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If you thought homeschooling at home was tricky, imagine taking your homeschooling adventures all around the
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world. This is the Exhomeschoolers Club and I'm your host, Jacob Gooden. If you're new here, this is where we talk
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about the good, the bad, and the ugly of growing up a homeschool kid. And if you're not new here, if you're a
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returning uh viewer, guest, audience member, welcome back. We love having you. Before I get into it, just a quick
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reminder. If you're not on the email newsletter, jump on that, okay? Top link
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down below. Get on the newsletter. I only send it out once every two weeks or once every week. And it's just things
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about the latest episode, things I'm reading a little bit homeschool news, all that kind of fun stuff. But enough
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of that. Let's get into our guest. Today, I'm joined by the wonderful Robin
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aka BG Barnstormer. and uh we are going to talk all things about taking your homeschool kids on the road and
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traveling the world with them. Robin is a homeschool mom or was a homeschool mom. So, she's kind of also an ex
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homeschooler in a lot of ways and uh she did just that. So, without further ado,
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Robin, welcome to the exhomeschoolers club. >> Jacob, thank you so much for having me
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today. >> Okay, let's get into it. So, I know you've got three kids and currently they
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are what 11, 13, 15, something like that. Yes, we have one having a birthday soon. So, we're we're calling it 111
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1315 cuz she insists that she's existed for 13 years. So, we have this battle
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every year, but approximately 11 1315. >> Okay. Yeah, I have a sibling like that,
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too, who's kind of like I'm actually this. Um, but you started homeschooling
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about 7 years ago at this point. You did you did six years of homeschooling and then you've done now like half a year
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maybe. >> Yeah. It was 2018 when we started homeschooling and we homeschooled
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exclusively until 2024ish. So, however many years that is. >> Well, walk me through that thought
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process of like, okay, let's let's homeschool the kids. Let's let's take
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things away from the public school system, I guess. >> Well, and honestly, it was an
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interesting dynamic. I had wanted to homeschool for a while, but the long story short, I had some health issues
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when the kids were little, and so I had a lot of fatigue and um my husband had a
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rotating schedule. he's in aviation, so he, you know, whether he was working in
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an office job uh at a simulator place or whether he was a week on week off or his
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schedule rotated in other ways. We thought about it early on, but then we did not actually kind of take that
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plunge into homeschooling until May of 2018 when we moved from Kansas to Virginia. And at that point in time, he
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had gone to a regional airline. And his schedule was going to be very dynamic. And what I mean is he had um eight days
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off a month. But those eight days off were what I like to call eightish days off a month. So let's just say he had a
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Tuesday, Wednesday off, then he would get home Monday night, possibly late, maybe sleep in Tuesday morning, and then
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we'd have a solid 24 hours before he really had to get back to packing and getting stuff back on, you know, wash
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the laundry and everything else. So he was really gone roughly five, six days at a time and then home. And often his
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home days were midweek. And so that was one of the biggest things that made us want to start homeschooling is because
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if we were going to have any family time, it was going to be on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Wednesday, Thursday. And
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so we decided pretty early on that, okay, the kids at the time were four, six, and eight. And we're like, okay,
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it's just like you're learning letters and numbers and colors like, you know,
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if I'm terrible at it, there's a school right down the street and we'll we'll
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just send them to school and if we love it, then this will be really great opportunity for our family. So, with a
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rotating uh pilot schedule and wanting to have some family time, that was really the first start that kind of put
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us into the plunge of of homeschooling. >> No, I totally get the the like weird
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schedule thing. I had roommates at one point and I live in Nashville and they do the band touring thing and we all we
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all ended up with these weird schedules and so yeah, our weekends would be like you said like Tuesday, Wednesday,
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Thursday um sometimes and it was just like really bizarre and we'd be out in
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the middle of the week and people were like why are you drinking on a Tuesday? It's like well because
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>> it's our weekend guys. But um but uh yeah, obviously you're not
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taking your kids out drinking, but um but I love that you guys were like, "Okay, look, dad's only going to be
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available these days of the week. Let's figure out how we can make the kids available those days of the week as
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well." Because I mean, I loved hanging out with my dad when I was a kid. Like
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he worked from home at one point and it was just like it made the homeschooling dynamic so much more fun. And like we we
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went and did fun things on those days. like it was knew, hey, it's our day with
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dad. We're going to go to a museum. We're going to go like whatever. But um
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walk me through a little bit of like home school days cuz you at this point are you're not on the road at this
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point, right? You're just kind of >> stationary home. The the people on the
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road call it a sticks and bricks home, but we have a stationary home now. And we were on the road full-time for three
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years. And now we call ourselves part- timerrs because we travel part-time in the RV, sometimes internationally or
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anywhere in the US depending on what like this last week my husband um wanted to hop up to Canada to see the Northern
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Lights. I was like that might be amazing, but this week we're getting ready to go on another trip in a couple
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weeks and I said I don't think it's probably a good choice for our unit to
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take a quick trip for 24 to 40 hours, come back, you know, shake up the little snow globe and then go again. So
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sometimes we have to be a little strategic. is quite the wanderlust and so he's like, "Hey, we could go to fill
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in the blank location this weekend." I'm like, "Okay, we have a soccer game and
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kiddo has this going on." So sometimes we have to balance the the fun with uh
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with reality. But yes, we were on the road for three years and now we have a stationary home and we travel part time.
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>> So those early years of like getting plugged into the homeschool community,
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did you have did you build any communities? Did you do the very like traditional like, hey, we're just kind
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of like, I don't want to say isolating ourselves, but for lack of a better word, like isolating ourselves, like
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everything's at home, or did you plug into like homeschool communities where
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you were at? >> For us, we did plug in immediately to a community. We actually did I don't know
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how many of your people are into different types of communities, but we plugged into a classical conversations
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community, um, also known as CC. And we specifically chose that one partially because it was one day a week and it was
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on Tuesday at the time for us. And so the time and the day worked really well for us. I tried to figure out like what
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type of homeschool mom I was going to be. And I remember doing a ton of research to be like, am I a is it called
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Charlotte Mason? Is that one of them? I'm It's been a while since I've looked
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them all up. >> That's familiar. >> I think it's that one. Or are you this
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type? Are you this type? Like I don't know what I am. I just love to learn. Um
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I'm a pilot by trade in the background. And so I am not new to teaching. It's
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just not teaching people in an airplane that are may or may not know what they're doing. Teaching kids color seems
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a lot less threatening to me. So, um, we plugged into the CC community because it
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was a classical approach. And so, if you're not familiar with what that means, it basically means if you're
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learning about, let's just say lobsters, or as the people in Maine say, lobsters.
