Real English Conversation: English listening practice

You're invited to this real English conversation with me, Vanessa, and my husband, Dan. We are going to give you something that AI cannot give you, and that is a real conversation between real people. I know I'm not AI. What about you? I mean, I think I'm real, ma'am. I think you are. So in this conversation, you are going to be immersed in real life English, which is the key to help you also become a natural, fluent English speaker. Like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet here over Dan's face. It's going to include all of the vocabulary that you're about to learn today, plus I have added a bonus in the free PDF. This is a listening version, an audio version of today's entire lesson. It's kind of like a mini podcast episode, so you can download the listening version, and you can listen to it wherever you go, while you're walking your dog, while you are doing the dishes, while you're doing anything. So how can you get this free PDF worksheet plus the bonus audio version? All you need to do is click the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and voila, just like that, it will land in your email inbox. It is my gift to you, so don't wait. Make sure you get the PDF worksheet and bonus audio version. All right, Dan, are you ready to get started? I'm ready to talk about my childhood. Yes, that is the topic for today. We're going to be talking about a few questions based on our childhoods, but especially comparing our childhoods to our children's childhoods. I have heard some other people say that kids nowadays are inside more, they are attached to their screens more. You've probably heard me say this. I think it is a really interesting conversation to compare different generations' childhoods. Are you ready for my first question? I'm ready. Let's do it. All right, Dan does not know what these questions are. Yes, it's a mystery. I want you to think back to when you were eight years old. I want you- It's a good time for me. Wonderful students to also think about when you were eight years old. Tell me, how much freedom did you have? For example, could you go off and ride your bike in the neighborhood? Did your parents drop you off at the grandparents' house for the weekend? How much freedom did you have? First, for context, I think that both of us had kind of unusual childhoods in some regards. As far as freedom at age eight, I think that we were pretty, I was pretty standard as far as the American standard. I was allowed to roam my neighborhood as long as I was with my brother. We could walk to the playground. We could walk to a pond by ourselves, which we did quite a lot. My parents were a little more strict, though, when it came to going over to a friend's house or neighbor's house. They were very cautious about- The influence of neighbors. Yeah, the influences, especially movies they'd watch or video games or whatever. We had a couple shady characters in our neighborhood. Not that shady. Well, maybe one or two. It was quite a mix, really, but nothing too crazy. It wasn't that dangerous. Yeah, I feel like I experienced something pretty similar where I could bike in the neighborhood. We could play with the neighborhood kids, but I went to a few sleepovers at friend's houses. That's a pretty common American thing. You can spend the night at a friend's house, but that was pretty much it. We couldn't walk to any shops because I lived so far away from shops or our school, we couldn't walk anywhere. We lived in the suburbs. There's not a lot of shops that are just walkable. Yeah, you could just kind of stay in your neighborhood. But we didn't have... We'll talk about technology later. We didn't have any way to contact our parents when we were out. So let's talk about our kids, though. Our kids now, do they have the same type of freedom that we had as kids? Kind of? Not really. A little bit less, I'd say. Yeah. I feel like a lot of parents our age are a little more cautious with their kids, like even more so, especially biking somewhere in the neighborhood or... The fear of cars. Even walking. And I actually, in our neighborhood, our kids are out all the time. We have them running around. They can run up and down our road, which is a dead end, so it's not super dangerous. And they're often the only kids out. So I feel like a lot of kids are inside more, but I don't know if that's really necessarily the parents are scared to send them out, or they don't want to give them freedom. I just think they're probably preoccupied with other things, if I had to guess. Possibly. We might talk about what those other things are later. So yeah, I do feel like our kids are... We give our kids, I think, a little more freedom than maybe the average millennial parent does. It depends on what you mean by freedom, too, though, because we don't let them watch a lot of TV, or they don't have computers or phones or anything. Yeah, I guess physical freedom to like, oh, you want to go to the neighbor's house, and we know that neighbor. Okay, that's fine. We let our children be bored, so that helps them get outside. Yeah, they have dug a hole in our yard that's at least up to my waist. It is so deep. And what are our kids doing? I