Everybody is Looking for Help to be Happier, Interview with Andrew Pudewa

Ginny: Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. I am here with Andrew Pudewa, who is the guy that everyone seems to want to be around whenever we're at conferences. There are always crowds of people. And so it’s really awesome to have him on our podcast.

Andrew: It is a pleasure, Ginny, I've been admiring your work for a long time and a couple of my kids are big fans of your website and resources and podcast and everything. So it's delightful to be here with you. 

Ginny: I love that. OK, so let me tell everyone about Andrew. Andrew Pudewa is the founder and director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing and a father of seven. There's a lot of kids. Good for you. 

He travels and speaks around the world. He addresses issues related to teaching, writing, thinking, spelling and music with clarity, insight, practical experience and humor. His seminars for parents, students and teachers have helped transform many a reluctant writer and have equipped educators with powerful tools to dramatically improve student skills.

Although he is a graduate of the Education Institute in Japan and holds a certificate of child brain development from the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His best endorsement is from a young Alaskan boy who called him “the funny man with the wonderful words.”

He and his heroic wife, Robin, have homeschooled their seven children and are now proud grandparents of 15 making their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

What a life, Andrew. I love it.

Andrew: Grandchild number 15 was just born about six weeks ago in Tulsa. 

Ginny: I was impressed that you had updated your website so fast. 

But we met, I think, at the Alliance conference, although I'd known who you were for a long time. The Alliance conference is where faith-based homeschool organizations get together once a year and just talk about how they're serving homeschoolers in their state and talk about conference best practices. And you were there and we connected. 

And I've seen you at other conferences as well. I’ve noticed that there are throngs of people around you all the time. Some people have that sort of magnetic draw and that's been my experience with you. The last conference I saw you at was in Cincinnati and our booth was kind of near the front doors and I saw a couple of moms that had stopped to talk to you and it was a long conversation. You have time for people and you’re present with them. So thanks for what you're doing in the homeschool community. 

Andrew: Sure. I love it. And we meet so many families who resonate very well with this idea of how we help our kids have a better, more natural, less plugged in and distracted life because we're all very distracted by screens. And you know, I learned a new word recently. I didn't know this word, although it's very intuitive and makes sense. I was waiting for Sarah Mackenzie. And we were going to go to dinner with some people. And I came up, said, “Oh, sorry, I'm a few minutes late.” She goes, “No problem. I am just doomscrolling.”

Have you ever heard that? We’re “doomscrolling.” I guess it applies to looking at your phone, going to bad news after bad news, after bad news. And, you know, that can be very distracting, even somewhat addictive, but depressing at the same time. 

So, you know, I think all of us, you know, old people like me, young people like my grandchildren, we've got to strive hard to not get sucked into negative vortices, whatever that is, whether it's entertainment or news or social media, things just, you know, disconnect us from our own mind and heart to some degree. 

Ginny:  So you’ve got this session that you were telling me about, Nature Deficit Disorder. And I was like, oh, I know about that because we read Richard Louv’s ‘books and they're so fantastic. And I love that phrase, “The Nature Deficit Disorder.”

But before we get there, I’d love to know a little bit about how you ended up here. We love your Fix-It Grammar books. We have done Robin Hood and The Nose Tree. A friend told us about them. She said, “I love these books.”

And today we're really trying to get our kids active and moving and playing. So Fix-It Grammar can be a quick thing for them to learn. It’s a sentence of the day and they're learning grammar and they're learning vocabulary. So at the end of the week, you have them read the whole story out loud. There's all sorts of vocabulary in there and then it turns into a whole story. By the end, our kids are wanting to type it out on the computer. They're really into it. So we’ve used those for a couple of years and then we've got new things this year, Andrew, because at one of the conferences, people came up to us and said, we've got to use these. We have the ancient history based writing lessons. We've got a lot of IEW materials and I really like them. They're easy to implement and easy to use.

What can you tell us a little bit about your path to the Institute for Excellence in Writing ? 

Andrew: Sure. Well, my background, as you read in the bio, is actually not in education or English per say. My real training is in music. So I spent the first 15 years of my adult life as a full time Suzuki violin and kinda music teacher. So I was basically spending all my available hours teaching music to young children. But that is not a great way to pay your bills and keep your wife home and grow a family without financial stress. It's not a particularly easy way to go. And so I always kind of looking for, you know, a side gig, a little business. I could do something that would get me enough money on the side so I could afford to keep teaching music.

