeah. you have had the unique experience of starting out with a mom and a dad and now having two moms,

Gideon: yeah,

LAZOU: two amazing moms sounds like, so is it really different?

Gideon: Not really, right? Especially in my position I mean she’s still the same person so she still has her own core interests. It’s not like she unlearned things. I guess a really good example would be, most seasons, we changed tires together, uh, on cars I don’t know, it’s a traditionally masculine thing. You teach your son to change the tires, change the oil filter or whatever, but like, it still happened. I still like, I have no hound and it’s. there’s not really as big of a difference as you would think.

LAZOU: Yeah.

Gideon: It’s not really like a change in parenting or whatever. It’s like it’s still the same person really.

LAZOU: Cece has shared on her platform, but also when talking to me, how loving and supportive your mom and you and your sibling have been to her throughout her transition and how much that meant to her. We often see parents talk about their child coming out to them, but rarely the other way around.

So I’m really interested to hear what that was like, for you, for a parent to, come out. first of all like, were you aware of the concept before, or was that all new to you? I’m assuming you were because your generation knows everything, but

Gideon: I mean, it’s like dragons, like, you know, they exist, but like, have you ever really seen one? Like.

LAZOU: I

Gideon: thinking back, like, I probably definitely have, it’s just, I never,

LAZOU: really thought about it much.

Gideon: I don’t know, I’m a kid. I’m never… I’m not looking

LAZOU: Yeah.

Gideon: to like, not notice, like the struggles that might be there. I don’t know, in my mind before it was kind of just like, you identify as this and that’s okay. But I never really took into account how that would affect someone’s relationships or their interactions with other people. When she came out, I had kind of the same mindset of like okay, well, that’s this now. It’s not like I didn’t care. It was like, wow, that’s a huge step, but I didn’t see or really understand the consequence until like, a few months in when I noticed they’re treating her differently or like, oh, this is kind of messed up actually seeing and like noticing specific times where it’s influenced her and influenced her relationships with other people too.

LAZOU: You mean, the way that people treated her was different?

Gideon: yeah, it was different after, the transition. And then that really opened my eyes to, like, there’s actually a lot more than what I’m seeing.

LAZOU: Yeah, so I guess, at first, you were just like, Oh, okay, you’re a different gender. Sure. you didn’t realize just how that influences dynamics with the world around,

Gideon: Yeah, it’s like, good for you for realizing, but I never understood how much it really meant, until later on.

LAZOU: was it a shock to you when she came out or?

Gideon: It was surprising but like, I remember one thing she said was that she still likes cars, she still likes video games, she still likes all these other things. Nothing’s changing about that, we’re still going to be able to play games together, or like work on cars. So I think that lessened it a lot for me. It wasn’t something that I really had to like struggle with. I think the way that she came out was very easy for me to interpret, especially being just way way younger.

LAZOU: Yeah. Even though you all supported her a hundred percent. I’m sure that was not an easy time. How did you cope with that as a kid?

Gideon: I just, I talked about it with people.. Like, it was basically my first big exposure. And then by extension, a lot of my friends’ first direct exposure to an openly trans person. I would just talk with some of my friends about like, today this happened, or today, someone treated her like this, like why is that?

It wasn’t a super, like, insightful discussion, but it was more just talking about it normally, and get it kind of out there. And then after a while, it just became, "Oh, I’m going to get coffee with Cece". And they’re like, okay, whatever. I guess I just normalized it for myself with friends and people close to me.

LAZOU: and, it sounds like everybody that you were close to was receptive.

Gideon: yeah, I think a lot of my friends were similar to me and Yeah. Yeah. our level of understanding at that time was like, you change your gender, okay. If that’s what you feel, that’s good for you. Right. that’s a good thing to recognize. But we never really understood, how much it would mean to a person.

LAZOU: You said that, other than changing her gender, that didn’t really change her as a person. She’s still the same person.

But did you maybe notice that she was happier, more at ease?

Gideon: Yeah, actually, kind of. In what she would call the before times, she would help me study. I used to be a bad, bad student. I would not want to study it. It’s the stereotypical Asian, where the kid is just like, no, I don’t I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to sit at the dinner table and do whatever homework I got given. Before it was a lot like, I was upset. And then, she was also upset because my teachers were sending emails about how, I’m not doing any work or my marks are really bad. And so she was also really upset. And we were just both upset at each other. But then afterwards it became… well first, I became a better student. But she would still help me and it became more of a discussion like discussion about the work. Why is it that you can’t bring yourself to do this kind of work? Or what’s, what’s going on in class that’s like you’re getting these low marks. And then we work, on that first before just doing whatever homework or we worked on the underlying issues before just doing whatever homework I had or studying.