don't know. Maybe digging a hole. They said they're looking for rocks. We have enough space to do this, by the way. Yeah. It's not in anybody's walking path. Yeah. It's not a safety hazard. Don't worry. There's only a child buried in there. That's all. Yeah. I think that the biggest difference, when I think about it, is our parents and our children. This kind of two generations difference. Like, when I think about my parents, they were gone all day. Yeah, they were even more extreme. And their parents had no clue where they were. That is not possible for our kids. Our parents come from the generation that said, go out and I don't want to see you until sundown. Right. I cannot imagine an eight-year-old. My eight-year-old. We have an eight-year-old. I can't imagine telling him, go out off of our property and I don't want to see you. And I don't want to see you. Until dinner. For the next nine hours. I'll finally know something's wrong when you don't come home at bedtime. Yes. I think our generation can't fathom that lack of control over our kids' well-being. How about concern? Concern. Yeah. We're concerned about them. Yeah. I think this is a good foundation. The other questions are very similar variations of this. I want to ask you the second question. When you were eight-years-old. We're just doing a lot of eight-year-old stuff. It's all eight-years-old. Oh, OK. It's like peak childhood, kind of. Yeah. You haven't reached puberty yet. You're not like a little kid. I loved life at eight. It was so fun. Oh. I can remember. Oh. Yeah. That's really good. Well, let's talk about it. What was technology like when you were eight? Think phones. Think music. Think answering machines. Well, when I was eight-years-old, it was 1995. Oh. Yeah. And so, yeah, there was some technology. We had a TV in our basement, and I would go down and try to watch that sometimes. But my mom would always kind of snoop down there and be like, what are you watching? It's time to turn it off. And I was one of those kids who really, really, really loved video games, and I wanted video games a lot, but my mom would not let me. My mom or my dad. But then my mom actually caved a little bit, and she got me a Game Boy. But, you know, you can beat one of those games in a day, usually. And so... It wasn't an endless... It's not like... Stay up till 2 a.m. because I'm playing this game, and then the next day, and then all day, and then... My mom's also the type. She's like, he can play it on a road trip, and he can play it outside. He can take it anywhere. I mean, maybe you could. Which is kind of true, I guess. Yeah. But... Yeah. What about... That's the technology we had overall. We had our... Our... My best friend had a computer, but we didn't have a... I don't think we had a good computer at that point. I remember we got a computer when I was in sixth grade, and you could type documents, and I think you could play Frogger, maybe? I played some fun little games like that. Very simple. But I had a CD player. I don't think I was interested in, like, CDs or music until I was a teenager, though. So at eight, we had a house phone with an answering machine. I don't even know if we had caller ID at that point. Yeah. And I just was not... We watched... I don't even remember watching TV as a kid. Really? I watched some movies. I remember watching some, like, classic Disney movies as a kid, but I don't have any real memories with TV. We never... We didn't have video games in my house. There's... Either it was our family, or we just had... But you were into monster trucks or something. That was in high school. Oh, okay. We had two girls, so we weren't necessarily, like, the right market for video games at that age. Mm-hmm. But what about our kids for technology? Like, what kind of technology is in their life as a norm? Well, there's... I mean, there's kind of a lot, but we keep it under control with them. Mm-hmm. And they're still young enough, and I think our oldest is... He's, like, cautious enough. He doesn't, like, push the boundaries. Mm-hmm. But, you know, they think that the TV only has a couple things on it, even though technically you could... It's anything. ...find anything on there. Endless, yeah. And they don't have a phone, and they see us on our phone. They know that they can ask us to find information on the phone instantly. Yeah. So that's different. Yeah. We could call someone on the phone. We could video call. Video chat, yeah. Yeah. Like, our kids, especially our two-year-old, if I'm on the phone with someone and it's not a video call, she asks to see them. Mm-hmm. Like, oh, I want to see Sharice, my sister. And I'm like, oh, I'm just talking to her on the phone. She can't... She's like, why would you do that? ...fathom talking to someone... That's silly. ...without seeing them. Yeah. I mean, why would you? It's great to see someone on a video chat. I think that's so... That's, like, the best thing about technology. But we don't, like... We don't give our kids a tablet or anything. I feel like tablets are the devil for children, basically. Here's my old man talking. Don't give your... Don't give your child a tablet. Yeah. Our kids don't really know. They... Maybe they know what a tablet is at this point. I don't