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If you're learning about the lobster, um, then we would learn about, you know,
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what type of animal it is, where does it live, what does it eat, what color is it, anything about it. So, my
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four-year-old would be like, "Oh, lobsters could be red or whatever other color. I don't know a ton about lobsters
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anymore. I haven't studied them in a while." Um, but they could be multiple
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colors. And then, um, the older ones would be learning more about the scientific like what, you know, genus
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and species and whatever else that they'd be learning about. And so the idea of a classical approach is you're
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learning about generally speaking like a topic and then learning at whatever level but everybody's learning the same
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topic which was really fun because you know I was a new homeschool mom. I didn't have a lot of idea and the CC
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community gave us like a three-year cycle. So one year we would be doing one thing the next year we would switch to
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something else. So it gave me really interestingly enough like quick plug-in content and then outside of their
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curriculum which again was one day a week we did our reading, writing and arithmetic. So, it kind of gave me like
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um some geography, it gave us some history, it gave us some other stuff. And then we could explore in those
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topics as much as we really wanted to. So, it was a really great like I don't
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know, maybe a rubric or like an outline to say this is where we're starting and
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then we can expand from here. And as a homeschooler, I'm I'm sure you know,
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sometimes you expand those interests and you get really into other underwater sea
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creatures and you're like, "Okay, lobsters are cool, but have you seen the
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starfish? They can grow backst. They're so cool." Right. >> I I kind of relate with that. I didn't
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do classical conversations. My my cousins did. Um so I have a little bit of familiarity there with it. But I love
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that like but we also kind of got plugged into a home school community where my mom was like okay at home I can
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handle the basic stuff. I know how to teach writing and math and all those different things. Yeah. The three Rs,
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right? Reading, writing, arithmetic. Um and um and then yeah, let's like let's
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kind of like get some help on some of the outside stuff. And so we had group our thing was group solutions and that
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was every two weeks a single day very classroom structured so it was three classes and you had a lunch break and
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you had you know we were around other kids and so it gave us some some social uh some social things and uh as someone
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who had been public schooled I was like this feels like school again you know it
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was a good fit uh at the time but we got those fun things of like science and leaning into something
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>> and one thing that's really fun about having a community to plug into is that
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it's like instant friends who are doing something similar, who are really relating to those struggles, whether
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you're brand new or your kid is struggling with reading or something else. And for me, that was absolutely
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critical because if you remember from the beginning, my husband was gone like literally all the time. And so, I didn't
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know anybody. I was in a brand new neighborhood. Not everybody spoke my language. And oftent times, everybody
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was in public school around us. And so, it's not like my kids had a lot of neighborhood friends. We did eventually
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find some, but in that area, we were just outside DC cuz we were living near the Dulles airport. Um, a lot of people,
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both people worked and the kids went to school and then they did after school activities, so they didn't have a lot of
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what I would call downtime between, you know, the school and the dinner or after
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dinner and and so that was a nice plugin. And then it also gave me a group of people that were like, "Oh, hey, your
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kid is struggling here. Here's some suggestions or we use these three. This one was my favorite, but these other two
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are pretty good, too." And so that was a really great resource group as well. And
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of course, instant friends, like that was that was really help helpful. >> I was going to say too, cuz that was
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like a big thing. My mom talks about that a lot when I had her on the show previously and she talked about yes,
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it's important for like socializing the kids. Like that's what we hear about a
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lot in the homeschool world. It's like the kids need to be socialized, but also
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mom and dad also need to be socialized, too. So it's like, >> is it about the kids or is it about the
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parents? That's the question I have. >> That's a good question. But but having
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both is important because to your point, it's like if someone's down the line,
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right, who's got a kid two, three years older than you, they can kind of help
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guide you as far as like, hey, don't go down this path with the curriculum. It's
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not worth the while. >> Really truly. And I I'm sure we'll talk about it at some point, but I've got two
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kiddos who uh struggled with reading and I was given a curriculum and it was um I
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really loved it personally. It was like teaching kids to read in 100 easy lessons or something like that. I don't
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know who the author was. Um, but it was like this book and it had 100 lessons and it was short lessons. It was
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fantastic. It was like literally open do the lesson done. It was my kind of curriculum. But what I noticed is about
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I don't know 75 way 75 lessons in my daughter was really struggling with a couple different things and she slammed
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the book and she goes these are not easy and I had to laugh because I was like okay so obviously there is something
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going on here that this feels really hard. So then I started looking with my friend who had recommended it, which I
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again I love the curriculum. It made it really easy to do. It was a great way to
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teach it. I said, "Hey, this is a thing. What can I do now?" And she's like, "Oh,
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hey, yeah, no problem. Let me let me give you a couple of other suggestions."
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So that was really helpful cuz her kids were quite a bit older than mine at the time.
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>> Well, let's let's talk about that a little bit of like kind of the the
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learning challenges that can kind of come with homeschooling because it's one of the strengths. It's also one
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of the weaknesses of homeschooling. is like the strength is like when your kid is struggling, you have the ability to
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the flexibility and the ability to change and to adapt and find the thing that works for them, you know, and and
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cater things to their learning style. The the con is that sometimes those things go unchecked because if you're
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not a traditionally trained teacher, maybe you don't know the signs to look for um of like, okay, hey, this kid is
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struggling in this area. And so that can go unchecked. Not saying it did in your
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case because obviously you guys did some things about it, but like >> sometimes it's a slower identification
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process for sure. >> Right. It might Yeah, it might just be kind of sometimes though like, okay,
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maybe we're just like not getting there. Maybe I'm not doing a good enough job
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getting us to the place we need to be. >> Um, so where when did things start? You
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said you started to realize like, okay, we're 75 lessons in my my my daughter is
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struggling. She's saying it's hard, but also like I'm just realizing she's not
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picking this up. Like where was that the trigger to be like, okay, something needs to change here?
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>> Yeah. So it it was interesting. So my my middle kiddo, her name is Alice and my
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younger one is named Walter. So Alice and Walter both had different reading difficulties. And so it was interesting
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and hard for both of them. And so when I saw when she slammed the book and she goes, "This is not easy." Which an
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average kid who has no general issues with learning something, I mean my kids are very quick at some things, but some
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things are going to be harder. Like my son, my 15-year-old just told me the other day, he's like, "Um, yeah, I'm
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doing whatever for science and next year is going to be chemistry." And I'm like,
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okay, so chemistry might be your jam. Maybe this isn't your jam, right? So some kids are going to be quicker at
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picking things up than others. So my daughter Alice actually started having an interest in learning and reading
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early. Now, what was interesting is as we were teaching her the the vowels and the sounds and all the things is the way
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her brain works is she more like picked up words versus just sounding out words,
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which is not the way most children learn to read. And my friend who was further ahead in the journey than I am in
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homeschooling was like, "Oh yeah, well if they are learning the word philosophy, if they've never seen the
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word philosophy, they need to know fu and then ill a, you know, and sound it out." But my daughter is interesting
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because she would pick up words and I'm like, "Okay, let's let's sound out ran,"
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you know, and she's like, "It's ran." I'm like, "Okay." So I started noticing
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things like that. like she wasn't what I would call on the curriculum trend the
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way an average kid might be. Now remember I say average there's kids on both ends of the spectrum here. And then
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my little guy his issues were different. Like he is now considered dyslexic dyslexic and disgraphic. And we may talk
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about that in a bit. But basically, I noticed in that book, and this is a really great like pro tip for parents
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who are just starting in reading, is if there is a line below the word and your child can read the word like ran again,
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um then they can like their eyes can track and their finger can track. But if there's no line, then it's easier for
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your eyes to wander if you have a tracking issue. Now, a pro person who is a reading specialist might be like, "Oh,
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yeah, that's a beginner." You know, totally. I know that. Well, what was
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interesting I noticed with Walter is when there was no line below the word, he had trouble tracking. And so I was
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like, "Okay, let's use a ruler. Let's use a thing." And then it progressed to
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be what I knew was dyslexia. But he would mix up his letters, his P, uh, B and D, P and Q, and then like there was
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just like more frustration. And I don't know, I call it the pirate A. I don't
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know what it's called. You know the A's that have the little hook on top?
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>> Yeah. It's like the Is it the amper stand or so or something like that? It's
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kind of like I've never It's like swirly. >> Yeah. I've never really cared to look
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into the name of it, I'm just like it looks like a pirate. It has a little hook. So, I actually wrote a book and I
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can share that here at the end of the podcast. But, um I was very specific in choosing my font because when I have
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children who are learning to read and they don't know the the pirate A versus
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the regular A. And then if you know the I versus capital I with like the little lines on top and bottom um versus with
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no lines on top and bottom. And if the kids are already struggling with reading and they are having to spend so much
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mental, emotional energy figuring out is that an I or is that an L? What is that
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letter? Okay, the G has a little swirly but that doesn't look like a regular G.
