The Homeschool How To

#144: Teacher Exposes School System 'Meat Grinder' | Homeschools 5 Kids on Sailboat Instead

• Cheryl - Host • Episode 144

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What happens when you ditch the American Dream, move onto a boat with five kids, and homeschool while traveling the Caribbean? In this inspiring episode, former public school teacher Tanya shares her family's extraordinary journey of "boat schooling" for nearly a decade.

From their catamaran "Take Two" in Florida's 10,000 Islands, Tanya opens up about:

Why They Left Conventional Life Behind

  • The "meat grinder" feeling of the traditional education system
  • Moving from Atlanta suburbia to life on the open ocean
  • How a childhood dream became reality with five young children

The Reality of Boat Schooling

  • Managing seasickness, morning sickness, and life in close quarters
  • Using the world as your classroom: from banana plantations in Belize to Christopher Columbus's landing sites in the Bahamas
  • One-room schoolhouse methods that work with multiple ages (toddler to teen)

Honest Conversations About:

  • Unschooling yourself as a former teacher
  • The socialization question (spoiler: she's seen what socialization looks like in classrooms)
  • Teaching five different kids to read five different ways
  • Why the "hard parts" of their unconventional childhood made her kids tougher and more resilient
  • Creating deep family bonds that last into adulthood

Mentioned Resources:

📘 The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide
Thinking about homeschooling but don’t know where to start? Cheryl created this comprehensive guide, compiling insights from interviews with over 120 homeschooling families across the country. From navigating state laws to balancing work and home life — this eBook covers it all. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident on your homeschooling journey.

🚨 Let’s Talk, Emergencies!
The most important lessons we can teach our kids aren’t just reading, writing, and math — they’re how to keep themselves and others safe. Let’s Talk, Emergencies! helps children learn essential safety skills in a fun, approachable way — from dialing 911 on a locked phone to staying safe online, around water, and in case of fire. Give your kids the knowledge and confidence to handle real-world situations.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why people are homeschooling? How do you do it? How does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today I have Tanya from a ship in Florida. Tanya, thank you for being here.

Speaker:

Yes, it is my great joy to join you. I am in the 10,000 Islands area of Florida aboard a sailing catamaran called Take Two. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1:

Well, it sounds luxurious, but you did show me your cabin before we hit record. So I don't know. Maybe well, first let's tell the audience why are you on a ship in Florida?

Speaker:

Well, actually, we're kind of stationary right now, but we spent the better part of a decade traveling aboard a sailing vessel with our five children, basically boat schooling them. And so we're currently stationary at a dock, um, caring for aging parents and launching a couple of teenagers. But we have done many, many trips out on the open ocean and island hopping. And most recently, we took two of my homeschooled nieces with us on a trip to the Bahamas. So we are an adventure travel family.

Speaker 1:

Now, is your husband in the military? Is that how you got into this?

Speaker:

No, but my husband is sort of like that Jimmy Buffett son, Buffett song, a son of a son of a sailor. So he's from a long tradition of Florida sailors, and he grew up sailing with his dad on their vessel, sailing vessel. Uh, and then it was a dream that we hatched as a young couple. We wanted to do it as more than just, you know, little trips. We wanted to go whole hog. So that's how we ended up on the boat. And he's a digital nomad. So we were able to keep our dream afloat while he was working the whole time.

Speaker 1:

Wow. Now you're the second person I've had on that has been on a boat. Like, is this a thing that I just don't know about? Is it like Dungeons and Dragons where it's this whole life? Yes. And if you're not in it, you just don't know about it. Like a lot of people do this.

Speaker:

It's like, it's like RVing, but on the water with a little bit, you know, more added danger than an RV. But there's a whole, you know, homeschool community of people who R V, or like it's like the hidden world of long hiking. So like we have two boys that completed a 1,000 mile hike and they met all these people, and now they have a trail name and they discovered, you know, more than the Appalachian Trail. There's like four other really big trails, you know, in the United States, and there's a whole community of people who just hike on their time off. So we're part of this sailing community, and they're it's a thing. It's a whole thing.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. Okay. So did you decide to sail after you had you? You have five children, correct?

Speaker:

Correct. So when we started just the thinking, planning, dream phase, we were in our 20s. We were high school sweethearts who dated long distance during college and then got married at 22. By the time we were 23, we had had our first big trip with Jay's dad and stepmom. And on the way home from that trip, we started talking about ditching our jobs in Atlanta, moving out of the city. You know, we started dreaming very early on. Then I taught for a few years into Cap County schools. Jay was building his career, it was brick and mortar. There was no, you know, escape in sight. But we kept talking about it and dreaming about it. And we had three kids in three years. So our oldest three are now 24, 23, and 21 and a half. So then all of a sudden, we were like living in toddler town. And then we decided to homeschool them and we left the city and we moved to Florida to sort of explore what it might be like to move onto a boat. Like we needed to be in a place that had coasts, and so we kind of uh we baby stepped toward that dream. And by the time we moved aboard, we had a seven, six, and four-year-old, and then the baby was, I think, 18 months, and that was Sam. And then we traveled for a while and then came back and had a baby. So I traveled uh during the entire pregnancy with Rachel, who is now a teenager. So she spent her whole life afloat.

Speaker 1:

Now, did you have seasickness and morning sickness together or neither?

Speaker:

So I am super lucky. I get neither. And I actually have done an informal poll. I think there's a link, and I think it may have something to do with your inner ear. Like the things that cause the same things that cause morning sickness seem to exacerbate seasickness. So informally, I don't know you'd have to poll your audience, but informally I've discovered that my friends who get seasick also have severe morning sickness, and the ones who sort of have very mild pregnancies also tend to have very mild seasickness. And I get neither.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting. My son, we've now discovered he gets motion sickness in the car. So I don't know.

Speaker:

Oh, it's terrible. I know. Oh, I know.

Speaker 1:

One of ours is just for us. I don't know. Well, there's medication.

Speaker:

There's medication.

Speaker 1:

He did a fishing charter. He's done a couple fishing charters, and he wasn't seasick on those. So I don't know. Maybe it's just maybe it's just my driving, but that could be it.

Speaker:

Well, I have my seasick child says I'm a terrible driver, and I make him sick in the car too. And so we do have varying levels of seasickness in our family. One of our kids is severe, which we didn't discover, of course, till after we were living on the boat. And when you move onto a boat, you know, at a marina, it's not until you're really out on the open ocean that you discover, oh my gosh, this kid is like severely seasick and he never gets over it. And we tried all the natural things, all the ginger, everything. Ginger, everything. And in the end, we started medicating him because, you know, he was miserable every time we untied the lines.

Speaker 1:

And the medicine works.

