How To Create A STRONGER FAMILY
AJ Hoge argues families strengthen through three things: keeping kids home instead of six hours daily at school, building rituals like dinner and gratitude practices, and choosing a partner whose values align with yours. He shares examples from The Book of New Family Traditions and audience stories about extended family contact and teaching manners early.
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Welcome to the Effortless English show with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hoge Where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms and grammar drills. Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly.
I'm A.J. hoge, author of Whoops Microphone. I'm A. J. Hoge, author of Effortless English. Learn to speak English like a native VIP members. You should have received your invitation for our meeting. So check your email if you are a VIP member and find the invitation. You'll find the date, the time and the link. Looking forward to talking to you. If you're not a VIP member yet, join our VIP program at effortlessenglishclub.com join VIPfertlessenglishclub.com and you can join the meeting this month. There's still time. If you join now to there's still time. There's a baby in the background calling for me. Da da da da da da da da. Our topic today, how to create a stronger family. Stronger families. Stronger families. So just some, just a few ideas, a couple ideas from a book that I'm re reading that I'm reading again about traditions and rituals for family. We recently talked about morning rituals and kind of success rituals. This is one of the first VIP lessons you'll get about kind of power rituals and really how to program yourself for powerful success each day. But also our families rituals and traditions are very important to make our family stronger. So let's talk about how to make our families stronger. Okay, welcome, welcome everyone who joining live and of course we'll get to the chat soon. Okay so the topic first of all the book I'm going to be reading from is called the book of new family traditions. How to create great rituals for holidays and every day. So it's a book about creating your own family rituals, your own family traditions. Right? These are things that you know. Family traditions are things that you know that you do again repeatedly as a family. And some of these, of course some of traditions are can go for, you know, many generations. Right. So like some of my family traditions for example are come from my grandparents, maybe even older than that. They're you know, their parents. But like for example around Christmas time, you know we there we have a lot of traditions and things we did at Christmas time that my parents did that I plan to do with my children and this is connected to my grandparents as well. So we'll talk some of these things might be Big and some little. So how to create stronger families is the, the first thing I would say is homeschool your children a topic we talked about last time. This is number one. I think this is the number one way to create stronger families. And by stronger family, I mean stronger connection between parents and, and children. So this is not really about marriage. That's another topic. Right? The mom and the dad, the husband and wife, their relationship obviously needs to be good. This is probably the most important thing. Number one is you need to have a good relationship with your husband or wife, so you have to take care of that. But then next, also, you want to create strong connections with your children. And this is a major, major, major problem. You can look around, of course, the relationship with the husband and wife relationship is also a major problem. We can see how much divorce there is around the world. So this is very important. Maybe that's a topic for another day, but for today, this connection between parents and children is so, so, so, so, so important. And, and I think, you know, there's a danger with this. The danger is that parents kind of get used to this kind of easy connection with their small children, right? Babies naturally will connect with you. Right. As long as you're a decent parent. Right? You're not, you're not terrible. You know, they, they're gonna, you hold the baby, they're gonna, they're gonna love you, and they love being picked up and held. And when they're little, small children, of course, you know, they, they, they, they're gonna love you and kiss you and want to be with you all the time and think you're great. But where do the problems happen? The problems happen when they speak. When kids, especially start hitting the teenage years, right? 