know. We have one, kind of. It's never... It's never out. Yeah. It doesn't work. We don't use it. Boy, now it's broken as well, so... Yeah. They... They're around... They know that I work on the computer. I don't know if we're, like... When I do my work, I'm... That's true. ...on the computer, and our kids will sit down at the computer and pretend to do mommy's work, where they tap, tap, tap. I think they think the computer is for work, as well. Yeah. So, that's good. Yeah. We have some boundaries about TV. I think it's gonna be a lot harder as they get older. And I feel pretty clueless and innocent about what it's like to have a kid feel peer pressure about technology. Like, right now, our kids don't feel any pressure about playing certain video games. Like, they've never... They played a video game at their cousin's house, like Mario, at their cousin's house for a couple days. But that's... And Theo was like this. I gotta get him to move over here! Physically moving his arms. He couldn't just stand still like this and play. He had to move his body. It was so innocent and cute, because he just... Yeah. I don't think our kids are standard in this way... No. ...at this point. I think it is possible, though, that there's... I think there's a growing group of... I'm saying millennial parents, because that's our generation, who are wanting their kids to have less technology. People are aware now. Like, oh, maybe all this technology isn't great for children's brains. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. Who could've thought of that? Okay. Are you ready for a big one? Yeah. A big one. Oh, boy. A big question. Okay. Tell me. When you were... A fun one or a heavy one? Make it serious. Okay. Let's get serious. Think about when you were eight years old. Eight years old, Daniel. So serious. How were you disciplined? Oh. Think about time out. Oh. Think about being grounded, spankings, what... Hmm. ...being yelled at. What was... I was a bit of a strong-willed child. ...discipline? I don't think anyone would be surprised to hear that. My parents definitely spanked me up until around that time. Okay. Yeah. And... Do you think... What were some circumstances that led to that? Like, what did you do? Well, they had a little bit of, like, a traditional, wait till your father gets home kind of thing. So I would get in trouble with my mom and she would tell my dad and then my dad would dole out the spanking. Do you remember what you did that deserved... Probably not listening. I don't... Climbing stuff. I mean, I went... I went to the library one time. I started climbing the bookcases and I remember my mom being like, how... Why... What on earth would compel you to do this? Yeah. Wait until you get home... Oh, yeah. ...kind of thing. And... Yeah. But I do remember distinctly one time my dad was gonna spank me and he could... He just, like, started cracking up. Really? It was me and my brother together. Oh, no. And apparently he pulled down our pants. We were, like, bare butt, you know? And he was, like... He just started laughing and walked away. He couldn't... He couldn't do it. Well, you know that you've lost it at that point. We were probably, like, looking at him like, Daddy, what are you gonna do to us? I mean, that is kind of funny. What... Did you ever get grounded as a child? Yeah, yeah. Or, like, in time out as a child? Sent to your room? Sent to my room for sure. Yeah, that was... That was a common discipline tactic. Taking certain things away. Yeah. I think as a kid it was... Game boys, TVs, you know. Yeah, the good stuff. It's always the technology. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. For little boys especially, I feel like. I mean, as a teenager... Grounded as well, but... I would take that away. Yeah, and I think... I feel like I remember getting really defiant. Maybe, I guess, probably older, though. Like, puberty. Mm-hmm. And, you know... It changes as you get older. Getting in some kind of big fights with my mom. Mm-hmm. Especially, so... Yeah, we don't have to reveal all right now for the entire internet. But I think when I was... I do know that they stopped spanking at some point. I don't know if it was explicit or not. Yeah, I mean, when you're not a kid anymore. I think that's pretty typical. But I mean, like, for everybody. Like, all of us. Oh, yeah. Even my sister, yeah. Yeah, do you think it was, like, a moral decision? Or just a... They never told me. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I got spanked as a kid. First, the same stuff. Like, not listening, fighting with my sister. You? We fought all the time. This one? All the time. You know, siblings. Mm-hmm. And I remember being... Plus, I mean, your sister. I mean, come on. Being sent to my room. That was pretty typical. I remember hitting my sister a couple times. And my mom sent me to my room. And I was so sad that I hit her that I snuck out of my room into her room. And we were playing with, like, our Barbie dolls. And my mom found us. And we were so scared because we were supposed to be in separate rooms because we were in trouble. And we're like, Oh, no. She caught us. I came out of my room. And we were playing peacefully together. Why would my mom be upset? She came in and