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I started to see some of those types of things. And so my best advice knowing what I know now would be if you have
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questions or struggles with reading, pull in a specialist early and have an evaluation done. Uh we were on the road
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and this was actually during the time of COVID, so between 2020 and 2023. And if
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anybody out there is like, "Oh girl, I hear you. I remember that time there was
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a lot of hard and difficulties for everybody during that time and so it wasn't like I could just go to a reading
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specialist and everybody was so like inundated with being overwhelmed with the pandemic at that time like things
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were just chaotic and so during that time it was like okay have we made progress and so I started really seeing
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like are we making progress and can I figure out what is the problem like is it just the letters is there again
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dyslexia going on is is is there something else and so my daughter Alice when we were figuring out with her we
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did end up finishing the 100 easy lessons which were a little bit more difficult for her at the end. Um my
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younger one we stopped because we started seeing other things like I said with the tracking and some dyslexia and
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so we're like okay we need to figure out so we switched to a different curriculum
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to work on some different stuff and it did make it easier but ultimately we did end up finding a specialist to help us
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figure out that it for my younger guy it was dyslexia and disgraphia and for my older one um still navigating through
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some of those difficulties cuz some other stuff came up during that time. >> Yeah. As someone who grew up in a house
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with dyslexic people, uh I I am not dyslexic. So to me, like the tracking like I I have always been kind of maybe
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above average when it comes to reading. >> Yeah. And some people it's so easy and
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lucky ducky. We're lucky little ducky. >> Exactly. Like like Yeah. I I my mom and
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I would just read these massive books and like talk about them and my my dad and my sister who both kind of more
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struggle with the dyslexia stuff. They would always just be so frustrated because they were like, "We love the
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story." >> When you when you you talk about it, they're like, "That sounds so
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interesting. I want to read that, whatever." But they could not do it. And the way that they described looking at a
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page of words was just like a word jumble. They were just like, "It's it's
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piecing all these things together, which like I know there's a couple different
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ways to view dyslexia and things like that, but for them it was just like word jumble craziness." And um I was like, I
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I can't imagine reading like that. It just doesn't that do struggle with that.
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That's when um we actually started audiobooks very early. Now for me it was out of desperation as a roughly
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sometimes solo single pilot mom of my husband was just gone and at the end of the day I had been up
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>> from 7 in the morning all day long doing all the things um for weeks on end. I
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mean this was like a two-year stent that he was there doing this and so I was absolutely exhausted at the end of the
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day and so we started getting into audiobooks and so for kids whether they have reading difficulties or not
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audiobooks are absolutely instrumental in at least in our journey because the kids could then pop on their audiobook
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and they were just so excited to listen because there's tons of information about reading loud to your kid and all
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this stuff and if you're a parent out there who's like I literally don't have
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time or maybe you struggle with reading I know I have gone through some eye therapy myself and I have 2020 vision,
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no issues at all. And there was some other um some other things that were identified after my son Walter ended up
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going to a reading specialist and then to a vision specialist, which honestly was a little validating because I'm
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like, I knew my kid was like having trouble, but it wasn't like the normal trouble. He's got great vision. He has
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no issues, but there was something that was a little bit underlying and something difficult for him. And so the
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uh vision specialist was able to help do some different exercises over the period
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of several months. and then that really helped him improve as well. So, you know, don't be discouraged if your kid
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is having trouble. Just give them the opportunity to learn in a different way. And that is probably one of my favorite
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tips is audiobooks are great. They're a great resource. And my kids have listened to dozens and when we were
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traveling, we would listen to them in the car as a family. And then it was a great talking point so they could
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participate right in the story. And then, you know, they're still building vocabulary. We always make the joke at
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my house that like we would we would sit and do school and my sister and I are three years apart. So, but similar to
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what you were talking about earlier with like kind of having a topic and that we
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were just at different levels going through the same topic together, we would do similar things. And so,
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>> my mom would sometimes read whether it's history or whatever. And I would just be
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sitting there taking notes >> very like very traditional school kid like just like, "Okay, I'm I'm in this."
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and my sister is over in the other side of the room bouncing on her little trampoline and like annoying the heck
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out of me. But she if she didn't do that, if she didn't have that second
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activity happening, her brain it went one in one ear and out the other. And um and so she needed that thing that was
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going to was going to lock it in there and that just so happened. Jumping on the trampoline, knitting, whatever it
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was. And and so to your point, it's just figuring out what is the thing that's
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going to get that information locked in your brain. And it could be audio books,
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could be jumping on trampolines, could be any number of things. >> Yeah. And I love that you specifically
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brought that up because my my middle daughter Alice is neurodeiverse on the autism spectrum. I don't know what the
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ter current term is going to be forever, but that is something that we learned and the term that we learned is called
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regulation. So if your child is not regulated, learning is pretty much impossible from my experience
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personally. I mean, I'm not an expert in that, but learning is a lot more difficult. I think too one of the other
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things that I've learned more now my when we got started because I was eight
00:21:29
when we started as well and my sister was five so she did all the way through home school zero K to 12 and then I did
00:21:38
second grade through 12th grade uh and jumped a grade in there as well. But one of the things that in the beginning my
00:21:44
mom was really rigid on like we start school at this time and we do x you know we're going to do this for an hour and
00:21:49
then we're going to do this for an hour and you know yada yada yada. day was all
00:21:53
planned out that quickly went out the window because it was just like this is not how this is gonna operate.
00:21:58
>> I think every homeschool parent is probably laughing right now because they're like yeah
00:22:03
>> I every home school kid knows that struggle of like mom came in with a plan
00:22:07
and we said nah that's not going to fly. Um >> I think we can do a music person, right?
00:22:12
We can make a little tune. No, no, no, no, that's not gonna fly. But uh as we
00:22:16
what was cool was by the time I was exiting high school, my mom had leaned into like well when is your brain fully
00:22:23
firing and that's when you're going to do school. And so there was also a
00:22:27
bigger level of like we were responsible for our own schooling at that point just
00:22:31
because we were older. You know, there were times where my brain was going at 2 a.m. and she was like, you know, rather
00:22:37
than be like, you know what, go to sleep right now. You have to be in bed right now. She was just like, you know what,
00:22:41
just do school. I don't really care and then yeah, you're going to sleep till
00:22:44
noon tomorrow. But like who cares? Like it's not that big of a deal because you
00:22:48
got it done. >> Yeah. And I love that because that's exactly what we've done for our daughter
00:22:51
Alice. Um she is most optimally functional between, let's just say generally speaking, noon to 10:00 p.m. I
00:22:59
am most optimally functional about 6:37 until roughly 9. So we have had to learn
00:23:06
how to be flexible with our schedule. And I think that's another tip to parents is I understand there might be
00:23:12
days where you need school done by two or or whatever whatever that looks like. But like separating out the school work
00:23:19
that's like okay what is your responsibility for us it was your responsibility is writing and maybe math
00:23:25
if they could do it independently depending on what lesson they were on and then reading depending on where they
00:23:30
are might have to be done with me. But as far as like other stuff like you know if you're not in a group that does like
00:23:36
history and other things together then you know maybe history time can be flexible in in the evening or you know 2
00:23:41
in the afternoon and finding the time that they are most optimally working is ideal. In fact, now, and I'm sure we'll
00:23:47
talk about it soon, is we have transitioned into an online public school system, which allows us that
00:23:52
flexibility to work around her optimal hours. And she has meetings at certain times that she does need to go to, and
00:23:58
some of them she watches on replay because she needs that extra processing time to really absorb the information or
00:24:04
hit the pause button while she finds the document to open to take the notes or whatever. Um, but it's been really
00:24:09
helpful because if I hadn't have had those three years of homeschooling on the road or before, well, two years
00:24:17
before we hit the road, so really five years in that time sp time time period, I probably wouldn't have the complete
00:24:24
understanding of how important it is to be flexible and to really teach the kid how to learn. So homeschooling, you're
00:24:29
not just learning things, you're teaching them how to learn. >> Yeah. I wanted to kind of
00:24:35
>> we've kind of danced around it a little bit, but I want to talk about so you did
00:24:39
roughly two years in a home in a in a sticks and bricks and then you were like now okay now we're going out in an RV.
00:24:45
So you had already mentioned your husband's kind of got this like wander lust always wants to be out traveling
00:24:50
the world. It seems like you also kind of have a little bit of that as well. So, like can we talk about that decision
00:24:56
because that's not just a like overnight like hey we're gonna buy an RV and just
00:25:00
like go and and especially with three kids like and we're going to homeschool
00:25:03
them and we're going to do like >> I've been in an RV. It is not big. Um
00:25:08
it's smaller than my apartment and I live in a tiny apartment >> usually.
00:25:11
>> Yeah. >> So So walk me through that decision and then like a little bit of like what it
00:25:16
looked like on the road. >> Yeah. Um it's actually funny. Some people plan for years to go in an RV. We
00:25:23
made a decision in a weekend and that probably sounds a little crazy to some people but um we our life changes very
00:25:30
rapidly. Um in aviation there was a period of time where every two years one or both of us had a different job
00:25:38
because aviation can be a roller coaster of an industry. We were looking at this
00:25:44
two-year stent in Oklahoma or not Oklahoma, sorry. We lived in Oklahoma at one point but that was in Virginia.
