FAMILY LEARNING ADVENTURES

EPISODE162| It can seem like a far off dream right? Traveling to a foreign locale while you and your family speak and become at ease at speaking and conversing in the native tongue. Well that’s exactly what Adelaide Olguin has done or better yet created for her family and for thousands of others with TalkBox.Mom. Join Janna and Adelaide as they chat about incorporating multiple languages into everyday and traveling as a family, the ups and the downs.

ABOUT OUR GUEST | Adelaide Olguin, creator and CEO of TalkBox.Mom, realized that parents are actually the most successful language teachers in the world—not professors. When it hit her in an apartment abroad in Brazil back in 2014 with her two little boys and husband, she was able to turn traditional language learning on its head, helping her family to pass up years of trying to speak another language by talking from day one—instead of year 2 or year never.

With her expertise in linguistics, design, marketing, and business, she developed TalkBox.Mom with a team of native-speaking women and launched it in 2016. In 2017, for obvious reasons (aka it works), it became a favorite for homeschool families and then later military families, families with children in language immersion schools, and any family that really wants to be able to use another language. 

See TalkBox.Mom Spanish package at BookShark here: https://www.bookshark.com/talk-box-spanish

Janna  0:04   Welcome to Homeschool your way I'm your host Janna Koch and BookSharks Community Manager. In today's episode I am joined by Adelaide Olguin. She is the creator of TalkBox.mom, which has families talking in a foreign language in the same day they start. But the most important part of Adelaide day is homeschooling her boys. We all know that homeschooling has highs and lows. So Adelaide is going to share with us some of her recent highs and lows, traveling around the world and homeschooling her boys. So let me introduce you to Adelaide. Hi,

Adelaide  1:08   Thank you so much, Janna, for having me on. I'm so excited to talk with you about the highs and the lows and all the trauma in between.

Janna  1:18   Now, Adelaide, do you consider yourself a world schooler? Or do you consider yourselves homeschoolers who happen to travel?

Adelaide  1:26   I would say we're a bit of both. It just depends on the time of year. So we'll be doing home, we'll be homeschooling at home and then we will be homeschooling or worldschooling other places. So I I just I love that BookShark has books that you read that you go into, because then we'll go to those places and see that out as well. But sometimes we do that from home, and then we go somewhere. Does that make sense? So there's like a nice and nice balance. This year. So far for this year, we've gone to France, Mexico, Costa Rica, and then Mexico again. But then we're all going to Dallas, Texas,

Janna  2:09   Which is a country in and of itself. I hear from those who lived there. 

Adelaide  2:12  That is true a Dallas has incredible food. And just a wild, wild fun core culture. Remember close to Fort Worth, so we get to see the stockyards and all that.

Janna  2:25   Very exciting for those who are unfamiliar with who you are just quickly explain what TalkBox dot mom is, so that we have a good base to jump off of when we start talking about the accelerated steps to failure so that we can succeed. 

Adelaide  2:44   Okay, awesome. So TalkBox mom, like you said, we help families to start talking another language the same exact day you start with our subscription boxes and companion app with a native speaker audio. And what we do is we help you create a language immersion environment in your home so that you're using full sentences talking together, and you just keep laying the foundation of the language through fluency. So you're on the path of fluency.

Janna  3:12   Now your three boys are fluent, in how many languages?