And I had been working at a school early on. And the whole faculty of this school, this is in Montana, we went up to Canada and took a 10 day teacher training course called the Blended Sound Type Program of Learning, where I learned this method of teaching, writing, structure and style in composition. And so when I saw it, I kind of thought, “Whoa, this is incredible.” It's like a Suzuki method for teaching writing to kids. And so I came back from that. I taught for the school that year. The results were fantastic. It was one of these little tiny schools where it was kind of like all hands on deck and anybody would teach whatever needed to be taught. So I ended up with this weird mix of teaching P.E., computers, and English literature and composition to 5th through 7th grade kids. And the results were so good that next summer I thought, I'm going to go back and take that course again in northern Alberta. And so the whole faculty didn't go a second year, but I did. And I learned more and I thought, this is so rich, this is so good. 

And then our situation changed a little bit and we shifted over from the school where I was working to starting the preschool and increasing my teaching of music to to supplement that because the school was pretty rural and it was a pretty low pay, to be quite honest.

And so I started teaching some writing classes to my two oldest, who were 12 and 10 at the time, and their friends - kind of an after school enrichment thing, and that went really well. And so I kept doing that. I went up a third year and took the same course and they said, “Well, if you're going to keep coming up here, you might as well join our team and help us do this thing.” So I did that. I kind of joined the staff of the blended onsite course and then I kind of phased out, did something else for a couple of years, but I really missed teaching.

So we moved to Idaho. I went back to teaching music and writing classes on the side. And right around that time, the school in Montana said, “Oh, would you come and do a little workshop for our few teachers that are new here and teach them that writing program that you learned?” And so I did. And they had a couple parents that were homeschooling. They said, “Whoa, the system is kind of the best we've ever seen for teaching, writing. You should do this with homeschoolers.”

And so I thought, “Well, I would like to do that.” So I made a little flier, I made a little business idea, called it The Institute for Excellence in Writing, kind of just because I thought that sounded cool. This is pre-Internet days. So I printed these fliers, put stamps on them, sent them in a box to a homeschool group in Seattle and said, “Hey, would you mail these out to your four hundred members?” And they did. And I got twenty people to pay forty bucks to listen to me talk for a whole day. I thought this is more than I can make it a whole day. This has potential.

So I spent about five years doing both teaching music as hard as I could and then traveling and doing a Saturday seminar, a Friday, Saturday seminar, somewhere where I could get to. I was making more money doing seminars and selling videotapes, tapes, if you remember those things and cassettes. Then I was teaching music. So at that point we moved to California. I went full time, got my first helper, my first employee,a year after that, and then it's just been growing from there. So I kind of stumbled into it. 

But in retrospect, I think, well, this was kind of what I was trained for, not necessarily consciously, but all circumstances converged together. It was like the hidden hand in my life. And it's just been a great run. I've been at it full time for a little over 20 years now. And you've got a few of our products. And that Fix-It Grammar thing, I really never expected it to get as big as it was. I just thought it'd be a good little side thing. But the kids like it because it's short and it's clear and it's not like you have to study and do a bunch of fill in the blanks or something and then take a test like it's learning in context.

So I think one of the things I read maybe in the beginning was a lot of times we teach kids things so out of context. You know, we teach them grammar rules, but why not teach them right within the context of writing and a story and something unfolding. And it's quick, you know, so I think it's a draw for parents and teachers. 

Ginny: It's really interesting to hear your story. My midwife sent me this thing a long time ago from this book called “Rich Habit, Poor Habits” and I have the book. I've never finished it, but there's this test associated with it for parents. And it has these 40 question thing about, you know, are you teaching your kids good habits? 

We don't care if our kids are rich. You know, that doesn't matter. But we want our kids to be successful. And you go through this list of questions. And what's interesting is that none of them have to do with grade point average. You know, they all have to do with social skills and do we remember people's birthdays. And do we limit our screen time? It's all these sort of smaller things that add up. But one of the things that really struck me was, do you have your kids read biographies?

And after I read that, I started to read more biographies. And I think when you hear people's stories, you learn what their path to success was like. I actually didn't know your background. And, you know, you see this big booth and so you think, well, this guy must have been in the honors English class in high school. And he must've done all these things.

