Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 224 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing well and that you're ready to practice your English listening comprehension with another episode.
And in today's episode, I'm going to talk about having young kids. having young children.
At the time of recording this, I have a couple young children.
Maybe you'll listen to this years in the future and at that point I'll also have older children.
But right now I have young kids and there are a lot of joys and blessings and cool things happening that come with having young kids and I'd like to talk about those things in today's episode.
Of course there are difficulties, there are challenges, there are plenty of things that are hard about having young children.
I don't need to tell you that.
But that's not the focus of this episode.
I want to focus on the positives.
And I know that not everyone has a great situation with their young children.
You might have some difficult circumstances.
I get it.
I'm not trying to say that everyone has a super great relationship and situation when it comes to their young children.
But I just want to talk about my situation, and I'm sure some of you can relate to some of these things that I'm going to talk about today.
So I'm sure you'll find this episode interesting.
And before we start, I want to remind you that you should use my advanced podcast episodes to start getting accustomed to real English spoken fast.
In these normal episodes, I'm speaking very slowly and clearly.
It's good practice for you, but eventually you need to start listening to things at normal speed, listening to real English.
So that's why I have my advanced episodes available for you if you become a Listening Time family member.
So that link to sign up is down below.
And also check out my US Conversations podcast so you can practice with my conversations with other native speakers from around the country.
Eventually, you'll need to be able to understand when two people are talking, and my US Conversations podcast will help you become more accustomed to that.
So that link is also down below.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about some of the really great things about having young children.
So the first thing I want to mention is that the love that you feel at home is multiplied because there are more people to show you love throughout the day.
Kids, especially young kids, really love their parents in general if you're a decent parent, of course.
But I have found that young children love to show affection to their parents and love to show you that they care about you and they like you.
You're one of their favorite people or maybe you're their favorite person.
This is something that little kids are great at. even before they learn how to talk.
I have a young daughter who at the time of recording this does not talk.
She's still very young, but she's very good at showing her love for you.
I'm talking about me and my wife.
She is shy, around a lot of other people, but she loves me and my wife and she loves to show this love.
Same thing for my son.
He's a little older and he can talk, so it's a little different, but still, young kids really help you feel loved as a parent.
This is great.
When I first see them in the morning, It's always smiles and hugs and excitement.
It's something that I always look forward to in the morning.
I love saying good morning to my family when they wake up.
Today, I haven't done so yet.
I'm working in the morning and I haven't seen them yet.
And right now I'm looking forward to saying good morning to my kids and of course my wife.
So kids are great at making you feel loved and they often show affection, maybe physical contact that shows that they love you, especially my daughter.
She always wants to give me hugs in the morning and in the evening, and she wants to be in my arms and on my lap.
She loves physical affection.
Sometimes she'll just walk up to me with her arms spread out wide, which is her way of saying I want to be in your arms.
I want affection.
This is really nice.
It's something that makes you feel cared about and loved as a parent.
So young kids are great at this and young kids often think that their parents are are the greatest.
My son really admires me.
He makes me feel like a hero.
He makes me feel like a really important person.
This can be a little bit concerning at times because I know I'm not the greatest person.
And I know that my son is also noticing some of the things that I do or say that I shouldn't.
And so I have to be careful and make sure I'm a good role model for him.
Because he admires me so much.
So I need to be careful.
But overall, when your kids make you feel admired, it's great.
You feel that love that they have for you.
Another thing that I wanted to talk about is the happiness, joy and laughter that fills your house when you have young children.
Again, There are people with situations that are different and it's not always like this.
I understand.
I'm just talking about my experience.
So my kids are constantly excited.
They're always excited.
It's really amazing how much of the day they can be enthusiastic and excited.
And I constantly hear them laughing and shouting.
There's a lot of shouting.
And I just see them running around and having fun all the time.
So this helps you as the parent feel happier and in a better mood.
When I hear my kids laughing, this makes me smile.
And young kids, like kids who are my son's age, want to play all day.
They want to play, play, play, and of course, they laugh and smile while they play, and so...
All of this activity and excitement and playing and laughing and shouting.
This brings a lot of joy to the environment.
This is something that kind of lifts the mood at home.
What I mean by that is that it makes everyone feel happier and puts everyone in a better mood because there's so much warmth around you.
It's kind of hard to be negative in that environment, right.
Sometimes I'm not in the best mood and my kids turn it around, right?
I had an experience recently where I was not in a good state of mind.
And then my son was able to immediately turn my day around and make me feel so much happier and more thankful.
Young kids have that ability because they bring so much joy to your life.
Another thing that I wanted to mention is that it's really cool to watch young children develop.
It's really exciting as a parent, especially your first kid.
It's like, Whoa, now they're doing this.
Now they're doing that.
So, for example, the first time your kid rolls over meaning they roll from their stomach to their back or their back to their stomach that's an exciting thing.
It's really cool to see them sit up for the first time on their own without needing your help.
And then of course, when they start crawling, this is a big one.
Crawling refers to the action that babies do to start to move around on their hands and knees.
So when they start crawling, this is super exciting.
And of course you gotta be ready for that, because your life will change after they can move around like that.
And then when they start walking, that's super exciting.
And then one of my favorite things is when they start saying words and saying phrases.
I think this is really cute when you finally hear their voice when they say certain things.
My daughter is saying some different words right now.
And when I hear her cute little voice, it definitely warms my heart.
So I love seeing the development.
And as someone who's in the language learning world, it's really fascinating for me to watch my kids develop their linguistic skills.
My son is bilingual.
He speaks English and Spanish.