Speaker:

Yes. My husband uses studron. So the captain of all people, the captain gets seasick as well. And always got seasick, even as a kid. It's kind of a miracle that we ended up on a boat, but the this will tell you that for us, the good parts definitely outweigh the bad parts. So we he obviously thought it was worth it. So he medicates with a drug called studron, and that seems to work.

unknown:

Okay.

Speaker:

And works in smaller doses. Yeah, works in smaller doses for smaller people.

Speaker 1:

All right. So what was your initial reason to homeschool in the first place?

Speaker:

So I was a public school teacher in Atlanta, and I loved my job. I adored my job. It was for sure a calling. I had always wanted to be a teacher. I taught kindergarten for several years. I loved teaching kids to read. I love art and music and creativity. And that system was eating me alive. And I was like, the teaching part was fine. The kid part was fine. The administrative part was terrible. The feeling that you're in some sort of meat grinder, like the Pink Floyd song, you know, like another brick in the wall. Like that feeling. I don't know if you've ever seen their music video for another brick in the wall, but there's like a meat grinder and the kids get thrown in and they come out as these bricks. Like it was away. Yeah. You'll have to go back and watch that. It kind of creeped my kids out when we showed them, you know, hey, teachers, leave them kids alone. Like that, that one. So I felt kind of crushed by that system. I didn't feel like from within it that I could do what I had, what I really dreamed of doing. There was so little flexibility. And everything seemed to be pushing towards standardized testing. So all the teaching is so that the kids can pass a test. Not for the joy of learning, not for life skills, just, you know, to make the next milestone. And then once you finish school, you make the next milestone, you get into college. And then you make the next milestone, you get a job, and you get married and you buy a house and you go into debt. And then you get really old, and maybe you get to travel when you're retired and then you die. And it's this whole system that kind of freaked us out. So we abandoned ship, so to speak. We really wanted out in a lot of different ways. We were very boxed in in this little neighborhood in Atlanta. We were boxed in in our jobs. We just felt boxed in and we wanted out. And so that led to us homeschooling. I already had the teaching degree. I felt like I had the comfort level with choosing curriculum and teaching kids. Turns out that homeschooling is so much harder than classroom teaching. And I had to like unschool myself in order to do that. People are like, oh, you're so lucky. You came from a teaching background. Actually, I had to really unlearn a lot of things in order to homeschool my own children. Very, very different, different job description.

Speaker 1:

And it's interesting that you say it was harder, but that's because you had to unschool yourself. And so, yeah, walk us through that. What does that unschooling look like to you?

Speaker:

Okay, so the first day that I ever decided to like officially start homeschooling, of course, you realize after you homeschool that you've been homeschooling your children for the first five years, and then like some system tells you that you're not good enough to teach them when they turn five. Like it's so crazy. So I had taught all my kids how to swim because we had a swimming pool in our backyard and I didn't want them to drown. So we had done a lot of things independently, you know, and read books and done puzzles and done art projects with our kids all the way till they turned five. But on the first day of school, I rang a little bell and I had a little flag and I made Eli repeat the Pledge of Allegiance because that's what you do at school, right? And then he couldn't sit still because I'm pretty sure he was he's I'm gonna say neurodivergent because that's the fancy word now. My oldest is definitely neurodivergent and could not sit still. So I started teaching him his alphabet on a little chalkboard, like old school, while he sat in a little rocking chair.

unknown:

Okay.

Speaker:

Because that's what he could do. He needed to move while he was learning and I could customize our homeschool that way. But what I was doing was school at home, which I think many people will recognize from the pandemic because when schools closed during COVID, a lot of people did school at home. And then they said, My gosh, homeschool is impossible. This is so hard. Well, of course it's hard because you just shoved this whole thing into your living room or your kitchen and you rang a little bell and said the Pledge of Allegiance. Like it doesn't mesh with your life. So I think what happened after the first few days, after we realized, well, this is kind of silly, or like if the kid can't sit still for six hours a day, which is what they would be doing at school, I basically threw it all out the window and started from scratch. Because you can't have your, you know, five or six-year-old kid saying to you, Mommy, I hate reading, because the reading lesson is, you know, miserable. So he'd be sitting next to me on the couch and he would look at me and be like, I hate reading. And I'm like, stop, stop, stop. You don't hate reading. What you hate is the arduous process of decoding, you know, these little squiggles on the page. He loved books, he loved words, he could recite things from memory, but the actual sitting still was really, really painful for him. So we would get to the like 20-minute mark and he would start squirming. I'd feel irritated. He'd feel irritated. I'd be like, hey, go climb the tree. And he would go climb the tree in the front yard, and that was homeschool. And then we would try again the next day. And lo and behold, like right around seven or eight, something magical happened and he put it all together. I still don't know how it happens because even though I've taught lots and lots of children how to read, you give them all these little skills, and in the end, they have to synthesize everything. And that's sort of the light bulb moment that teachers will talk about. And I got to experience that with all of my children because, you know, that was the beauty of homeschooling.

Speaker 1:

That is so beautiful too, that you just get to see you're the one that gets to be there for it, you know, like you were the teacher there for the other kids, but their parents missed out on that. Right. Yeah. And and that you got to see that for your kids is.

Speaker:

Yeah, that was that was the fun part. That was the definitely the fun part.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'm going through that now. My son is seven, and we've been working for a couple of years now on reading. And well, of course, a five-year-old isn't gonna want to sit there and learn the letters, and even now, I mean, he still can't like read like he's reading, it takes him a lot a long time, and you know, so he's sounding it out and he's still getting things wrong, and so it's like, and he just turned seven a couple months ago. So, but you're right, it's like, well, now is when the brain is making those connections that at five and six he wasn't old enough to do, and at eight, it is probably gonna be so much easier for him. So like I'm pushing them, but so early. And then as homeschoolers, you feel like, well, I have to do it early because everyone will think I'm failing if if he's not reading by seven. So right.

Speaker:

I think there is some social pressure. I do feel like that's also relaxed a little bit. Now, on the flip side, I'll tell you the flip side. I had two boys and then I had a girl, and I was like always pregnant and nursing simultaneously. But by the time I had the girl, I had a little bit of breathing space. And so I had read a book by Gary Doman, Glenn and Gary Doman. I can't remember the last name is Doman, and it was teach your baby to read. And I was so lit up by this book. And it was basically like, why not teach your kid to read when they're in their major language learning phase, which is before five? And they had this whole method that was not oppressive at all and not like forcing something on your child. Your child's brain is a sponge between zero and four. They're basically memorizing language and all language is symbolic. So their principle was you're telling a kid what a duck is, for example. You could be at the pond and say, look, it's a duck. Or you could show them their rubber duck at bathtime and say, look, duck. And you're showing them a picture of a duck and saying, duck. They're learning the word duck, what a duck looks like, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck. And why not teach them what the word duck looks like? It's okay. You know what I'm saying? So we did these flashcards with my daughter. Now, I won't know, I'll never know if it's because she was a girl or because I was really good at teaching my baby to read, but that girl read fluently by three and a half. Like it was appalling. Like we Jay, she was sitting on my husband's lap and he was reading some spy novel, and she looks down. She was four at the time, and she goes, I can read your book, daddy. And he goes, You can't read my book. And she starts reading out loud and he quickly closes the book because it's not like a G-rated book. And he was like, Oh my gosh, my four-year-old can read. So I had the time and energy with her to put into the sort of basically memorizing the English language. And she, her little brain did the rest. So for any parents out there, like, there's a million different ways to homeschool. My boys learned to read on a delayed schedule. My daughter learned to read at four. My fourth son never was gonna ever learn to read, but I motivated him with superhero books, like easy readers. And I we're super um clean eaters. And so he wanted Superman ice cream. Every time we would go to an ice cream shop, and it's full of like red dye and blue dye and yellow dye. It's just vanilla ice cream, but looks like the Superman logo. And I said, if he finished these like eight superhero easy readers, I would reward him with a Superman ice cream cone. And that's all it took. And then that kid learned to read. So I mean, really, like you never get to be an expert at homeschooling because every child is different and presents different challenges. And that's from a mom of five who and I have now homeschooled four kids kindergarten through, you know, college age. So I'm still not an expert. I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 1:

And just think about that. Your kids all have these different experiences with learning how to read. So, how is a teacher supposed to sit in front of 30 students and expect that they're all gonna get it the same time and the same way presented to them? And not even with the one-on-one attention, really. I mean, there's just no way a teacher can sit one-on-one with them. I mean, it it is bizarre, right? When you think of it, your daughter, if she were in daycare and preschool and regular public school, that would have just I mean, that's a talent. Like I I don't think every baby is going to learn to read by four with the method, but there's something about her and the way that method was presented to her and it clicked, and that would have totally been missed. You know, it it is really wild to think like all the kids that are in school that might be like these geniuses in some area and right, they're just falling through the cracks because we don't have enough one-on-one attention.

Speaker:

Yeah, and it's true that so as an elementary school teacher, I can tell you that it's a lot like throwing mud on the wall. Like you throw everything you've got at it. And if you're a dedicated teacher, you'll try to get each kid exactly what they need. But like the first year I taught kindergarten, I had 35-year-olds and one assistant. And two of my kids in that classroom were special needs. But in kindergarten, they're not, it's there's no pull-out. There's you're still identifying who needs what, you know, and starting I the IEP process. So the kids in the middle do fine. They do fine. But the kids who need extra help and the kids who are very, very bright and bored and troublemakers. I was one of those in kindergarten myself. Those kids fall through the cracks because you just can't give them what they need. So I knew that going into it.

Speaker 1:

There's just no way. There's not enough resources. Wow. Okay, so you're teaching that now. This is something I thought about today, since you were an elementary school teacher. Kids at that age, at five years old, they really need a caregiver. Like, you know, in their life, they don't need to know all their colors at five. They don't need in all their shapes and numbers, but they do need a caregiver, like all through the day. And I guess I had never thought about it before until I started like writing an Instagram post. And I'm like, you know, I I look at my kids and I'm like, they really need me like all throughout the day. Like, I need a hug here, I need a little support here. But did you like what do you think that's doing to the kids? Or what did you see? What did you experience? Like, are there these kids that are just like, I I really want my mom right now to be away from my mom? And now kindergarten is a full day. Uh back when I went to school, it was a half a day. Now it's a full day. So a five-year-old is in school, and I think we even have a preschool full day at the school down the road from me. So four years old, they're with a mom all day long. And it just seems a little bit different than daycare, too, because it's like they're just shuffled off on this bus, and um, maybe they're not in a home. I don't know. So what do you think that does to the child's psyche, to their emotional level?

Speaker:

Well, children were not made to be raised in litters. So, like a cat or a dog might have 10 uh kittens or puppies, and they're sort of biologically geared to have to be raised in a litter, but human beings were not made to be raised that way. Like it takes 18 years of dedication to raise a really good human being. So I can't even imagine. Like, I had a litter essentially of 25 kids, some of whom um would accidentally call me mom, and then I got reports back from parents that they would occasionally get called Mrs. Hackney. So there's a little bit of confusion there between mom and teacher because you spend so much time with these kids. And of course, I was bonded to them, but imagine being a kid and you're, you know, with your mom and then you're torn away, and then you're with your teacher, and then that's only for a year, and then you're with the next teacher. I think that we're we're gonna have, I think we're having serious attachment problems. And I think it is creating trauma. I really don't think human beings were made to be raised that way.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker:

And also, if you think, I'm sure you've dealt with this in lots of conversations with homeschoolers, people will ask you, but what about socialization? And you're like, good God. So, first of all, we weren't meant to be socialized. We were meant to be sociable. If you've looked at a classroom full of children, that's what socialization looks like. It looks like your kid in an artificial setting with 30 other seven-year-olds or whatever, and that's who they're gonna be like. Whatever those kids are like, that's what your kid is gonna be like. That's socialization. And so when people would say, What about socialization? I would say, well, I've seen what socialization looks like and I'm not that interested in it. I would rather my kid be raised in a more natural setting where they have the ability to have a conversation with someone younger than them, someone older than them. I want them to be able to converse with adults and make eye contact with strangers and make friends with people from all different walks of life. And that doesn't really happen in the artificial setting of school.

Speaker 1:

Right. And, you know, my teachers always told me, stop socializing. You're not talking.

Speaker:

Exactly. And then lunch is 30 minutes now. And in the school that I taught in, they had done away with a recess. Like there was no recess. I was teaching five and six-year-old boys. I had a classroom one year with 20 boys in it, and it was PE. PE was the new recess, which is still structured wiggle time, right? But it's not an unstructured time. Imagine, like that, that's why when I said I had this sort of meat grinder experience. Why are we drugging children? It's because that's the only way that you can get them to sit still for six hours a day, shuffling them from one, you know, from the music class back to the classroom, up to the bathroom as a group and back, up to the lunchroom for 30 minutes and back. Like you're forcing them to do this very artificial thing that they were not meant to do. And the only way to get them to do that, especially boys, is to drug them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker:

I know I'm very critical about this whole system, but it's because I it's like working in a restaurant where you've had like the health department come in and there's rats and roaches in the kitchen. You don't eat there, right? Like I've seen how things are happening there, and I'm not interested in throwing my kids into it.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I mean we were just eating dinner before I came down here to record, and my seven-year-old is sitting next to me, and he is just moving, moving, hitting the table, hitting the table. I was like, Oh my gosh, I remember that. I'm going to send you down the driveway and back three times because we're on a big hill, so that you can get that energy. And he's been outside all day. He hasn't even been in a classroom. He was outside working on the dirt bike, he was on the tractor, and this is still a kid that can't sit still for day. And we don't even, we don't do sodas, we don't do any. I don't know.

