Written by Christopher Kelly
March 28, 2024
Chris:
Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly. Today's journey takes us into unconventional living with my guest Julie Kelly, my wife and partner in adventure. Together we delve into our nomadic lifestyle shared with our 3 vibrant children, each step an exploration outside societal norms. This conversation unfolds the layers behind our decision to steer clear of conventional schooling whilst aiming to better support our kids needs.
Our conversation starts with what we learned from developmental psychologist and evolutionary anthropologist Peter Gray, emphasizing the pivotal role of play in a child's development, and how we've designed our environment to nurture this philosophy. From living in a house and sending our kids to forest school, to the compact simplicity and togetherness of a campsite living in a VW camper van, we share the ups and downs of our experiences. We also discuss living in an intentional community in Costa Rica and Airbnb's important role in enabling our journey. Well, Julie, missus Kelly.
Julie:
Hello, darling.
Chris:
You promise no flirting. Okay. There's nothing more annoying than that somebody who hosts a podcast having their significant other on and flirting with them for an hour and expecting other people to enjoy it. So I promise you that this will not be that.
Julie:
Okay. I also promise I won't sing you happy birthday.
Chris:
It is my birthday today. Now I wanted to have you on because recently I interviewed the developmental psychologist, Peter Grady. That's a fair description of Peter's work. He's a scholar of
Julie:
play. Yeah. That's often how I describe him.
Chris:
We did a podcast and the title was how to raise the value of free play. And I think Peter did a really good job of arguing for the importance of free play. The question then becomes, well, how do you facilitate that for the kids? It's not obvious to me from reading the book free to learn which I would highly recommend Yeah. Exactly how you go about this as a practical concern.
Julie:
But no, it wasn't, prescriptive.
Chris:
Exactly. Yeah. I think it would be useful just to pull out from Peter's work a definition of play. Mhmm. And by Peter's definition and, you know, having talked to someone else who's done a lot of reading in this area is a is scholarly pursuit if you believe or not and worthwhile scholarly pursuit too.
Play is self chosen and self directed. So the moment somebody else is making someone other than the players is making the rules, it's
Julie:
no longer play.
Chris:
It's not play. This all league baseball is not. Well, it's a form of play, but it's definitely not free play. Play is intrinsically motivated, and the means are more valued than the ends. So the moment you start handing out belts like in jujitsu, participation trophies, they are really not like the kids do any kind of assessment to get the belt.
Mhmm. It's not really free play anymore. Right. However, the Duke the kids do have an opportunity to do free play Mhmm. At jujitsu.
Yeah. And it's funny that's when they've always come alive.
Julie:
Those pursuits are not also valuable, but it's Yeah. If you're if you're looking to optimize for free play, then you I think it's important to be clear about what exactly that means.
Chris:
Plays guided by mental rules and the coral to that is that there's no such thing as unstructured place, not just a bunch of random crap. The kids have rules in their heads and they're playing by those rules even if they're not written down anywhere. And in fact, we talked about this in the podcast that the kids spend much of their time playing Negotiating. Negotiating rules. Mhmm.
So, you know, someone asked us yesterday, how will your kids learn to do division? My question to that in response is how your kids gonna learn to negotiate? Mhmm. I I think they'll find the the divide button on the calculator. Yeah.
Negotiation not so much. Play is always creative and usually imaginative. That's important, isn't it?
Julie:
Very much
Chris:
so. So whenever you get your kids to do something in education, I'd say that you're making bets about what skills will be valuable in the future.
Julie:
Mhmm.
Chris:
And having spent 25 years in tech, this last couple of years has been nuts with how much progress has been made in AI and in particular in generative AI. Correct. And the potential and possibilities there seem limitless. And I don't I don't even know where this is going next year, you know. I really don't.
Julie:
No. I mean, that's something that I point to people a lot because, I mean, I graduated my undergrad in 2008.
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
And that was a terrifying moment. These are just like, well, now what? Yeah. And I I mean and then extrapolate that to everything that's happened in technology to now. And I just have zero ability to predict what will even be possible for employment, a job, any of those things when our kids are grown.
Chris:
So Peter also makes a really good argument. Also, why do we play? How is this going to give our kids the skills they need in the future? Well, play is a powerful means of practicing survival promoting skills. All animals play at the skills that are necessary in adulthood.
Mhmm. So baby mice play at escaping from cats and kittens play at catching mice. Right? Like so we're a very social species, obviously, obligate social learners. We learn new skills from other people.
That's the type of thing that humans play out as as kids. Right? And it's like, yeah, a lot that goes on. Right? So Peter writes about constructive play.
You see that forest school all the time. Like, they wanna build forts. They wanna build pillow forts. It's going on in
Julie:
my living room this moment.
Chris:
Yeah. Our good friend, Laura, who was on the podcast previously is making this episode possible. Thank you, Laura. And what else do they play at? A social dramatic play.
Mhmm. So if I take on some persona, if I'm king and you're queen, then who are these other people? What does that mean?
Julie:
Yeah. House even, you know, just playing at regular everyday life. Find mom and your dad and we've got kids and this is your job and this is my job and, you know, all the things.
Chris:
Yeah. And then dangerous play. Mhmm. Which may look dangerous to helicopter parents, but is perhaps less dangerous
Julie:
than it appears
Chris:
than it appears. And that dangerous play plays an important role in danger management as an adult.
Julie:
Right.
Chris:
And, yeah, we see that all the time. Kids playing, climbing trees, rope swing. Yeah. It's like kinda controlled danger, isn't it?
Julie:
No. It's finding their limits. It's finding the boundaries of their abilities and learning where they have room to grow.
Chris:
And I'm not saying that kids should do nothing but to play. But I think you always have to keep in mind that if I'm directing the kids away from play because that is what they'll do all day if you let them Yep. Towards some other activity, say I make the kids sit down and learn how to read, then I've decided that what I've directed them to is going to be more valuable in the future or for them in this or for them in this moment Mhmm. Than whatever their brain would choose for them.
Julie:
Right.
Chris:
So I would liken this to me telling you that you need to drink more water because I know better than your hypothalamus right now. Mhmm. I know you're not thirsty, but trust me, I know best. Yeah. It's kinda ugly when you put it like that.
Yeah. Anyway, that's that's enough of my proselytizing.
Julie:
Well, I think it's important because I think, you know, the why the why of this podcast is what we see in the day to day is that there's a lot of adults who who make decisions about what kids should do all the time, including us. And without genuinely understanding the importance of play, it's very easy to overlook and to to underestimate its value in a child's life. And so I think that's the real crux of this podcast is helping people understand the real value of it and what it gives rise to.
Chris:
Mhmm. I would definitely refer people to Peter and Oh, yeah. His work for sure because yeah, he's the man. And I'm sure there's others too. I've read a book called Play Anything.
That's a good one too. Anyway, so the question then becomes, how do we best create an environment that facilitates play for the kids? Our kids are now Ivy, who is 10, Bauer, who just turned 6, and then Ayla, our youngest, is just 2.
Julie:
No. She's probably 3 in April, so she's almost 3.
Chris:
Almost 3 in April. We live in the Santa Cruz mountains in a single family home on how many is it one and a half acres? Mhmm. And there are other kids in the neighborhood, but the way the town planning is done there, that you don't see that many kids around. It's a very low population density in general, and there's a especially low density of kids and
Julie:
Right. And if you don't attend the public school, you're very much not a part of the social dynamic of that community.
Chris:
Yeah. That's tricky. It does sort of make you an outcast, a misfit. But we're not just not into the school there. It's a very traditional school.
Been there a few times, looked in through the window. I see the tiny desks, tiny chairs, the blackboard. I don't even really see any computers. Maybe that it's locked away in the cupboard. I only looked through the window, but you you know what you're gonna get.
Right? Like
Julie:
it's it's very standard. It's exactly the same education that I got when I was, you know, in
Chris:
grade school. Not much has changed in a very long time. Nothing has changed. Yeah. And, yeah, opportunity for play are somewhat limited and increasingly diminishing as Peter has argued.
Once you think that play is just a waste of time, then, of course, you're gonna schedule something else in this place. Curriculum. Yeah. And, you know, I've heard of kids that it's a very because of the low population density, kids ride the school bus. Mhmm.
And I've heard of kids talking about how the time on the school bus
Julie:
Is their favorite part of the day.
Chris:
Is their favorite part of the day. But it seems like a giant waste of time, doesn't it? It takes me 90 minutes to do 6 miles to get to school. Yeah. And actually, it's their favorite part of the day because it's the only part of the day that's unstructured the kids get to play.
There's somewhat limited fashion, I guess. There's only so much you could do when you're on a school bus. Alright. So now I'm gonna ask you some questions.
Julie:
Oh, great.
Chris:
Sorry. Too much talking by me.
Julie:
That's fine.
Chris:
I saw it was I was saying yesterday, it's always a bad time. When I'm talking in the podcast, I'm like, not learning. This is not going well. Yeah.
Julie:
Yeah. Well, there are a lot of common questions that we get
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
About how we make our life work and Yeah. Just kind of the trade offs of, you know Yeah. Of homeschooling versus traditional schooling or even unschooling versus homeschooling.
Chris:
Yeah. And we're very lucky, perhaps somewhat privileged that I get to work remotely. And that means we can go anywhere. Mhmm. We're not tied down.
The kids are not in school, so they're not tying us down either. Mhmm. And then you're full time caring for the kids and me to a greater or lesser extent. I'll let the audience decide. And so that gives us tremendous opportunity.
We can basically do whatever we want. Right? The world is our oyster Yeah. Within financial limitations. But, I mean, none of this stuff.
Julie:
I mean, it's all about it's all choices. Right?
