Scholars have demonstrated that small-scale relatively private family decisions about language are intertwined with parental language ideologies. Using data from the context of multilingual Central Asian families--including those living in Central Asia and those living abroad--this study employs socially situated analysis of discourse and narrative inquiry to show "how" parents invoke language ideologies in justifying their decisions about their children's education and linguistic exposure. The notion of "chronotope" is used to demonstrate how parental ideologies are embedded in "images" of space, time and moral personhood. Focusing on these "images," rather than only on language ideologies, allows an incorporation of the many social factors--both linguistic and non-linguistic--involved in bottom-up language planning, and facilitates increased attention to emic perspectives. This focus also illustrates how state discourses are internalized by participants through their understandings of morality relative to other issues such as language education.