Speaker:

Can you imagine? You know what? I wish we could bottle it. If I could just take all of that extra energy and then drink it at about like two o'clock in the afternoon, right when I'm starting to like hit my energy dip, I'd be like, hey, I'll tell you what, you sit still and I'll drink your energy, and then we're gonna be good to go. It's crazy. They have so much energy.

Speaker 1:

He would definitely have issues if he were in school. I know it. And you know, especially with the sarcasm that he thinks is funny, but it's really sarcastic and it's because he hangs out with adults, right?

Speaker:

He has adopted some adult sense of humor and they crack you up all day long, but you're like, I might have ruined this kid, and they cannot ever go to public school. If I ever put this kid on a bus, they're gonna be in so much trouble.

Speaker 1:

So, okay, so that brings me to a good point there. How have your kids dealt with being on the boat, right? Because that was a big fear of mine in the beginning. Are my kids going to resent me for the lifestyle that I am choosing, the childhood I'm giving them? How do your kids feel about it? You have adults now, essentially. So how did it go?

Speaker:

I do. I know. I like I I've kind of graduated a few, so I can kind of on the other side of it. I can I can look back over my shoulder and tell you what I've learned. So something interesting that I realized pretty early on is that I have the perspective to compare my childhood with their childhood, but they don't have that perspective. For them, I am defining normal for them. So people will always stop Rachel, especially because she was raised on the boat, like from the time she was in utero, she was on our boat and has never lived in a house. They'll say, Oh, that's so amazing that you had that childhood. What was that like? And she'll be like, We did school, we did chores, there was no air conditioning sometimes, it was hot, sometimes I was seasick, and I'm like, Okay. And she goes, Oh, and sometimes we climbed volcanoes and swam with whale sharks and went snorkeling every afternoon. And people are kind of amazed by that. But for her, it is the most normal, boring thing on the planet. And she does not know how to answer people because for her, it's just normal. It's normal that we moved from place to place. It's normal that we would meet up with friends wherever we went. It was normal to swab the deck, you know, it was normal to it was just normal. That was her life. And so I felt a lot less guilty after the first few kids of like, oh, what are we doing to our kids? We're ruining our kids. And I thought, I'm gonna give them the kind of childhood I wish I had had. And they won't know the difference. I mean, we changed the way we did holidays, we changed just everything. I wanted really hard, I really, really wanted to break some of the negative generational patterns that were in my family and really start over. And I don't think you can start over any more than cutting the lines and like sailing away. You're really making a clean break, you know, literally and figuratively. You couldn't find me if you tried. Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1:

So the one uh how like what did friendships work? I mean, did they do they have friends that they've had for years?

Speaker:

Yeah, so we had the best of both worlds. I think part of it is because we were so successful at doing it long term. A lot of the sailing families are doing a sabbatical. A lot of the RV families are doing a sabbatical. They're like, hey, why why don't we save up some money and do this for a year to have some really good family adventures and then go back to our regular life? Maybe they'll put their house up for rent or, you know, there's lots of different ways of funding it. We wanted to do it forever. Like we just we cut all ties. We sold the house, we sold the car, we sold 90% of our crap, and we took off. I always thought we would circumnavigate, but with both Jay's work and like with a kid who gets really severely seasick, I don't think that was in the cards for us. But we spent, you know, three and a half years island hopping in the Caribbean and in Central America. It was amazing. And there was an answer in there somewhere. I'm off on a tangent. Friends. And so what we discovered was there's this beautiful community of people who are also doing this. And so during the cruising season, which is roughly winter and spring, you're sort of touching base with people on different islands. Like if you're in the Caribbean or if you're in the Bahamas, there'll be places where people congregate and then every kind everybody kind of splits up. So you make a bunch of friends, and then everybody splits up a little for a little while and goes their own way. And then hurricane season, everybody meets up in a safe place. So you'll run into the same people over and over again, year after year after year, and you keep in touch with these people because they become your family, right? You're far away from all the familiar things. These people become your family, and you get tight and close really fast. And then we would come back to the same places. So we had spent many seasons in the Florida Keys, and there's a really beautiful homeschool community there. So our kids had long-term friends in the Florida Keys, and then they had these short-term friends that we would touch base with every time we were traveling. And then we would keep keep in touch and we would do road trips in the US and then go visit all of our sailing friends who had gone back to land. Um, and then our teenagers, when we came back from the Caribbean, our teenagers wanted to settle back in the Florida Keys because that's where their friends or their long-term friends had been. So we did that for a few years. We kind of just we were basically stationary either on a mooring ball or in a marina, so that they could do the sort of normal teenager thing.

unknown:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

So I'm just trying to picture it. Like, so you you dock your boat, you have to what pay rent to keep it docked somewhere, but you sleep on it every night, even though it's not necessarily moving for the season or whatnot. Like even in hurricane season, would you leave and go stay on the So we've done a lot of right?

Speaker:

We've been we've been doing this for 17 years. So we've spent hurricane seasons about everywhere you can. Usually, if we're not in the hurricane zone, we would just stay on the boat. Occasionally, if if there's like a really big threat, we could easily get off the boat. I'm trying to think. I don't think we've ever had to evacuate. Um, we considered it a couple of times. One time we tied up in the mangroves, so we enacted like a hurricane plan where we would not want to be near other boats or near land or near buildings that, you know, or near big trees where there could be damage. We would tie ourselves off in the mangroves all by ourselves. We've only had to do that once. We've been in hurricane places like we've been up in the Chesapeake during a hurricane where we didn't have to worry about it because we were really far inland, like up the Potomac River for a hurricane season. We did a hurricane season in Grenada, a hurricane season in Panama, and that's far enough south that you don't have to worry about hurricanes. And we did a hurricane season in Guatemala and found nine other teenagers, amazingly boat kids that were teenagers, so our kids had gobza friends for several months in the Rio Dulce, which is way up this river, so you don't have to worry about storms. We've weathered six, seven named storms on the boat, but never seen more than like sixty knots of of wind. Anything more than like a category one, I would not want to be on the boat. It would be terrifying.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Wow. So what are some of the places that you've traveled? You've named a f a couple there, but I did.

Speaker:

So we traveled up the East Coast. So we've done the East Coast of the United States as a history field trip. Fabulous. Like, you know, swapping the school at home for homeschool means that you can turn everything into a learning opportunity. You know, the oldest city is St. Augustine, you know, the old oldest city in the United States. So that was like sort of the beginning of our trip. And then we were, we stopped in Charleston and up inside the Chesapeake. Of course, you can get to all of the old history places in the Chesapeake and went all the way up to Washington, D.C. and did all of the museums. It was a fabulous, fabulous. I'm calling it a field trip, but it was a two-month field trip where everything was hands-on and on location. Wonderful. You don't even have to write lesson plans at that point. You just go places and see things and experience, you know, the places firsthand. And then we spent many seasons in the Bahamas because our kids love to be underwater. So spearfishing and freediving and snorkeling. There's just no playground like that. You know, the underwater playground in the Bahamas. And then we spent three and a half years in the Caribbean. We went down the Eastern Caribbean, island hopping, and then you're getting old world culture in the new world, right? You're getting French and Dutch and Spanish, all of those colonial places that are now independent. The the leftovers are language and culture and food and music, and it's it's like touring the world by island hopping.

unknown:

Wow.