Adelaide  3:16  So we speak on a regular basis Spanish, German and English. And then because we were in France, we had like a kickoff for French to get them excited about it. And it worked. It was so good for when we go to another country like we do a language trip. Part of Well, the word education comes from the word adduce, which means to draw forth. And so instead of trying to pack in information, we're trying to entice and love on our kids and reward them and do different things, things in that area. So when we plan a language trip I look for like, How could like I entice them to want to speak French, we're gonna have to take because they're like mom and other language, right? So croissants was up there. But one of the things is they really love rock climbing. And so we found this thing called the Via Ferrata. It's like rock climbing, but you have a cable that's already set up and an area to climb that's kind of designated with these metal like, kinda like a metal ladder that you follow throughout. So we hired this guide, his name was Patty, he was a very tall Frenchman. And so he took the boys and my husband and I, we went out with him. And when when they got to a bridge, my 10 year old was a little scared. And so Patty started bouncing the bridge up and down. Horrifying, right? And so, and then he told my son, it's funny, right? And then he tried to get my son to do it. And finally my son was doing that and I was like, what is happening? And so he's not my 10 year old, not scared anymore. And he loves rock climbing so much, but we've had to have him be rescued from up high several times, you know, like we'll get into spots where like, Oh, this is happening, even though he loves it so much. So Patty is having so much fun with them and encouraging them to do things. And he works with the French government to help kids who are very unhealthy to be able to go out on Via ferratas. During the summer, they like to account for kids in France and just really help them to get outside, and to enjoy being out the outdoors. So it was no problem for him to like, drag our 10 year old along, and we got to our routes where we were inclined, like backwards, horrifying. And I kept like imagining myself at the park as a kid falling from the monkey bars. You know, I was very scared that we made it through. We did some really scary stuff, but they love Patty, they love that experience. And they're like Mom, oh, and there was horseback riding there. And it was like, I don't know, $30 for two hours in the Alps. Are you kidding me? Right? Like, what is this? So we're like, let's do that. So now my kids are like, we want to go back there. We want to speak more French. It was just it was really good way to entice them. And it was also very cost effective, because it was not not expensive for those things, not like it would be if I had done it in the US.

Janna  6:05   Yeah. And so you use experiences to help your children practice and not it. They don't even realize they're doing it. Right. It's almost like the way parents put vegetables into sweets. You know, there was that whole cookbook for a while that was Do you remember that? One? I think it was actually Jerry Seinfeld's wife. And and so it was like this idea that we're like, we're like slipping in these things. And they don't even realize that it's affecting them positively to want to do the very thing that we we want them to do. I mean, it's yeah, kind of sneaky.

Adelaide  6:37   Like what you're saying, like, change is internal, it's not external. If we want our child to do something, it has to come from within themselves. And so our job as a home educator, right, is to draw that forth. So like when I I see my child, and he's struggling on like, well, how does my child this specific child like to be loved? And if it's like acts of service, it's like, okay, they, you know, we made it through the math. And I'm like, hey, guess what, I organize this part of your room for you. And, you know, he's like, Thank you, right, he that, that makes him feel loved. And, and so and I relate that back to like, thanks for doing a great job with your math, right, like, happy to serve you as well. So I just look for opportunities like that in that area to just draw anything forth that I'm like, I would really like my kids to have the skill or to work on including reading and writing.

Janna  7:27   So France sounds like a travel success. You guys, you guys went you had a good time. Your boys were encouraged. They want to go back. Lets talk about a travel fail, because I think that for someone like you who is accomplished in language and in business, and you're doing homeschool, it can be you know, the Instagram worthy pictures. Sometimes people feel like, oh, they have it all together. Oh, everything they you know, she's got the golden touch. Everything she does comes to fruition. So let's actually wreck that view of you. Let's get real. And talk about how even when we fail, there is still learning to be done.