00:25:49
you've lived a lot of places. Um, we were in Virginia and we knew it was going to be two to three years and
00:25:55
we said, "Okay, after that time is up, where are we going to go?" Wherever your
00:25:58
job is. That's that's the plan. Well, in September of 2019, he brought up the
00:26:04
idea because at that time he had interviewed for an airline and um did not get that job at the time. And then
00:26:09
he had gone another couple opportunities were popping up and we're like, "Well,
00:26:14
this one is in, you know, this state and this one's in this state and this one's
00:26:16
in this state." He's like, "Well, we where are we going to live?" And so out
00:26:21
of the opportunity of not knowing where we were going to be came the idea of what if we live in an RV? And I'm like,
00:26:29
"Well, I mean, maybe we should look at one." I mean, because he's like, "Well,
00:26:34
if I have to do training and I need a place to stay, then I can have the RV."
00:26:37
And then it, you know, because some places do or don't provide hotel or accommodations for training. And so that
00:26:42
was a big thing. So, he's like, "If I get hired in, you know, March or February or whatever, you guys will have
00:26:47
a couple months here in the Sticks and Bricks home and then I could have the RV." And I'm like, "Yeah, okay. That
00:26:52
that makes some sense." So, in September 2019, we went to a local RV store and we
00:26:57
looked at RVs. And I'm like, "Oh, it's basically an apartment on wheels. You
00:27:02
got a kitchen, you got a bathroom. I mean, it's a little cozy, but like, you
00:27:07
know, we've moved a lot. So, at this point for us, it wasn't any really big
00:27:10
deal. I had never been camping in an RV. In fact, I can quote myself when I was like, we had first gotten married. And I
00:27:18
was like, why in the world would anybody ever want to own one of these, let alone
00:27:22
have one, live in one, travel in one. And so, you know, people, the joke is, if you want to hear God laugh, tell tell
00:27:28
him your plans, right? And so, I can definitely say I ate my words. And not only did we own an RV, we lived in one
00:27:36
for three years, we still own an RV. and we love love RVing. And so for us after
00:27:41
that weekend in September of 2019, we talked about it and I was like, "Okay,
00:27:47
I mean, I I could see it. It's basically going to be 6 to 12 months. We can live
00:27:51
in this thing and then we'll figure out where we're going to be." And so by
00:27:55
October, within 2 weeks, we had bought an RV and we started renovating it. It was beautiful. Um absolutely gorgeous. I
00:28:00
don't know if you post pictures, but maybe I can send some pictures for you and uh share our first RV. It was
00:28:05
gorgeous. And um yeah, we renovated over the winter and then moved in in the spring and hit the road. I believe it
00:28:10
was trying to think if it was March or April of 2020. And as the rest of the world is
00:28:16
aware, that is when the pandemic kicked up and everything was crazy and everything was shutting down. And so for
00:28:22
us, we actually had a completely we bought like a 2012 model, so it was completely paid off. Um, and we had a
00:28:29
perfect little bubble to be in that gave us a bit of security in a time where the
00:28:34
world was a little crazy. >> So, walk me through a little bit of like how do you homeschool in that type of
00:28:41
environment? Because like I think >> you brought up like, you know, your your
00:28:45
oldest kind of like needing to like hum and whistle as as they work. Um, and then your middle one being like being
00:28:52
like, "Bro needs to shut up. like I cannot focus while that is happening. Um, and so all of a sudden you're in I'm
00:29:01
I'm guessing 40 45 feet foot RV something like that. >> 35 foot and square feet. I'm not going
00:29:07
to do the math, but it was somewhere between maybe two to 300 square feet. So yeah. Yeah. How does that work?
00:29:12
>> That is tight quarters. And I understand, you know, um we have a mutual friend, Patty Hunt, who has the
00:29:18
Inspired Travels with Patty podcast, who we we've both been on that show, but uh
00:29:22
but yeah, she always is like, you know, you also have the outside world, you know, that's part of that becomes part
00:29:27
of your living quarters. And I'm like, I understand that, but like I live with
00:29:31
one other person. We live in a 700 750T apartment. Like during co we wanted to kill each other um at times. So, you
00:29:40
know, I'm like, you fit, you know, another h full-sized human being and three little ones in that in in a space
00:29:46
half that size. >> How do you not strangle yourself? And then also, how do you be productive and
00:29:51
get any school work done at that >> period? Yeah. Now, learning in a small
00:29:55
environment, we actually got a clam tent. Now, we have a gazelle tent just because the clam, you know, were out
00:30:01
over time. Um, that was after many years. It was a great great unit in case anybody has a clam tent. They last a
00:30:06
long time. We bought our secondhand because that's what we could afford at the time. Um, but we would set up tent
00:30:13
the tent outside and so we typically had um we didn't have the words at the time,
00:30:17
but they were regulation tools. We had a hammock that had a foldable stand because some RV parks that we went to
00:30:24
did not or had a rule that you couldn't put hammocks on trees. So, I think it
00:30:28
was like you can find them at Walmart, Amazon. Um, I think the brand was Ozark Trails from Walmart that we had got our
00:30:35
uh folding hammock stand. It was fantastic. So, we actually had the hammock set up out there. And so, if you
00:30:39
remember, Alice loves to wiggle while she works, not whistle while she works, she wiggles while she works. And so, she
00:30:46
um might be out there hanging out on the hammock. And we would do her math orally
00:30:50
outside. She had some struggles. She can write and things like that, but there's
00:30:54
something. And we were still figuring out at the time what the connection is between writing and thinking and
00:31:00
working. Like, we weren't quite sure what was going on, but we knew math for
00:31:04
her, she could do the math. it was just going to be out loud and she could see it visually, but if she had to do the
00:31:08
writing while she did it, there was some holdup and we weren't really sure. I'm
00:31:11
not an occupational therapist, but I was able to then communicate with the occupational therapist when we started
00:31:15
working with one. These are the things that I'm seeing. And they're like, "Oh,
00:31:17
yeah, that's called blah blah blah." I'm like, "Oh, perfect. You know what that
00:31:20
is? Great. We've just always done math orally." So, for us, we would separate
00:31:23
the kids out into different zones. So, one might be outside working on something, one might be in their bunk
00:31:27
working on something. And then the little one, he was 6 years old at the time, so he had a lot of play time. And
00:31:34
when the kids were little, I would rotate through the hours of work. So I'd be like, "Okay, Walter, you're going to
00:31:40
be, you know, playing in the bunk room during that time. Theo, you're going to
00:31:45
be in my room working." And I actually want to talk about that. I'm going to
00:31:48
come back to that. Hang hang on to that thought with my bedroom. And then Alice,
00:31:51
I'll be working with you outside for a little bit and then we'll swap. And then
00:31:54
Alice can go work in my bedroom and then Theo can come outside if we have to work
00:31:57
on something. So we did a lot of like little like rotation stations, I guess you might call it. And that worked out
00:32:01
really well. Um, as far as my bedroom, that was actually recommended to me by um, actually a therapist at one point. I
00:32:09
had questions about going, well, we had worked through some different things in therapy with one of the kids for some
00:32:15
different stuff. And the therapist said, "Okay, with you guys hitting the road,
00:32:17
it's going to be really important that everybody has their quiet space, quiet
00:32:20
time. So, if you need a quiet space, then create a place in the in the rig where they can get away." I'm like,
00:32:26
literally, we have four bunks. Two bunks. Four bunks. Yeah. two on each side a living room and then my bedroom.
00:32:32
So, what we did is every day I would make my bed and I had like a little quiet like corner, a little quiet like a
00:32:38
a box of things that was like um what what like the different types of games like you could do like a dot to dot or
00:32:46
you could do um you know remember the game rush hour with the little cars. It's like a plastic game things like
00:32:51
that. Things that would get you out of your emotional brain into your thinking brain. And that's what one of the
00:32:55
therapists had recommended. They said hey this will be a really great tool. So if people are having big feelings, they
00:32:59
can go to your quiet space, your quiet corner, and then they can get out the stuff and then have a little quiet time.