was like, Oh, you guys are playing together. Okay. Yeah. And I just could not fathom that that was a good end result. You're supposed to be punished right now. I was supposed to be punished. So I didn't do the punishment. I should be in trouble, right? But because we were playing so happily together. Yeah. I distinctly remember that moment. The fear of being in trouble for not doing the punishment. But, yeah. How about, let's think about our kids now. How are they? We dropped the ball on this one. Disciplined. Well, we have a very strict no spanking policy. Yeah. We don't spank our kids. But then it's like, now what do we do? Yeah. I think, I feel like our generation is stuck in the middle where, like, a lot of science has come out and said hitting and spanking your kids is psychologically bad for them. It is not actually going to help them. So our generation hears that and says, okay, we're not going to spank. But there's not enough experience to tell us what else is effective. As they say, too, the pendulum swung too far. Like, a lot of parents our age as well, they would do, I would just call them permissive parents. I don't know exactly what they... I think this exists in all countries right now. I don't know exactly what they would call it, but, you know, their kids just walk all over them and they're rude all the time and they get what they want. And, like, who's the boss in the house? Is it the kids or the parents? It swung from one far side with, like, maybe our grandparents were very, very strict authoritarian parents and then we, our generation, has swung to be much more permissive. They're going to hear you out, child. Yes, tell me all your feelings. But then when you're rude, what do I do? So for us, our kids have time outs. If they do something wrong, if they say something rude, if they hit someone, they have to go sit in a chair for one minute, three minutes, five minutes, whatever it is. Quiet. Calm. Um, that has worked really well even for our two-year-old. Sometimes she... It's easier when you start them young, Yeah, sometimes she skips over to the chair like, okay, I'm ready. She's also like, yeah, I hit Freddy. Yeah, I did. Yeah, but even for Freddy, for our five-year-old, um, he has adapted to that really well. He's the reason that we started the rules in the first place. That was you as a child. Oh, yeah, middle, middle children. But for our oldest, it's a little bit trickier. I think when you're, as you get older, and I'm sure we'll figure this out too, like, or we'll find this out as our kids get older. Discipline has to change. Like, what is serious for him for our eight-year-old might be more, oh, you're, like, more towards the you're grounded side. Like, a long-term consequence. This weekend, you cannot play with your friends. You did something bad enough that this weekend you're not allowed to play with your friends. We have to stay home. Because those are more, like, grown-up consequences, kind of. So, we're learning. We're trying to figure it out. I would say we were a bit late to the scene on some of this because we started out a little more like, uh, just explain what the problem is and then they'll naturally stop. Not really. We were very resistant to discipline because it feels like an infringement upon your children. But now I'm like, kids are looking for a leader and you have to be the parent. Like, who's, who's supposed to be in charge in this situation? Yeah. And if you're, if you're not in charge, the kid is gonna try to be in charge. Yeah. I have a feeling that when our kids are adults, they're gonna be more in the middle. Like, they're gonna have a better picture. Maybe. It, I feel like generations tend to go like that though where it's like, Yeah, the pendulum has gone from here to here and then they will see the problems and kind of adjust a little bit more. Hopefully, right? We'll see. So, let us know for you. What is kind of normal punishment in your household if your kids or maybe when you were a child? What, what happened in your house? Tell us. Yeah, has there been any general loosening in your society as well? Like, I think in America. Maybe Europe too, I don't know. Less strict? Yeah, just way less strict. Yeah. Okay, we have two lightning round questions. Very quick. Boom. Are you ready? Tell me. What were your favorite games as a kid? Games activities? Things to do. Tag. You're it. you're it. Cool. Other games, I don't know. Did you play on a trampoline? Oh, trampoline, sure. Oh, yeah, like dodgeball on the trampoline. That was fun. Okay. Yeah. Man, we did all kinds of insane games like alligator where we took two mattresses and we jumped on the mattresses and smashed the people inside the mouth. Yeah. I cannot imagine doing that. Yeah. Why? Because it was so fun. The friends that I hung out with, if I knew you as a kid, I would never have played with you. We wouldn't have been friends. I was scared to get on it. No, no. I was scared. I would have flirted with you though. As an eight-year-old? Yes. I was scared to get on a trampoline because I didn't like that kind of physical like pushing or bumping. Like that was not what I liked. So my favorite activities as a kid were crafts. We did a lot of crafts, sewing things, cutting little