Adelaide  8:14   Oh, yes. Okay, so how this this Costa Rica trip. It's not. It's not all of Costa Rica. It was this trip. It was this specific city that we went to. So I won't say anything bad about Costa Rica. But it was an absolute fail. So what happened is a really good friend of mine and her husband and her two boys. They really want to travel for a couple of weeks, like every couple of months and go somewhere. But they've only stayed at resorts. So they were really scared to actually go live somewhere. So something special that we do when we travel is we really try to go and get a house and Airbnb in the neighborhood. Go and attend. Just attend anything we can neighborhood to be part of the community. So for Costa Rica, we got Airbnbs that were on the same property and shared a pool. And my husband signed up for jujitsu classes with my son, right? Like it seems good. But when she was showing me where she wanted to go, because I was like, you choose a location, we'll go with you. So she's telling me where she wants to go. Everything in my gut was like, this is a very bad idea. And she had paid someone to choose the location. I think she paid someone to research she paid like $1,500 Right, a lot of money for research. I saw like the debrief and I was like, why am I not charging for this like this? It was just I was just like, this looks like such a bad idea. But just Costa Rica is very, very special to her family, because her parents fled Cuba because a lot of her family were killed there. Right. So this is like a very special place for them before they made it to Florida. So I was like all right, let's let's do it because Costa Rica is important to you. Do I have more experience maybe planning a really nice trip in Mexico or in Europe? So it was just I couldn't really help out with that. So so we go to Costa Rica, we get well we get we're driving and right and it's just single lane roads that they have are their major roads. And when you get to a bridge, which there are many only one car can go by, and if you get behind something that's really slow, people try to pass but it's a windy road. So it's just your anxiety is already like through the roof. We had people on the other side of the road almost crashed into us several times. So you're just like Will we even like survive it to the Airbnb so we get we get to the Airbnb, and it's on a dirt road in my neck was just like going about it hurts so bad. It was just this long dirt road. I'm like, How are we on a dirt road? Which is fine, right? It's okay. It's not a dirt road. But it's a very it's a nice Airbnb. So again, she has paid someone a lot of money to research it. So we're thinking like it like things should work out. Well. Well, things that were not mentioned to us the this the town on the beach, we're on a beach town, it didn't have continuous power. It's never something I've ever had to ask at Airbnb. We checked the internet speed. It was great. But we weren't like, do you always have power? No. So the city doesn't always have power. Then I'm like, Okay, well, there's just like power surges that goes out. We can deal with that. Even though I work you know, I have to work with my team as well. So that makes it hard. Then I didn't know this. There were water outages. So I go to like turn to wash my hands. And there's no more water in the sink. So I'm like asking the Airbnb, right? Like, hey, like what's going on with the water? They're like, Oh, that happens every day. Just kind of runs out. We don't have enough water to the town, right? So I'm like, Oh, okay. And then this was a user error. I couldn't work the shower. So it was cold water, right. And these are like, kind of, you know, to feel good, right? These are like things that I'm like, okay, the car is uncomfortable. There's no water. If there is water, the water is cold, it ended up I figured out how to get the water warm later. But the first day was just very, very hard. And then my husband, he had gone to other grocery stores. But then he took me to grocery store he hadn't been to. And it reminded me of a grocery store that we were in a town in the town. This was kind of like a similar fail, but it was because it was it was after COVID but they hadn't restored the like supply chain. So they were running out of food. So we took me to a grocery store is very similar to that. And I was like, Is there no food is there not going to be food again? Like I started to panic. And then we went to then he took me to a nicer grocery store and Janna, I started crying in the nice grocery store when I saw the coconut milk. And he said why are you crying I like is they have a nice grocery store. Like, you made me feel like I was gonna starve it right? And he's like, I didn't make you feel anything else. Like I thought, I thought because I had asked the guy for like where the salt is. And it was just like this big bag of salt. And I was like, I don't want that salt. Like I want pink Himalayan salt today.

