Special: Jesper Conrad | Fatherhood, Worldtraveling & Unschooling - An interview by Earth Ozina

0:00:01 - Jesper Conrad
Ema reached out to me and asked if I was up for answering a bunch of questions from her and her followers on Instagram Live. I said yes, and Ema agreed that we could share the recording as a little extra episode to our podcast. You can find Ema on Instagram and on substack under the name Earth Ozone, where she shares her writing as a mother honoring motherhood. Please check her out. You can, of course, find the links in our show notes, and now I will hope you will enjoy this little extra episode of our podcast.

0:00:36 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
To start, I will tell you a little bit about our journey. So you have an idea and you know why I contacted you to do this part.

There was never a point like, oh, we are unschooling, but it has been more of a continuum journey. So I started this platform on Instagram, basically when my first daughter, who is 6 now, was a baby and I wanted to express myself and open the horizon. So we have 3 children the oldest is 6, the middle is 3 and a half and the youngest is the 1 year old baby. So we are still in the phase of early childhood, but there has never been a point where we are like, okay, now they need to go away, you know around. So I have been more searching in the topic and connecting with homeschoolers.

Unschoolers and every homeschooling community in Slovakia is sharing all your things all the time, listening to your podcast and I was like, yes, I like these guys and I want to know more. So I have been sharing on my platform about homebursts, about breastfeeding, about how is it to be a manager, how is it to raise your children in home environment, sharing and support community around and stuff like that. And, interestingly, unschooling is one of those tricky topics, I would say, because people get triggered with it. You know what I mean.

0:02:29 - Jesper Conrad
Oh yeah, where to start First. The fun thing about homeschooling and unschooling is, I think it's a thing for parents. If your children grow up at home with their parents, they are not by themselves thinking, hey, when can I leave this family life? It is us who are still in the process of needing to be school to understand that learning the school system is needed. Now our oldest is 23. We have one who is 16, one who is 13 and our youngest is 10. So we are sat down to road and my beard is also starting to get a little gray and all that. So we have been on this travel form many years.

Still, what I realized is it's not strange for the children, but it is us parents who still are in the process of removing the normal society from our life and understanding. And when we meet other people, then we try just to answer them politely, because it is not important for me to get their recognition. Me and my wife are very happy with what we do. We don't meet strangers who are opposing to unschool to convince them that it's the right thing. If people come to us, they will happily share and if it's people who are really interested. But sometimes people can find that very weird. But that's just society and it's crazy norms.

0:04:26 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
But the people who are often aggressive, it's the people who are hurting inside in my world and I find it very often that homeschoolers switch to the system when they have the internal fight themselves. They cannot decide, they cannot fight and it creates this tension and the homeschooling is not possible because this is the way you will fight. But if you have resolved inside of you and you really feel that this is the way that works for the family and for you, like you mentioned, it's absolutely normal for them.

0:05:12 - Jesper Conrad
It's absolutely normal. Me and my wife coached a couple just starting out. This Monday was the first time they didn't send their kids to a school and this kid started school and the parents were up and running about it. Oh it's wise. I had to say to them you know what your daughter? She doesn't care, she has been raised at home and for her not going to school is not special, she is just still at home. So often it is us parents who are in what we call the de-schooling process of spreading the society.

0:05:57 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yes, could you tell a bit more what is this cooling?

0:06:01 - Jesper Conrad
Yes, it's imagined having been in school for 10 years and growing up with the idea that this is normal and a lot of people who go home or on school, they have also chosen to go to a university or something else. So the parents around us, they, I myself I only went the normal years in public schools and then tree on a gymnasium, but I didn't want to do a university, and my wife has been six years to university and has a very high degree in psychology, and a lot of the homeschoolers also, and we have been raised and been leaving that the only place you can learn stuff is in the school setting.

0:06:54 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Make friends also. No, yeah, make friends and learn stuff on the school.

0:07:00 - Jesper Conrad
And that's what we believe and it's. I'm not here to pass or talk bad about the school system, but sometimes during our talk I will mention some of the stuff I find very weird with school. For example, the idea that learning only takes place if you're sitting down 28 to 30 people who were born in the same year in a classroom. That's the only place you can learn and has been imprinted into our mind because we have been in school for so many years. But it's quite fun because if you meet a person who is on having a career stuff, often they are not using what they learned on university.

What you can learn in a university and in a school setting is you can learn to learn and you can learn to obtain knowledge and you can get different system you can use to address a problem and that is also something you can do just by learning to live and handling the processes that are around you. So the de-schooling is for the parents to understand this on a deeper level, to be able to take the schooling out of yourself. And often we meet people like this probably me and my wife coach this morning. They aren't the process where it's normal for people to use some I call the mental crutches. It's oh, I'm responsible for my child's education. Then they take the school at home and buy the same books as the children in the school have, and then they sit in front of the desk in the kitchen and they do some stuff. And we did that when we started also.