13 years old, middle school and high school, junior high, high school. This is where we can see in culture after culture around the world, because of this globalist system we have, that a break often happens. There's often a very serious break between the children and the parents somewhere in that age, right? Some it happens earlier, middle school, and some it happens maybe a little later, more like high school. But it's very, very, very, very, very common. Why is this? First of all, it's not natural. This is not natural. This is a product of culture. It's a product. This is a result of the school system, number one. And it's a result of the media and then, of course, just the general culture. So it's all three of these things. But I would say, number one, the worst thing is the school system. The school system will gradually weaken the connection between you and your children. Of course. Yeah. They always love you and you always love them. But, you know, there's a level of connection, and it's very strong, typically with very small children, very naturally, easily. Because why, number one, they're home with you all the time? I mean, this is one of the things we forget, right? Babies are with you all the time. At least with mom. Usually with mom and sometimes with dad. All time. The. All the time with one of you. Every single minute. Okay. Except when they're sleeping. Even then, like, our babies slept in the same room with us. We always slept. And we still do all sleep together. So they're with us every second, Right. There's never a time they're not with one of us. So that is, number one for creating strong families, is that the children are always, always, always with you. You're always together. Time together. There's no way to replace that. Okay? You can do all kinds of cool things and amazing experiences, but if you're not with each other very much, if you're separated a lot, the connection will get weaker. I talk a lot about all the different problems about schools and my criticisms of schools, and they're all true. But the very worst one, the worst thing of all, is that schools separate families. This is the worst thing. Even the very best school, even if it's a perfect school with amazing teachers and they just. They have the perfect teaching methods, everything's wonderful. But still, you are separated from your children for what, six hours at the. At minimum, right? Schools. Kids go to school for six hours. If you count the time to get there, like if they're on the bus or walking to school and the time they're in class and in lunch, you know, they're away from you. You're separated from them at least six hours a day and sometimes more. This is the worst thing. This is this. It starts little by little, and you can actually see it. You know, there's quite a change. Let's say kindergarten to first grade. Why? Kindergarten is usually part time, and first grade is full time. So as soon as the kids start going to school full time and they're away six hours a day already, a little bit of a separation starts to happen. The connection gets a little worse. And then, of course, it's year after year after year. And then they become teenagers, right? They start hitting 13, 14, 15. They've had many, many, many years now being away from you during the day. So what does that mean? It means they're connecting with other People, they're being influenced by other people, people who may not be that great, people who may not be very loving, people who may not be very wise, who may not be good people at all, Right? The teachers, that whole teaching system. And other kids, some of the other kids might be okay, and a lot of them are not. A lot of them are bullies. A lot of them are maybe they're not bullies. Even your kids might make friends with kids who are just not very good, who. Who watch a lot of television, watch a lot of movies, listen to terrible music, and they have a lot of quite negative bad ideas and behavior, and your child will become very influenced by them. That separation is the worst thing for families, the number one thing that weakens families. So that's why I say homeschool your kids. Because when you homeschool your kids, when you teach your kids at home, they're with you every day. So this separation doesn't happen. So when they become middle school age 13, 14, 15, they still stay connected to you. There's the connection stays strong. Yes. Of course, as they get older, they need more independence. You know, this is natural. They're getting little by little closer to adulthood. It's part of your job as a parent. My job as a parent to prepare them for that and to start to give them and help them reach more independence, more ability to take care of themselves, of course. But we need to keep that love, that strong loving connection. So homeschooling is number one. Okay. Next, though, some smaller things you can do, and this is from the book, are little traditions. Just little things you can do during your day. Little rituals. Little rituals, things you do each day. And here's an example of this, is just to have a dinner tradition. And in this book, this. I'm not sure if it's a man or woman who wrote the book says creating a dinner ritual, you know, can make your family stronger. So what does this mean? It means you kind of have certain things you do in each evening and you eat together as a family, right? So you might have. You have a way to announce dinner, that it's starting. You might just say, time to eat, right? In some movies, right, they would ring a little bell, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, whatever it is, right? But you. But everybody comes and you have it. You have an expectation, rules. If you want that, you know, everybody comes and sit down together at the table. Not like one person's sitting on the floor, another person's in another room. So you're all sitting together at the table. No Television, all TV off, all phones, media device, everything off. None of that. No music even. Okay. Why? Because you want to get together and talk, right? So you don't want any distractions, right? So you all sit together. And then next, the person who wrote this book recommends start your, you know, having kind of a. Before the meal, have a way to. A ritual, a tradition for starting, you