Speaker:

And then uh we spent a season in Grenada and we loved it, and there were tons of kids there, and we made really good friends and just loved that island. And then we went west to Bonaire, which is in the Dutch Caribbean, and then we spent some time in Colombia, which is South America. I just had to pinch myself. Like we sailed all the way to South America. It was amazing. And we started to learn Spanish, and then we spent a year in Panama. And so even though we were there for a whole year, we were also exploring inland, overland, several different ports, spent a lot of time uh in the archipelago of Bocas del Toro, but also explored the canal zone and San Blas, which is a very idyllic little island group. And then we went north to San Andres and Providencia, which belong to Colombia again, the Bay Islands of Honduras, Belize, which has the I think third biggest barrier reef in the world. So we got to explore that, which was really cool. And then we spent a long season, like 10 months in Guatemala. And then when we left, we went to Belize, then Mexico, and then completed our Caribbean circle. And then we've been in pretty much in Florida since then.

unknown:

Okay.

Speaker:

Wow. I think we have 20 stamps. I think what we we counted it up recently, and Rachel has 20 stamps in her passport.

Speaker 1:

So amazing. Oh my goodness. Where do we begin? Okay, so how did you prepare them with their high school years and uh like what are they doing now? Or did they do they want to go to college? Do they realize that's probably a scam?

Speaker:

Yes. Um, so that was the hardest part for me. I think I spent some time feeling both like this weird, the weirdest feeling when we came back from that Caribbean travel. Rachel was only eight. So I was still kind of like in this stage where you are with homeschooling in elementary school. And simultaneously, her oldest brother was 18. So we were like trying to prepare him for independence. And he had spent his whole high school years homeschooling in the islands, which was a very unique experience. Academically, we were doing a lot of book and pencil old-fashioned, I mean, like one-room schoolhouse stuff. So all the kids would do history and science together, and then they would sort of break off to do their own whatever level of math they were doing. Um, I had gone to the homeschool convention in Florida right before Eli and Aaron started high school because I wanted to make sure I had the materials and kind of a clear idea of where we were going in case they wanted to go to college. I didn't want them to be crippled by their weird childhood. So I wanted to make sure that if they wanted to go to college, that I was giving them the tools to do that while simultaneously raising them in such an unconventional atmosphere that when they got back, they were like, why would we want to do that? So you are right, they realized that it was a scam. We had saved up, had a huge education fund that no one is using. They're using it. Like we do not have to pay for four-year, you know, university educations for any of these kids. When we came back to the Florida Keys, the three teenagers signed up for Florida dual enrollment, which in Florida is free. So it's two years of college. It's basically an AA degree that they can get for free if they apply themselves. And so my oldest son aged out at 19, but he finished like he only had a couple of credits. So he has an A. And then he went to work for my brother's commercial painting business and he saved a ton of money because he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do. And in the meantime, he figured he might as well get a skill and make some money. And um, and he ended up wanting to go back to school and he went and got his EMT and works. He just got a job with emergency services, which is super cool. So he's done a couple of shifts on an ambulance and he's getting his paramedic. And he would ultimately, he thinks he would like to do disaster relief, which would be very cool. And he's got a very cool head, so I can totally imagine him doing that. And then our second son, who was the one who was Mr. Fix It on the boat, he was always tinkering with the dinghy engine or the helping MJ with a project on the boat. He didn't like jumping through other people's hoops. So after a year of college, he decided he wanted to get a technical education. So he ended up with a Bachelor of Science, the equivalent of a Bachelor of Science, and he is working uh for Mercedes-Benz as a technician, and he's like 80% of the way done with a master mechanic at age 23, which is amazing. And he really loves his job and he loves to tinker with, he's got a couple of old cars and he loves to tinker with his cars. Yep. So he's a car guy.

Speaker 1:

And then I have a daughter who uh got her AA a car guy that never spent like a day in the car in his whole right.

Speaker:

Well, he was the one that he was the one who got seasick, and so he was like, I'm gonna be on land now. I do not need a boat, I'm not gonna tinker with boat engines anymore, not interested in boat engines at all. And then my daughter, who got she got an AA in high school at her graduation, she graduated from high school with an AA, which was amazing. And she did a stint at a um at a dude ranch in Colorado. And I thought she was gonna end up like being like this mountain woman because she loved horses. And she ended up, she came back from that, she had, you know, grown some independence and she signed up for the Coast Guard. So she went back to boats. She's working on boats. Yeah, she's not on a boat, she's actually stationed at a station, but she is the she's working on a 29 foot and a 47-foot boat, and they go out and they do search and rescues, and she sends us pictures of these really uncomfortable sea conditions, and she gets seasick. So I'm like, this does not I can't believe you did this. Like, why did you why did you choose this career? But she's super happy, she really loves it. Oh, yeah, she loves it.

Speaker 1:

Did she get the medication?

Speaker:

So if you get a call in the middle of the night because there's some stranded fisherman, there's no time for it to take effect. So she just toughs it out. But I think that's one of the things you learn in basic training is how to tough it out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker:

She's very tough, she's a tough girl.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's amazing. I mean, the just the fact that they are doing things that they really like doing. And you know, none of those jobs none of them that they're really pigeonholed. Like, correct. Correct. Okay, well, I did however many years in the Coast Guard, now I can take those skills and I can continue to go. I can start my own business. You know, so it's it's that's the thing, you know, where like I got out of college and it was like, what am I gonna do with a communication degree? Right. Yeah. So yeah, I worked for the government for 16 years, and it was like, yeah, this is just where I am. Not getting really any skills that would help me later on in life. So that is so important.

Speaker:

Well, and here here's a something that we never even thought about. We're riding the crest of this wave and not being crushed by it. But like all these jobs that are going to be taken over by AI, our kids have chosen jobs co coincidentally that a robot can't do. Yeah. So I think that's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Anything in the trades like that, you know, my husband does the commercial HVAC, so it's like Yeah, high demand.

Speaker:

Yeah, very high demand right now, and shortage of labor. So, I mean, I think it's an amazing opportunity for young people to get back into trades.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and trades look so much different than they did 20 years ago, you know, when he was getting into it then. It, you know, it was, I I would imagine, even more hands-on. Like he's super hands-on with everything that he does, but there's also so much that the computer can do too. For instance, like, okay, write this report, you know, and here's you're telling it what you did, and it regurgitates a report for you. Or, you know, so it's like some of the little things that AI has helped a little bit with.