LAZOU: Yeah. So sounds like maybe she had a little bit more, how do you call that?

Gideon: Compassion.

LAZOU: it’s more emotional bandwidth

Gideon: Maybe.

I think maybe she was more aware of herself and how she interacted with other people.

LAZOU: Do you have any advice for other kids whose parents are going through a rough life transition?

Gideon: It’s not something to worry about in that like, you shouldn’t be ashamed of it.. Even if at first it’s kind of embarrassing to go to your friends and be like, hey guys, my, my dad’s a mom now. They’re trans and it’s seems embarrassing on paper, but it’s really like, if they’re really your friends, it’s not as bad as you think. And I think it’s really useful to have people that are outside your family to talk with People that aren’t necessarily detached, but less kind of biased than your family. if you have good friends, you should be fine.

They’ll support you and they’ll correct you when they think you’re being weird about it or too stressed about it. And they’ll also push you to when you miss things and you don’t notice things.

LAZOU: And what about other parents out there who are terrified of telling their children that they’re queer, do you have any advice for them?

Gideon: Well, okay, I’m speaking from my experience and other people around me. I think a lot of us care a lot more about our close family than you will realize or you will come to see. It would help to keep that in mind that like, even though your kid is like, holed up in the room all day or whatever. They only come, they eat dinner. They see when they get home or whatever. And that’s it. They do still care about you because you still are their parents. nothing can really change that. And nothing really should change that to an extent.

LAZOU: Yeah. So, they will likely be supportive is what you’re saying, and there’s no need to worry about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. so you’re only 17 and you speak four languages, which is pretty impressive. What do you enjoy most about learning languages?

Gideon: I think it’s the most raw form of learning if that, I don’t know how to explain it super well, but when you learn a language, you not only learn about words and grammar and all that boring stuff.

If you have a good teacher, you’ll learn about, slang and like culture and more specific things like trends and stuff. So especially for, Mandarin, I had some stereotypically old crabby teachers that are just like, do your workbooks, get your stroke order right and everything. But I also had teachers that were like, Hey, check out what I was watching the other day or check out this funny video that I saw or look at what I did over the break. I went to China and we saw these things and then you can really connect better with a culture, I think, which is one of the reasons why I decided to learn French. Well, I live in Canada, right? So if I could speak another language, French would probably be a good other language to speak and like really understand and then i’ve come to like really enjoy it i have a really good french teacher she’s. She loves france a whole bunch and it’s really funny to see because you can totally tell she’s biased. But she teaches us a bunch of slang and she’s like if you’re talking in class, don’t talk like you’re a robot because no one talks like that in real life. i think it’s really fun to connect with people in that way and especially with Chinese I think it’s brought me the most connection like I’ll be with friends and a chemistry class or whatever and we will just mess with each other and we’ll just, like, we tell each other to shut up a lot in Chinese. it’s not necessarily a secret language, but it’s, I think, a deeper kind of connection than just messing around in English. just the fact that, oh, we can, so why not? We were together for all those years learning Chinese. Let’s at least use it to mess around a little.

LAZOU: an additional layer of connection, I guess.

Gideon: Yeah, knowing Cantonese and Chinese can be really confusing because you have to like get your brain into Cantonese mode or Mandarin mode. There are times at restaurants where if I’m ordering in like Cantonese, I will completely blank on the Cantonese word and then I’ll just say whatever, I’ll just use the Mandarin word. So it can get a little confusing but it’s quite fun.

LAZOU: Yeah, I do regret not learning. I started when I was a kid and I hated it at the time because I was a kid and I didn’t want to do homework and now I can’t read.

Gideon: reading is the one thing that everyone struggles with I feel like, I don’t don’t know.

LAZOU: It is hard.

Gideon: yeah, I can’t read in Cantonese. Like I couldn’t tell you, I know Cantonese words and what they mean, but I don’t know. which character is which, but I can do it for Mandarin.

So It’s different, I guess.

LAZOU: Okay, this is going to sound very ignorant but I thought they used the same characters. No. Well,

Gideon: That’s, that’s the stupid part. They do. And I I just don’t. I can’t do it. I cannot read in Cantonese. I can read it to you in Mandarin, maybe. But like, Cantonese, I, no reading.

LAZOU: at least read it in one of the languages.

Gideon: Yeah.