Chris:
Yeah. Exactly. So these are we've made these these decisions very carefully over the years. It's not like and I would like to say we made them all at once. It's been understanding what's valuable and then every time you make a decision, it's like, is this moving me towards the type of life I want to live or is it this an it's an away move?
Julie:
Yeah. Definitely. It's been a constant recommitment to those values all along the way.
Chris:
Yeah. So talk about the early days when it was just ivy and Forest School. How did you discover Forest School and how was that experience?
Julie:
Well, in the early days, we were running NBT, just you and I.
Chris:
Yep.
Julie:
And and Ivy was a tiny baby shoe. I think it was, like, 4 months old when we started NBT.
Chris:
Yeah. So we still have that picture.
Julie:
When we made it in LLC. Yeah.
Chris:
Me coming home from work.
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:
As software engineer at hedge funds. Yeah. Quit my job.
Julie:
I got a text message. So I think I'm not working anymore. Is that gonna be okay? I was like, I think I'll make it work.
Chris:
Yeah. I'm full time doing health coaching.
Julie:
I think I said as long as we can buy healthy food and travel, we can do whatever you want.
Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Julie:
But anyways, we were running MBT ourselves and she was a tiny baby and so I knew, obviously, that I wanted to raise my own kids. That was something that we decided even when we were dating. And so when Ivy came along and we started the business, it was just we kind of had a commitment to prioritizing time with her and making sure she was doing all the things she needed to do. But as she became a toddler and she was a voracious, you know, listener of books and audiobooks, and she spoke early, and she was very independent and wanted to play. And so by the age of 2, she really wanted to do more than I was even ready for her to do.
And so I found Forest School, and that actually ended up working out really, really well so that I could work a few half days a week, and she could go to forest school and be with other kids and be out in nature. So that's kind of what led us to even look for forest school. Yeah. Because I I wasn't ready for her to go do anything.
Chris:
So by that time we moved to Santa or Scotts Valley, actually, not quite Santa Cruz. But initially, we were living in Oakland and the East Bay, it's near San Francisco, for people who don't know, on the West Coast of the US.
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
And it's very urban
Julie:
Mhmm.
Chris:
And not much opportune. Is that there probably is a forest school in in Oakland, but
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just kind of a a different feel because a lot of the the natural places feel still very kind of man made. And whereas in Santa Cruz, there's still a lot of, you know, there's just you're immersed in nature basically everywhere you go. Yeah.
Chris:
Okay. So forest school, can you describe it for people who are not familiar? Yeah. It's not recreating the classroom?
Julie:
No. Not at all. It's really just creating a safe place for very young children to explore nature and let mother nature be their teacher. Mhmm. Most of the time, it's run by teachers and educators who or even just parents and caretakers who really under have an intimate understanding of the child's developmental needs and their natural curiosity and how being in nature is actually the very most perfect playground for them to explore their curiosities.
Babies are natural scientists, and so when you put them in nature and you just let them play, it's just incredible to watch because it's all the things all the time. It's physics and it's chemistry and it's, you know, balance and gymnastics. You see it all unfold before them. And it's a really natural place for them to start to interact and have social interactions with their peers. So as the you know, I would call them more like mentors than teachers are really there to just help make sure that the kids are having developmentally appropriate interactions with each other and keeping them safe from hurting themselves.
Chris:
Exactly. But
Julie:
they have tremendous freedom to explore. And
Chris:
There's no age There's no
Julie:
age matching, so it's usually quite a spread, especially forest schools tend to lean towards preschool age kids. So it's usually from age 2, 2 and a half potty trained, usually is the cutoff, and then to about 6, 6a half, sometimes 7. It's a beautiful age range of kids because it's that very natural as Peter Gray talks about, that very natural scaffold where you've got the smallest kids who are still doing a lot of parallel play, a lot of independent play, kind of watching the older kids who are already doing, like, a lot of sociodramatic play, interdependent play with their peers working together.
Chris:
So the older kids are the scaffolding the younger kids up, and they're the ones who are doing the teaching, but they don't even know that
Julie:
they're doing know it. Yeah. So it's it's it's an incredible thing. And so in the beginning, I went with her and spent a lot of time with her kind of just observing the whole thing, and that was my biggest takeaway. And we're still friends with a lot of the kids that were there when she was, you know, 2, and now they're you know, now she's 10 and those kids are 12, And they remember that, you know.
I mean, like, her friend, Leaf, was is a few years older than her, actually. And I'll never forget that first day I brought her, and she's got her little rain boots on, and they're at Quail Hollow. And she was really afraid to walk over. There's, like, a cattle grate there to go over to where the trails are. And she kinda just stood there and, like, wouldn't cross it.
And Leaf, like, saw her and turned around and came back and held her hand and helped her cross over the cattle grid. That's what
Chris:
it's actually.
Julie:
It is. And it I'll just never forget that. And they've been friends ever since. And now he has younger siblings who are the same age as our younger siblings, and they've all had that was their start, was at was at Forest School with these amazing things. And then I've had the opportunity to be a teacher with the Forest School, and that was such a privilege to get to witness the kids in nature at those in those really formative early years.
Chris:
Mhmm. Yeah. That's great. And so what happened so our kids are not in forest school anymore, so what happened?
Julie:
Unfortunately, kids tend to age out of forest school because they tend to end up in the public school system, or forest school just really works well for preschool age kids.
Chris:
Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? That's a general problem that we found is that as the kids get older, they tend to disappear into public schools.
Julie:
They do. And then you still have homeschool kids around that, you know, there are nature programs for those ages, but there's just fewer and fewer of the kids. And so the programs become less robust because there's just not enough kids to make it happen. And then what happened during COVID was all these nature programs emerged because parents wanted their kids to do stuff outside, but now there's almost too many nature programs. This is, like, very particular to Santa Cruz.
I'm not sure
Chris:
about the rest of the world. From Palo Alto on the peninsula to south of San Francisco, 60 miles south of the Santa Cruz mountains so that the kids could have some outdoor experience Yeah. During COVID when either the schools were closed or you didn't want them at school. And
Julie:
Right. And so now there's, like, a little bit of a correction as, like, certain programs close down because they don't have enough interest. But, yeah, that's ultimately what we see is that, also, there's this tendency as kids get older, which is not right or wrong, but there's a tendency for them to be in more programs. So they wanna do, like, lots of different classes or they wanna, you know, just do lots of different activities, and that takes them away from a big chunk of time to be outdoors in nature with with peers.
Chris:
Mhmm.
Julie:
So I think it's kind of just a natural progression. So we ended up finding other ways to be because I've always optimized for nature first and play. And so we just gravitate towards homeschool groups and co ops, etcetera, that allow for that.
Chris:
Okay. Yeah. So you basically ended up in this place where you were essentially recreating forest school, but you stayed with the kids. There wasn't this thing where you just drop them off and then come back and pick them up.
Julie:
Yeah. I think that's another divide, is that for some parents, that's still necessary. You know? They they wanna do this, like, kind of hybrid version of homeschooling, but they still have to work part time or they, you know, they just have other obligations. Or the other big problem that I face is that I've got kids a very, very wide age range, and so the needs of Ivy are very different than the needs of Bauer are very different than the needs of Ayla, and their interests are also very varied.
So finding something that they can all do together at the same time so that I'm not driving to 3 different places to get them what they need is also challenging. I think that's another reason why you see splits in these these times of their development is because parents of multiple children have to often make choices about what they're gonna do and
Chris:
Really tough. Yeah. You end up doing so much driving in the Santa Cruz mountains, but I think this is true elsewhere as well.
Julie:
Oh, definitely. Even just it's just coordination. It's difficult to get everybody on the same page. And I'm sure we'll talk about this later, talking about different programs and things like that that we've we've experimented with. But I think that's our job as carers who are trying to give them this experience is I view myself as the the facilitator.
Right? So it's my job to provide rich learning environments. And it's very tempting to outsource that sometimes because I can't be everything to each of the kids all of the time. And so it's sometimes it feels like it's necessary to okay. So maybe Ivy needs to be in a program for a couple of days a week where she can really get some of the stuff that she's after, and then I can have time to give Bauer some pretty intense one on one attention or get him with some, you know, his own playmates in a rich natural environment so that he can learn the same thing with Ayla.
So it's just kind of a lot of it's a juggling act of making it all work for everyone. Mhmm.
Chris:
Yeah. The logistics of it are just mind boggling. It is. You know, like a lot of messages on WhatsApp. App.
And then so there's this question. Okay. So if we're taking this play centered approach, how much is enough? And in our experience, and I think this is pretty typical, it's it's never it's never enough. It's never enough.
It's never enough. The kids are never satisfied and given free access to as much play with other kids as they can get. They'll do it from the moment they wake up until
Julie:
It is.
Chris:
The moment they go to sleep.
Julie:
And that's both terrifying and very reassuring. Because for me, when I reflect back on that, it makes me realize that, like, you know, what we I was just saying a second ago about it's, like, difficult to balance everything and it's hard to manage. When I keep that in mind, when I keep in mind that play is what they really need Mhmm. And they will do it all day long if I let them, then I can release the expectations that I put on myself to, like, make stuff happen for them.
Chris:
Yes. So you yeah. Exactly. Your job is not to play with them. Your job is to create that environment that's conducive to play.
Julie:
Exactly.
Chris:
And that means finding other kids.
Julie:
Yeah. It means exactly. So then it just it changes my perspective because I think people can get really bogged down in those details of, like, well, how am I gonna meet meet Ivy's needs and meet Bauer like, how am I gonna meet each of my kids' needs at these different very different ages? Or you have people who have kids that are, like, really close together and but the kids really want, like, independence from each other They wanna break from each other. And so that then again, you get into this whole cycle of, like, making stuff work.
But if you just take a couple steps back and just be like, okay. Well, what's the simplest answer here? And the simplest answer is get them into a rich environment with lots of other kids and beautiful things will happen.