But then, when you hear the full story, you learn that there's a payoff and there's a winding and a beautiful journey and that all of these experiences can sometimes culminate. And so I think it's great for everyone to have heard your story. And Suzuki is actually really interesting. I'm a piano player, and so I cannot play by ear at all. Suzuki's always been really interesting to me, and one of the elements I've heard you say is that they help the parents, help the kids.

It's sort of a component there, which is that if you go to a lesson, you only go to a lesson once a week. But with this method, it's more accessible for parents to help their kids out the week, which helps them be more successful. And so it's interesting because that's kind of what you've created.

Andrew: There's four pillars of the Suzuki method, if you will, four pillars of education. 

One is creating the right environment. So Suzuki noted that the reason all Japanese children learn to speak Japanese very easily is because they live in Japan and that that makes it a whole lot easier than children who don't live in Japan. So he kind of transferred that idea to music and created recordings and said, play these recordings, you know, many hours, day after day after day. And the children memorize the music and then they don't have to learn the music persay. They just have to learn how to make their bodies and fingers and everything do that. So the first key is the environment.

The second is the right period. He noted, and I think we've all noticed this, the younger you are, the easier it is to learn a new language. And so if you compare - if you took your family and moved to Guatemala, you would notice that your younger children would probably acquire ease and fluency in Spanish faster than your older ones and a lot faster than the adults like you.

So Suzuki said, well, why do we wait until kids are 12 or teenagers to teach the music? Why not start at a younger age? So he kind of popularized this idea of music lessons four, five, six years old. And of course, if you're going to do that, you can't really expect the child to come to a lesson, remember everything, go home and practice carefully.

So that gets to the third pillar, which is the right teacher. So the right environment, the right age or period and then the right teacher. And so he noted that children learn their mother tongue primarily from their mother. That's why it's called mother tongue or from parents or the environment at home. So he got into this teaching of parents, the violin and other instruments so that they could teach young children at home. And I started playing the violin when I was about five. My mother was a piano and voice teacher and there wasn’t a lot of Suzuki. There was very little Suzuki around in the early sixties when I was a little kid. So we were in the experimental batch, but she was very open to it. And eventually she got training and became a Suzuki piano teacher. And she actually created a kind of voice program based on the Suzuki method called Singing Made Easy and published and sold that until she passed on. I took control of it and then passed it on actually to someone else who is better at marketing music stuff.

And then the fourth pillar is the right method, which is the incremental and mastery approach. We call this the “easy plus one.” So you do something until it's easy and then and only then you add in the next complexity and you keep doing that until it becomes easy. And then and only then you add in the next complexity and so that you're only adding in one little step of complexity and you're continuing to practice and perfect all of the skills that you've learned up to that point. And that was kind of what I saw with Dr. Webster. And the structure and style checklist was, this is brilliant. You get three things to do in every paragraph. When that becomes easy, you add one more thing, but you don't dump a whole lot of complexity on a child all at once or too fast. They become overwhelmed and start to dislike it because of the overwhelm. And that principle is just so broadly applicable in all areas of teaching and parenting. 

Ginny: But this is fascinating because you took your violin training and have transferred a lot of those pillars into your Institute for Excellence in Writing. I mean, I see it. The parent is there. It's a day by day thing. You're walking through it with your child. You know that “easy plus one,” incremental learning. 

So that's why it's neat to learn people's stories, right? It all goes together.

So you mentioned your mother teaching piano and voice and that part of your childhood was just being out of her hair, basically. Right? And that she didn't really know where you were and you were out playing and filling your own time. Well, let's talk about your childhood. Did you have a lot of time to play outdoors when you were a kid? And how do you think that affected you? How is it different from kids today? 

Andrew: Yeah, I was very, very blessed and I didn't really start thinking about it until I hit 50 years old. And it was kind of funny. A lot of things happen when you hit 50. One thing is you kind of realize, wow, my life is probably over half over. I was also hit with a kind of a wave of gratitude just for all the blessings that I have experienced. And part of that was reflecting on my parents who were moving into the last phase of their life. 

My mother was the music teacher. My father was an engineer, and he worked to live, but he lived to sail. So we lived in Southern California. We had a thirty two foot sailboat and I spent a tremendous amount of time in nature. He loved to take off a day, especially in the summertime. He'd take off a day or two of work with his vacation days and we would sail over to Catalina Island, which would take, I don't know, four or five hours depending on the wind. And we would anchor our little boat there in this, you know, very, non-civilized place. There were no stores. There were no roads. There were just boats parked in this little bay and a beach. And you would bring all your own food and you would cook it. And then, you know, you could fish along the way and eat some of your fish if you got lucky.