0:08:52 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
We have never had this kind of not the problem, but transition with my husband, because we went through the schooling system with knowing that these things don't serve us and our qualities are somewhere completely out and we are like aware of our quality and we know when we use them. We are successful, a way that only means we are happy on a daily basis. It's not in a term of successful, but it is the biggest success.

0:09:31 - Jesper Conrad
That's also a fun idea that you get imprinted by society. I find it interesting that so many people. Let me start another place. If you look at the amount of self-help courses out there today, then you must answer. If the schooling system has some flaws, how can they succeed in making so many broken people who don't know what they want in life? They are not sure when they are happy, they are not content with just waking up in the morning, seeing the sun and the birds and the trees and feeling that they are okay.

And I was in school for 12 years. I can still have days where I am in search for the external praise from the out of world. Just this spring I left my career behind because we now have our own different projects, we are in money on, we have some investments and stuff. So it was much easier going to work than doing this like we have now, for example, because then I could just there came a paycheck. The paycheck is a simple up hey, you are a good human being, you have done your deeds and now you are going to be proud because you earned some money.

But it's not a question of if I was happy and that is the most important thing I believe we can do for our children and that is the added bonus of old schooling and world schooling and on schooling is that your children learn to pick out who they are without being in a setting. That is not normal. It is not normal to take 28 people who only have one thing in common, or two. They are born inside the same kind of area and they are born the same year. That's all they have in common. That's weird. Actually, I don't know how old you are.

0:11:47 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
I'm 27.

0:11:49 - Jesper Conrad
Oh, you shouldn't talk, I'm 47. Then I should only talk with people who are 47, because that is what.

0:11:58 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah.

0:11:58 - Jesper Conrad
Until you are finished with school. That is what is social life Talking with other people at the same age as you, and it's just. It's really weird if you think about what they call normal.

0:12:09 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah.

0:12:11 - Jesper Conrad
It's actually yeah, it's actually crazy.

0:12:14 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah, and then you end up having these children who are 10. They prefer to stay around the group and eat rolls, and their friends can't stay with those.

0:12:31 - Jesper Conrad
But that is becoming normal. If you take and put children into a school setting because you break the close bond between parents and children and the children ends up having their school mates as their primary contact. I believe that children's primary contact should be the parent and of course it can be provocative to say that this is broken, but if you decide to not be together with your children for 8 to 10 hours a day, then it's quite wild. We are staying with homeschooling families and that's one of the wonderful thing about traveling full time is that you reach out to people like you and you're also home school and this family. They have a giant farm where we have stayed with them now several years, where we come back, and now we're here just 10 days. Sometimes we've been here a month and our children are friends and we are friends.

0:13:43 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yes, that is a big advantage. You have right there to be traveling right, and one day I hope to come to the sanctuary in Spain where you're staying most of the time.

0:13:58 - Jesper Conrad
For people who don't know our story, then 5 years ago, in the summer of 2018, we set out in a big red bus in 1973 and decided that we would travel all over Europe in it, and it runs 2 kilometers per liter of diesel, which is crazy, and it turned out. It wasn't very fun to drive in an 11 ton car. It's difficult to park, you don't go to the beach, you don't go shopping, and we ended up having a park next to an animal sanctuary, where it has been for some years now. And then we have actually two other cars. We have a small one small in my world, it's a Volkswagen Caterwheel we can sleep in, and then we have recently rebuilt a new tiny house and wheels, which is Mercedes-Benz, which is 7 meters. So we are cognizant to preserve this animal sanctuary and it's wonderful, but now we have been there, we have lived there and we have seen it. So we are parked next to an animal sanctuary where we volunteer for a lot of the time, but now we want to travel more, so I think we will only be there a little.

There was one called Rights of Love. I can see who have asked at some point do you plan to eventually use a light classical education With the Doctorate Regent as the focus on healthy father authority. I would love for you to help me to deduct what the question is actually about Father authority. We are parents in a very different way. We try to only speak to our children in a way that I would also speak respectfully to my wife, and that is. It's a quite difficult task if you give yourself it.

Ask yourself the way you talk to your children. Would you ever talk to a grown-up person like that?

0:16:26 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yes, let's talk about this and give some sense.

0:16:31 - Jesper Conrad
It is super, super and of course, I believe all of us sometimes fall into the now you need to order in kind of business towards our children because we are still with slows and were brought up this way. But I strive to talk to my children as someone I actually love and respect and who believe, respect me back.

0:16:57 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
So I don't do a lot of fatherly authority what feedback. Do you feel like it works? Do you feel like it's a process of couple years?

0:17:07 - Jesper Conrad
Do you feel like I feel like I have become a much better parent during the years and there's a lot of different reasons. One is my knowledge of the world and stuff around me is a lot bigger than when I was 30, when I became that the first time, and you also see how you have taken your children. If you lose your timber and end up shouting which I believe every parent at some point might have done I know I have then you see it's just a mess and it takes longer time because then you need to say so You're sorry to your kids, which you are, and you need to help them get in a good mood and you need to rework on recreating the trust in the relationship. So it takes shorter time to actually get what you want by.