Chris:
It's it's so tough because we've designed our lives, and in in particular our towns and our the places we live that in such a way that are not optimized for this at all. Like, you look at the single family home designed for a nuclear family or even even a condominium complex. Right? You're not. And then once people have made the decision that they're gonna outsource this and go to work, then you're screwed.
Right? Because all the other kids are in school. Like, if you could you could probably find a a nice condo complex in Palo Alto that has a pool and Mhmm. A playground built into the gated community. However, you ain't gonna find any kids there during the day.
Julie:
No. No.
Chris:
They're all in school.
Julie:
Yeah. I mean, and there are some places that are very conducive to this type of situation. And those places tend to be, for us in our area, it's the state parks, it's the beaches, it's the libraries, you know, regular parks, playgrounds. Those are the places that we tend to gravitate with our kind of homeschool community because they're kind of neutral places that are very open ended for the kids of all ages to explore, create their own. You know, the older kids, there's room for them.
If they have a project they're working on, they wanna work on together, there's room for them to do that, the little kids to observe or participate, and then there's just open ended play kind of everywhere you look.
Chris:
Do you wanna say something about the Ocean Grove Homeschool Charter?
Julie:
Maybe not specifically by name, but but, yeah, we are. No.
Chris:
We're selling it. Why not? I mean, it's something
Julie:
honest with you. Yeah.
Chris:
It's great for little kids. They give you they it's a charter school so you don't have to in the US, like, the kids have to be
Julie:
in something. Right? Yeah. It's compulsory education in California and obviously most of the United States.
Chris:
So you can sign an affidavit. You can start your own school, then you can homeschool or you can sign up with Ocean Grove and other homeschool charters like them, I assume. Mhmm.
Julie:
And Yeah. There's a lot of them.
Chris:
That that that bypasses the need to do a lot of that legal stuff. And then also they give you this financial stipend that you can use to
Julie:
to spend
Chris:
on the kids.
Julie:
I mean, if you are a type of homeschooling parent that wants a curriculum, that wants guidance, or your child needs interventions for learning disabilities or or what have you, there's massive amounts of support that you can receive from them. So I don't wanna discount it in any way, but those things just, like, haven't been vital to us. And so for us, we kind of have been using it as a purely, really, for the stipend since the beginning. I knew very early on that it was only gonna be kind of good for us until about 3rd grade because
Chris:
So how's that for the listeners that don't know grades? Like
Julie:
About 8, 9 years old.
Chris:
Yeah. I remember that. It was, like, terrible. So, basically, there's this coordinator person that
Julie:
It's called an an an educational specialist. So your your ES, everybody, every parent, every family gets assigned an education specialist. Yeah. You meet with them once a month, and they kind of review your portfolio. So you give them examples of what your child has done.
And some education specialists are more strict than others in what they're like, they call them work samples. So work samples that you provide them. Some are more strict than others about what those samples look like or the variety that you give them. And when we started, we had an older ES who was very sympathetic and understanding of unschooling. She had homeschooled her children.
She was a former educator in the classroom as well. Mhmm. She had 3 or 4 grown children, and she was very supportive of what we were doing. She was always satisfied with the work samples I gave her, which were literally mostly just photos of things that Ivy was doing out and about, you know, every day.
Chris:
To me, like, she was checking in to make sure that we weren't sending it to work as a chimney sweep or something.
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:
You know, those kids that size, they fit real good up the chimney in a way that I can't. So
Julie:
Yeah. And and that works really well up until state required testing begins, which is in 1st grade, but doesn't really get serious until 3rd grade. And so I was able to kinda get us out of all the required testing up until 3rd grade. And then at 3rd grade, if they don't participate, basically, or they don't score to a certain level on the state standardized testing, then in order to get your stipend, you are required to meet the requirements of, you know, having a tutor. You have to basically get to that standard in order to receive your stipend.
So they and this a lot of this has changed since COVID. Like, it's drastically different even than before. So we kinda hit that wall pretty hard at the beginning of
Chris:
this race. It was like Ivy doing these online assessments.
Julie:
It was so stupid.
Chris:
For testing for a curriculum that she'd never see. Right? Like, it was just completely stupid. And and she has so Ivy's now 10 as we mentioned earlier. Mhmm.
And for sure when I talk to other parents whose kids are in the public school system, there are some things that those kids learn to do sooner than Ivy.
Julie:
Oh, definitely.
Chris:
Like reading, for example. However, I Ivy can now read and it's Mhmm. It's not like we ever Nope. Coerced it into it. So going back to the idea of being intrinsically motivated and the means are more valued than the end.
Yeah. That has happened somewhat naturally to Ivy. And and who knows how exactly I mean, you've almost read a lot of books to the kids, which I'm sure is part of it where it starts. Mhmm. Exactly how she learned to read, I'm not exactly sure.
Maybe that's just a sign of my disconnection from that. I mean, you definitely did simple phonics and stuff like that a little bit but
Julie:
But again, it's you know, I definitely have had my lapses in confidence over letting it happen naturally. Right? Like, it's not like I have this innate intuition that my kids are gonna learn how to read. I panic about it just like every other parent does. Like, am I doing the right thing?
Am I making the right choice here by stepping back and letting her do this on her own? But I just got to the point where I've realized with with Ivy and most kids I think are like this is if you push, they response is to push back.
Chris:
Yeah. Intentions. Right? Like, whatever you do, don't learn to read. It's like the problem the best coach you've come.
Julie:
And kind of was just kinda became my attitude, you know. I would try to do these phonics things with because so she would get frustrated that she couldn't read, and I would say, well, you know, this is how I know how to teach you, and I'm happy to do this with you. And she would be okay with it for about 20 minutes, and then all hell would break loose. And so I just did. That's kinda what I threw up my hands, and I was like, well, fine.
Then don't learn how to read. You can learn how to read however you want, but I'm not gonna teach you because I don't wanna have this type of conflict in our relationship. It's not worth it. And that was that. And so every once in a while, she'd come back around.
She'd be like, no. Really, this time, I want you to I want you to teach me. I'm like, okay. And then they would do the same thing. This happened so many times.
And then it wasn't until then Bauer kind of started expressing an interest in doing this phonics stuff, and so I started doing it with him. And then she was, like, realizing, like, oh, crap. I think he's gonna learn how to read before I do. So that was one motivation
Chris:
for me. Other kids, the presence of the other kids is super important. You meet other, like, kids that have been in public school that learn to read when they were, like, 6 or something. Yeah. And, oh, wow.
Look at what they can do. And then, of course, the other kids, they could also be helping. Right? Like I've seen, you know, kids younger than Ivy read a book with her and then she's learning by, you know, through the other kid.
Julie:
Exactly. So it's experiences like that. There's lots of little things I've noticed in the last, I'd say, 2 years that have kind of built up this kind of head of steam like you talk about, that's kind
Chris:
of
Julie:
pushed her over the edge to really finding fluency in her reading.
Chris:
And I
Julie:
think that
Chris:
So it's like the salience, isn't it? It's the idea of just in time learning versus just in case. Right? So the school room, the classroom is just in case. Right?
I'm gonna Teacher will lose that. Stand here as the teacher. I'm gonna, like, shove this stuff into your head and you're gonna passively consume it and then you will have the knowledge I have. And of course, learning just doesn't work that way. There has to be salience and the salience comes from I have a problem I wanna solve.
I wanna know. Somebody has just sent me a text message and I wanna read it. Yep. So Yep. How do I do that?
And Yeah. You know, sometimes you you actually don't need to read in order to solve the problem. We've learned that. Like, I don't really read books anymore. I do read some books if the audible version is not available, which happens a lot with older books.
Julie:
Well, that's another thing is, like, that was something I think took some of that head of steam away from Ivy for a long time is because she's been listening to quite advanced audio books since she was 2.
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
And so I would say her comprehension level is closer to yours Yeah. Than it is to most kids'
Chris:
She listens to some of the same books all the time.
Julie:
I know.
Chris:
Chop Wood Carry Water by Joshua Metcalfe.
Julie:
Yep. Yep. I know. Listened to
Chris:
that many, many times. Fantastic book of you. It's actually what Jeremy Hennen and I'm I talk about Jeremy all the time. So Jeremy started our book club. He's been on the podcast before.
And Chop Wood Carry Water is one of Jeremy's favorite books. Mhmm. Somebody that drops out of a PhD program in rhetoric at Berkeley. Yeah. Chop Wood Carry Water, a book that I listened to like 10 times a month.
Julie:
Yeah. So that's
Chris:
that's I would I would say that's a glowing recommendation for that book. Check it out.
Julie:
So yeah. I mean, and and and but then even more recently, like, she's discovered that there's some things she's got a lot of these, like, art kits, and she
Chris:
wants to learn how to
Julie:
crochet, and she wants to learn, you know, she wants to learn she wants me to teach her how to sew, and she wants to cook. And she's, like, had these several things pop up where she wants to learn how to do these things. And she knows that she can watch a YouTube video, but she also knows that, like, inherently that there's instructions that she's gonna have to follow, that she's gonna read and she's gonna have to follow, and she doesn't wanna have to ask me for help. Like, she wants to do it on her own. She wants to teach herself how to do these things.
And so she's working through that struggle
Chris:
of, well, shit. I have to I'm gonna have to
Julie:
read if I do.
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
And so she's learning, and that's forcing her to do it. And then she's now coming to me and being so excited, like, mom, I'm realizing that, like, I'm reading really fast now.
Chris:
Yeah. And Well, I saw it the other day. We were having a little karaoke session and she's reading the lyrics. Yeah. And the lyrics move along without you.
Right? You got it. Yeah. Interesting.
Julie:
And that's huge. And so I think it's a lot about confidence. Like, as a parent, for me, it's a confidence in that, trusting in that innate internal struggle. You know? I I've got this problem.