LAZOU: So I always ask people what is one nuance that they want to talk about and yours was that the best way to improve a skill is to get good at losing or failing. You want to tell me more about that? Do you use that to learn languages?

Gideon: I mean, languages is a lot harder to really fail at. But I think I carry that mentality and like studying and playing sports and playing games.

If you’re doing your homework and you get all the questions, correct, and you don’t even have to think about it, you really just didn’t do anything for that whole time you spent.

Just for an easy example, if you’re studying, if each question was really confusing and you managed to get help with it or figure something out, from each question then each question was useful to you in some way.

The same thing can apply to sports if you play a blowout game, like, what’s the point? You didn’t get anything from it except for winning, which is, it’s okay, it’s nice, right?

But if you really want to improve, you have to lose. It’s something unavoidable. You need to lose in order to get something out of it because it’s much easier I think it’s much easier for your opponent or like your math question, right or whatever to find your weakness than it is for yourself to look and find your own weaknesses.

LAZOU: Yeah.

Gideon: Which is why I think losing is actually very valuable.

LAZOU: Well, I would say it sort of works with languages, in the sense that I think a lot of people struggle with learning languages when they’re embarrassed to pronounce things wrong.

Gideon: My, okay, it sounds really bad, but my Mandarin class was split between basically the white kids and then the kids that spoke it at home. Because there’s nothing you can do, really. When my teacher saw me, They just assume that, oh, you’re here because you can speak Mandarin.

And like, I had no idea. I could speak Cantonese, but I couldn’t speak Mandarin. But because I could speak Cantonese, my pronunciation was there. So I was able to learn a lot easier. But for, some of my other friends, at the beginning, I remembered their pronunciation was so incredibly bad.

and it’s not that we made fun of them but, like, we would point it out and try and, correct them over time. Eventually, I think their accent is not too bad anymore. I know that I still have an accent. It’s a lot better than it was before.

LAZOU: There were some white kids in the Mandarin bilingual program?

Gideon: Yeah, there were, actually quite a few, surprisingly.

LAZOU: Oh, that’s pretty cool.

Gideon: yeah, it was really cool. It helped me be less scared to talk to other people in general. A big one was actually like they would play basketball all the time during recess. And like, oh, there’s kids playing basketball in my class. I’m going to go because we’re in the same class. I can kind of go ask them to play. Cause I, I’m in your class. Can I play? And then that became just like a big thing of getting more and more people into that group where we would all play together. And then, through them, I was able to meet a whole bunch of other people as well. And I think it was lucky that it wasn’t just Chinese kids

LAZOU: My last question is, what do you think we grownups underestimate young people about?

Gideon: I think my generation especially is known as the generation that like stresses about everything. There’s a lot of people that are super into activism, a lot of people that are stressing. It’s like, did you know that you will never own a house? And everyone’s just like, yeah, well, that’s whatever.

But I think that it’s important to realize that yes, there’s stress, and there’s been more stress I think, but we now, especially more than ever have a very different perspective that shouldn’t be ignored.

To a lot of people, I think the younger generation may seem kind of biased in a way, I guess. but we’re not 10 anymore, right? Especially with the pandemic, we have a lot of lived experience that even though we’re so young, we have the lived experience that kind of shapes a more unique worldview, that I think is important to look into, especially because it is so different..

And also like, don’t underestimate our ability to do our research actually like look at things for what they really are, I think as well.

Maybe also our ability to support one another and to bring each other up is a good one.

There’s a lot more community. I feel like that shouldn’t be ignored. for an example, a bunch of my, like, I would consider my best friends now, I met them Technically through a friend of a friend, but it was pretty much all online because that’s all we could really do. Especially during the pandemic, it’s hard to meet up in person. but we’re able to build a community around basically nothing. Right. I think it’s important to recognize that those relationships can lead to somewhere like something greater or like, they can be very deep and precious relationships.

LAZOU: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the same in Canada, but in the U S there’s been a lot of talk about banning some social media apps. you know, Social media apps are destroying young people and mobile phones are destroying young people. Is that one of those strong opinions that your generation does not agree with?

Gideon: it’s no, I think that there is some merit, but I I think in my opinion, it’s not about, it’s not a deal of like banning or restricting things. it’s just an issue with like regulation and moderation that. I think a lot of North American countries don’t want to enforce for some reason. Because you see it a lot in the EU where the regulation for things is a lot stricter and a lot of changes that we see in brands come because of the regulation in the EU. And so I think the whole banning thing is weird.