know, before you eat of saying thank you. Something spiritual, right? In, like, in America, this is called saying grace. It's basically a short prayer where people will say, thank you, dear God, for this food and for our family, for know, for our family here together. And then they'll start. So before starting to eat, they will say this prayer. Or it could be like in Japan, they just. It's just one word that means something like that. Actually, it's kind of a similar meaning. And it just. Itadakimasu. People will put their hands together in like a praying position. They say itadakimasu before they start eating. So it's not just you put the food down. Everyone starts eating like animals, right? There's a. There's a pause. There's a little everyone together. You say something and then you begin. Sometimes people hold hands. Like in. In America when they say grace, they'll hold hands and they'll say that little prayer, some kind of little blessing. You can decide what you want, right? It can be anything you want. The point is just that it's the same each time. It's a little way to get everyone to be more mindful, to focus on this moment. And then other things you could do. Like this is, these are some other things this, the author recommends you could do have a tradition that while you're eating, you have family news. So maybe you have. Your tradition is it depends on the age of your children. But you go around and each person talks about, you know, like, what's. What happened to them that day, right? Because it's in the evening. So you might, you might start and say, okay, well, today I went to work and I had some problems at work, and, you know, whatever. And you kind of. You tell your news for the day, what happened to you? And then you go to your child, okay, what happened with you today? Tell, you know, what's your news for the day? And then the next person and the next person, and each person gets to talk about their, you know, the family news, right? What they did that day. Another example, you could have toasts. You know, a toast is when you raise the glasses, right? And you say, you say something. It can Be anything again, you can decide. But you could say something you're grateful for. For example, so maybe everyone raises their glass, say, okay, a toast. Ding, ding, ding. And then, you know, I'm grateful for, you know. You know, that we're all healthy. And it's that we had a great day today, and it was really. We had a really good time together. And then maybe each person in the family would go around and they raised their glass, you know, and drink water, whatever, juice, and you do that and then you say, you know. Yeah, cheers. And then everyone drinks together, right? It's just a little. It's just little things like this, but it creates these little shared memories, these little shared experiences, and it creates these positive moments, mindsets and shared connection, right? Instead of everyone just eating and kind of ignoring each other, right? Or being. Eating and being distracted by a television or just eating and being quiet, right? Which can happen sometimes. So this kind of starts to create a very positive experience, ritual tradition every night for the family. And let's see. Oh, and then another thing that the author recommends, that you could do fun stuff, like you could have like a. Like a little hat or a little bowl, and you just put in like a question, like a conversation question or topic. And they could just. Sometimes they could just be funny. It doesn't have to be something serious all the time. And so, you know, some. One person picks it out and then everybody has to answer the question, right? Like, what would you do if you had $30 million? What would you do with it? And then everyone goes around and answers it. Or what is your favorite animal, right? Or who is your favorite character from Lord of the Rings? And why? For example, if your family, we're reading Lord of the Rings or, you know, so it could just be fun little questions like this, and you get. Again, it gets conversation going and it can be quite fun for you, right? And it's again, this shared experience that you're doing. Just see if there's a couple more. Oh, then another thing that she recommends in terms of meals, again, this is really folk. So that. That's kind of having that every night tradition, but then also having a tradition maybe once a week, maybe once a month of doing some kind of special meal for your family, right? Just something special. I'll give you an example. It can be very simple. When I was growing up, every Sunday, every Sunday, my dad would barbecue. So this was our family tradition, right? So Monday to Saturday, my mom usually made dinner. We. We just kind of whatever. Different things, right? But then every single Sunday My dad always would barbecue, and he would make steak and hamburger, right? So this was just kind of like our little Sunday tradition. And it's just something we did every Sunday. And it was kind of nice, you know, it was just something special that was for us. You're creating these special little things that are just for you and your family, which is quite nice. And then the writer of this book recommends other things you could do. You could do barbecue, like, once a week, right? You could do picnics. So maybe once a week, you. You, instead of eating at the table, you, like, put a blanket on the floor just inside your house in the living room, and you all eat on kind of the