00:33:04
And so that was actually instrumental to us as well is designating a place that people wouldn't be going generally that
00:33:11
they could go be quiet if they needed quiet time. And that was really helpful for us. So, if anybody else, and that
00:33:16
works really great in a sticks and bricks home, too, is we still have a quiet corner where there is a box of
00:33:22
stuff that you can go and get um just like a little tub of toys and they're thinking toys, things that get you into
00:33:28
using tactile something. And um it's a really great tool. So, very regulating.
00:33:33
>> You know what's crazy is that like even I'm 29. >> I still do that to this day. Like I I
00:33:39
still buy Legos. I still like when I am stuck in the the just like I can't get
00:33:44
out of the flywheel of like >> I have to fix this problem. I have to fix this problem.
00:33:49
>> If I can just turn it off for a second and go do anything else. >> Journal, do a puzzle. Sudoku is great.
00:33:57
But like Lego is like so tactile and I just like >> just putting things together. Do a
00:34:02
little challenge of like build only with the color, build the ball, build a whatever
00:34:08
>> it your brain will solve the problem. >> Yeah. >> In the back of your head while you're
00:34:13
not thinking about it and then you'll come back and you're just like >> fresh new eyes, fresh new emotional
00:34:18
state, fresh new whatever. And that just it's like >> literally the best problem solver I
00:34:23
think I've ever had. And once I reconnected with that of like toys are great.
00:34:27
>> Yeah. And I think that's the thing and and you alluded to it being like you're
00:34:31
in a small space. How do you do it? Is for us we would separate out you know different zones or different times and
00:34:36
we would rotate through. The other thing is knowing your own limits and it's
00:34:39
going to amplify everything that's unsolved undelt with. And so basically in a small space
00:34:44
>> having regulation tools to use and that could be taking a walk outside um
00:34:50
sitting in a quiet space. My daughter loves to be cozy, so we have a weighted blanket we put on top of her, and she
00:34:54
loves to be cozy under that, and that's very regulating for her. Um, but learning how to regulate your body, I
00:35:00
think, has probably been my greatest adventure in my homeschool journey is because it can be really hard and
00:35:06
frustrating when your kid is having a hard time, you don't know how to help them, and you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna
00:35:12
have to get some resources, but I can't solve this problem today." And then
00:35:16
learning how to not only take a deep breath, but like do something that helps your brain really regulate. You know,
00:35:22
some people like the game Candy Crush or whatever. I'm not a big on the electronic. I'm more I love the tactile
00:35:26
stuff because it does something different in your brain. And I'm not a psychologist, but I know from like our
00:35:31
rules at home is when you're frustrated, you remove yourself and you calm down
00:35:36
and then you come back and talk about it. So remove yourself, calm down, come back and talk about it. And so if you
00:35:40
need to remove yourself from situation, then you need to go and find something to calm down. And we would use the quiet
00:35:45
corner to find something, whether that's writing or coloring or drawing or playing the rush hour game or some other
00:35:51
type of thing. And we're always looking for stuff. A lot of science museums as
00:35:54
we would travel had really cool things and we're like, "Hey, that'll go in the
00:35:57
quiet corner. That'll be great." And it was fantastic because there was always
00:36:01
something new. And at different points we had like light brights and different, you know, things that we could put the
00:36:06
little pieces in a little snappy container and then the kids could literally just go and pick out their
00:36:10
color. And when they get in that thinking brain, it helps to calm down and do other stuff, you know, psychology
00:36:15
wise. I'm not the therapist, you know. I just have really great people who know
00:36:19
really great things. >> Yeah. No, but like you said, I think it it just translates to everybody, too. It
00:36:25
was just like sometimes you just have to like turn it off for two seconds and go
00:36:29
do something >> that is just totally out of the norm and like it gets you in a different place
00:36:36
and breath work can help with that too of just like learning how to regulate your breathing and and and stuff like
00:36:41
that. But it's just it you have to get out of the mindset and that's where we
00:36:45
get just stuck. you get stuck in the repeat and repeat and repeat and you're
00:36:49
bashing your head against the wall trying to figure this thing out or trying to solve a problem and it's just
00:36:53
like this is not working like do something different you know >> I do have to tell parents though uh
00:36:58
silly putty does not come out of things very well um I don't know what it's made
00:37:01
of it is a table toy for us so in case you need to know that silly putty is a table toy learn that out on accident
00:37:07
>> I wanted to kind of we we've kind of brushed on it a little bit of like your
00:37:12
kids having their their brains are wired a little bit differently >> sure >> and one of the big fears. I I know from
00:37:18
growing up with with my friends who we we also all of us were very different. We were a wide variety of kids. We had
00:37:26
dyslexia, dcalcula, we had autism, we had asberers, we had just like anything you could imagine like and the the great
00:37:33
thing is it taught me I think a lot of patience for people because I was just like you never know what you're going to
00:37:38
get on any given day uh with any of my friends. But there was also, I think, a lot of fear from parents around getting
00:37:46
their kids tested or getting them diagnosed because and I I don't know if it's a failure thing or or what cuz it's
00:37:56
not a failure. It's just it's just your brain is wired differently. It's not a
00:37:58
big deal. But like I I know that there was a lot of this fear and this this not wanting to do that for your kid. And and
00:38:06
I've always been of the philosophy and my family has always been of the philosophy. It's like once you know what
00:38:10
it is, well then you can actually take steps to like make it better or it's not
00:38:15
even make it better. It's just you know that you know the tools you can learn
00:38:19
the tools to to operate like we've been talking about. And so what kind of was
00:38:25
there a fear for you of like okay putting putting a name to some of the things that you were realizing like okay
00:38:31
my kid is not operating the way that I thought they were going to operate or were you like no like we got to get this
00:38:37
I got to know what is going on here. >> Yeah. So that's a that's a really great
00:38:40
question. I'm glad you brought it up because there's a lot of times where I
00:38:43
wondered should I have quote unquote found out earlier? Should I have done something sooner? And the thing is is my
00:38:49
all all of my kids are general average kids. You know, they're rough and tough,
00:38:53
they rumble, they you know, they play in the dirt, they do this, they do that. They were just average kids. And I did a
00:38:58
ton of babysitting growing up. So, I was pretty familiar with different learning
00:39:01
phases and stages and things like that. What I noticed is that when my kids were
00:39:06
having a hard time, and that's the phrase that I learned from a friend of mine. They said, "Are they giving you a
00:39:10
hard time or are they having a hard time?" And I really loved that phrase because it's like my kid doesn't wake up
00:39:16
every day thinking, "I'm going to make my mom's life really hard today. I'm
00:39:20
going to be a jerk. I'm going to scream and yell and throw tantrums." No, they
00:39:25
only usually get to that point when they're having a hard time and they're
00:39:28
so overwhelmed they can't physically control their bodies anymore. And so I noticed with um Alice that she was
00:39:36
having a hard time with a lot of different stuff in different areas. And I'm like, for example, food was one of
00:39:42
them. but it wasn't anything she was allergic to. It wasn't It's like she just really
00:39:48
preferred this applesauce brand and this cheesestick brand. And I was like, "Okay, so we can kind of cater a little
00:39:54
bit within reason because, you know, I'm the mom who I cloth diapered. I made my
00:39:58
own baby food. I did all the things cuz I really enjoy that stuff." But at the
00:40:03
point where my kiddo started dropping foods, where my kiddo was having not only a hard time with reading, but then
00:40:10
other things like that were were making learning difficult because food was becoming difficult. So then learning was
00:40:16
becoming difficult because if your brain doesn't work then you can't really learn
00:40:19
anything. So I started seeing these things and I'm like at what point would a diagnosis be helpful? And so for us um
00:40:26
we were at the end of our time on the road and that was actually one of the reasons we got off the road is my
00:40:30
husband had a change in his company to a different position internally and that required us to be stationary in one
00:40:38
place and then also it provided us the opportunity for Alice to get some services and some support and
00:40:42
evaluations that we needed. And so my best advice is with food related things, if you're not sure, if you're starting
00:40:49
to see food things, they can't chew, they're getting really selective, go and
00:40:54
find a local place that can help you with food stuff. Because I've spent roughly 5 years figuring out this food
00:41:02
thing and from the age of 5 to 10, Ella started dropping foods and it was like, "Oh, I don't like PB&J." Okay, well, you
00:41:09
can have ham and cheese. Not a big deal. Kids go through these selective phases.