Adelaide  17:19  Yeah, so we chose a Spanish speaking country because we wanted to speak Spanish. And I just want to comment on what you said about these good feelings of wanting to have that that's is what she wanted to have in Costa Rica. She had been there before, she had a great experience, because I really am saying it was still she had this wonderful experience. And so this was just, it was such such a letdown. But the part that was really nice was being together and then and then doing Spanish together. So um, she had, she had arrived a couple days later than her husband and kids because she had a speaking engagement. And so the day before she arrived, we were I her boys came over and they they're okay, so they are public school students. And they have three week breaks because they're on a track schedule. So they wanted to know all about homeschooling, and what it's like, so they're like, We want to homeschool with you guys. Right? So we're like, okay, so they're sitting with us at the table. And then we get to Spanish. And we pull out our TalkBox mom language guys. And I was like, well, let's, let's start with something at the beginning for them. So we are asking for they were very excited to be in Costa Rica to eat pineapple. And then they wanted to get ice cream. So we're like, okay, let's practice asking for pineapple and ice cream. Let's just start there. And then the one little boy, he's about seven years old. And so we're starting our TalkBox on practice session. And in the session, you choose your phrase like that. And then you practice the phrase, and we practice the phrase with the native speaker audio. So we get an ear for ear for it. And then we practice with in situations so that the children feel really empowered to use the phrases themselves. And then we practice with emotions. So you can really own the phrase. Now once we play the native speaker audio, he was like, Wait, we have to say whole sentences. I don't want to do this. And I was like, huh, and I could feel I could feel a little language trauma in there. And then his brother who's a little bit older than him, wanted to stay on the couch. Right? But he still stayed at the table. So I was like, this is interesting. So after we heard the audio, I was like, that's okay, you can just sit here and observe like, that's totally fine. And so after we did that, we started practicing in different situations and the situations were, you know, we just came up with silly ones, like the ice cream is melting, but you want it before it's melting. So how would you ask for the ice cream, right? And so we're doing all these fun situations. And then we start doing emotions and we're seeing the phrases with the different emotions. And all of a sudden he's like, Oh, you guys really need to say it like Michael. I'll just say it for us. And he's like, No, I can't do that. You know, and he has like As he's just telling himself that he can't say a full sentence I'm like, Huh. And I know from my friend that her parents are native Spanish speakers, right? They're from Cuba. They're native Spanish speakers. And so I know that she feels scared to talk in Spanish, but when she's with me, because we went to Mexico together, and she was like, starting to speak Spanish, and she's like, it's just going really well. And then she's like, but then I was speaking Spanish. I'm getting hit on I can't speak Spanish. Like she's hilarious. Okay. So she's like, when I'm with you, I can speak Spanish so well that I get hit on, you know, I'm like, oh, gosh, oh, gosh. Okay, so then something like, Okay, I know something's going on there. And I know that her husband, he learned Spanish as an adult. So he has some kind of conversational level of Spanish. So, so anyway, so the boy really wants to practice with us. But he's just like, too nervous. But he's laughing now. And he thinks it's so fun, how we're practicing. And then I'm like, well, let's change the scenery. So I'm like, Okay, everybody get in the car. And I grabbed her scavenger hunt guide. So we're in the car. During our scavenger, I had one of the guides, and I said, that I saw something, like I said, in Spanish look, like, look there, see clouds. And all the kids, including them repeated look, I see clouds in Spanish. And I was like, oh, it's happening. Like, I haven't tasted out that they want to say these things. And we were very, very specific. Even my kids, our focus is not on perfection. It's on fun, right. And that's so important for kids to feel like they're not performing for their parent, they're practicing with their parents. So when you focus on fun, it really frees you up to actually learn and grow. So they're doing the scavenger hunt in Spanish, and they're just like having so much fun. So then the next day, my friend arrives, and she's like, her husband come and I came, and I had a really nice, I had the talk about some materials, I made it for them to gift it to them, like the ones that we were going to be using, because didn't have all of them. So I was like, Okay, we're going to use these. They're very excited. And I was like, we're gonna do a practice session together. So we did the practice session, and we'd practicing a phrase, and she was just so impressed that her kids were so excited. She goes this morning, my kids woke up, and they were asking for pineapple in Spanish. And they were telling me how funny Adelaide is, and that she was saying the phrases and all these funny voices. And she's like, they're saying that I have to do it with them. And then she said, I went to correct how my child said, Said, part of the phrase, and my husband stopped me and said, No, we don't do that, right? Because that's not the point is not that it's perfect. She goes, your presence is already in our home. And she's like, it's changing everything. And so we did a practice session with them. And it's just so cute. Because you know, the phrases that we're learning, it's in the kids heads, and they're like they're thinking about it. And one of the boys is like when I was at camp and I finished eating. I said, Yes, bear, Renae, and I was thinking about saying, Yeah, Tamina, which is I'm all done, right. So they're just getting so excited about it. And it was just this really nice healing experience that they needed to have for the language trauma they had. And then my friend explained to me that she had had this trauma because it seemed like an expectation that she should speak Spanish, but she couldn't roll her ours. And so she felt very, you know, like, whenever she spoke, they'd say, you know, speak better say it like this, right. And so to help her child, she doesn't want other people to say that to him. So she says it to him, which is not any better, right? It's like, let us hurt you before other people outside hurt you. But parents do this with anything spelling reading, it's like, you want to point it out before they have this, like public humiliation or whatever, whatever it is that you're like anxious about. But it's still not not what we want to focus on. So the focus again, is on fun and not perfection. And we carry that in everything in our homeschool reading, writing, like, we want to have fun as we as we do it. So that was a huge, huge moment for her her family and their Spanish language journey that her kids are, you know, they went from one sitting on the couch not wanting to be involved. Right, and the other child sitting there being like, I'm not gonna say a full sentence to actually using their Spanish so that that was really fun part of the trip.

Janna  24:13   I think that the contrast between what you first presented as like, probably one of the worst trips you guys have ever taken as a family, right? This with all the things to this beautiful story about how it really illustrates like, what what was the point? I mean, you didn't the point was that you guys bonded and had fun and that these kids got to enjoy Spanish in a way they never had. Right and and so we as parents have to remember that. It's not always the finished product. It's really the process and let's be honest, your process was a bit messy. But to come out with this beautiful story of how language really can be fun and exciting. I think it's how For for parents to hear that, you know, they're nothing is going to be perfect. Not no homeschool is perfect. No school in general is perfect. Like life isn't perfect. So it's like what can we take away? How can we live in those positive moments despite the chaos and, you know, disappointments that happen all day long?