How am I gonna solve it? And I really don't wanna ask my mom for help. I really don't wanna give her the satisfaction of teaching me something. So I'm gonna do it myself. And letting that happen as a parent and not feeling like you have to step in all the time and solve the problem for them.
I think that's
Chris:
And do you ever spend much time worrying about whether or not they'll be able to get into college? That's another common question.
Julie:
I really don't worry about them getting into college. I think the thing I worry the only thing I've ever worried about is that they're gonna get to some crucial point, and I know that they'll be able to solve the problem and overcome the hurdle.
Chris:
That's not what
Julie:
I worry about. I do worry that they're gonna get to a point and they're gonna be mad or frustrated with me that or us, that this is the path that we chose
Chris:
for them.
Julie:
So I try I think I've started to try to have more conversations with her about letting this be more of her choice. You know, let letting the whole like, involving her, especially now that she's 10 and she's got a lot more awareness of time and energy. You know, just the fact that she's really writing her own story already, and she's 10. And so just trying to have more authentic conversations with her about why we've made the choices we've made. And I think she's I mean, we were walking the other day, and this has just made me feel so happy, is she just said, I'm really lucky, aren't I?
And I go, what what what do you mean? She's just like, I don't know anybody that gets to do the things I get to do. And she was referring to the fact that we're here in Costa Rica and traveling, and she's getting to try out a school here. I use the term school loosely. And she's meeting people all over the world.
Yeah. And
Chris:
We don't send her to prison.
Julie:
Yeah. And that she largely is in charge of her own Yeah. Life. And I was just so proud of her for recognizing that in that moment, but also extremely grateful that she shared that with me, that that's how she was feeling.
Chris:
Yeah. It's amazing self awareness for a for a 10 year old. She's a really sociable kid with adults as well as with children Yeah. Which is fantastic.
Julie:
And I said, I'm glad that you feel lucky. I feel really lucky too to get to do this with you.
Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's how I you know, that's that offer the cough remark there about we don't send you to prison. But it it kind of like by one definition like so what is a prison? What's a place where we send you against your will and you don't get to choose what you do there or when you leave.
When you
Julie:
leave which I think is
Chris:
But isn't that also true of school?
Julie:
Very much so. Very much so. Yeah.
Chris:
Certainly felt like that when I was there. And then Same. You know, I should defer people to answer that question or what do you do about getting into college. I should again refer people to one of Peter Gray's recent substat articles. Peter has published on this.
There's data. And, yeah, so I should just refer people to that. They can look at the Elaine makes amazing show notes
Julie:
for these sessions. Should look at that. I think the other important thing there is that I I am not confident that college and universities are, a, going to matter as much as they seem to matter to people now. Like, culturally, I think that is a huge shift in that coming. And, b, I don't know what's gonna be available because
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
I mean, as a as a as an institution, I think it's having a moment of crisis of figuring out how it's gonna be relevant
Chris:
to Yeah. I mean, it's also very it's not you know, I have a first class honors degree in computer science from Southampton University, which is a very respectable university in the UK. They were the 1st university to offer a degree in electronics and electronics and computer science in the same department there. Well, when I talk to recruiters now, do they give a shit that I have a degree in computer science? Kinda, but it's not gonna get me the job like it did in Yeah.
1999. And it did. Like I got hired by Cisco before I'd even finished my undergraduate degree. Yeah. But Cisco aren't knocking on my door anymore, you know, like 25 years later.
And so anyway so let's talk about what we did in 2022 and 23 because that was fun. So Yeah. For the listener, yeah. But COVID was a strange and not great time for MBT. No.
And fiasco, wasn't it? And It wasn't just us. I didn't wanna talk about it. Yeah. And it it was it seemed, you know, for so at MBT, what we do is we help athletes overcome chronic health complaints and improve performance, which is what I did for myself 10 years ago.
Yep. And still do it for myself, although I'm optimizing more for health span than athletic performance these days. And the way that we do that is mostly through diet and lifestyle intervention that comes by way of video conference and in text. Especially on kanban boards implemented in Trello. And during COVID, it was a weird time for everyone, not just us.
Right? And, you know, we talked to clients and their kids were home from school, and they were trying to hold down a full time job, and maybe they got laid off from their job. Mhmm. As well as homeschool their children, you know. So here's me.
We went in 2014, I used to talk to people on Skype. Yeah. Remember that? Yep.
Julie:
I did.
Chris:
And by 2021, I wasn't really doing any of the coaching calls. We had other people smarter than me, like Megan, for example, was doing most of the coaching work. And, you know, she'd have clients on Zoom. And by that time, everybody knew what Zoom was. Right?
You didn't have to explain that anymore. But people had Zoom fatigue. They were absolutely sick of Zoom, like, how much time they were spending on Zoom. Yeah. And, you know, imagine you're trying
Julie:
to had so much on their plates now. Yeah.
Chris:
And so, like, loading more things. Well, I want you to do all this extra work because it is extra work figuring out all the shopping and cooking and meal planning and all that and and that's just like one of the pillars. You're there on Zoom hearing about all this stuff whilst your kids are setting fire to the couch in the background. Right? It's like
Julie:
it's just It wasn't the right time. It was
Chris:
No. So it was it was a bad time. I decided to go get a job in tech because it was also a good time for tech. Right? I think that, you know, 2022 Yeah.
Was like, there was a lot of money around.
Julie:
To work remote and make money.
Chris:
Yeah. Everybody was remote. It was a great time for start ups. There was tons of money out there. I went to work for a start up called ENGIE in 2022, and it was a sweet deal.
It was, like, I think more money than I've ever earned in a salary, at least. Yeah. Plus it was a 4 day work week, 32 hours. The boss said to me, I do not want you to work more than 32 hours a week. He was, like, amazing guy that really had his philosophy of life and work Yeah.
Dialed. And it was a a great package. It was a 100% remote. Mhmm. And, I mean, it was kind of the same deal.
I love to code. It's really fun for me. Yeah. It was a greenfield project. Use any technology you want.
It's, like, kind of the dream, really. Yeah. And and we got to go anywhere, right? And and it suddenly became really, like, why are we staying here in Bonnyddoon where it's, like, not conducive to the things that we value when we don't have to be here? Yeah.
I know. Why don't we go get an Airbnb somewhere else and Yeah. Go there?
Julie:
We've been toying with the idea of putting our house on Airbnb for a long time because we've always traveled. Mostly in the beginning, it was for conferences and bike races. But as bike races ended in COVID and we weren't going to as many conferences because you weren't working with NBT quite as much, then it kinda became like, well, what are we traveling for? But then it became very clear, like, oh, well, we're traveling because we wanna get that f out of here
Chris:
and to see people. Yeah. We wanted it. It wasn't where we're gonna go. Who we're gonna see?
The problem was that as I'm sure everyone knows, Airbnb is kind of expensive. Like, you do a 3 day weekend somewhere then Yeah. That could easily be $1200 and that gets expensive real quick. And I thought, well, maybe we could offset this by I mean, no one's gonna be in our house whilst we're
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
Doing some Airbnb somewhere else. I know. Why didn't we try hosting our house Mhmm. On Airbnb?
Julie:
Yeah. And that and it made sense, and it wasn't that daunting to me because we love like, the only not the only reason, but one of the main features of our house is it's a lovely place to entertain people. And people really like to come there because it's very different than where they live. It's in the woods. It's in the redwoods, these, like, ancient redwoods.
It feels like you're in a rainforest. There's, you know, wood fired. It is a rainforest. It's a temperate rainforest, and there's, you know, wood fired hot tub and an outdoor shower and a trail to a creek and next to some beautiful hiking state parks.
Chris:
Yeah. We picked it for a reason. Right?
Julie:
Yeah. We picked it for a reason, and it's been a wonderful place to to be most of the time.
Chris:
It's just kinda isolated. It is. It's very different. Own people. Yes.
You're not gonna get the people once you're there. Exactly.
Julie:
And I feel like for many years, we were kind of distracted by building our business and
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
And lots of other things and having babies, and then all of a sudden we got to this point where it was like, oh, crap. We're not distracted by that anymore, and our kids are kinda big. Like, we gotta go do something else. So, yeah, the Airbnb thing just kinda made sense, and it didn't take long because we really don't have a lot of stuff.
Chris:
No. We're sort of minimalist, so that basically all of our things just fit in
Julie:
Well, I know we just kinda have a different philosophy about our space, like, it doesn't
Chris:
Not precious about it.
Julie:
It's not. That whole conversation, but we're just not precious about our our stuff in our house. Yeah.
Chris:
And I guess some people get weird about having the, you know, the idea of having strangers sleeping in bed or whatever, and we're just not really married to ourselves.
Julie:
Periods of time where we're at home and no one is sleeping in the house because you like to sleep in the van.
Chris:
Yeah. In the van. Outside.
Julie:
And we had a canvas, like, bell tent in, like, one of those fancy glamping tents in our yard for a long time, and I was in there with Bauer when he was a baby in Ivy and
Chris:
It's nice to sleep outdoors.
Julie:
Yeah. It is. So, yeah, we're we're not traditional in that sense, and so it was very it took me maybe a month to get the house, like, ready to go for Airbnb.
Chris:
And we had really good results. There's someone called Robill that you can find. I'll link to that again in the show notes on YouTube, who had some really great resources for teaching people how to host on Airbnb. And we kinda got lucky. I'm not sure that anyone listening to this with a home can do this because it's a destination.
Right? Santa Cruz is a destination. It's by the beach, but it's turned out that we can book our place essentially year round because the weather in California looks favorable compared to many parts of the US Yeah. Even in the winter. Mhmm.