00:41:13
And I love the word selective because they're actually very they're they're
00:41:18
selecting their food very strategically. Um I actually just went to a training last night about selective eating and
00:41:25
supporting kids who have food difficulties and they were talking about their food profile. And I had no idea
00:41:32
that there was such a thing because I'm not a food expert. I just really like
00:41:35
food. And I discovered that Alice prefers soft food. Sometimes crunchy food like pretzels or goldfish. She
00:41:42
likes um either room temperature or warm foods. And understanding why her food got so selective is because part of and
00:41:51
I've known this part of it is because she couldn't chew it. But I wouldn't
00:41:54
have understood the indepth point of that issue until much later. Like it it I didn't realize she had a severe
00:42:01
undervite. I didn't realize as she lost her teeth between ages 5 and 10, she
00:42:05
wasn't literally able to chew her food, which is why we saw her slowly drop foods. And now I can look back and say,
00:42:11
"Wow, that makes a lot of sense." But at the time, dropping one or two foods is
00:42:16
not a big deal. Like, okay, you like strawberry yogurt, but not vanilla yogurt. Yeah, you're still eating
00:42:19
yogurt. That's pretty good. But I didn't realize at the time how selective she
00:42:24
had gotten until we were so far in and she had started to get braces and started to have other things that that
00:42:30
was a really big piece of our food journey. And she was not actually diagnosed on the autism spectrum until
00:42:36
age 11. So, if you can imagine, one day I have an average kid, no reason to think anything's unusual, and then the
00:42:43
next day it's like, what what does this even mean? So, had I maybe known more
00:42:48
about food stuff and other stuff earlier, I might have been able to get into food therapy with her to be able
00:42:53
like with an occupational therapist, a food specialist, to say, "Okay, this is
00:42:57
what we're looking for. This is how we're going to give you those tools like
00:43:00
we talked about before to help her continue to progress." Now the reality is is with her severe underbite which we
00:43:07
didn't know at the time um that is like a dental work issue which we didn't
00:43:12
really discover until we started looking into braces. And so it's it's a
00:43:15
multiaceted approach specifically in our situation. But for an average person who
00:43:20
doesn't have the food difficulties who doesn't have some of these other stuff
00:43:24
Alice was also emotionally having emotion I'm going to call them emotional meltdowns more than I thought an average
00:43:31
was for her age. And so that's when I started saying that phrase of are they
00:43:35
giving you a hard time or are they having a hard time? And I didn't realize that there was a lot of other sensory
00:43:40
overwhelm because I had no reason to believe that her brothers who were loud were a problem. I mean, they're boys, of
00:43:47
course they're loud. When we actually did testing, we discovered that for her
00:43:52
specifically, auditory overwhelm was huge. I had no idea. And so if you have thoughts or concerns about your kid, my
00:43:59
biggest thing is just to say go get a test done. like we did one um I don't remember exactly her credentials but
00:44:05
she's some type of doctor of something of another and um we did a full-on evaluation and it was a bit expensive
00:44:11
but at the same time like having that diagnosis allowed us now to get services that we would not have been eligible for
00:44:18
other otherwise and that's probably the biggest reason to or not to get a diagnosis is if for example Walter had
00:44:24
some speech issues he could do in-person speech but because he didn't have the
00:44:28
autism diagnosis he could not do virtual speech So that can also be and now I know
00:44:34
that's going to continue to change as insurance and CO is not as much of a thing anymore but like that is a very
00:44:40
difference in having a diagnosis versus not. Walter does not qualify in those same areas that Alice did. And so
00:44:47
Alice's needs allowed her to have extra supports and services that Walter will
00:44:53
not qualify for because his needs are not in what is now the DSM5 as the same level of her needs. And so they have to
00:44:59
quantify it in some capacity. And so as far as like insurance and like diagnoses
00:45:05
and things go, if there is something that your kid is struggling with that they need help with that requires some
00:45:10
type of specialist, that is where I believe a diagnosis can be really helpful and supportive. And I also
00:45:15
completely understand why people don't want to have the diagnosis. But my best
00:45:19
suggestion is if you need a specialist, if you need support, get it early because that could be the difference
00:45:25
between having the tools and then also going through a lot of extra struggles later. And my best advice is get the
00:45:32
tools. Don't make everything a hammer and just smash everything. Get the the
00:45:35
specialized tool for your specific situation. >> Absolutely. I mean, that's what I've
00:45:39
seen with with my friends, too. It's just like Yeah, there were the families
00:45:43
that did that did it. My my family went through some of that. we got diagnosis for for different things and so it was
00:45:49
like and it gave us >> it gave us a name for what was going on. Yeah. Which then it gave us the tools
00:45:57
because we could then go research that and that that gave us >> now I look at it and I go it also gives
00:46:04
us as kids it gave us like agency over our own bodies as well because we're like we know understand what I'm just
00:46:09
wired a little funky language to describe what you need is that song bothers me. Okay, I'm going to put my
00:46:17
headphones on. >> Cool. >> Right. I have a I have a friend growing up who he had um uh I believe it was
00:46:24
asberers. Um I could be mixing it up. But anyway, generally neurodeiversity of some sort. Yeah.
00:46:30
>> Yeah. But he um he would get very overwhelmed by like having all his friends over, but he loved having us all
00:46:36
over. >> But we just knew, hey, he's going to go in the other room. He's going to go
00:46:39
chill, be alone for a while. Sometimes he'd come back and hang out with us. Sometimes he wouldn't. And his parents
00:46:44
were cool. They were just like, "Hey, you guys are already here. Pizzas are on
00:46:47
the way. Movies are in the DVD player. Like, just do your thing. If he's if he
00:46:51
wants to come back out, he'll come back out." Kind of a thing. >> What great parents to be able to
00:46:55
communicate that to other kids because so many kids will internalize that be like, "Oh my gosh, I hurt their
00:46:59
feelings. Oh my gosh, I upset them. Oh my gosh." And then that energy, anxiety,
00:47:03
whatever you want to call it, is like, "Oh, I don't want to go over to Joe's
00:47:05
house because Joe doesn't like me being there." No, Joe loves you being there.
00:47:09
They just get really overwhelmed. So that's >> Exactly. And so it gave us like like you
00:47:14
said it gives us the tools and then it also the thing is also when you know it then like you said you can communicate
00:47:20
it to other people and you can educate them on it and that's where I always tell people I'm like I learned patience
00:47:27
at a very young age because like I just knew so many people who had literally any number of things. I mean, and it was
00:47:34
just it it taught me to just be like, "Okay, sometimes things are going to go
00:47:39
really slow. Sometimes things are going to go really fast, and it's okay. Sometimes people are going to get angry
00:47:43
for no reason. Some people, you know, and they're going to struggle with their
00:47:45
emotions and whatever." >> And so, >> again, it just gave us >> it gave us power over those things in a
00:47:51
lot of senses because we just knew what was going on. And so even now I have friends who were in our late 20s, early
00:47:57
30s who are getting diagnosed with stuff and they're like, "Oh my gosh, like for
00:48:00
the first time in my life, I feel like I have kind of control a little bit over like what is going on with me because I
00:48:06
have I have something >> to label it as and now I can do my do my research and figure out what I need."
00:48:12
And so I think it's great for your kids that they're going to get to grow up
00:48:15
with kind of this like, okay, this is what's going on with me and this is why
00:48:19
this bothers me and this doesn't bother me and this is why I act this way. And
00:48:23
hopefully they can communicate that with other people >> and educate their friends to be like,
00:48:27
hey, like I'm a little different. It's all good. Like, you know, come on this
00:48:31
ride with me. >> Well, and we all we need all types of people in the world, you know, people
00:48:35
who see things differently than we do. My daughter always says it's like I'm a
00:48:39
different operating system. You're a you're whatever and I'm a I'm you're a
00:48:42
PC and I'm a Mac. You're this and I'm a that. And it's so interesting because
00:48:47
once she had the language to describe to other people that yes, I can do this. I
00:48:53
just need to take my time and do it this way. Then they would not be frustrated that she was taking longer.