Adelaide  25:18   Yeah. And my, my, my friend, she also said, she's like, Oh, we're gonna, because I was worried they would never travel again. They like they would never try to stay in another country for a couple of weeks. But then, you know, by the end, her son is like begging, like, Please homeschool me mom, right? Like begging to be homeschooled. Because like you said, the kids didn't care that like there is a horse pooping on the premises of the camp, right? Like, that wasn't only my son thought maybe we could do that a little better, my eldest son, but um, it was it was just they decided that they will do it again. And before we left, we already decided our next destination, but she was like, I will not choose that. Adelaide, please choose it. And so we have like a couple of guiding principles that we follow. When we do book a trip before we are like, okay, let's let's like, let's choose the Airbnb there. Let's do that. And in this trip, every single, like one of those things was definitely broken. And so we're gonna give it another go next year, next fall. And so let you know how it goes. I'm sure it will be better. It already seems better.

Janna  26:26  This story of what this friend's family had kind of the trauma that was created around language. I know we've done a podcast before. And we really talked about like, people don't speak another language. Because a they're worried they're going to say it wrong, or they're going to be made fun of or they're going to be one they're going to be corrected. And nobody likes to feel that way. I mean, there's not one person that's like walking around, please correct me on everything that you think I'm doing wrong. But there are reasons why families failed to learn another language. And what in your experience, have some of those reasons, Ben?

Adelaide  27:00  Yeah, I think like the biggest reasons before we had language trauma, already is one of the places are just starting in the wrong spot. So we'll have a lot of families that they want to speak. And actually, let's say like this, they want to speak another language. But because of the things, all the things you just mentioned, that scare them, they retreat from doing the actual thing they want to achieve, they retreat from speaking. Right. So it's just interesting to get better at riding a bike, you don't just like watch bikes, read about bikes, figure out how to fix bikes, you have to get on the bike, and you need to ride the bike. It's the same thing for speaking a language. A lot of people will want to speak a language, but they'll do everything but speaking in attempts to get better at speaking. So for example, they'll learn the ABCs to learn numbers to learn colors, right? They're like, let me start there. And that's really where people start for preschool. But before preschool, you can already speak a language you can already use the language, right? So it's just like that's, that's gonna lead you to failure. Because saying numbers, letters and colors only makes you be able to say numbers, letters and colors, it doesn't have you speaking the language, then the next thing is just focusing on vocabulary, right? People are like, well, if I increase my vocabulary, I'll speak better. Well, if you work on memorizing vocabulary words, and you'll just be really good at outputting, right? It's not even a fluency thing. It's a translation thing. And so you're really slowing your down yourself down from being able to speak when you go in that direction. Because in English, when we learn vocabulary words, we are learning it in the context of English. So we look up a word, and we get the definition in English. And so that makes a huge difference. When you're doing translation with vocabulary that's definitely going to gonna slow you down. And other people think people do instead of doing the actual goal retreating from it, is grammar. They start with grammar. So they want to learn the logic of the language. If you can learn to speak the language really well, you actually have context for grammar. And this is how we learn grammar in English, right? We teach our kids grammar and our kids really think about how does, how does it work? Have I had that experience before, right, and they can see the grammar happening. The fourth way that I see a lot of families feel is that they have foreign language time as separate time. Right? It's an app, we do foreign language in the app. As with a tutor, we just do it one hour per week, whereas language is something that's meant to be communicated. We're learning the language to talk. So that means that you do need to talk throughout the day. So in all of these instances, you were doing shadow activities. That's something that Steven Pressfield coined, and it's in its activities that are in the shadow of your goal. So if you have a goal, it casts a shadow and you're doing all these other things you're doing the grammar, the vocabulary, the writing, the reading, but you're not actually doing your goal, which is talking. And when you start with your goal, you really focus on the goal of listening and talking you actually learn all the other parts much faster. I mean, studies show that kids need to clock 20,000 20,000 hours of listening and preparation for reading in their first language. So why would we start with just reading? You know, in Spanish? Yeah.

Janna  30:05  Yeah. Translating.