And then summer, it's in great demand. I don't think there's a ton of places available for people to stay in Santa Cruz. They've been very restrictive on building, and there's not really a ton of hotels. There's, like, very limited camping in Santa Cruz. So there I think there's a great opportunity for for Airbnb in in Santa Cruz.
Julie:
Worth people looking into though because I think it's become much more about, like, experiences on Airbnb too. So if you can build that into your home kind of wherever you are, then there I think there's always, like, there's it's definitely worth.
Chris:
And people are mobile now. Right? Like, that was another important change is there were other people out there like me. Right? Engineers working remotely that thought, well, you know what?
Sounds kinda fun to go to Santa Cruz for a 3 day weekend. Let's do that. We can afford it.
Julie:
Yep. Exactly. And so that's what we did originally. We weren't in it to make money. It was just more of like a swap.
Chris:
So To offset the cost of doing the same thing. And, of course, you control the calendar. That's what's really nice. Right? This calendar and the dashboard interface.
You don't wanna do it every week. Fine. Just, like, open up whatever dates you get
Julie:
and We just did that in the beginning. We opened a few weekends a month, and we would go stay on the other side of town in Santa Cruz so that you could surf and the kids could go we could go to the beach and walk everywhere and meet friends at the library or whatever.
Chris:
That's great.
Julie:
It was wonderful.
Chris:
It's really great. It's like an interrupt to our routine, you know, like, the you get this notification from Airbnb, your place is booked this weekend. And it's like, okay. Cool. I wouldn't who are we gonna go see?
Yeah. Which is great. Yeah. And we've been to a lot of really fun places. And I wouldn't say that Airbnb is without difficulty.
Julie:
Oh, yeah.
Chris:
You definitely get 1 in 20 guests who are a royal pain in the ass or will do something weird to your house like spend the whole weekend smoking cannabis with every door and window closed and then Yeah. The cleaner comes when they check out and says, oh, smells kinda funny in here. Like, that will definitely happen. And you should definitely be aware of the the restrictions. Yeah.
Metropolitan areas in particular now are very difficult Very
Julie:
difficult to navigate.
Chris:
For Airbnb. However,
Julie:
I think it's a net positive, and it's one of the main things that has allowed us another level of freedom to do what we do with the kids and give them that kind of rich learning environment, which I think comes from travel, which I think has been we've realized is one of the kinda key ingredients of
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
What we're doing.
Chris:
So, yeah, I worked for NG for a year. They ran out of money. Got laid off at the end of 2022, like, just before
Julie:
Yeah. Beginning very beginning of 2023. Yeah. January of 2023.
Chris:
And I was saying, like, oh, no. Now what? Do I need to go get another job? And, like, the the you know, for the same reason I got laid off, like, obviously hiring that marketplace and check. Like, now it's like Yeah.
Freaking Mordor out there with, like, tens, 100 of thousands of tech workers being laid off. And it's just like all the recruiters are gone, you know, like, at that point.
Julie:
They all got laid off.
Chris:
They all got laid off. Like, all of them, like, literally all of the recruiters got laid off. You know, you try and contact someone that helped you get a job in the past and they'd just be gone. Anyway, we we realized that, actually, like, kind of this Airbnb income, we don't just live on this. Right?
And so there's this kind of moment where, like
Julie:
It came up. It kind of
Chris:
If I didn't spend a load of money on another Airbnb
Julie:
Mhmm.
Chris:
Then there's a significant arbitrage opportunity there, potentially.
Julie:
We kinda just started to get a little bit more creative of about what we did when our house booked. And luckily for us, we have a Volkswagen Euro van that we bought when we were first dating because we went to bike races every weekend.
Chris:
And I didn't like camping at the time.
Julie:
Just didn't like camping, and I did. And so I thought that was a good option because we didn't have to sleep on the ground anymore, and we'd have a little kitchen, which is also crucially important to us in
Chris:
the beginning of our own food trip because
Julie:
we couldn't we couldn't eat out. We had to make our own food. And so having a little van that we could cook and have all of our stuff with us when we traveled was amazing. And we still have that sweet little van. We've just kind of maxed it out in terms
Chris:
of capacity. Right now. I really lucked out. There's supposed to be a 3rd row of seats in that van that I'll never forget. Is never in any of the used vans because people take it out because they don't need it.
And it's kind of in the way of the kitchen. Yeah. And it gets put in the yard presumably. Yeah. And then by the time you buy it used, like, it's disappeared.
And then the moment we realized we needed another seat because we'd had another baby, we went on to Craigslist and found the 3rd row seat.
Julie:
Like 2 days after she was born. I will never forget it. I was, like, sitting in the living room chatting about it, nursing, and we had plans to go camping, like, a week later. Yeah. And we kind of, like, it kinda dawned on us that we needed this 3rd row.
We hadn't really thought about it.
Chris:
I couldn't believe it, like, turning up at this guy's house and trying to sell me on it. I'm like, dude, take my money. All of my money.
Julie:
Just take it.
Chris:
So the van has been fantastic. And so so that's what we do now. Like, the place books on Airbnb and typically will go to a van. We don't go far. We usually go to New Brighton in in Santa Cruz.
It's one of our favorites. It's an amazing campground. It's on the east side of Santa Cruz which is where some of the best surfing is, beautiful beaches. Mhmm. The campground you can it's on the bluffs.
So we've had I mean depending on the spot, we've had a spot where, you know, you can hear the ocean, you you look out the window, you can see the ocean. Yeah. A 2 minute walk down to the beach.
Julie:
It's flat, so the kids can ride bikes and there's lots of good climbing trees, and then, of course, the beach is there that they can easily walk to and we can walk to and spend the day there or even part of the day, and it's
Chris:
And when the schools are out, particularly in the summer, there are kids everywhere. Americans really love their campaign.
Julie:
Yeah. That's been the the closest thing we have found to kind of that 19 fifties era.
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
Kids everywhere kind of just go out the door in the morning and don't come back until the street lights lights come on mentality that I've not experienced since I was a kid. Yeah.
Chris:
It's really it's really wonderful. You know, you you rock up in the van, you slide the door open, and Bebo in particular is good at this. Yeah. Our 6 year old boy hops out and 10 seconds later you hear this, hi. I'm Bebo.
What's your name? Yeah. And then he's, you know, he's gone. He's gone until it gets dark. Like, the problem is, like, trying to find him once it gets dark, you know, which is just fantastic.
Yeah. Really great. We love New Brighton. We spend a lot of time there. And we also had some really great experiences at KOA, which stands for Campground of America.
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
But camp spelled with
Julie:
k. It's a very, like, old institution.
Chris:
Yeah. So for me as a foreigner, I don't really know it. But
Julie:
Yeah. I grew up going to KOAs with my grandparents. We'd go on long road trips. We'd always stop at KOAs and camp and
Chris:
Very affordable. And it's slightly
Julie:
More amenities than a normal place.
Chris:
Exactly. So they have power.
Julie:
They've got power. They'll usually have a pool or a hot tub or, like, a shuffle board or, like, the one that we've been staying at. The ones in California tend to have these, like, big jump pads, like a trampoline It's like
Chris:
a style pillow
Julie:
jumper thing. Like a
Chris:
bounce house, but smaller, just a pillow shape.
Julie:
Mhmm. And a sandpit and, like, an act like, they've got a whole schedule of activities for kids, and it's kinda lovely because it might be, like, slightly more expensive than what people are used to paying for camping, but, like, only barely. And it doesn't say this, but it, like, basically comes with free childcare.
Chris:
Yeah. The kids are busy That's that's why everyone's there. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
So it's it's like $65 a night if you time it right. And that includes the hookups, power and water, and then also WiFi, crucially. So I can do work there. You
Julie:
can work. Yeah.
Chris:
Which is fantastic. And the kids have a blast. Yeah. It gets really expensive
Julie:
In the summer. In
Chris:
the summer. So once the kids are out of school, it's a sliding scale and it can become very expensive.
Julie:
We had no problem finding kids there because the other great thing about KOA is that, like, a lot of people stay there when they're on longer road trips, and so there were a lot of families there that were, you know, doing a year in an RV and traveling, and so there were always kids there. Like, we never were there without kids there, and there were even a few kids there. Yeah.
Chris:
Even in the winter.
Julie:
Yeah. Even in the winter, but the spring, I felt like was kind of clutch because it was just, like, a lot of kids.
Chris:
It was
Julie:
still not very expensive. And on, like, a lot of time during the week, we kinda had the place to ourself a little bit. Like, the pool was pretty empty. It felt like we were were at a resort. And then on the weekends, it would get busy and that was great because then the kids had way more people to play with.
Chris:
We've also stayed at other California state parks. Yeah. Lots. Campgrounds like Sunset. Do you remember that?
Julie:
Yep. Sunset was really lovely.
Chris:
Again, just outside Santa Cruz.
Julie:
Mhmm.
Chris:
Occasionally good surfing. Yeah. Beautiful beaches. Beautiful beaches.
Julie:
Beautiful dunes. Like
Chris:
We met some fun families there. Do you remember I can't remember Joe and his kid, like, another homeschool family, and they were musicians. Yeah. Yeah. What I'll I'll never forget that I think how old was their daughter?
Like, 12?
Julie:
I think 11 or 12. 12. Yeah.
Chris:
And him and her singing Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan Yeah. Which is a great song. If you don't know it, check it out. It's like apparently it was an early, like, the one of the precursors of rap music.
Julie:
Mhmm.
Chris:
Him and his daughter who knew all the words to it. It was unbelievable watching her sing
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
Was will never forget that.
Julie:
Yeah. That was really
Chris:
Really fun. And she was playing the ukulele, by the way, at the same time. So it was unbelievable. Really fun. And then we kinda got bored of the fog.
In Santa Cruz, the sea fog starts to push in as soon as it starts to warm up.