And my father just loved being on the water and near the water. And so that was just our childhood. This was pre-Internet days. But one of the really interesting things about going on a boat away from your home for four days is you're really disconnected from all media. I mean, we didn't even listen to the radio. We had a radio for emergencies, but we never used it. Of course, no television. And so I had these big chunks of time where I would either be sitting on the boat, watching the waves, looking at the mountains of the island, or more likely, you know, running up and down the beach or climbing on the rocks. 

And as I got a little older and more independent, I would take long hikes sometimes all by myself, you know, into the mountains and be gone for hours. And for some reason, this didn't seem to bother my parents. They were, I don't know, relatively relaxed about letting me get in a dinghy and sail, sail out beyond where they could see me, trusting that somehow I would make my way back or climb up, climb a mountain and be out of sight for hours.

And I just think that is a very different attitude than my wife and I had about our children at that age. And I would say it is very different than most parents have where we tend to just be so worried. We have to absolutely know every one of our kids. Is it every minute, you know, even when they get into their teenage years. So I mourn the loss of that kind of freedom I had because it was so good for me.

When you're alone in nature, you're contemplating things. You know, you're not necessarily thinking formally or logically, but you're absorbing the beauty. You're watching the animals, you're seeing the plants. You're kind of just immersing yourself in the creation. And there's something that went deep into my soul.

And, you know, later in life, my parents weren’t particularly religious in any way. I mean, usually if it was Sunday, we were on the boat, not in church, but later in life, you know, I found faith and I looked at the relationship between my childhood and that richness of faith. And I really felt that that immersion in nature had done so much to tune myself to a Creator in the creation. And I am just profoundly grateful. 

And that was right around the time when we made a conscious effort. When I turned 50, we moved from California to eastern Oklahoma and we went very rural, you know, the end of the paved road. And so one of the motivations of moving way out into the country was just so that my remaining children at home could have more of that type of freedom. And you could just kick them out of the house and say, you know, come back by dinnertime and have the comfort of knowing they're not likely to be, I don't know, having something bad happen. 

Ginny: As a child I had a lot of freedom as well in the eighties. I remember riding my bike a lot and riding through all these different neighborhoods. And I think I could go for hours and you know, that builds confidence in yourself. You know, I think that I can be out on my own and I can make decisions and I'm safe and I have this competency that maybe will carry me through. That may be a piece that kids are missing if they're not having those experiences where they get to direct their own life.

Andrew: Yeah, one of my good friends, you may know Andrew Kern, but he has a talk and he talks about four deep needs or deep level desires of our souls. One of those is to rule. And in the relationship between play and learning, self-rule, self governance, you need to learn your limits. You need to make decisions whether you know, when the weather is bad and you're indoors creating your blocks or Legos or Dollhouse universe. And when you're outside, you know, I remember, you know, in this situation being on a rock and looking at another rock, thinking, “Can I jump from this rock to that rock?” And, you know, I think a typical mother would say something like, “Be careful,” you know? But your mother is not there, and it's OK, you take the risk and you discover your limits. 

And, you know, part of the reason that we have bodies that heal themselves is so that we can learn lessons along the way and and come out on the other side and say, “OK, if I do that again, I'm going to do it a little differently” or maybe “I shouldn't try that again,” or maybe “I did that and I'm going to try something even a little more wild, a little more ambitious.” 

Ginny: So in that sense, that's risky play. Risky play is not letting your two year old wander by the road, but risky play is when a child could get slightly hurt, that type of thing. That actually makes them safer in the long run because they've learned all of these things. They’ve got experience of what their bodies can and can't do and then they have a better knowledge for the next time.

Andrew: We live in Tulsa now, we moved from the country to the city after our kids were pretty much grown for various reasons. But Tulsa a few years ago opened a very, very large park. 

Ginny: We want to come. 

Andrew: Yeah. The Gathering Place it's getting nationwide coverage as being the best city park in the country. But one of the things I really like about this park is it's got play equipment where you actually could get hurt. There is that edge of risk. And, yeah, you could fall down and twist your ankle or maybe break something. But there's that desire that kids have to test themselves, to stretch themselves. 