things. This is not a game. That's an activity. Oh. Like what did you occupy your time with? And the next thing we loved to do was just dig outside. Kind of like what our kids do but like make little things with sticks and dirt and all of that. Yeah. Did I ever tell you about the Indiana Jones game? No. That's where my brother pulled us in the wagon and somebody pushed a barrel behind us like the ball that was rolling after you and other people threw like balls and hard things at you. While you're in the wagon? While you're in the wagon, yeah. Are you just free going down the hill or is your brother? No, my brother was pulling us through like a course. That is totally not what we did. It was a four boys two girls situation and only one girl played with us. Yeah, that would not have been me. That would not have been me. Okay, we have another quick lightning round question. When you were a kid what responsibilities did you have or chores did you have as a kid? List like two or three. Oh, my parents were they my dad would always shake his head about this now and be like we didn't give you enough chores. We had a chore chart that lasted like a month but there was no lasting like it was my job to feed the cats. No, not really. Nothing really stuck. I think my mom struggled with getting it to stick and keeping it up. It is hard. We know it's hard. I mean when I was a kid we had a chore chart which is pretty typical. I mean we would do it was the kind of thing where Saturday was doing chores and then you just get assigned something. Yeah. It wasn't consistent. We the things that stuck were just little things and I don't think they really helped the family that much. Like after dinner it was my job to wipe down the table. Okay. That's so small. It's not really a responsibility. And at least from my experience as a parent it takes more work to have your child do it than for you to do it. So for you to have your child take that responsibility it's not because it makes it a life easier for you. It's because you're like literally trying to instill in them a skill but it's going to take six months versus you doing it really quick. So I think that's something that we're starting to play around with. Like the kids feed the cats they're starting to collect the chicken eggs. They of to put their shoes back. Those little things that are helpful especially when there's three kids. Yeah it's not super regimented though. It's kind of similar to how we were. At least I was. Yeah yeah I think in the summer though Theo mows our grass. Oh yeah he likes doing that. Freddy cleans up. It's a really light lawn mower by the way. Yeah yeah it's not too hard. Freddy kind of cleans up the lawn before we do it. So they have some chores but it's definitely different than what our grandparents did. I think that's the biggest gap. Like our grandparents had very strict chores they were required to do they required our parents to do like that. They were needed a lot more. Yeah that was a much different life. My parents I mean my dad always said he would always help his mom wash dishes and sit at the table and they never were asked to they just did it is how he would explain it. Yeah very different. Different expectations I think. Yeah. Oh they also weren't allowed to talk at the dinner table before their mom and dad spoke. Very interesting. Yeah I could see that now it might be kind of nice. Yeah yeah so when your parents when your dad sat down at the table as a child they had to be silent until the parents talked together. I think like oh it'd be nice if I sat down at the table and me and Dan could talk and the How do you enforce that? Yeah what was their trick? Like how do you get that to happen? That is the mystery. If you have any ideas let me know it's not my life goal to have this happen but it is I think it's just a generational difference like very different parenting style. my grandpa could give you a stare that could make you want to shut up. Maybe that's it. A lot more than I have. Yeah yeah we're too nice. Okay well this was our conversation about childhood. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Dan. Oh you're welcome. For bearing all for our students. I hope that this real-life not AI conversation has enriched your life. Thanks for not being a robot. You're welcome. And don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet for today's lesson. It includes all of the vocabulary you saw come up here. Plus the bonus audio version which is something you can listen to to help you understand fast English. All the stuff we talked about and the way to get this is click on the link in the description enter your name and email address and voila just like that it will land in your email inbox. It is my gift to you. So make sure you download it and thank you so much for being here. You're welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you the next time. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching this video next where Dan and I have a conversation about education. In particular, you will see why Dan did not go to school until he was a teenager. What? And you'll learn a lot about the American education system and how it might be different from your country. I'll see you there.