floor. Or maybe you eat outside. If the way. If you have good weather where you live, you could. You could actually do a real picnic and eat outside once a week or once a month or something like that. So this, you know, these are all these ones focused around meals, right? You could have special traditions that you create for holidays. Of course, you know, whatever your cultural holidays and your religious holidays are, you may. You probably already have some, but you can make some extra ones, some extra traditions that are just for your family, a few extra special things that just you all do. So the more you create these special repeated experiences together, it brings your children and you together, and it encourages, you know, conversation and connection. And this is so, so, so important, especially as your children get older, right? Because if you just have young children, this is great. But if, you know, you got to start when they're young, hopefully, and then once they get older, you know, it's kind of late. If they're. If the connection breaks when they're older, it's very hard then to get that connection back. But if you keep it strong, then much better. Obviously. Obviously, I will. Let's get into our live show. And if you have any, you know, family traditions that you do, or you did, your family, maybe your parents did with you growing up, or if you're a parent now that you do already with your children that you feel make your family stronger, they make a stronger connection with your children, better communication with your kids, then please share those, because I'd love to hear what you all do also. All right, let's see. Let's get into our comments. Let me just go back a little bit. Yakon Albez says this is a good topic. I often find myself thinking about my future family. I'm only 18 years old, but I love imagining my future kids. Good for you. That's great. And it's, I think it's very good to do that. When. Before you have children. I think it's good to think about these things before you have kids, think about how will you discipline them? Like, how will you handle discipline? You know, all kids are gonna, you know, do stuff where they're. You don't want them to do. How are you going to handle that? You know, a lot of parents just kind of do it, so it's kind of good to read some books about that and think about it and kind of think, how. How would I handle that? Right. And how will you teach them? Will you homeschool them? Will you. You know what, you should think about these things. I think it's good to think about these things beforehand so you're kind of clear. Of course, when you have kids, you're gonna have to change some things because the reality might be different than what you imagined. But it's. It's good to have, you know, some. A fairly good idea what of how you want to be a parent. So then, number one, when you're looking to get married or looking for a partner, you can talk to them, make sure they kind of fit with you and what you want to do with your kids. And then once you're. Once you are a parent, you're a little more. You're ready. You're a little more ready. So, yeah, that's great. So it's great that you're already thinking about this. I think it's fantastic. And Ibrahim, Aliyah, sorry you couldn't. You had to go to work now. And thanks for saying hi. You can listen to the recording, I'm sure. Okay. Daria says hello. My daughter, who is 13, is a homeschooler. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I work at home, so physically we stay together most of the time, every day, but we talk very little because everybody is busy with their own stuff. Aha. Well, change that. I recommend you change that because it's great. You're home together. That is probably number one. But you don't want to be home together and silent. Right? So you need. I recommend, as the topic today suggests is start to create some, you know, everyday rituals, habits for you and your daughter during the day, you and your family in the evenings. That will encourage conversation and interaction, connection. Right. So they can, you know, it can be. Again, it can be some silly, fun stuff that's just kind of light, you know, like the little questions, you know, funny questions. And it can be more like, you know, a little more, you know, a little more serious, too, sometimes, whatever it is, you can Read books together, for example, for. If she's homeschooling, she's reading books. Well, read the same books and discuss them. Right. And involve your husband or if you have other kids, so you can start having conversations about the book. Not just like from school, trying to memorize it, not writing papers about the book, but really discussing the book. What do you think about this book? What do you think about this? Do you think that character did the right thing? And which character do you like best? Why? Why not? And what do you. And then you share your ideas and you have discussions, just like you do with adults. So you've got a right. We're the parents. We're the leaders. We have to create this connection. We have to create these conversations. We have to do everything we can. So that's great that you're homeschooling now. That's fantastic. Daria, good luck. Wonderful. Cool. Olga says, when I was a child, all my family prepared food for in Sunday morning. See, that's even better, right? So her family prepared food, you know, together. So, like, everybody's involved. Everyone's doing it together, right? Not