And when you have these kind of antiseptic little play areas where, you know, the worst thing that can happen is you, you know, scrape your knee and and cry. And it's not real to kids. 

And I look at my grandchildren when we go to the park and they want to climb up, they want to go higher than mom is comfortable with. But there's just something about that. And I remember climbing trees. I loved to climb trees and I think all kids do. But, you know, a mother watching a child climb a tree can either get nervous or impede the process of climbing the tree by saying, “Be careful! Be careful! That's high enough.” or whatever. But when a mother is there, you can’t really stretch yourself. And yeah, some people fall and get hurt. But there's just such a joy to discovering your own capacities as a child. I think that joy carries over into adulthood where you then test yourself and drive yourself and stretch yourself even, and the dangers may become less physical, but that willingness to take risks and trust yourself. Isn't that a life skill you could never really replace? 

Ginny: Right, and in fact, I was just talking to this author who wrote a book called Disconnected, and he was a school counselor and he's a psychologist, but he was saying in his book that kids are so afraid to fail, they're not trying anything. And you can really start to see how on both sides of it, that long term, having these opportunities to stretch yourself and to risk and to know that when you fall, you can try again or try something different, know or that the damage is not lifelong, those are skills you would carry with you throughout your life in different situations. But it's tricky to get there. 

I mean, I know you said your job was to keep out of your mom's hair because she was working. And like you said, kids do act differently when there's not a parent that's right there or sort of scrutinizing their every move, you know, but this is sort of how our society runs, which is filling the day with adult-directed activities and always being there. What advice do you have in this day and age?

Andrew: Oh, it's a hard time because as Richard Louv talks about in his book, Nature Deficit Disorder, it is very easy for kids to get so screen focused that they don't even want to go outside anymore. So there's that combination of parents worrying about unsupervised play and kids gradually becoming acclimated against it, saying, “No, I'd rather go to Minecraft, I'd rather play video games.” And as they get to teenagers, “I'd rather sit on my phone and scroll through my Instagram friends”. 

I think if we survive this age, historians will look back and say that was one of the worst periods of time for the physical, emotional, and mental health of children, primarily because of how easily we all get sucked into using our free time with screens. 

And so, you know, your work is so valuable to just help all parents, homeschooling or not. But anyone who's got a child is from the earliest age tempted to babysit that child with a screen.

You know, and I've been going to homeschool conventions for 20 years. So I will tell you, 20 years ago, usually if parents brought kids to homeschool convention, they had books, they had coloring books, they had, you know, actual paper that they were involved with. 

I mean, you know, I always carried a book around wherever I went. So if I got bored, I could read a book, which would usually happen if I was with my mom and she was talking to someone.

But now you see most kids, if they're not interacting with someone, they are looking at screens of one sort or another. So even in the homeschool world, you know, there's this big shift. And then how easily does that behavior continue on? Yeah, it's a nice day. You could go out and play, but, oh, I'm doing so good in my game. I want to just stay here and stare at the screen some more.

So, you know, we can't eliminate screens and screen based entertainment. But I am constantly trying to encourage parents, you know, as an older parent who kind of lived through the explosion of the Internet and devices in homes, you can't really ever go backwards on technology. So as you give your kids more access to screens and screen based entertainment,realize you can't take that back from them. So it's better to air on the side of giving it to them very slowly and trying to preserve their time to engage with whatever is available, from Legos to dollhouses to books to the trees in the backyard.

And then, you know, one of the benefits of homeschooling is you can just take a day off if you need to and say, “Hey, we're heading to the hills, we're going to the beach, we're going to the lake, we're going to go to the park. We're not going to stay inside when it's a perfect opportunity to be outside.”

Ginny: I talked to Peter Gray. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. He has a book called Free to Learn. At the very, very, very end of his book he talks about how they let their 13 year old go to Europe for two weeks by himself in 1982, all by himself. He is a type one diabetic so they were a little nervous about his health. He wore a necklace and they said he earned all the money. He planned the whole trip without the Internet. You know what? He figured out how to buy the plane ticket.

I mean, they dropped him off at the airport and for two weeks, I think they had one phone call home. There was no cell phone, you know? And I just thought, “Wow, things have really changed in 40 years in terms of what we let our kids do.” And that was a little eye-opening for me. I'm like, I’m sure my kid can ride a bike around the block. 