Julie:
Yeah. Like May, June, it gets real foggy. And it was a late kind of a late winter as well last year. We definitely camped in the winter last year, and there was a ton of rain, and there were definitely several weeks where we were questioning our life choices because we were real wet, real soggy. And luckily I mean, the other beautiful thing was that, like, we'd just go stay with friends.
It gave us an excuse to make plans, like, on a weekend to go stay with friends in San Jose. Wherever we
Chris:
were extended hospitality tours.
Julie:
And so I think we've had a lot more experiences really spending really good quality time with friends in a way this year that we haven't done before,
Chris:
and
Julie:
I'm so grateful for that. And then as the summer wore on, we found someone to kind of manage our Airbnb when we went further a flunk. And we started to travel kind of farther away from Santa Cruz, which was great because we got to go to Lake Tahoe a bunch Yeah. And stay at some amazing state parks there.
Chris:
And we're also lucky that we had someone to manage our property as well. Like, there's another crew that
Julie:
is not That's what yeah. I just yeah. That was huge. Like, that changed everything for us because up until then, we were kind of staying in Santa Cruz for that reason so that we could kind of do the changeovers ourselves. But then once we found our kind of person to do the cleaning and changeovers and kind of manage that piece
Chris:
be there available. Uh-huh. It was really important. Yeah. But we had some really great, you know, we got out of the sea fog in Santa Cruz.
We went to Camp Lotus on the South Fork of the American River. Do you remember that? It was just like absolutely stunning. Yeah. Like, Shangri La, just unbelievable, you know, because the the Sacramento Valley, I guess, is kinda hot and dry and quite barren, and then you get to this place that has these incredible lawns that I suppose they've, well I know, they've watered them using, I think it's well water actually.
It's not water directly from the South Fork of the American River. And you can't camp there in the winter because the river is too high. But then in as soon as the water's level starts to drop you can camp there. Just unbelievable place. Highly recommend it.
And I guess it's, mecca for kayaking, you know. I recognize, you know, having been to yeah, the North Shore of Maui and other places that are amazing for kiteboarding and you sort of recognize, like, oh, people have come here because this is one of the best places in the world to do this and I don't know kayaking, but I kinda saw that same, like, vibe about these places that were at Camp Lotus. They were obviously there was people camping out the back of the office that obviously didn't give a shit about Yeah.
Julie:
Where they sit. River rats.
Chris:
Yeah. Exactly. They were just there for the the kayaking. And, oh my god, you had to be very careful with that water. I got a loan.
Julie:
Oh, yeah.
Chris:
I'm just gonna throw on my wet suit and jump in, see what happens. I was like, oh, god. I think I might die.
Julie:
And the kids were so worried. I've actually never seen them so worried. They're like, I don't think dad's coming back. And then we saw Ultra and he was like, yep, he's dead.
Chris:
So that was really great. And then Tahoe as well. Do you remember Eagle Point?
Julie:
Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, how can I forget? We got so lucky. Most of the time we find cancellations on the state parks website.
That's kind of how we got a lot of almost all of the spots.
Chris:
Really hard to get a reservation, but, yeah, we we kinda you figure out you have to spend some time.
Julie:
I think a lot I think that is gonna change the way that they're doing it is changing. But
Chris:
more. Because I think what happens is because the sites are so cheap that people book them 6 months or even a year in advance, not knowing whether they're gonna use them and then, you know, it's so cheap. It's like not a big deal to not show up. Right. That obviously creates a problem because
Julie:
But, yeah, we got a premium spot at Eagle Point Oh, yeah. And had it for 9, 10 days, and then we just knew we wanted to come back. So we kinda like, we came back later in the summer. We were there, I think, in late June, early yeah. Late June.
Mhmm. And then we came back later in the summer and spent more time there and at Sugar Pine Point, and then also William Kemp Campground.
Chris:
It's amazing. Tahoe is incredible. So for people who don't know Tahoe is a lake and it's in the Sierras, again, on the west coast of California, but it's a couple of 100 miles from inland from San Francisco. And, you know, I went there a lot when I first came to California. It was kind of the reason I came, actually, from London was I wanted to go snowboarding at the weekends, and you can do that at Lake Tahoe.
It's equally amazing during the summer.
Julie:
I prefer it.
Chris:
And the camping is almost better than staying in a house because you get to be right on the water. So you can, you know, ride your bike for 2 minutes, maybe even less, and get in the lake. And it's cold, but it's so beautiful. Yeah. And last year was just an incredible year for the the snow, and the lake level has been low for many years.
Last year was record highs. Absolutely amazing. And there's really great mountain biking there as well. The Pacific Rim Trail, highly recommend it if you ever get the opportunity. In fact, if you're coming, you should get in contact.
My email address is chris@nourresponsewright.com. We'll go ride in Tahoe, super fun. And then even if you're into road biking as well, there's a little bit of that too that's very good. We have this banana seat electric bike with, you know, one of the 750 watt Bafang motors, and and the banana seat allows me to get all of the kids on the bike. So there's pegs on the front and there's pegs on the back, and then there's a child seat behind that, and the littlest one goes in the child seat.
And Yeah. My god, we've had so much fun up at Tahoe. We've definitely gotten our money's worth out of that thing. Yeah. How many bears did we see?
I think I counted,
Julie:
like, 12 bears. 12 bears. Yeah. We had an epic,
Chris:
yeah, nature experience.
Julie:
The other, like, great thing that where the kids got a ton out of the summer was the junior ranger program that the state parks do, and we just got so lucky. We met The state parks have what they call interpreters, so it's people there who usually have a background in science or biology, environmental studies, and they're literally there to help you interpret the nature that you see while you're in the park. So it's to make parks more accessible and more useful and more available to average people who come there to camp and don't get to see that kind of nature in their everyday to day life. And our kids have been raised in nature, and so they tend to have a lot of knowledge about the natural world.
Chris:
I'll never forget that one time where Ivy ident what did she and the interpreter said, oh, no. That's not right. It's something else.
Julie:
Yeah. There was a type of she thought it was a type of berry, and Ivy said, no. That's actually a thimbleberry. And so she thought it was a currant, a type of currant, like a wild currant. Yeah.
And Ivy goes, no. That's definitely a thimbleberry. And the lady was like, no. I'm pretty sure that's a currant. And I was like, no.
I'm pretty sure
Chris:
that's a thimbleberry.
Julie:
And so we looked it up.
Chris:
And this is an interpreter that's been coming to Tahoe.
Julie:
Decades. Decades. She's been an interpreter since she could since she started working there as a teenager, and she'd been coming like, working there every year ever since. And so, yeah, that was pretty hilarious. But, yeah, Ivy
Chris:
Afterwards, so she realized it. She just have to realize her mistake and then came to find Ivy and said, you know what? You were right. That is a thimble.
Julie:
Right. That is a thimble, berry. And I was, like, yep. Told you.
Chris:
Yeah. It's it's, like, for me, it's sometimes terrifying when the kids start eating stuff that they've just, like, picked on, like, some random trails over them, like, very knowledgeable. They actually do know what they're doing. You can definitely eat from
Julie:
it very much. What amazes me is that Ivy is really good at finding the people who know because she really wants to know. And so, like, here in Costa Rica, she found the one boy who was, like, mom is kind of an I think is an herbalist and, like, knows a ton of the plants here. And she, like, forced him to, like, walk around with her and show her, like, all the edible things within range and tell her what they are, and then, you know, so she knows. But so the but the junior ranger program was great because it's like they give all kinds of talks and the kids got really close with all, like, 3 of these interpreters.
And so it felt like we had this, like, very customized personal experience in Tahoe. That's amazing. It was just so wonderful.
Chris:
I think California State Parks got an injection of cash fairly recently. Yeah. You know, whereas before it was notorious for not being that great.
Julie:
Yeah. Being very
Chris:
The amenities whereas Yeah. Our experience last year was of
Julie:
No. It was wonderful.
Chris:
Like, you know, beautiful new bathrooms with stainless steel everything. Yeah. And, yeah, the interpreters giving evening lectures.
Julie:
You want, like, a free kayaking tour? Oh, yeah. They gave us free kayaking.
Chris:
And we got to, like, paddle around. Yeah. They showed us the border tours and the Ospreys. And Yeah. Yeah.
It's amazing. I highly recommend it. I hope we can go back and do that Yeah. Again this summer. And there were other places as well.
You remember Scott's Flat and In Town Campground was another fantastic place to find kids. Yep. Again, with more amenities than you typically find at a state parks campground. It was super good for us.
Julie:
And then we did a few other things that weren't camping. We went to San Diego and
Chris:
Yeah. Saw your brothers there.
Julie:
Wonderful times. Saw my brothers and we went to Europe for some weddings and stayed with friends and family.
Chris:
Yeah. Fantastic. Travel is a really great education. I mean, that's what one of the things I've learned especially from Bauer is that when you put them in a very familiar environment, they'll try and create novelty within that same familiar environment.
Julie:
Yes.
Chris:
And often or at least in my son, the way that he does that he takes things apart so he'll break shit. It's very predictable. But if the environment is almost changing like in travel Mhmm. He becomes a totally different person. Yeah.
He's like calmer. Mhmm. He's less destructive.
Julie:
He's regulated. Like, he is regulated by novelty. I feel like just kinda moving his body through space. I mean, my favorite time to be with him is when we are at the beach or we are near a river where he can rock hop or we're near something that he can climb on because he is just, like, in his own energy.
Chris:
He moves really well.
Julie:
He moves beautifully. He just, like, drops into this flow state, and you can just see it in the way he's, like, looking around. You can just see his wheels turning in a different way. So he's, like, thinking about moving forward instead of, like, kind of this, like, being stuck in, like, negative energy and, like, wanting to break stuff. He's, like, moving his body through space, and he's perfectly happy.