Adelaide  30:05  If you do that it's not going to be it's not going to be fluency. But it is it is. That's, that feels like the scary part is talking. So when you're so scared to talk, my recommendation first is, of course, talk in your home, create an environment where there is no nitpicking, right, there's no making fun of people. Because if you nitpicker you make fun of your pronunciation is not going to improve, it improves by having fun, because when you're having fun, you're not stressed out, when you're not stressed, you can hear better, you can hear better, you can actually speak so it's going to improve by having fun over time. And then in align with that when you go and you talk with people who are outside of your home, and you're worried that they're going to be mean to you as you talk, right? Like that's, that's like a scary part. As you step outside your comfort zone. I mean, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is that it's actually classified as a toxic behavior to correct someone as they talk. And I'll give you like an easy example. So you can see that if there was somebody from another country, and they asked me and they said, like, where bathroom and I'm like, it's where is the bathroom? Right? You'd be like, Whoa, yikes, that lady, right? Yeah. Right, you can already feel it. So it's just, it's interesting. Like we we usually don't correct people like when we're kind, we're just like, oh, let me just show you where the bathroom is. We're very kind about it. So it sounds like well, who are the people that are correcting and oftentime behaviors like this, people don't mean to do those behaviors. It's just happening. And it comes from that that mentality of like, I better let you know, before somebody else lets you know, right, like we've talked about before. And so you'll often see see people who are like, yeah, they're like, it needs to be said, like this or like that. But the problem with that is that's not going to help you to improve. And so whenever I get in a situation like that, where someone's like, trying to tell me something, and they want me to have this instant perfection, which is absolutely unrealistic, I always pull up my phone. And I turn on my voice recorder, and I say, Oh, it sounds like you'd like to help me, would you say it for me, and then I can listen to it for a couple of days. And by then I'll probably sound really good at it. Right. So now, I've had them help me. And they can't go on about what's happening, because I've already given my boundary. And that's what we do when we have a toxic behavior, we just have to set up a boundary. And then we can feel really good. And so so I'll do that. In our phrase book, we have a toolbox area that helps you as you step outside your comfort zone and talk with other native speakers, most of the time, people are going to be kind, like most of the time they're going to be so whenever you get into the point where you're like, oh, but as you're talking, you don't have to know every word, you can get the general sense of idea. But when you hear like a repeated word, or it sounds critical, it's we can use our toolbox to like ask what the word means. And to start using that and to start talking. As you use your phrases at home, you start to feel more confident at home, you feel more comfortable people use the safe place to learn so that when you go into those other situations, you feel prepared to talk you feel prepared to ask questions, and you also feel stronger. If somebody does kind of come at you and let you know, like you're not good enough. You're like, Oh, of course I'm not I'm learning. Like we're all on the same page there, right? It's okay to make mistakes. I mean, we have to make mistakes as we as we learn to talk. So it shouldn't feel it shouldn't feel like a bad thing. It's something that you want to do you want to feel really fast. You want to get in those situations and make mistakes, learn from them and keep going. And if someone sees their name, right,

Janna  33:43  It's on, it's on that right? That's their problem that has nothing to it that's not about you, you have nothing to do with you. And I think these principles that you're talking about can very easily translate into any learning situation and homeschool or not. Because if we create space to mess up, like, of course we're not, you know, I've said to my kids, math is something that just doesn't come as natural as some of the other subjects in our family. And so they're like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like, Well, of course you don't know what you're doing, like quit expectedly we put that expectation on ourselves as parents. Now, of course, you don't know how to homeschool you've never homeschooled before, like, give yourself a break and just start and see how the word the process takes you. But the same thing. I think our kids see that we do it to ourselves. And then we started doing it to them. It's like, well, I don't know how to do it. It's like of course you don't because we haven't had it yet. Like it's I don't know, I just wish that we kind of lived in this space more. Not only as homeschool parents, but also just as human beings like yeah,