just mom or not just dad. And everyone else is sitting around waiting, doing nothing. Like, instead, they're all helping. They're all helping to make the meal. They're all, you know, preparing the food. And even if you have little kids, you can give them some little small thing to do, even if it's just pretending. And I think it's really great is to. To have these traditions where you are doing projects together, making a meal together, building something together, cleaning the house together. Oh, whatever. Reading. All reading the same book together and talking about it. You get the idea, right? Yeah. Amina says we should teach our children good manners from childhood, not when they become teenagers. Right. This is, you know, there is too late if they're. If they're rude and you have bad, you know, bad attitudes by teenage years, it's a little late, right? You. You got to start young. I mean, I'm starting now, so my kids are three, and we're just starting to, you know, to teach them to say please and thank you. And I don't quite understand it yet, but. But they still do it a little bit. They're already starting to do it, and it's just little things like that. So she's starting right away. As young as you can, two, three, when they're toddlers. And then, of course, building, building, building so that. Right. You can. It's easier to prevent a lot of these problems if instead of having Them happen and then try to fix it when they're 15. It's kind of late. It's not impossible. I'm not going to say it's impossible at that age, but much more difficult. David says, greetings from Argentina. Nice. Thank you. Oh, cool. Why so Siri says, when I was younger, we, on Sundays we always cooked our traditional food, which is called Plov, an Uzbek traditional meal. This was, this habit was so memorable. I wish I could go back to those days. Very nice. Well, you may. You can't go back, but you can make. Create them again for your own family, right? So when you have your own. I don't know if you have kids already. If you do, you can do this with your kids or in the future when you have kids, you can do this and create that memory for them. This is actually, I think one of the fun things about being a parent. It's quite fun is that you kind of get to see have experiences again and they, they become special again. Right. Like, you know, I'll be honest, like. So when I was a kid, we had these great Christmas traditions with my family and some of these meal traditions like we're talking about today. But then as a, as an adult when I was single, I didn't, they didn't have so much meaning when I was alone, right. So I would just eat sitting on the floor, eat whenever, eat out at restaurants. You know, there's no tradition about um. And you know, even like Christmas time, I often was living in, in Asia where there was, you know, non. It was no Christmas celebration or not much. So I kind of just kind of stopped doing all that stuff. But now that I have my own kids now it's kind of fun to start, you know, doing some of these or at least thinking about doing some of these traditions with them because, you know, they were quite young right now we, we started doing a little bit like we had a fun. This Christmas was quite fun because we, we had a little Christmas tree and we did a few the little things and as they get older, I can do more and more with them. So creating those again, those things that were special to you when you were a child with your family, you can repeat again now as the parent for your own children. It's very nice. You're passing it on. You're continuing it. Okay, let's see. Martin says, do you ever want to make a video of you teaching your kids to talk? There's, I don't know, like, you know, native language there. There's not much teaching that Happens I show them some cards. We read books together. But, you know, mostly you just talk to your kids, right? It. Everybody learns their own native language, so I don't know there's much method to it. And I don't put my kids on video or. And I don't put them on social media. But I'm happy to talk about, you know, as we start doing more homeschooling, I'll definitely share what I'm doing with you and any, you know, any problems I have and how I solve the problems. Happy to do that. And I will, of course, do that. Carlos Freita says when each family member understands their role. Does it. The family becomes a safe and loving place. Therefore, maintaining family unity requires continuous effort. Good point. Continuous effort, right? Yeah, exactly. We don't get distracted by, you know, getting busy with too much with work or activities or whatever, and forget about this. Because the family unity, as you say, is number one. Right. In terms of practically. Right. This is super, super, super important. It's more important than, you know, all those other things. So you gotta. We have to. We need to make an effort and consciously do things, plan things, create things, meaning, situations, traditions, activities, behaviors, rules, experiences that make our families more unified and stronger. Let's see. Elma says, talk about jealousy in marriage. Don't really have any. There's not a. There's no issue with that in my marriage. So I don't know. Jealousy is not a good thing. You know, I think it'll destroy, you know, I guess I experienced it when I was young and younger, when dating, and. It's toxic. It's poison. Gotta let it go, you know, if another. If the other person is jealous. I don't know. It's hard to deal with, I guess, but it's a quite a toxic, poisonous thing. Do you recommend a book about creating a strong family? Ask Vladislav. Not one. I can't say there's not, like, one book that I think has been fantastic. Honestly, it's more just reading lots of books and getting little ideas from lots of different books. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. So, you know, I'll just keep sharing little ideas and tips and tricks as I find them and come across them, but unfortunately, I don't have, like, one great book. Read this book. It's awesome. About families. Yeah. No, not really. Oh, Marty's asking, what about the next book club? Mehdi's asking. I don't know. Not sure. Think about it. I have. No, no. No thoughts about it yet. I. No idea. Okay. Just kind of going through the Comments. All the comments here. Oh, why so serious? Thank you. From Uzbekistan says I'm your crazy fan. I've listened to all your podcasts. Awesome. Mm. There's a lot of people saying hello in the comments. Please recommend a book for young people. Ask Rita. Not sure. You mean for English? For. Yeah, I'm not sure what. I'm not. Can you ask? Just be more specific in your question. Like what. What kind of book? I mean, like, for fun, for enjoyment, for learning English, for family. I don't know. Okay. C says you're the greatest preacher in the world. Nobody has your bones. Ability to influence people. That's an interesting word to use, preacher. Amen. Diva says a strong family is an everyday job. If I want to become a fluent speaker, should I speak every day? Eventually, you will speak every day, but you should probably have a time period where you're doing lots and lots and lots of listening and reading, listening and reading, listening and reading. And then when you feel like, ah, I'm ready to start speaking. Right. You kind of feel it then. Yeah. But you can do things like shadowing, which we've talked about before, to get that. Speaking all the time, you know, so you can just do it by yourself, you know, you don't need someone else always. Oh, this is really nice. Olga says, I created a new habit a month ago. My favorite uncle died. Since then, I just. And I'm sorry to hear that. Since then, I decided to call all my relatives every Sunday. So when I start doing that, I begin to feel myself happier. Very nice. That's very, very great. Yeah, I like that. Having a tradition where you contact, connect with your extended family. Uncles and aunts and cousins. Right. Because sometimes especially. And grandparents, if they're still alive. And sometimes that can be maybe even harder because maybe we have a good connection with our parents and our brothers and sisters. But, you know, that extended family, we, you know, sometimes we only see them special holidays or special days if they don't live close. So it's a really nice idea to have a habit of, like you said, maybe one day every week or a day every month, you call them, or maybe you write them a letter. You know, you write everybody, like you said, all your different relatives a letter or send them a card, call them on the phone, whatever you want to do, email them, but keep that connection with them. I think that's a great idea. Like, I've got, you know, I ended up connecting with a couple of my cousins, younger cousins. They're more like nieces and nephews back in In America using. Just using an app line. I have my cousin Olivia, like, we text back and forth now. And a couple of my nieces and nephews in America, I also kind of. We started that habit to just keeping that connection, right? Little things just send each other little texts, little pictures, little funny things. And it creates a stronger extended family, too. So it doesn't have to be just the family, you know, your immediate family in your. In your house, living together, but also that larger family, or sometimes you can call that a clan, your clan. Tomas says, we are living here. Greetings from Norway. We're living here with our kids. It's really difficult since we're actually from Poland. Ah, homeschooling is not so popular. They need to learn Norwegian. What about Japan? Homeschooling is not super popular here. There are some kids don't go because of the parents, keep them out of the school because of bullying, and they're just depressed. They hate school. But, you know, probably, you know, in most countries, I think the United States is probably leading. The leading country for homeschooling. But, you know, I think it's slowly growing in some other countries, and so you just gotta investigate. Good luck to you, though. Oh, cool. Ali Sundays, since about two years ago, I was listening to your podcast. Sometimes with my family, I'm still doing it. So that's a cool thing to do, too. You can learn something together. In fact, that's a great way to build a connection with your children, for example, or your parents. Learn something together. Like you can start a new hobby together or learn about. You can learn about something, or you can actually like, you know, learn how to do something together. And that's kind of nice because, you know, especially, I think as kids get older, right, that they have. They're wanting to. They want. They want you to see them differently. They're trying to earn your respect in a way they don't want to be. You know. You know, they'll often say it. They don't. I'm not a child. I'm not a little kid anymore, right? Teenage years. And they're. They're trying to push to become