I'll never forget this. Like, we went recently, we house sat for some friends near San Francisco, very urban environment, and we pulled up to the house. We got there after you. This is at Christmas. And he looks out the window.
He, like, woke up from a nap, and he, like, looks out the window, and he goes, mom, this is not my habitat.
Chris:
He's he's, he looks Mowgli. He's like, nature boy.
Julie:
I was like, I know. And I am so glad that
Chris:
you recognize that. Yeah. Yeah. We went for a rock hop yesterday with Laura. Laura was on the podcast recently and we were hopping between rocks and there was a couple of moments where he hopped, like, the the jump, the the gap that he cleared that Laura, who is incredibly athletic, like, she has fantastic muscle mass and, you know, history of athleticism.
She looks great. And there's no question. Yeah. She moves well too.
Julie:
Right.
Chris:
Like, she pulled up and went, I don't know if I can do that. Like, he hopped. So he took off in one big boulder, landed on another on all four legs. Like, man. Yeah.
So he's using he's got shock absorption from all four limbs. And she's like, I don't know if I can and she looked at it for a while. And she did do it, and she could do it. You know, it wasn't a question of strength. It was like, what's gonna happen when I hit the other side?
Julie:
Yeah. Exactly. It's a different prospect when you're, like, literally twice as tall as somebody else.
Chris:
So that brings us to La Eco Villa. Yeah. And I've talked about it a bunch on the podcast, so I don't think I need to recover all of that ground. But for people who have not had me mention it before, La Eco Villa is an intentional community. It's about an hour west of the capital, San Jose.
So it's actually quite easy to get to. If you can fly to San Jose, the capital, then you're almost there. You can get an Uber from the airport and it will take you here. It's pretty accessible. Yeah.
It was founded in 2005 by a man named Stephen Brooks, I believe. And there may have been cofounders whose name that I I can't remember. The land here was formerly, cattle ranch, and you do actually still see rolling green hills with cows on them in the far distance. But they did a lot of work to restore the land to some of its former natural beauty. They Mhmm.
Planted a whole bunch of edible plants including fruit trees. Yeah. And now 20 plus years old.
Julie:
Yeah. So indigenous plants that you would find in the jungle in Costa Rica, but they were very careful to select ones that were, you know, would provide for the wildlife here such as monkeys and sloths and all the wildlife, but also for the people that live here.
Chris:
It's really the the light is absolutely incredible. Yeah. It's magical. We've really enjoyed it. We're staying in this place.
It's called Casa Maracuya. I'll link to that as well. Mhmm. It is available as a short and medium term rental. So we paid about $2,000 for a month Mhmm.
Which I thought was really pretty reasonable. That's not much more expensive than camping in California.
Julie:
Right? 3 times a week cleaning.
Chris:
3 times a week cleaning. My god. I pay the cleaner in California for Yeah. A $160 to Yeah. Clean, and they're doing at least that.
Well, no, they are. They're doing about the same amount of work.
Julie:
It's very modern.
Chris:
The cleaner's not getting rich in California. Right? Like is
Julie:
No. But it's got it's it's very modern. It's got a wonderful kitchen.
Chris:
Glass and steel window, like, all the like, 360
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
Almost 2 70 degree sliding doors everywhere.
Julie:
Picture in the show notes of the view from here. It's
Chris:
pretty awesome. There's some really nice videos, walk throughs on the the website for this place, and it's been absolutely incredible. There's a swimming pool and this place they call the Rancho, which is like a communal dining, lounging
Julie:
Working.
Chris:
Working space with a kitchen. But nobody really uses the kitchen much. They do hold regular potlucks here and the Rancho is central to that. There's also a yoga charla, if you're into a yoga, but they also do like singing and dancing. The full moon party is in there.
Julie:
Yeah. There's lots of activities and different types of exercise classes and
Chris:
But it was Jessica Fern who was on the podcast many moons ago talking about her book Polysecure, talked about I think offline, she may not have even mentioned it in that episode that she was coming here And her dream was to live in 19 thirties America, where the kids were free to roam, and there were lots of other kids to play with. And I think she was right. That's exactly how it is. What what do you what do you think? There's like tons of little kids here and the kids have tremendous freedom to just go find the others Yeah.
And play.
Julie:
I mean, I think one thing we didn't say when we started talking about everything we've done this year is, like, why we were doing all the things travel wise that we've done this year. And I think largely it was about exploration of trying to find places that more closely matched our values as a family.
Chris:
It's like trying to it's a mini I think we did explain it, like, if you value play, then how do you find an environment that's conducive to it? Well, the first thing you gotta do is find other kids.
Julie:
And so we've done that in campgrounds, but obviously that is very
Chris:
Seasonal.
Julie:
Seasonal. And still I, you know, don't ever intend on not camping with our kids as long as they'll camp with us. However, I think we're all yearning for a little bit more ease when it comes to the type of, like, schooling that we do and the way that we live our life, which is I want the kids to have tremendous freedom. I want them to have a lot more independence in terms of being able to decide when they wanna go play and when they wanna stop playing, instead of me having to be like, okay, you got 5 more minutes. We have to leave, so I have to get home and make dinner, and it takes me 35 minutes to drive home from wherever we are.
I just don't feel like that's a great way to live. And so coming here was hoping to find not only a place where there were lots of kids everywhere and they had independence, but also some community, like, pretty strong community. And I feel like at this point I've said this a lot in the last couple of weeks, but I feel like at this point, knowing us as a family, we could live just about anywhere. Mhmm. So for us, it's more about who's there, just like when we travel.
Like, doesn't really matter where. I used
Chris:
to think that, like, oh, well, there has to be mountain biking Yeah. There has to be Yeah. Bike boarding and there has to be surfing and there is surfing here Yeah. Accessible from La Ica Villa. I've been a couple of times.
There's a group here. Everything's organized in WhatsApp groups
Julie:
Yeah. And You can't survive.
Chris:
Holly in particular was incredibly generous in not only giving me a lift, but letting me use his board, which was terrifying because anyone who surfs knows that you really don't wanna buy someone else's stuff.
Julie:
That you didn't break something. But, yeah, I think so for us, I mean, I think it's been nice to lean back on that of knowing that it isn't it isn't about the location. It's about who's there. And so for us coming here, it was just, like, it's it's beautiful. Yes.
It's in the jungle, blah blah blah. I just wanted to know who was here, and I wanna know what the vibe was and and most importantly, what the kids would think. And if you look on paper about, like, everything this place promises to be, I think I probably, as an adult and, you know, where we're at in our life right now could probably find a few things to niggle with about, you know, community and Is it what they say? Yeah.
Chris:
So I talked about that a bit with Laura Yeah. That community is an emergent phenomenon. Exactly. And for the most part, it emerges from sharing Mhmm. Work Yeah.
Things to be done Mhmm. And goods and services. That's not happening too much here at La Ica Villa. So you can order I I get the impression that most people are vegan. They're not eating a lot of meat.
Yeah. However, as Laura pointed out in the last podcast, there's 50 people on Whatsapp in the meat lovers group. Mhmm. You can get anything you want delivered here.
Julie:
Yes.
Chris:
And the quality of the food It's very good. Including the meat Yeah. Is very very good. Mhmm. There are vegetables that are grown on-site and you get a box delivered every Saturday Mhmm.
Which is pretty amazing.
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
And then the local supermarket will also deliver whatever fruit and veg you want. It's all like, the quality is really good. It's not cheap. In fact, it may even be more expensive than California. Yeah.
California is actually more expensive than the UK. It's pretty expensive too.
Julie:
Yeah. So it is pretty expensive. I think that's, you know, I I feel like though for the convenience factor of Yeah. Like having everything delivered and not having to spend literally half of my life. No.
I mean, I spend half of my life obtaining food for our family. So
Chris:
It's a big big time suck.
Julie:
It is. So that's been really
Chris:
It's cool.
Julie:
Special for me to, like, take that part and off the plate, which has been really nice. And I think when the longer you're here, the more you find, like, specialty people and sources of things that you want.
Chris:
Yeah. You know, like It's easier and easier.
Julie:
It's easier and easier.
Chris:
But for you turn up on day 1, you you don't have a car and all you've got access to is a taxi that you can order on WhatsApp.
Julie:
You haven't discovered any of WhatsApp groups.
Chris:
Yeah. You feel kinda stranded, like, oh, god. How am I even gonna get a cup of coffee this morning? So it's definitely kinda tough. And then we had some friends show up later and I think maybe that's They
Julie:
were more organized.
Chris:
Yeah. But anyway Well, actually our other friends we turned up, we were here with Lucy Manning and her her husband Steven and also Ben and Kate and Lucy met Ben at the Ancestral House and Yeah. Symposium and I think they were both more organized than us in the beginning.
Julie:
Mhmm.
Chris:
But then Sam showed up after them and he had a super soft landing because we'd already figured
Julie:
out what we were. We figured everything out for him and we're also, you know, just taking care of him while he's here. But
Chris:
Super sweet. We love it here though. Casamarcu, I think it was originally built as a retreat center. In fact, I know that because the owner, Monica there. Yeah.
Said it was built as a retreat center. So there's one big home, and we know the family that lives in the big house. Mhmm. They've got kids, and they just come over to our house. Yeah.
And, you know, your home is my home type thing, and Niara accidentally called me dad the other day, which was, like, a big compliment, like
Julie:
And their baby loves you, which is really sweet because Chris doesn't get a lot baby love.
Chris:
No. I don't. My babies definitely not love me as much as they love mom. So that's been great. We'd highly recommend it.
Julie:
Yeah. We definitely wanna come out.
Chris:
And the kids have tried school for the first time ever.
Julie:
Yep. Yep.
Chris:
There's a school here and they say
Julie:
Well, it's not here.