Speaker:

Yeah, well, I mean, I have a kid who's a technician, he's not a mechanic, he's a technician, and at Mercedes-Benz you wear gloves, so he doesn't have the black fingernails of a mechanic, but he's got this fancy computer because it interfaces with the car and gives him all the error codes. So I understand what you're saying about it looking a little bit different.

Speaker 1:

That's what I'm yeah, I couldn't think of a good, but you're right, yes, because my husband works on cars too. He built a Camaro, and yes, so he's got a laptop in the Camaro, and he's like fussing with the that where back in, you know, the 80s and 90s, we wouldn't really have had it hooked up to a computer. You know, you just got in there with your tools and switch it. But yes, you can program things. I won't be but yeah, so it it is very different. And that's kind of hard to prepare your kids for that. When you were kind of creating their lesson plans in their high school years, did you I know they had the dual enrollment, so at least you didn't really have to worry about what they were learning through the colleges. How did you supplement or what did you feel that you had to make up for to get that high school diploma part? And so that they were ready for this ever-changing world of technology.

Speaker:

Right. So I had taken, um, I had taken a seminar when I went to the Florida Homeschool convention about writing high school transcripts. And it was another mom who had figured out how to make them look official, and I bought her book. And so I just would look at like the Florida state standards and look at what was required for a Florida diploma. And then I would somehow try to mush what we had done into that formula. It doesn't work really well, like you have to make things up sometimes. So if you're traveling through the Caribbean, you're studying history, like the colonial history of the New World, like we were getting French history and you know, the Spanish conquistadors and we're walking in their footsteps and we're interfacing with all of these first peoples, like super interesting. But how do you write that as a history curriculum? So, you know, like I was giving my courses a name, but the coursework, I mean, like we went to a banana plantation and learned how they grow bananas. That's not in the Florida state standards for 10th grade.

Speaker 1:

Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start? Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic, actually, 120 interviews at this point with homeschooling families from across the country and the world. And what I've done is I've packed everything I've learned into an ebook called The Homeschool How to Complete Starter Guide. From navigating your state's laws to finding your homeschooling style, from working while homeschooling to supporting kids with special needs. This guide covers it all with real stories from real families who've walked this path. I've taken the best insights, the best resources, and put them all into this guide. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Get your copy of the Homeschool How-To Complete Starter Guide today and discover that homeschooling isn't just about education. It's about getting what you want out of each day. Not what somebody else wants out of you. You can grab the link to this ebook in the show's description or head on over to thehomeschoolhowto.com.

Speaker:

So it was very hard to make what we did fit the Florida curriculum, but you know, you have to a certain number of language arts credits and a certain number of math credits. Math is easy because like we did Life of Fred, which was great because that I don't know if you know Life of Fred. It's like a ridiculous curriculum where it's like uh like story-based, but everything is like a real world problem.

unknown:

Okay.

Speaker:

And then we supplemented with sort of old-fashioned curriculum when you know, when Fred wasn't quite enough, but it was book and pencil, and it was like I spent $700 and homeschooled five children, you know, K through 12. So because it's not consumable, it's just book and pencil. You read the chapter, you answer the questions, you read the chapter, you answer the questions, you take a quiz at the end, and voila, you know math. So we loved Life of Fred up until about high school, and then the kids were kind of tired of the like storybook problems. And so then we would go with some like boring book and pencil or workbook for algebra.

Speaker 1:

Did you notice in there like in the one curriculum jumping to another?

Speaker:

Just that the he calls it kill and drill. Most math programs are kill and drill. Like you learn the skill and then they give you a hundred practice problems and you do it until it's so you know it so well that it's boring. If I had a kid who was struggling with something like like they would learn how to multiply, and then before you can move on, you really need to have it mechanized. You know, it needs to be like automatic. So if I noticed that there was a gap, I would like stop doing Life of Fred and we would make flashcards and we would work really hard on that skill until they were ready to move on. But when you're homeschooling, you can do that, you can fill in all the gaps.

Speaker 1:

And we were just talking about that this morning, actually. My son was doing his, he's doing Matthew C right now.

Speaker:

And well, I love Matthew C and I love all those manipulatives. What a great program.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I I do like and he seems to like it. I mean, it's dry, it's not any storybook, that's for sure.

Speaker:

But a lot of people use Life of Fred as a supplement to another math program because like my kids would beg me to read another chapter, and I'd be like, It's a math book.

Speaker 1:

Are you sure? So that happens next. Yeah, and so he's doing the carrying over. So, you know, he was having like he would get it, and then the next one he would kind of forget what he did. And you know, I said to him, or like we he did a whole page while I was in the shower, and I came back, I was like, I didn't really do this right, buddy. So we uh slowly went through, and normally he does two lessons a day. And um I was like, Hey, this week, this one's a little tougher. Let's just do one lesson a day. Don't overwhelm yourself. You let it sink in. And I said to him, you know, this is the beauty of homeschooling, like it's hard, so let's not get too frustrated with it. You don't need to do four pages of it just because that's what you did when it was easier. Take your time and you know, I that is really the beauty of it. And like you said, you can let's make some flashcards because you need a little extra practice. How many times in school did you feel like oh they just move on?

Speaker:

Like they just move on and leave you behind.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't really have this. I'm embarrassed to speak up because all my friends seem to have it, and I don't really want to stay after class because I have you know a sport after c after school, so I I can't. Yeah, and then you're just you you miss one thing and it snowballs, you don't understand anything for the rest of the year.

Speaker:

Because if you can't do multiplication, then you can't do division, and if you can't do division, then you don't understand fractions, and everything sort of builds. So you have the opportunity when you're homeschooling to slow down, make sure you understand one skill before you move on. And I I do love that that's the individualized portion of homeschooling.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And you brought up a good point earlier, too, which I kind of forget to talk about now that I'm, you know, two and a half, three years into this podcast. But in the beginning, it really shocked me to learn like, wait, you can do science and history with your five-year-old, eight-year-old, 12-year-old, and 16-year-old. Like you can do it all with those ages. That's crazy. But, you know, you had kind of touched on that. Why don't you tell people, especially who are new to homeschooling or want to homeschool, how that works and what it looks like.