Adelaide  34:47  Like we're here, here to learn, okay. I don't think I've ever shared this with you. But the reason that I decided like the biggest reason that I decided to homeschool like what absolutely broke me and I was like We are homeschooling unapologetically is that I wanted my kids to have the space to fail. I did not like that, that teachers expected me to rescue my child, if my child didn't get their work done. My child should have consequences for not getting their work done that doesn't involve mom doing a whole workbook and a night with them as they cry, right? Yeah, like, it just doesn't make sense. I wanted my kids to have space to fail. And so my son who that started with my first son, because we homeschooled and then we we did a little bit of private school. And then I was like, I'm not paying you to have me homeschool my kid at night. Like that is not happening, right? Because we're just like, doing the work that he didn't do during the day. And it's just very, very nice. He's 13 Now, so we can we have like, we can kind of look back on the journey a bit. But I asked him to go, it was so hard with you at the beginning. And he's like, Yeah, I don't think I'd ever need reading and writing. It didn't just it didn't seem like something essential for my life. Right. So he didn't want to do it. And so I was given space to allow him to fail. And then he and then use a true education which is changing from within not forcing a child to workbook right? To change from within to have like this love for reading and like, you know what, that's something that I would love to do. I want to read these books, I want to hear these stories, I want to write my own stories. I you know, just having that huge change. So now yes, he can read and

Janna  36:32  Yeah, and in we're so as a society that set up for perfection. I mean, now, I think more than ever with social media, and being able to stage everything and Photoshop and do everything. So right, the idea of failure is not even an option is so ridiculous and contrary to a natural environment for learning, because, you know, scientists will tell you, you have to fail and then come back and reassess and, and make some more predictions and do it again. So I am grieved that it's acceptable in some areas. So if you're learning a second language, like, okay, maybe we can agree that we can fail there. Or if you're doing a science experiment it sure that makes sense that you would fail. And it's like, the truth is, every moment of our lives are, are an opportunity in this area to just be comfortable in the uncomfortable of not knowing and failing and not doing it right. And if we as parents can model that for our children, what an amazing generation, we can put forth next, you know, for the next generation, that they can just be like, Yeah, we want to do our very best, but we understand that in that process, we're going to fail. But that's how it's going.

Adelaide  37:40   And yeah, that's where I want my kids to live in as we homeschool. And that's where I want to live in when I homeschool. And so something that I do on a weekly basis with the kids, and then a like monthly basis for the household, is I just review the week with them. And I ask them, like, what do you want to keep doing? What do you want to improve? What do you want to start doing? What do you want to stop doing? And it's given me so much insight into what my kids need to be able to feel like they can fail and move forward. So like my son, Darien when he was really struggling with math, he would do one problem, and he would sit there Janna, and he wouldn't do the next problem. And I'm like, you need to do number two, and he's like, okay, and then he would do it. And then he would stop. And I'm like, Okay, you have to do number three. And I'm like, I can't homeschool like this, like other, I can't homeschool all the kids and have you do this, right? So in our After Action Review, I'm like, hey, I need you to stop just stopping as you do it. Like what what is going on? He's like, Well, I just need to feel he just wanted to feel like he was in the right direction. He just wanted to feel like, secure in that. And so he's I said, Well, what would make you feel secure in that and he's like, I want I want flashing lights to go off when I finish a math problem. And I'm like, done, everybody get in the car, we're going to Party City went to Party City, we found like the string of lights, he would do a math problem. He would push the button three times the lights would flash and then he would go on to the next problem. Like that's all that's all he needed. And so I feel like these, these these reviews that I do at the end, it tells my kids like yeah, we are going to fail every week. And so then at the end, we can just decide do we want to keep doing it, how we're doing it? What do we want to improve it spells Kiss, kiss, right? Keep improve, start doing stop doing? We do have a role. We can't like just stop doing school can can't stop doing. Like, that's not gonna get us to our goals. But that helps us live in this this area where we can fail very fast. We can fail every week, but yet we can keep succeeding and improving.

Janna  39:41   Yeah, well, I think that's an amazing homeschool hack that you just shared. And so hopefully our listeners will take that to heart and really just get comfortable with some of these concepts that we've been talking about to just be okay with things not working out with, you know, being in situations that are are very uncomfortable and he would not pay to be in them again. But, but knowing that in everything you know, there's always a silver lining, right. And so I think just sometimes we have to remember that especially as homeschool parents like good days, bad days, in the long run in the final goal, it is always worth it when you and your family decide that this is the type of education you want to do. Adelaide, I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. And we will put links in the notes for top Boxdot Mom, we do want to announce that book shark is now carrying TalkBox dot mom as an elective. So you can check them out at BookSharks website, but we'll put links in the notes we want to just thank you guys so much for listening. So until next time, bye bye