He's going to turn four years old next month at the time of recording this, and it's really cool to watch him develop both languages simultaneously.
When people talk about learning languages like a kid, Oftentimes they don't really know the process of how this works, unless they're a parent who has had young children.
But when you actually see it in action, it's pretty interesting and you almost can't realize why all the development that's happening, because you're with them every day and you don't necessarily see every little improvement.
But over time it's really apparent that They're learning, they're saying new things and you don't even realize how this has happened.
It's like, hey, how are you suddenly talking so well?
When did this happen?
It's really interesting because it's almost like they're sponges, absorbing language and And, of course, making a bunch of mistakes, but eventually saying things better.
And you don't even know how it's happening as their parent.
It's really cool when you realize that they're making progress.
And for me, it's extra interesting because...
I love language in general and it's really fun to see, for example, my son try to conjugate words in Spanish, meaning use the correct form of the verb for the particular subject, and Sometimes there are irregular verbs, but he tries to conjugate them regularly.
And it's interesting to see how his brain has developed that grammar, because his brain is just trying to use the conjugation that it has learned from other verbs.
But nobody... taught him that conjugation.
We didn't teach him how to use that verb ending for that subject.
He just picked up on that, meaning he just Learned it over time from observing it and then doing it.
And then suddenly his brain knows the grammar intuitively.
It's super interesting.
And a lot of the errors that he makes shows the fact that his brain actually is picking up on grammar, because he The errors that he makes are like logical errors, where he is trying to use the grammar that his brain knows, but maybe there's some irregular thing there or whatever.
It's really cool.
And so I love to watch his brain intuitively grasp different grammar elements and things like that.
I love to watch him translate between English and Spanish, and sometimes I'll see that he is saying a new phrase in English and he's actually translating that phrase from Spanish.
And so he says it wrong with the Spanish structure.
But it's still really cool because I can see that his brain thought of that phrase in Spanish and then translated it to English.
And this is a three-year-old.
So it's really fascinating to see how how he's developing his language skills.
So I love seeing that development and seeing him start to understand the language more and understand other concepts, other subjects more.
I love seeing my kids become more intelligent as time goes on and seeing them think, figure things out.
It's a lot of fun as a parent.
Another thing that I would consider a big advantage or positive regarding having young children is that they bring a sort of freshness or newness to your world, because they're discovering the world for the first time and And we adults take a lot of things for granted.
We don't really think too much about them.
We don't examine them and think of them and look at them the same way a kid would.
And What happens is when your kids start to discover the world and get excited about really basic things that we would consider basic or not too interesting.
Seeing them get excited about these things actually makes you excited about them and it helps you rediscover your inner child meaning.
It helps you see things like you did when you were a kid.
Certain things that didn't excite me at all before I had kids excite me now that I have kids, especially things in the natural world like animals and stuff.
Just yesterday, there was this really interesting bug.
It kind of looked like a grasshopper, but a really thin one.
I have no idea what bug it was.
And I saw it and I got excited and showed my son and he was super excited.
And that's something that I just wouldn't do back in the days before I had young kids.
So things like that tend to excite me more now.
I want to show them to my son when he sees things and he gets excited.
I say, oh, I want to see.
It's like I'm a kid in that sense again.
So I think this freshness, this newness, is really great because as adults we can experience, grow cold to the really amazing things around us in this world.
And that's not good.
I think it's great to enjoy animals and plants and trees and grass and the little things that you take for granted.
So that's a great thing.
I love that I get to show my kids the world.
I get to take them places and help them discover the world.
I introduce things to them.
This is really exciting as a parent.
When you take your kids to see something for the first time, maybe you take them to the beach, or you take them hiking, like I did recently, and you show them new things and you introduce them to different activities elements, different animals, different whatever.
It's exciting as a parent.
So I love that aspect of having young children.
And my last point is that it's really cool to have young children because you get to have a major influence over them.
You you get to be their role model, like I mentioned before.
And so, of course, you need to take this role seriously.
But it's great to be able to Be their teacher, their guide, the person who is showing them how to do things, what they should do, what they shouldn't do.
It's great to be able to impart your wisdom on someone.
When you impart something, It means that you are giving it, teaching it to another person.
So it's great to impart your wisdom on your children and be able to teach them valuable things.
Teach them things that are important to you, help them gain knowledge, And you are a big influence over how they think and the ideas that they have and the values that they're going to have later in life.
This is really cool.
Of course, you need to take this seriously and you need to understand that your kids are learning good things and bad things from you.
No one listens to you or whatever.
Your young children will definitely look up to you and you can teach them and show them things and help them grow, aid them.
This is great, in my opinion, and it makes me try to be a better person, because i know i'm the role model.
I know that i'm teaching my kids a lot and they're learning from me, whether or not i want them to learn a certain behavior or a certain word or whatever.
They're observing me.
And because of that, I feel the need to be the person that I want my kids to see and look up to.
So this helps me be a better person.
So there are plenty of other joys and blessings regarding having young children, but these are some that I wanted to mention today.
I hope that you enjoyed listening to this episode and I know it was good practice for your listening.
But for some of you you need to move on and start to use my advanced podcast episodes so you can actually train with real English spoken fast.
So please check those out.
The link is down below.
And also check out my US Conversations podcast so you can start getting accustomed to listening to more than one person talking.
I know you've probably had that experience where you're in a group of people or you're listening to two people speaking English and you're having trouble following the conversation.
This is something that is difficult when it comes to learning a language, and that's why I made my US Conversations podcast to help you get accustomed to that.
So if you want access to that, that link is also down below.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