Chris:
It's not here. Yeah. So that was kind of a disappointment, actually. I saw in the videos online that the school was on-site at La Gavilla. It turns out it's not anymore.
You can go see what was the old school. It's really just 2 buildings. One's a library and the other is, like, some sort of kitchen thing. And there's a, you know, a basketball court and a playground or something. I mean, it looks ideal for little kids.
However, for whatever reason, I don't un really understand.
Julie:
And we don't know the whole
Chris:
We don't know the whole story. Story. They ended up moving the school to a off-site.
Julie:
One of the reasons was it got too big.
Chris:
It got too big. It got maybe got too popular and the school now it so, like, that was kind of a problem for us. Like, how do we even get the kids there? Luckily, the neighbors have been very generous with taking our kids to school.
Julie:
There's also a really fabulous WhatsApp group for carpooling. And so if for whatever reason they can't go or to or from with the neighbors, I just put a message in the group and somebody will always bring their
Chris:
kids there back. And it's not really a school in the, like, the public school in
Julie:
Yeah. New York units. I wanna be really fair because it's also very new. So it was formerly called Casa Sula, and now it's Laikovilla School, and they've had a complete and, like, a 100% shift in their administration, and they're still trying to figure out a lot of things. But, ultimately, I think it's very much different from any traditional public school we've ever seen.
And, you know, it's very it's project based. It's, you know, everything that they've told me is that it's project based, it's student led, especially for the older group, which is from 7 to their upper limit would be 18, and then the smaller group is very, I would say, very Montessori based.
Chris:
Yeah. So they claim that that their Montessori and Waldorf expired, and I don't really know what those
Julie:
things mean. I saw more Montessori than Waldorf, but I think there's probably both. And then they have a new nursery that just opened for, like, 0 to 3. I definitely have some criticisms from just what I've seen, but I don't think I've spent enough time there physically myself to
Chris:
So are those criticisms?
Julie:
I struggle with the amount of structure that there is. I think it is already a little bit too much. But I think I keep reminding myself is that everybody that's coming there because this is a very international school, right, because most of the students are from they live here at Laicovea or in the surrounding areas and, like, there's a few communities here. And so but most of those people are coming from around the world, they're coming from a traditional public school system, most of them are not homeschooled or were
Chris:
not homeschooled before they came here.
Julie:
So that's what they're comparing to. So for all of those kids who are, like, tremendously overworked, overscheduled, stressed out, needing to get out of that system, it's a huge relief to them and their family. And they're really excited and stoked about it, and they're super pumped on the project based learning, and they're just really, really excited about it, and I get that. But for us, coming from a very unschooling, very unstructured, very play based, nature based life, it's still a little bit overwhelmingly structured for me. But more than anything, I think I I really wanted it to be more centered in the community.
Like, I really was, like, hopeful that it was gonna really be owned by the community Yeah. In that more of a a co op type feeling where everyone here knows that that is, like, the most valuable resource that the community has is its children. Yeah. And providing for them and nourishing them and keeping them happy is, like, key to this whole place thriving and growing and becoming a really vibrant place. And there's so many interesting people here with these amazing lives and backgrounds, and Yeah.
They're a tremendous resource. So it feels silly to take it, you know, out of this community, put it somewhere else, and then also charge quite a significant amount of money to each family for the child to attend there to pay educators who are not special and, like, not necessarily it's really hard to find educators in America that are, like, good at project based non coercive education, let alone in Costa Rica attracting that type of an educator. So there's a lot of turnover of teachers, mentors, I think they should be, and then there's not enough reliance on this community for input to, like, hey. You know, everybody's required to give time to this school. And if you don't wanna give time to the school and share your resources or your time with the school or a talent or a skill that you have, then then you can put some money in the pot that helps the school keep going.
Chris:
Yeah. That's a good idea. I'd like to do that, you know, I've already Ivy's already expressed an interest in in coding, not expressed an interest, she's demonstrated it. We've been using a programming language called Scratch. Yeah.
She's from MIT. And you bought this book called The Code Book. Mhmm. And we were working through it. And she was really into it.
We're basically making video games. Yeah. And it's a a proper programming language.
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
It's just that the elements are visual. Mhmm. So it's like drag and drop, an if statement.
Julie:
So it's a bit of a wild loop. Eat it. It's
Chris:
And she was really really into that, and I'm guessing other kids would be too. So, you know, for me as a software engineer, could I do that? Like, I don't know, 2 hours a week. Mhmm. I take however many kids you think we can handle and they all have an iPad or a laptop or whatever they do Mhmm.
Have. And we spend a couple of hours coding up a video game. Yeah. I mean And then and then somebody else is like somebody else has got some other skill. You could do cooking
Julie:
and then you spend 2
Chris:
hours with
Julie:
I think there's so many ways that you could make it work. You could make it work for everyone, you know, no matter how much time they had to give, you know, and or maybe it's something like on the ministry. They don't wanna be directly involved with kids. They wanna do something, like, to help with the administrate. You know, there's just lots of, like, creative ways that I think it could be less expensive for families, more rewarding for the people who live here and the kids that participate.
So, yeah, a few there's a few things like that. I don't I don't even wanna call them criticisms because it's new, and I think that they they the man who's running it and his wife are fabulous people.
Chris:
And our daughters become good friends with
Julie:
their kids. Become good friends with their kids, and I think they've got the right vision. I think they have the right ideas. I think their struggle is gonna be finding the people to really make that vision come to life.
Chris:
Yeah.
Julie:
And I hope that they do. I hope they turn towards the community and and find it there instead of trying to outsource everything. Everything. Yeah. That would be where I would start.
I would also make the line between the younger kids and the older kids less
Chris:
Yeah. That's kinda weird. Like, our son Bebo wasn't really into it because they drew this artificial well, I don't know. It's like arbitrary, it seems to me. Age oh, so the big kids are on this
Julie:
side and the
Chris:
little kids are on the other side. And he was not really into being the biggest kid on the little side. Right? So he's kind of a big fish in a little pond and eventually decided he didn't really wanna go and, you know, he gets to the point where you're, like, trying to drag him out from under the bed and, like, are you sending this kid to prison again? Isn't this, like, the thing that we said that we wouldn't do?
Julie:
Yeah.
Chris:
And so he ended up not liking it and going as much as but Ivy was, like, really upset when she thought she couldn't her trial period was ending and she couldn't go anymore. So she's been way more into it. And I wonder if, like, Bebo being on the other side Mhmm. Why the side so it's
Julie:
just dumb? I know. I know. I think developmentally, I think it's about the right age to, you know, say these kids are probably, like, more interested in this type of play, and it just, like, let's really and then these kids tend to be more interested in project based based and and needing a little bit more or wanting a little bit more structure or direction. However, I would make it much more individual, as you know.
So when a child is expressing that they wanna spend some time doing projects with the bigger kids, that they're allowed to do that in some kind of way. Or if a big kid is expressing interest in wanting to spend time with the younger kids and just play, like, they can they're free to do that as well because that's equally as important.
Chris:
Yeah. That is an important point, and Peter Gray wrote about this reason. There's another subset I can link to that if you're going to have lots of separate specializations, as we do in modern industry, and people find their passion slowly and incrementally. Right? You start with something that you're somewhat interested in, and then you figure out that's also a rare and valuable skill, and then you work on that slowly over time, and then eventually, you have what could be a career.
Right? Well, that happens on a very individual basis, and the moment that you lump all of the kids together and say, we're all doing this now Yes. Then you extinguish the possibility of that slow and incremental development towards a career.
Julie:
And Ivy's already expressed frustration with that. Yeah. Because they had 2 teachers she was felt were really great at facilitating that kind of openness, and then they left suddenly. And then the 2 new ones that they brought in were from a much more bullshit. Yeah.
But overall, great experience. Yeah. And you would expect in a
Chris:
It's a bullshit. Yeah. But overall, great experience.
Julie:
Yeah. Yeah. Tremendous experience for them. And Ivy, in particular, I think is exactly what she needed at this moment in time, and she's really, like, made some tremendous friendships that she really wants to like, she basically decided our next year of travel for us. She wants to come back here pretty quickly.
Yeah.
Chris:
Well, this has been great. Thank you so much.
Julie:
Thank you.
Chris:
And thank you to Laura.
Julie:
Yeah. Thanks Laura for monitoring my 2 Yeah. Banshees.
Chris:
There's no way this could happen without her help. Mhmm. Thank you. And, you know, anyone listening to this, if you've got any any ideas or thoughts or feedback or you've got some, you know, place that you're gonna be on the West Coast of the US or Yeah. We're headed to Lisbon in Portugal next, so you happen to be there and you got kids and you wanna meet up or ride bikes.
Julie:
Yeah. That's huge. Because fun. Yeah. When we travel internationally, that's definitely something, like, the next phase as the kids get bigger, I wanna look more into is this idea of, like, world schooling.
There's Yeah. That's, like, a whole another, like, thing, like, part of this that we could like, there's meetups and hubs all over the world where people meet up to do world schooling with other families. There's families that will go on, like, cruise ships together for weeks to do, like, different activities and educational stuff with their kids and meet up in just random parts of the world. So that's another thing that I'd like to look into. Yeah.
If you're
Chris:
if you're out there and you wanna get in touch, come to the forum.
Julie:
Mhmm. That's a great idea.
Chris:
Forum. Nourishment.com. I'll link again to that in the show notes. You can find it this epi- if you poke around inside your podcast app, you'll find the show notes and then the forum will be linked from there. And there's still a lively community there, even after all these years.
And, yeah, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me a direct message there if you like, or if you share things in public, I think that's more helpful because then, you know, everyone gets to see them and we all get
Julie:
get to I am. And if there's enough interest or questions or whatever, I can hop on there and answer questions as well.
Chris:
Cool. Thank you so much. Thanks.
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