Andrew: I'm sure you've probably read the book Bud and Me or read about the book. 

Ginny: I haven't heard of it.

Andrew: Oh, it's mind blowing. And this is back in the early like the first decade of the 1900s. I'm not sure what year exactly, but here's kids that are seven and five years old and they want to ride their horses from Oklahoma City to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their father is the US marshal for western Oklahoma and he gets them their horses and some equipment and gives them a checkbook and says, “I'll meet you at the governor's place in Santa Fe. He's a friend of mine.” And it's so mind blowing as you read the book, of course. The big thought is, “Where's their mother?” Like, what mother would allow this? But one thing Richard Louv pointed out was that if you look statistically, crimes against children have not increased in the last hundred years. What has increased is the reporting of crimes against children. 

So some tragedy happens and it's rare, but everybody knows about it. Everybody's aware, and that causes fear for everybody. 

And I think reading that book Bud and Me made me realize, wow, these kids were obviously exceptionally resourceful, but they met good people everywhere they went. And I bet that was the same thing with Peter's son. He went over to Europe at 13. He probably met very good, helpful people that were on his side in terms of helping him grow up and have adventures. And so I think we do have to be careful that we don't become a victim to, you know, the fears of strangers and unknown things. We have to be prudent as parents, but we can't over fear. What we end up with is kids who don't take risks, who aren't adventurous.

And, you know, probably if you interview entrepreneurs - an interesting research project is to find some of the more successful entrepreneurs and say, “What was your childhood like? What kind of risks did you have an opportunity to take?” Because really, in the end, it's all about being willing to take risks, trust yourself, trust God. And then maybe you fail, but you learn lessons and move forward. 

Ginny: Yeah. A lot of people talk about their childhoods. 

We just had an interview with the author of the Green Ember series, Sam Smith. We also met at that homeschool convention and we talked about doing a podcast episode together. And I was sort of thinking, “Well, what are we really going to talk about?” You know, you're an author. And what he said was that he credits his creativity to playing in the woods and the things that they would come up with as children. 

And he said we didn't have a lot of money. But these experiences as a young child translated into this amazing adult work that he's doing and the impact that he's having. 

So I think maybe the last thing that we could talk about since we're running out of time here is the achievement trap, a trap I've heard you talk about. Parents want their children to have every single opportunity and there's this tendency toward overscheduling. And one of the things actually that really struck a chord with me that I heard you talk about was, “Where's my wife? Why isn't she doing the schooling?” you know, for these homeschool families. This is something that is really relatable. Like there was a little bit of autonomy before.

As a mom, my journey has been one of just continually stepping back. So, you know, where I was at the beginning was directing, directing, directing as a homeschool family - filling in all the time. I've been learning that what the child finds worthy is worthy. And so, you know, if they're out and they're playing a game in the yard, I've stopped calling them in. We'll do it later. But with dads in the home, I think there's more of this sort of like, “Well, what's going on? Why aren't you doing, doing, doing?” So talk to me about this achievement trap and what should our schedules look like? Where does downtime fit in? 

Andrew: Yeah, I think one of the things that we've seen both in educational institutions as well as home schooling to some degree is this application of business principles to childhood. There's a saying that I really don't like, I understand it, but I really just like it when it gets applied to the world of children, which is “What gets measured is what gets done.” This is a business concept, like you have to have metrics. You have all of this planning to use every minute of every day efficiently to make the most money you can make. 

And so we've kind of taken our almost hyper capitalistic mentality and applied it to children. And so if they're not using every minute of it, if we haven't scheduled every minute of their day, we're missing some opportunity.

So I tell the story of and I think this is the one you were thinking. I had an office at home in the outbuilding, a little converted shop. And so I'm working at work and it's mid-morning. I've got to go somewhere. So I walk through the house and there's my 10 year old daughter sitting at the window, looking out the big glass window into the backyard. And so I'm thinking, “OK, it's 10:30 in the morning. Why is she sitting here doing nothing?”

Ginny: And that’s so relatable because all the dads are home.

Andrew: Where's my wife? How come there's not like schooling going up? Because if you're not doing something at 10:30 a.mThat's bad. That's home school failure, you know. So I make a mental note, I'm going to find her, find out where it's going.