Speaker:

So there are a lot of curriculums that kind of take a one-room schoolhouse approach. I'm trying to think what what my sister-in-law uses. So my brother homeschools his kids and my sister homeschools her kids. I think it's crazy that our whole generation is like doing this, but so I have two siblings and they both homeschool their kids. My brother homeschools, homeschooled 10 children, five boys and five girls, with goats and chickens and a little garden in a suburban house, like 30 minutes from where I am right now. And so she took the approach, it's a curriculum where you can either download it or you can buy the consumables. And so you would do it at, they do it as unit studies. So I think this year they're doing like the history of Florida or something like that. And she does the read aloud portion, and then there's individual lessons where, you know, the kindergartner might be coloring a picture, but the high schooler might be writing an essay. But it's all around the same subject matter. So we essentially did the same thing. Um, a lot of it was geographically based because of where we were in the world. So we take all five kids to the banana plantation, for example, when we were in Belize, and we learn how bananas are grown and sort of the history of the fruit companies in Central America, and we learn all the sorts of things around this subject matter. Obviously, my five-year-old isn't learning the same things that the high schoolers are learning. We're studying the same subject matter at each kid's level.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And it's what a way to bring a family together, too. You know, like you are making these little inside jokes that when you're in the school system and you know, the little ones off at preschool all day or daycare, and the older ones are off at high school, and they're just not even connected at all. And it is all part of a grand design to tear apart the family unit, go down that road any day.

Speaker:

We we could, and I would probably agree with everything that you say.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but how beautiful is that? I mean, were you able to you went to school as a child?

Speaker:

Yes, I did, and I loved school and I excelled at school. And so back when I robbed my children of the opportunity to go to school, I had that same guilt of like, am I screwing my kids up? I loved school. School was a wonderful experience, and now I'm keeping my kids from this, you know, happy memory that I had. But I also had had the experience of being a teacher in that system. And I saw that the I think that the system for sure changed from when I was in kindergarten to when I was teaching kindergarten to then when my kids would have been going to kindergarten. So I struggled a little bit with that. But I also look at the education that I got, and I got a very good education, and I went to Middlebury College in Vermont, which is a very sort of high-end private four-year college.

Speaker 1:

Are you in Vermont? We are right next to Bennington. Uh, but I'm in New York.

Speaker:

Okay. Okay, on the other side. Yeah. Yeah wonderful. Yes. So I went to Middlebury and very prestigious and got this, you know, amazing education. And then I started homeschooling, and I'm like, oh good, I can bequeath to my children all these things that I've learned, and we can read Shakespeare together, and I can, you know, like give them this very expensive education for free because I have all of this stuff that I can. And we did, you know, read Shakespeare and we did make a little model of the globe theater and thatched the roof and, you know, had some really cool experiences that I was able to give them because I'd had a good education on the one hand. On the other hand, as we start trekking through history and literature and science, I realized that my education had so many gaps in it. And there were things that I had never learned. The best education I ever got was in homeschooling my children.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker:

That's how I it's like, how did I I had like a very good experience at school? I wasn't even one of those kids that fell through the cracks, right? How did I not have a good education? If anyone would have had one, it would have been me. And yet all of this stuff that I did not know, or at any depth, you know, maybe they scraped the surface, maybe, or skimmed the surface. But until I started homeschooling and going, you know, doing these deep dives with unit studies or traveling, of course, traveling is the best education. But until we started doing that, I didn't realize how poor my education was.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know, and it's all like who wrote that curriculum, right? Like, I mean, what was their agenda? And, you know, what even just when you talk about Christopher Columbus, I mean, they don't even tell us the truth about that. And we have a whole holiday for the guy, you know, like did he even touch land in North America? I don't know.

Speaker:

Well, he did. He didn't touch where we live, but he landed in San Salvador, which is in the Bahamas. And so when you're when we were in the Bahamas, we we love to do, you know, source text. So we don't like social studies books because it just, you know, it's revisionist history and you can boil everything down into one paragraph and miss every nuance, right? Yeah. So we actually read the translated journals of Christopher Columbus while we were in the islands where Christopher Columbus kind of first landed in the New World. And it was astounding. And my view of Christopher Columbus is very different, you know, than sort of the criticisms that I hear. I think we're not getting a full picture of history at all.

Speaker 1:

But it is but so, but if he landed in Bahamas, did he really discover North America? Sort of.

Speaker:

Like he didn't, he didn't like land at Plymouth Rock or anything. Okay, yeah. No, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's what we feel like when we celebrate Columbus Day. We think like, oh, he's the first one that found this, and you know, where we live, America.

Speaker:

Well, right. Well, and America is named for Americo Vespucci, and very Amerigoves Pucci never landed in South and North America either. He explored a little bit in South America, but I didn't know that. Yeah. He was more like a novelist than an explorer. He came back from his exploratory trip and wrote these fantastic stories, and that's how we ended up getting referred to as America. Isn't that funny?

Speaker 1:

Our name was from him, but I didn't know it. He also never touched North America. Meanwhile, the like, hello.

Speaker:

Right, and the Vikings were here like a thousand years before Columbus.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So what happened to them? Why didn't they stick around?

Speaker:

Well, as my eighth-grade history teacher would say, they didn't take good notes. He said that a lot of things had been discovered and forgotten because it wasn't written down. So I guess the history is written by the victors and the ones who take good notes.

Speaker 1:

So that's interesting. So, like, where did the but had then did the Native Americans take over and leave?

Speaker:

So I have a really good book rec recommendation. I don't want to like commandeer the conversation onto the early history of America, but one of the books I read aloud with my kids was A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz. Okay. And you start to learn like there's this huge gap in our education from like what happened between when Columbus landed in quote unquote North America, when he landed in the New World, and you know, when we established our country. There's a massive gap. But um, he talks a lot about the Native Americans. He actually, it's a it's part travel memoir, part history, and it's very, very comedic. There were some like slightly inappropriate parts that I kind of would like skip over. You know, you're reading like one sentence ahead if it has bad language, but it was one of the best history books that I ever read with the kids because it really gave a much bigger, better picture of like what was happening in America between 1500 and you know, 1776. Like that's a long time. That's 200 and something years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm reading that right now with the Tuttle twins. They have the Tuttle Twins. Perfect history. Yes. What's awesome is I I'm listening on audio with my son. Like when we're in the car. Perfect. So we miss some of the some of the pictures, but he's only seven. So I'm like, we'll probably do this every year. For sure. And but it's so cool because now, so I'm up by Middlebury and I'm over in New York, but we're right by the Hudson River. We're right by anyone that listens to my podcast now is probably like, oh my god, shut up about this Hudson River because I like it. I never they never taught me anything about it in school. I'm like so mad. Like you didn't teach me a thing about it. I've been going over this water a million times in my life, and you've never taught me one thing about it. And then I start looking into like homeschooling stuff, and I'm like, there's so much history right here. So in the Tidal Twins book, it's talking about um first world war, and they're like, oh, World War I. And he goes, No, no, no, there was a war before that, and it's the French and Indian War. And I'm 41 years old, and I'm like, I don't know who fought in that. Like, why would the French and the Indians be fighting each other? Well, then the book, Tidal Twins book, goes to explain, no, it's from the British perspective. So Indians and French were fighting the British, and they were on you know, US territory or whatever it was at the time, fighting each other for that territory. And I'm like, that's even more history. So then there happens to be a homeschool day next week at the Fort William Henry up in Lake George.

