Being a wandering nomad allows you to enjoy the variety of life. When we start to educate our children in different countries about different cultures and life, in general, this gives our kids a far better attitude to the world as we know it. But, when we move from place to place, it might not allow our children to settle. Some parents might think of this as a good thing. And while we need to encourage a healthy nomadic attitude in our kids, we’ve got to strike the right balance. What can we do to ensure that our children are getting the benefits of travelling the world while also giving them the support they need to thrive?
Give Each Place A Chance
Some families move every couple of months. Instead, you might want to think about settling somewhere for a year or so. You can always rent a property, so you have a base of operations. When our children have the opportunity to explore somewhere, they will indeed get the benefits of a varied education. Being nomadic is excellent for life experiences, but there can be that sensation of the ground moving beneath our feet and not having the opportunity to settle in before we move on. From one point of view, we can see that this will be better for children in an emotional sense, but if they never truly settle anywhere, this can instill some unhealthy behaviors later.
Living Within Your Means
You could argue that being nomadic is getting the opportunity to go everywhere, but if you hop from country to country, are you keeping track of your finances? As parents, we got to set a good example, and there will come a time when we will decide to settle in one place, and then life may catch up with us. We might realize that we haven’t learned many of the real-world skills. This is especially true in terms of money. Learning to live within your means can be difficult when you are going from country to country, and you need to purchase new documents. Living within your means is about lifestyle choices, not finding ways to earn more money. Many people now have the opportunity to work remotely so they can work wherever they want and this can be a lifesaver but learning to live within ours means is still a valuable lesson regardless of how much we earn.
Focus On The Experiences
When you are encouraging a nomadic sensibility in your children, it’s about those experiences. Regardless of the age of your children, if you start to focus on experiences rather than the lessons, your children will be able to develop a healthier attitude to stress. We all learn life lessons, and when we go from country to country, we can start to notice that a lot of life lessons are the same. We’re all human, after all. But sometimes we can benefit from truly appreciating just how lucky we are. Focusing on experiences in specific countries like South Africa can help us to have a newfound appreciation for life. Volunteering in organizations to work with the homeless or developing communities can help us all appreciate our lives.
Getting Out Of The Comfort Zone
One of the most important things we can all learn is to get out of our comfort zone. While in one respect, our children will be with us every step of the way, so what we do they will have to follow. But when our children don’t have much of a metaphorical security blanket, this is when we can start to see the frustration. Getting out of our comfort zone is a gradual process, and when we go to a new country, we can always find ourselves like a rabbit in the headlights. In one respect this helps us to find our feet, but when our children are continually being exposed to stress, it could have an adverse effect. We have to remember to gauge each situation.
Encouraging our children to travel more when they get older is a fantastic way for them to experience the world. But when we are a traveling family and hop from place to place, we must remember to set good examples. We may like the idea of going from place to place, but if our children don’t have a grounding, then they may not ever feel at home anywhere. By encouraging our children to be nomadic, they are going to develop in many ways, but we can’t underestimate the importance of a stable home. Moving around is exciting, but when we’ve done it so much, it becomes second nature. And it’s at this point that we might have to consider truly settling down. That nomadic sensibility will always be in our children, but it has to be a healthy one.