00:48:59
>> Knowledge is power. Yes. >> That's what I always say. >> I want to talk a little bit about now
00:49:04
the school journey cuz now So you no longer a homeschool mom, but you guys are doing on their home class.
00:49:12
>> I'm not in their curriculum. So I'm >> right. So not the traditional homeschool
00:49:17
approach of you picking every curriculum. They are now enrolled in public school online, but you guys are
00:49:23
still able to travel the world and still kind of do things at your own pace to some degree. So talk to me a little bit
00:49:28
about like that decision of of what led led into that and then and then let's
00:49:33
talk about like what's coming for this next year. >> Yeah, I'm so excited. Um, so we started
00:49:39
their online public school journey in 2024, fall of 24, because that first year of getting back, I was like, we
00:49:47
just need a year to kind of like settle in because there's been a lot of changes
00:49:50
in our life. And at that point, we had been on the road for three years. Now we have a stationary home and figuring out
00:49:55
how to settle in. We were in some different therapies with Alice for a period of time trying to kind of figure
00:50:01
out exactly what support she needed. And so we had kind of a transition year to get into the home school or to the
00:50:06
online school system. So we knew we wanted flexibility. Colorado is I think they call it a choice state choice
00:50:14
school something. Basically you don't have to go to your neighborhood school.
00:50:17
You can choose what school you can get on their weight list then they can call you up if you make the list or however
00:50:21
their system works. So basically we looked for an online school that would provide flexibility and we really wanted
00:50:29
something um especially for Alice that was flexible that she could sleep in a little bit because we know and we've
00:50:36
always known she does not do mornings well even when we've traveled um in the
00:50:40
airlines or uh on the road if we have to be up and gone before 8 a.m. we have to
00:50:46
really prep her for that and we knew that was going to be difficult. So, the school that we found is an online school
00:50:51
that has four days of school a week and they have basically a checklist that they email you or they have posted in
00:50:58
their um online area where they have all the different subjects and then they have a list of everything that you do
00:51:03
and this school's been in existence for like 20 plus years and so we felt really
00:51:06
confident that they kind of had it figured out. I know after COVID there was a lot of like online school and what
00:51:11
does that look like and my oldest had done a different online school. It was uh Montana Hybrid Academy, which is
00:51:17
fantastic. By the way, the thing with that one though required him to be in front of a computer so many hours. Um,
00:51:24
but there it was a really fun learning environment for him. So, there's a lot
00:51:28
of different environments and types of learning. That Montana hybrid was fantastic for that time that we had that
00:51:33
like gap year of going into the public online school and trying to figure out what we needed to do. But what we
00:51:38
decided for Alice specifically is that wasn't going to be the best learning environment for her because she needed
00:51:43
to have frequent breaks. she needed to have certain things that were going to really accommodate her needs. And so the
00:51:49
school that we do now, it has that checklist. It is, you know, everything is recorded of course for online stuff.
00:51:56
But basically, it allowed her to receive special services for not only reading, but some math support that she needed
00:52:03
and then potential other supports as we continue to evaluate what her needs are.
00:52:07
And then same thing with Walter, he was able to get some extra reading support uh that if we were not in the public
00:52:13
online school, we would have to pay for specialist reading. Now, I don't know if
00:52:17
any of your listeners have looked at or paid for specialists. They are very expensive and typically weekly or
00:52:23
monthly. And now through the public school system, we are able to get some of those services um either for free or
00:52:29
most of it covered. and then we can do like a reading camp in the summer that is much more affordable than weekly or
00:52:34
monthly, you know, paying for those services. And that was really something that was important to us is to get the
00:52:39
services not only as cheaply as possible, affordably if possible, but that public school provides, which is
00:52:46
key for a lot of people who who need those supports. >> Like I mentioned before, like I have
00:52:50
family members that Yeah. have some of those learning things. I've been to the
00:52:53
specialist office. I've sat in the waiting room waiting and and I yeah, I remember hearing
00:52:57
>> Yeah. the bill cost and being like that is >> and we did for a period of time during
00:53:02
that kind of like gap year where we were figuring out what we needed to do and what was going to be the best for our
00:53:07
situation. We did have one and I remember the specific one that we had found was very rigid in their system and
00:53:14
we're like we need to have 20 to 30 minute lessons and they're like we do 45
00:53:18
minute lessons. I said can we do them twice a week and depending on where you go to depends on what services they
00:53:24
provide. Um, but we knew at that time I don't think we had a diagnosis yet um,
00:53:29
of dyslexia, disgraphia or autism officially, but I do remember that we were very sure that what we needed and
00:53:39
what was going to be provided needed to be very specific. And um, so it's great
00:53:43
because now with the like Walter has a reading I don't know if they call him
00:53:47
tutor or specialist. I'm not sure what their their title is, but he has several
00:53:51
times a week short lessons. They work on very specific goals and they're really
00:53:55
fantastic. They love their jobs. They love what they do. They love working with kids and Walter really enjoys it
00:54:00
for the most part as well and is building a lot of confidence in reading and they've um if you do have a kid I
00:54:05
think it's called Orton Gillingham or something like that there for dyslexia
00:54:09
disgraphia. Um I don't know how it's spelled but it's like Orton Gillingham
00:54:13
or something like that. So, if people aren't familiar, that is supposedly one
00:54:17
of the best um curriculums or methods to teach a kid um who is dyslexic or just graphic with different stuff. So, that
00:54:24
is something that we've learned in our journey uh from getting tutors and specialists and then now working in the
00:54:29
public school system. And I I just I have nothing but uh praise for the people who are trained in these
00:54:37
different things because I knew when Walter was having trouble with reading early on that there was going to be
00:54:44
needing some support and I could get trained but I also had Alice who had other difficulties and I had to kind of
00:54:51
decide am I going to become that specialist and I think you've talked did your mom become a specialist at some
00:54:56
point for your sister. I don't know to what degree. I know she went through some training. I don't know that she was
00:55:01
like fullyfledged specialist, but she definitely knew what she was doing to some degree. And so, but yeah, it was
00:55:07
one of those things where then my mom had these tools, this tool set that she was able to then other kids who had
00:55:12
dyslexia. >> Yeah. >> Could come to our house and be like, "Okay, let's let's do a quick lesson."
00:55:16
And it could be 20 minutes or it could be 45 minutes or if it was going really well, maybe it was an hour and a half.
00:55:21
And so, yeah, we did all the like the B's and the P's and the D's and the Q's.
00:55:25
like we did the Sharpie on the thing and yeah all that stuff. So >> which is such a great service to the
00:55:30
community if you do become a specialist. I think in my situation I had Alice who
00:55:34
had other difficulties, Walter who had different difficulties. None of them were the same difficulties. And so if
00:55:39
you have if you're a parent out there who has kids who have different difficulties, don't be afraid to pull in
00:55:45
the support and the troop of other the support of the troops of other people who are able to take that weight off of
00:55:50
you because the goal is to support the kid, not that you have to do it all. I also wanted to bring up so I mean one of
00:55:56
the great things about the fact that you guys are doing the online schooling is you also still get to travel. Yeah. And
00:56:02
so you know you had sent me a whole list of like hey here's all the trips like
00:56:05
we're planning. Yeah. >> And what one of the things when we chatted uh the other day was also that
00:56:10
you were talking about one of the great things about traveling is the experiential learning aspect of it. So
00:56:16
>> where are you guys going and what what is like what is the learning goal when
00:56:20
you guys get there? >> Yeah. So this fall we are getting ready for an Australia and New Zealand trip.
00:56:25
And we um love love love experiential learning. That's something that no matter what people's situations are,
00:56:32
whether they have a diagnosis or not, it can be super um supportive of just creating that memory and locking it in.