more independent and things. And. And, you know, as a parent, you're always used to being in that role of kind of above them, above them, above them. So I think it can be very positive that you do something where you're basically on the same level. Like, you both start. You both learn something together. We have a lot of effortless English members who, for example, who listen. Have listened to English with their children. You know, listen to effortless English, to the stories, to the podcasts, learning English together, right? It could be anything. You could. If you live at the beach, you could, you could, like, both learn how to start learning how to surf together. You start, you both start off as beginners, or you both, you know, you both learned. You both go to Jiu jitsu, and you both start learning Jiu jitsu, right? And you're gonna be bad. You're gonna be a white belt, and there'll be a white belt. So you start off together, you're kind of in the, you're, you're doing this. And so now you're kind of more like a team. It's more like you're, you're not always above them. You know, of course, as the parent, sometimes you have to be above them and be the leader, obviously. But I think it's helpful, especially as they get older, to have some things, some experiences, some areas of life where you guys are more like equals, right? You're on the same level. Because finally, you know, eventually that is what's going to happen, right? As they become adults, you have to change and, you know, essentially become equals. You know, you might be able to guide them and give them some advice occasionally when they're adults, but, but more or less right there, you become. You reach an equal level where you do become more friends and maybe you're a little of a mentor to them, hopefully. But eventually, though, they may pass you. They may pass you in a lot of areas in life, right? This, in fact, if, if you're a good parent, you want them to. You want them to pass you. You want them to be better than you. So, but we have to keep. So we have to watch our egos as parents, and when this happens, we have to accept it. And I think this is a good way to do it. Do some things together where you start off together, maybe you say, let's learn photography. You both take a photography class or maybe something online, and you both start doing the projects together. Okay? You both, you both start off and you're both beginners, you're both terrible, you're not any good, and you're both getting better, better, better. And they might actually learn faster than you and get better than you, and I think that's a good thing. That's totally fine. Or you both decide to start learning how to play guitar or learn a language or whatever it is. I think that's very, very, very healthy and wonderful to do, even with younger kids. So it gives them a feeling of Like I said, sometimes they might become better than you and learn faster than you, and they become kind of the. The one that's helping you a little bit as you learning, and that's really nice. It's really good for them. Most kids are going to really like that, and it's going to help your connection with them. Colleen says, what about expats? These are people who live in a. Outside their own country. I'm an expat, and they're away from their families. If you're talking about, like, you're away from your children, I would say go back home. Go home. Don't leave your children behind in another country. I could never do it. I could never do that. So I couldn't live my. Leave my wife and children behind. So no amount of money is worth it. I would say go back home, be with your. Be with your family, or bring them over with you. I mean, obviously, I live in Japan. Obviously, I'm not Japanese, but obviously my whole family lives here. So stay together. Keep your family together. That's my advice. Keep your family together. Carlos also mentions the importance of forgiveness. A strong couple or a strong family is a union of good forgivers. Right. People who are good at forgiving. Don't focus on faults. Don't focus on the bad things, but focus on what each one has that is best. Help each other to grow. Yeah. Awesome. Very, very, very, very, very, very good. Yeah, you got to forgive in the family. It's one of the great things about family, is that it teaches you forgiveness and patience. Wahidullah says intimacy in the family satisfies many of the spiritual and psychological needs of the members. Indeed, there's a degree of intimacy in every family gathering. All members must work to improve it. This is true. But of course, more responsibility for parents who have younger children, because you have to teach them how to do that. But yes, you're right. You're right. Hey, Cliffy, Good to see you as usual. Good to see you. And Tiago Silva, thank you for the donation, the super chat. Thank you. Oh, Dada. I got my baby boy out there saying, da, da, da, da. All right, okay. All right. Maybe one or two more, and then we're done. Mm. That's about it. All right. I'll take one more question, and then we're done. So, again, if you haven't not joined my VIP program, join now. We're doing a VIP member meeting at the end of this month online using video. We're gonna try using Zoom. I hope it works, because then we can actually see each other's faces and talk to each other and I'm quite excited about it. We'll see. This will be my first time trying to use Zoom for a big meeting of our VIP members. If you're not a VIP member yet, you