So anyway, I go and take a shower, get dressed, whatever. I come back maybe 10, 15 minutes later, she's still sitting in the same spot, staring out the window. So I put on my nice dad voice and I say, “Hey, sweetie, what are you doing?” And she kind of comes out of whatever she was thinking about. She looks up at me and she goes, “Well, things are just kind of connecting up in my brain.”

And I remember that moment very clearly because I was convicted and I thought, “Holy smokes, who am I to interfere with things kind of connecting up in her brain, you know?” And then when I started thinking about this subject more that story came back to me and I thought, boy, I had so many times sitting on the boat with nothing to do. Just staring at the hills of Catalina Island and looking at the shape of the mountain and making up stories about the face that you could see in the mountain and that level of contemplation or looking at the sand and creating little patterns in the sand and doing these things that have no product per say. There's nothing to measure there. There's no good result that you could say that was a great use of a half an hour or an hour of time. And yet, I remember lying on the grass, staring up at the clouds, watching the clouds go by and seeing different forms and figures. I bet 90 percent of kids under the age of 20 today have never done that for more than a very brief time, if at all. 

And so, you know, it's like the universe gave us the materials to grow our imagination, to facilitate the skill of contemplation and reflection and being at peace and being comfortable with ourselves. And those are all the skills that are probably most lacking. And then people have anxieties and they have their tendencies toward, you know, feeling if they're not busy or productive, they're failing. And then that can contribute to depression. And then you you you seek escape from from that by being entertained and then you're not comfortable with yourself and solitude. 

Ginny: Even John Taylor Gatto talks about that. You know, he talked about the gift of enjoying your own company. Know that when we practice solitude and we have times that are not filled with busyness, that we do learn to love ourselves and to love our own company. And that was a big theme that I read of his that I hadn't heard anyone really talk about before. And I hear you talk about it here with your daughter. She had her time of solitude or your own times of solitude and how those affect us for the rest of our lives. 

Andrew: [Yeah, another one I remember, I was in the house with my older daughter and a young man who was going to become her fiancee and we'd finished dinner and my wife was not back from wherever she was yet. And I realized that my youngest daughter, who was probably nine at the time, was not in the house, and it had gotten dark outside. So I poked out my head and I called her name and she answered. I said, “What are you doing?” And she said, “Sitting on a mound.” 

It was twilight. It was almost dark. The stars were just starting to come out. And we had this big pile of dirt that was from some leftover project or whatever. And I said, “Are you OK?” She goes, “Oh, yeah, I'm great.” And I just thought, “OK.” And I went back in the house and continued the conversation with the other kids, and I always remember that it's like, wow, how many of us would just have the willingness to go out and sit on a mound of dirt at twilight and watch the stars come out and think about everything or nothing? 

There's this huge business and countless books of people have written about how to use meditation to overcome stress and anxiety and depression and all of these things that are plaguing the millennials and the Gen X and whoever comes after. Everybody is looking for help to be happier. Truth is, I think if everyone had grown up and still had the habit to some degree of just being outside for no particular reason, we would be moving into that zone of getting the right kind of brain waves and all that stuff that now has to be technically described and defended in books. 

Ginny: Because learning to be by yourself and be who you are and be present in your environment… kids aren’t really having those opportunities. You know, it's interesting because we talked at the beginning about biographies, you know, and how that helps. I mean, that's helped me be more resilient in my pursuits because you see that everyone has ups and downs. And that may be part of this whole journey is for parents to hear stories like yours or stories like Bud and Me. Peter Gray changed me - a 13 year old that went to Europe by himself for two weeks?! That helps me gain perspective. 

Maybe that's part of this phase of life, which is that parents need to hear stories about how childhood was and how it was fine and and what came of it, you know, the beauty that came of it. 

So I really appreciate your time. If people are interested in finding out more about you finding out about IEW, we love the resources, we've got several of them here, Where can they find that kind of stuff? 

Andrew: Yeah, well, we have our website. It's easy. It's IEW.com. It's an easy website, three letter domain dot com. And then we have a special link. If you do slash and then free hyphen lessons, people can actually get three weeks for free. 

They can get our spelling if they're interested in a more auditory approach to teaching spelling. We have some writing lesson videos for about three weeks. And so you can try out most of our main products at no cost, no commitment. And increasingly, we've seen parents who aren't necessarily homeschooling full time, but they do want to enrich their children's education and learning even though they go to school. 