Speaker:

That's so exciting.

Speaker 1:

Let's go. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Like hands-on history. My whole life I thought that the Fort Henry well, I can't even say my whole life because I probably didn't even think about the American Revolution until the musical Hamilton, right? Right. I wouldn't have even been able to tell you what that war was.

Speaker:

Well, that's great. I've been to the birthplace of Hamilton in the Caribbean.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker:

Yep. We visited his house. Yep. Well, we we learned about Hamilton because we were at his at the island where he was born. And so that was our little entry into that part of history. But there are touch points all over the place, and the world is small. So you've got this really exciting homeschool history thing coming up. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And it's more like I'm hopefully you can see how excited I am about it, you know. Because I'm like, I didn't, I thought that that was the American Revolution, that the Fort William Henry, you know, that's more the stuff like the Battle of Benningfield Bennington. Right, right, right. But it predates the American Revolution. So it predates was learning about that because we just camped in Woodford, Vermont a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. We um I can honestly say I have learned more in a a year and a half of homeschool, two years of homeschooling my son than I ever did in 1340, 17 years of school.

Speaker:

Yes, I had that same experience. So sad. Yeah. I mean, we learned other things. Some were good and some were bad.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Now tell me about you wrote a book, right? I did. I did.

Speaker 1:

I wrote a book that before we wrap up and forget.

Speaker:

Sure, absolutely. So I was I've always been a writer um just forever and um did creative writing at Middlebury. And then I wrote a blog. So our blog is at um www.taket2sailing.com. And if you wanted to go all the way back to 2008, like when we were even just thinking about buying a boat, I think the first blog post is from 2007. You can see like our whole thought process when we were doing this big scary thing and how scared we were and how hesitant we were to like ditch the American dream and go, you know, sailing with our kids, because that is a big scary thing. So that blog goes all the way back. And we wrote both Jay and I wrote for that. And then later on, our kids would contribute. Our son Sam, after he did his, you know, thousand-mile hike of the Florida Trail, he's actually getting ready to write a really good blog post to kind of like keep the blog up and let people know what the kids are up to. So that part is free. And then when I wrote my book, I didn't want to simply like write down the blog and publish it. This I wanted to do something different. So the book has a little bit more, a little wider appeal than like if you want to go sailing with your family. It was more the philosophical journeys that that went alongside the the physical journeys. So anybody who was interested in trying something new, in doing something big and bold, in breaking the mold, in getting out of the house with a white picket fence mentality, would be interested in a book like this. So it's called Leaving the Safe Harbor: The Risks and Rewards of Raising a Family on a Boat. And each chapter is named for an nautical idiom that people use every day, like in close quarters or rocking the boat. Like these things that we say all the time have a very deep meaning for me. So I took these nautical idioms and wrote a chapter about each one. And each one kind of explores a different aspect of our lives and a different aspect of risk taking and mitigating risk and trying to live your life and not just sit on the sidelines.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, not just go through it, but really Right.

Speaker:

Not survive, but to live, to really live. So it was something I wanted to encourage other people, not like you should, you know, go sailing with your kids. It was more like if two suburbanites that were raised in middle class America can ditch everything and move on to a boat with their five kids and homeschool them while traveling and working, then any other thing that you can possibly dream of is possible. So I really wanted to encourage people not to follow my dream of like moving onto a boat with their kids, but follow your dreams and know what's possible. So there was a lot of philosophy that I wanted to write in that maybe the blog. The blog was much more like where we were going and what we were doing, and definitely some thoughtful episodes, but um, but the book is different.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that sounds awesome. I will put a link to that in the show's description. Oh, thank you. Yeah, so people can just check that out. And um, coming from working in a cubicle for 16 years and taking that leap to leave that and homeschool the kids and like stay at home and bake sourdough bread. It's like yay, sourdough. Never would have thought that would have been me, but it is so just living alongside your kids, it's just so nice. And they drive me nuts, but it is so nice.

Speaker:

It's very rewarding, and very much like what I say in the book about living on a boat, everything is really hard. Hard. Like we chose a really hard way of living, but the lows might be lower, but the highs are higher. So yes, we're all crammed into this boat, and sometimes it was really, really hard. And sometimes there were storms at sea, and sometimes things were breaking. But sometimes we were, I think I mentioned earlier, like climbing volcanoes and swimming with whale sharks and having these incredible, intense, beautiful experiences with our family that made all the hard things worth it. My oldest son, we were sitting around a fire one Christmas with my brother's family, and somebody asked him a question, and the way he answered, it just made me cry. He was saying that living on the boat, he said, even though he loved the nice parts, he said that now that he's an adult, he's actually really thankful for the hard parts because it shaped who he is as a person and made him tougher. And he looks around and some of his peers are kind of sissies, like they just can't deal with difficult things. And he's like, we lived in the Florida Keys without air conditioning for a whole year, or we've been in storms at sea, or we, you know, like ate whatever we could find under the floorboards if we hadn't been to a store for a really long time. Like we got really creative. It made him a tougher person. So all this time I've been hoping, like, I hope they remember the good parts. I hope they remember the good parts and forget the bad parts. It turns out that even the bad parts are the good parts. This was very good news for me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. That's something I think about too. Like, are we making their life so comfortable because they don't have to wait for the school bus or you know, deal with that bad teacher all year. But you're right, they learn it in different ways.

Speaker:

Sure. They don't always get what they want. I assume that you have some system, like you can't live with your children if you don't like them. So there have to be rules and consequences, right? That maybe if you if you send your kids off to school, you can get away with gentle parenting. But if you live with your kids day in, day out, you want them to be lovable people, not just because you spend time with them, because you want to send them out into the world and you want other people to love and accept them. So it behooves us to, I guess, do the do the hard thing now so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labor later. And now I have these beautiful adult relationships with my kids. And I was always worried, like I was the mean teacher. I was also the nice teacher. I was the only teacher. And I'm like, are they gonna be bitter or angry or have to go to therapy because of what we did to them? And it turns out that we're friends and it's wonderful. And my two oldest boys who we happen to be living near them right now, where uh where we're docked, and they come back for pizza night every now and then on take two, and we all sit around and have pizza and play board games, and I'm like, this is what I always dreamed of. And I'm sort of have to pinch myself that we accidentally achieved it by doing hard things.

Speaker 1:

Oh my god, that's so beautiful. Well, I think that's the note to end on. This was such a good one. Tanya, thank you so much for sharing your journey. I hope people check out your book. I will put that link in the show's description. Thank you for being here today.

Speaker:

Well, thank you, and good luck to you because you're in the part that I now look back so fondly on and wish that I could go back and like relive the days when my kids were little, even those days that they were driving me crazy. Those are the days you'll look back on with nostalgia.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the Homeschool How To. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.