can still join us on that meeting and future meetings. Join at effortless english club.com Niraj asks, have you ever been to India? Three times. I've been to India three times. All right, we'll take this last comment. Actually, I got a couple comments. Wow, suddenly the comments are pouring in. All right, I'll take the last two here. Naruto says, I saw in a school textbook which teaches young children what is family teaching? The total opposite of reality. Like two moms, two fathers, etc. That's why I said homeschool your children. The schools are full of this kind of crazy brainwashing and you put your child in schools, this is what you get. And then when they become teenagers, suddenly they hate you and they have a terrible connection to you. They don't trust you. You know, you're, you lose that close connection with your children. Why? Well, you let them be brainwashed for 10 years or more in the school system, that's what's going to happen. Don't do it. All right. Okay. Finally, Khalifi says a strong family begins before having kids. Yes, I agree about that. I agree completely that the relationship with the, you know, between the husband and wife is obviously very, very, very important. Choose well. Choose carefully. Choose well. You're absolutely right about this that, you know, you need to have a good relationship because obviously you know that. What's the, what's one of the, not one of, what's the biggest thing that destroys families? Divorce. Right. In our modern sick world, the number one thing that destroys families and causes so much pain and suffering and so many long term problems for children, Divorce. So absolutely right. This has to be the foundation, right? Absolutely. You need to choose carefully, choose well, have a good relationship. And when I say to have choosing well, it means don't. Just don't choose based on your hormones, you know, like just being excited or, you know, you've got to have deeper levels of. You have to agree your values have to, you don't have to be exactly the same, but you have to have some basic agreements of values. Right? Like if you want children, the person you marry needs to also want children. You need to agree on kind of the main ideas of how you will raise those children. You should have a pretty close agreement on very important Things like religion or spirituality and other key values like that. The kind of lifestyle you want economically, like financially, right? If you like to live a very simple life, don't marry somebody who likes to spend money and wants lots of expensive things. That's a disaster. Wait, it's gonna, that's a disaster that will happen, waiting to happen. Okay, so you need to match about a lot of these things, right? So many people get married just because they like, like a man will marry a woman because, oh, she's so beautiful and oh, I love her so much and, and that's not enough. That's not enough. That's what everybody says when they get married. And then a lot of them then get divorced several years later, so. Or even less than that. So don't just choose on attraction, okay? Do not only choose based on attraction. You got to focus on all these other things. I mean, I think that's why it's funny because when I was young I used to think the idea of arranged marri was so crazy, right? For an American, it seems very, very strange. Arranged marriage means like the parents, like help, you know, basically, you know, choosing or helping to choose the person you marry. The kids marry their older kids, right? Like I know in India that I'm not sure if it's still done, but I know it was, you know, part of the traditional system and I know other countries also. And so I said growing up, I thought, oh, we, you know, we, we thought, oh, that's so crazy because you know, Americans, we choose based on love and all this. But I have to say, I have to say as I've gotten older and kind of more red pilled and more awake, I understand that system. I understand that system very, very well. Now. I think that why it was and maybe is popular and used because a lot of times young people will choose their marriage partners based on just basically excitement. It's lust or, you know, even love. But it's, it's just this kind of romantic excitement is what it really is. They don't really even know what love is. It's not. Love is not romantic excitement, okay? It's. It's something that develops over years and years and years and has to be. It's something you do right, not something you feel. And so, you know, having that advice of older people who can kind of help see some of these things, help the. Help their children or help young people look for those deeper values, the deeper connections that are very important. Not just excitement and romantic excitement. It is very important for long term. You got to think long term. This is the problem. Romantic excitement is a short term thing. It doesn't last forever. Does not last forever. These other things are what will create a strong marriage, you know, for years and years. And then having children and having a strong family and staying together. This is so important. So, Cliffy, good point. Yes, absolutely. 100%. All right, guys, as always, lots of love to you. Join my VIP program at effortless english club.com and I will see you next time. Build your family stronger. You know, try some of these ideas we talked about today with some of these traditions, you know, so even just the simple things. See you next time. Bye.