They're looking for things like the Fix-It Grammar that can be done in 10, 15 minutes a day that the schools aren't necessarily doing or doing well, you know, writing courses. We've had people get one of our writing courses and start over a vacation period and then the kids discover, “Oh, this is really going to help me with my school assignments.” We're having an increasing number of parents who are interested in supplementing whatever their kids are getting, if they're in a school or not, with some of what used to be considered just homeschool curriculum. 

So one thing I like a friend of mine said, and I've kind of repeated this many times, is every parent homeschools, it's just some do it more than others. So even if kids go to school all day, five days a week, you're still teaching them at home. And your choice is to do that consciously or not. 

But, you know, again, you don't want to fall into the time trap, the achievement that Louv talks about. It's OK to not do academics at home as well. It's OK to not have your kid in every single curricular activity. I guess the biggest thing that we love is freedom. We love the freedom to follow our intuition, follow our our promptings, follow the needs we receive in our children, whether that's just take the whole day off from school work and go outside or find something that we can do with them, that we know we would be valuable apart from whatever else they're already doing. So we all love freedom. 

Ginny: That's for sure. And even on your blog, you have a lot of resources. So there is an idea of writing what you're grateful for on a pumpkin. That was cute. There's a lot of poetry on there, which I thought was fun. That poem for Falder fieldmouse there's Thanksgiving poem, and Christmas haikus. There are quite a bit of gardening resources on your website, things about collecting in nature walks. There was a nature blog post. It had all sorts of resources on it for birds and wildflowers, links out of places to learn about butterflies and. So it's great, your website has a lot for parents. IEW.com has resources and curriculum. All those things help parents.

Let’s end with a favorite outdoor childhood memory of yours.

Andrew: Oh, boy. I was spear fishing at Catalina Island. I was probably 13 or 14. And I saw a very large halibut on the bottom of the ocean there, not far from where our boat was anchored. It was probably 14, 15 feet deep, not hard for me. I didn't have scuba gear, so I was just snorkeling. So I took a big breath and I went down as I got closer. This fish got bigger and bigger and I got more excited. And I had my spear gun and I hit it right in the head and this fish just took off. And at that moment, I realized that this fish was much bigger than I had ever experienced and it was getting bigger, stronger. And of course, a fish like that, when it gets hit with a spear, will head for deeper water. 

And so it just went and went and it was probably almost three feet. And this is not a fish story. I mean, that is a very big halibut. And when you're snorkeling, you can only be underwater for so long before you have to go up to the surface and not die. And unfortunately, this year, this fish came off my spear and then I went up to the surface and I took a huge breath and I looked down and I see this fish and of course, blood is coming out of its head. 

And I'm partly like, I have to get that fish. I can't just let it bleed out and die. Plus I really want to get that fish. And it was probably 30 feet deep. I mean, it was deeper than I had ever dove before. So I said, I'm going to try. I'm going to try. So I took this huge deep breath. I thought to myself, we're going to take a huge deep breath. I swim straight down for this thing. And of course, pressure builds up in your head after you get below about 20 feet. It's really painful and I'm not used to it. And my lungs are bursting. And I, I finally get close enough and I think, OK, I can I can hit this fish and I got as close as I could. I got it right in the head again. And of course it took off again. Only this time I'm like, OK, it's coming with me. And so I'm trying to swim for the surface. It's trying to go out into the deep water. And it was this battle.

And I did finally get to the surface and I managed to pull it up. And I am holding the spear. And this fish, I mean, it's twenty, thirty pounds. It's a huge fish. I'm holding it above the surface. My lungs, my ears, my whole head is like bursting out and I'm like, I didn't die and I got the fish and then I managed to get back to the boat. And of course my mom was like blown away because we had never had a fish this size before. And that memory and I don't know how old I was. I'm pretty sure I had to be in that thirteen, fourteen, maybe fifteen. But that was one of the memories where I was stretched to my absolute limit of what was physically possible for me to do. And I was blessed with some success. And, you know, it's just one of those things that just stuck with me and we had delicious halibut for the rest of that trip. But yeah, it could have gone the other way. I could have lost the fish or died, but it all worked out OK. 

Ginny: Well, I really, really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here with me today. 

Andrew: Well, thank you for all you do to inspire the countless parents who I know have been so blessed by the kind of lifestyle change that you have inspired in them. So keep up your good work too. God bless you.