Because there’s just going to be a new app in what, two months that’ll do the same thing anyways. but I do agree that Like, yeah, there can be times where it goes too far. Like, I don’t know, there can be times where it goes too far, and I think it’s very important to have people around you that will tell you like, you’ve just been on social media, like all, you’re like always on it, like what are you doing?

I think it’s important to have people there to help you realize. And like for me and my friend, what that is for us is not necessarily a direct confrontation of like, where have you been? What are you doing? But we make a joke out of it, not to have it be removed from its meaning, but just kind of make it like easier and more lighthearted and it’s more so that they can realize. and so, like, I have a joke with, um, one of my friends, where it’s like If we’re like talking say we’re like eating together and they’re on their phone and then I’ll be like you’re too much with the phone it’s a dumb bit but it’s it’s funny.

LAZOU: Awesome. I always end the interview with rapid fire questions. These are one word or one phrase answers. You do not have to explain, but you can if you want to.

Gideon: Okay.

LAZOU: What’s an Asian food that you should like, but don’t ?

Gideon: The only Asian food I don’t like is, bitter melon and I’m, I don’t think I should like it at all. I don’t think there’s an Asian food that I don’t really like apart from that.

LAZOU: What’s an Asian food that you’ll never get tired of?

Gideon: I don’t know what it’s called in English. The chicken feet, I think, with the red sauce.

LAZOU: What is on your playlist? what are you listening to right now?

Gideon: Eric DOA, is awesome. He came from kind of like an underground scene of a lot of close knit creators. And I think it’s really cool.

LAZOU: What do you like to do in your spare time?

And.

Gideon: Play video games with my friends.

LAZOU: Last question, on average, how much time do you think you spend on your phone per day?

Gideon: I don’t know what counts as on my phone because I will have music up or like.

LAZOU: No, like, looking at your phone. Either, you know, watching videos or games or?

Gideon: Oh, geez, three hours, maybe on average.

LAZOU: That’s not bad.

Gideon: yeah, but it’s not bad. But then it’s, it’s mostly because if I’m in my room, I’ll be on my laptop anyway. So it’s, it’s more.

LAZOU: Alright, Thank you so much for doing this. It was great chatting with you.

Gideon: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. for having me on.

OUTRO

LAZOU: Here are my takeaways for today’s episode. Number one, Your kids really do care about your happiness and well being, even if it seems like they barely ever talk to you or look up from their screens.

Number two, this younger generation has grown up in a worldwide pandemic, saw the adults have complete meltdowns over masking, And politicians weaponize life saving measures to score points. They also grew up on the internet and have a keen eye for propaganda. If anything, they are more objective about what is wrong with the world, and their perspectives are more valuable than some of us want to admit.

Number three, things that might seem embarrassing on paper probably aren’t that big a deal in real life. True friends will support you and go on the journey with you. So don’t be afraid to talk to your friends.

Number four, banning TikTok or any other app does not address the root of the problem, whether it’s about privacy, online bullying, or access to age appropriate content. If governments really wanted to address those things, they would pass legislation that affects all the apps in the same way, Just like the EU did with their General Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR. Number five, struggling and failing is a necessary step in order to get better at anything. So get used to it. It’s okay to fail. And finally, number six, learning a language is a lot more fun when students are encouraged to engage with the culture, learn the slang, and use the language in a way that is fun and conversational.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, if you haven’t. Go back to last week’s episode to hear Cece’s journey.

As of this week, I’m going to be switching to every other week for publishing episodes because I am working on the limited series, as well as my music, and I do not have enough time in between releases to do all the things that I need to do.

So the next episode will be out in two weeks.

I want to share with you a song that I just released that is somewhat related to last week’s episode, where Cece mentioned that she and her ex wife had to redefine their relationship, but they still have a lot of love for each other and they still care about each other Bloom without me is about breaking up with somebody despite still being in love with them because they’re not right for you. Breakups aren’t always full of anger Sometimes they’re full of love, care, and hope. Love that is giving you strength to do the right thing but also breaking your heart at the same time. Care for your future selves and what would truly make them both happy. hope that you both will find love again. The kind that you couldn’t create with each other even though you really tried.

One of my friends described it as the I wish you well ballad you didn’t know you needed. I love that description. So, here is Bloom Without Me. It was produced by my friend John Navarrette it is now available on all streaming platforms.

If you also have gone through a breakup like this or are going through a breakup like this, I want you to know that things will be okay, and you will bloom again.

Alright, that’s all for today. Once again, my name is Lazou, and I’ll see you soon for another Nuanced Conversation.

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