00:56:39
So like my kids remember going to the battlefield and learning about whatever the historical event was. They may not
00:56:44
remember all the dates and all the people, but they're going to remember that battlefield and they are going to
00:56:48
remember very vividly how these troops came up this way and these came up in this way and why did they do that? That
00:56:52
was a bad idea, but they didn't know because they had never been there before, right? And so, you can read
00:56:57
about it in a history book, but once you go experience it, it's it's a game
00:57:00
changer. It really is. I mean, if you have ever been international, I'm just
00:57:04
going to pick on like the Eiffel Tower, it is awe inspiring to look out and be like, "Wow, like this is so cool." Um,
00:57:10
and so or like if you go to London and you see Big Ben, which fun fact is the name of the bell inside the clock, not
00:57:19
the name of the clock. Isn't that interesting? Um, that is interesting. >> You learn these fun facts along the way.
00:57:23
And so going to the place, hearing like in the US, you have a lot of national parks and we've been to a ton of them.
00:57:29
Like over a hundred of them. They're incredible. And doing Junior Ranger books and things like that. But then
00:57:34
when you go to the location, like we're getting ready for New Zealand and Australia, so we're gonna go um snorkel
00:57:40
on the Great Barrier Reef for my daughter's birthday and that is something that we have studied in the
00:57:44
books, but she was so excited. We took like a local snorkeling lesson to like learn all this stuff. And so now they
00:57:50
know how to like go down and to clear their masks and all the things. And um that's going to be an experience that
00:57:55
they're not going to forget. And they might actually build on that. So like the law of readiness, like I talked
00:58:01
about is when you're ready to learn, you will learn. Like they know the basics.
00:58:03
they had the cliff notes, but now they're going to be able to absorb so much more because they're getting that
00:58:08
actually hands-on experience. So, that'll be a really fun trip. And we've
00:58:11
also been starting to listen to podcasts. My I think my Theo sent me the other day uh something about kiwis and
00:58:18
invasive species of the islands and lots of different stuff. And so hopefully we'll get to see some koalas while we're
00:58:25
over there. Um and also they eat so many eucalyptus leaves. I'm like, how do they
00:58:30
end up so fluffy? I don't I don't know. I just I think they're just fascinating
00:58:33
creatures. So yeah, we we love the hands-on learning and then it also gives us an opportunity to explore and to
00:58:39
question like, "Oh, I didn't know that. That's really interesting. Why did they
00:58:42
do that here?" And then that can dive back into history. So it's a multiaceted
00:58:47
approach to learning, which makes it really fun because you're questioning everything and you're absorbing
00:58:51
everything all at the same time. >> I I love that. I love that. I think too
00:58:55
when when kids have the ability to have like a not typical school experience, we
00:59:01
end up learning these really unique skills that like, >> you know, it it and not to say the
00:59:07
public school kids don't have that, but it's just but we have these opportunities sometimes to get certain
00:59:12
skills that >> we wouldn't have otherwise. And it it's >> it can be fun. I mean it just you know
00:59:18
me and my buddies we all owned different we had different businesses and we had different skill sets and we go help each
00:59:23
other build cars or you know someone come over and we you know like I loved I I built guitars for a while like you
00:59:29
know stuff like that. It was just like just weird stuff we were interested in and you and
00:59:34
>> they were skills that now we get to look back on and be like >> I know how to do that. I like to talk
00:59:39
also about like learning a skill, studying a place like going to Disneyland, Disney World and we studied
00:59:46
the history of Disney before we went. We made that an experiential learning trip
00:59:49
and then they so much appreciated all that Walt Disney did to create this park to do this thing. So something as simple
00:59:56
as going to Disney can be that experience, right? And I think >> the fun thing about hands-on
01:00:03
experiential learning is that everything is a learning opportunity. With that, I'm going to give you an opportunity. I
01:00:09
know you've got a book, you've got a blog. How can people find you? How can
01:00:13
people connect with you? >> Absolutely. Thank you so much. Um, so my name is Robin. My pen name is bgbarnntor
01:00:21
and you can find me on my website www.bgbarnstormer.com. And you can also I have a blog up there.
01:00:28
I don't always update it like weekly or monthly. Right now I have been pouring
01:00:32
into other creative projects, but I do have my book. It's a children's book.
01:00:36
It's called Yucky Weather. And um on my website there's a little um tab that has
01:00:43
my book and you can find the link there. Um you can also order it on uh Amazon or
01:00:47
Ingram Spark. And if you're ordering it in the fall of 2025, I do recommend you
01:00:52
order on Amazon or Ingram Spark because I'll be doing traveling. So I will not
01:00:56
be able to give you an autographed copy. If you can wait a little bit longer, I'll be back uh mid December and I can
01:01:01
send it out hopefully before Christmas. But um I'm also on Instagram and Facebook at BG Barnstormer. And in case
01:01:08
you're wondering why I have my pen name B stands for Birdie and my name is Robin. My brother called me Birdie
01:01:13
growing up. And my kids G is for Guyeta, which is cookie in Spanish. My kids call
01:01:17
me Cookie. It's kind of like an internal family joke, but I love cookies. I love
01:01:20
eating cookies and making cookies. And then the uh barntormer is a pilot from the 1920s and 30s that would travel from
01:01:27
place to place performing aerial stunts and uh they would sleep in a barn. They were called a barnstormer.
01:01:33
And as a pilot, as a traveler, I just feel like BG Barntormer encompasses all of who I am. So, it's kind of a fun play
01:01:40
on every aspect of my crazy awesome life that I live and the adventures every day.
01:01:44
>> Yeah. Go check out everything that Robin just mentioned is going to be linked
01:01:47
down below as well. Go check out her book if it's something you're interested
01:01:50
in and her blogs. She's got some wonderful blogs. I'm going to link one that she sent me that talks about uh her
01:01:55
daughter and her a conversation that her and her daughter had that I thought was
01:01:58
beautiful. And um but is there anything I've missed topic-wise? Anything I want
01:02:03
to hit on? >> I neglected to tell you my book. It's called Yucky Weather and it's about life
01:02:07
perspective. It is a bedtime story aimed at ages kids 3 through eight, but it is
01:02:13
definitely appropriate for kids of all ages and even adults. And the story is called Yucky Weather because when my
01:02:19
kids were little, they were looking outside, literally outside the window in Virginia, and they're like, "Mom, it's a
01:02:24
yucky day. What are we going to do?" And so it actually inspired me to write
01:02:29
this book about what you can do on a yucky weather day that you can't do on a
01:02:33
sunshiny day. And it's a book about life perspective and enjoying every day no
01:02:37
matter what kind of day it is. So it's a very special book to my heart and inspired for my children. Um all the
01:02:42
characters are inspired for my children as well. And I was very specific. It's
01:02:45
actually a seek and find book. You can find a duck and a frog on every single page. Um, I chose a font that was
01:02:51
friendly for early readers, especially kids who are dyslexic and disgraphic and um, colors and everything. It's just a
01:02:58
very gorgeous book. So, please check it out. And thank you so much, Jacob, for the shout out for that.
01:03:02
>> Of course. Yeah. And if you don't have kids like me, you can either buy for
01:03:05
yourself or buy for somebody else or you can also encourage your local libraries
01:03:10
to go buy a copy or even buy a copy for your local library because, you know, that is something we need to support our
01:03:16
local libraries. But, um, all right, Robin, this has been fun. I've really enjoyed having a conversation with you,
01:03:22
and I appreciate you sharing so openly about your family and your homeschool experience,
01:03:26
>> and I'm stoked to hear about your your guys' upcoming trips and what and how
01:03:31
they go. Um, >> well, and to remind your listeners, remember, learning is a change in
01:03:36
behavior as a result of experience. That's what we learned in life school. So anytime you have an opportunity to
01:03:42
learn something and you take that forward with you, like I said, it's a change in behavior as a result of
01:03:47
experience. So keep on learning and every day, every aspect of life, no matter where you are and no matter what
01:03:52
learning looks like for you. >> I love that. Thank you once again, Robin. And to my audience, thank you
01:03:57
guys for listening. If you stuck with me this long, you know all the things to do, right? Like, comment, subscribe,
01:04:01
leave a review, do all of the things. If you've got any questions for me, for
01:04:06
Robin, for any of my other previous guests, shoot me an email, [email protected].
01:04:11
And uh until next time, we'll see you. Peace.