0:18:16 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
And also kind of mimic the behavior.

0:18:20 - Jesper Conrad
No, oh yes, and that's where we are also the fruits of our parents, so it's a big development I just looked up so fun. I haven't been beaten as a child, so that's not about it. But it was first in 1997 in Denmark that it became illegal to hit your children. That's wild, and in the States it's still legal for people and I actually think it says a lot about how people become adults and how they have aggression in their relationship if they have been beaten as a child. And I can't understand that countries still lawfully write to smack your child.

It's just crazy and we talk about it with our children about ages, because they meet it a lot in the world that people chop down to them. Sometimes we can be out in a social setting where people say hi to us and not our children, and our children are like what the fuck is going on? I'm right here. I'm a human being. Come on, they are polite enough to not say it to the person, but we talk about it afterwards. It's strange, why don't they say hi to us? So I try to remember it all the time. Of course, children can be shy and you can end up saying you always shouldn't disturb the child, but it's a human being. It's just a younger human being.

0:20:07 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah, I wanted to talk about also Looking for the right people. Like you were saying, we just move somewhere where we, would you say that unschooling is also possible if you are not full-time traveling?

0:20:29 - Jesper Conrad
Absolutely. Unschooling is a word that is easy for people to understand. It's school, but it's not school. But actually we don't do any form of classical. We just don't believe in schooling and we don't believe in curriculum no, nothing. We don't follow anything, we don't even unschool. We are just living our lives, because learning is a byproduct of living and if you succeed and that's where it's difficult for parents who have been in the school system if you succeed to not kill your child's lust to learn.

The humans are very curious, otherwise we wouldn't have built all this shit around us and made phones and stuff. Humans are some of the most curious species on Earth and we love to explore and learn and get knowledge. And this is what is sometimes killed if you force education onto a child, and this is what we try not to do with our children. We try to correct where, when they are interested in something, we guide them, we help them to seek information and right now my 16-year-old, for example. He is studying three or four different things he finds interesting and some of it is storytelling in books, different story formats, because he reads a lot and also in games how you build up characters, how you build up the world and a lot of stuff and he explains a lot of it to me and I try to be interested, but that part doesn't. It triggers me that I love to hear him talk but it's not a subject that is as interesting for me. So I divert the talk sometimes and talk about self-lifeline interest.

But to say, can you unschool without traveling? Absolutely the biggest part of unschooling, I believe, is to not kill your child but force your child to believe that education is boring by saying the need to do different stuff. And then there is a big difference between what I call on parenting and on schooling. Some people they read books about on schooling and end up believing that you are not allowed to be yourself as a parent, that you should. If my child wants to gain a computer all day, then I should just be signed with it because I am an on-schooler.

But if you are not signed with it, you are still the parent, you are still a human being living in that family. Then you need to speak your mind. I am not signed with my children saying the whole day I say what I feel about it and that is okay to do. But there is a better term than on-schooling. But, as I said, we are just living. We don't do terms or issues. But there is a better term I like, which is called self-directed learning, and it covers it more. But on-schooling is a more easy way for people, common and easy word to understand.

But the self-directed learning explains it more.

0:24:16 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
In my area in Slovakia, on-schooling is not even known, it's just on-schooling. But on-schooling really is something I as a human cannot comprehend and imagine in every family setting to have. It would be very structured, there would be lots of tension inside the children and it would just not be flowing.

0:24:40 - Jesper Conrad
No, no, no.

0:24:41 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Just have good weather and you go swimming instead of doing what you planned.

0:24:49 - Jesper Conrad
But it is for many people who start out. It's for many people who start out then it's very I call them crutches. If you have broken your leg, it's like a way to start out. You take the school home and then you start feeling good about that. You can take that responsibility. And it's quite wild to take over the responsibility for your child, because a lot of people have what are called outsourced the responsibility and I don't understand, where I am today, that people actually dare do it. But I understand it is easier. If your child haven't learned to read at whatever age the schooling system says it should, then it's not your fault, it's not your child's fault, it's the teacher's fault.

0:25:48 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
What do you mean? What do they call it? When you learn something, you get this from the others. You get this sensation of oh, I'm worthy. And it's also why I don't choose education in the system, because I don't want their self-worth to be based on something big.

0:26:26 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, you are absolutely right.

0:26:29 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Oh, my God, you are such a good girl. No, we don't do punishments, we don't do rewards. We don't start to live also to build your own self-worth. And what you were saying connection to like I am just happy because I am and I see the self-worth as a lie. And self-worth is another big topic because you have my generation who are like constantly looking for that kind of reward.

0:27:05 - Jesper Conrad
Absolutely, and we have been raised by. If you're in your age, then the social media have been around for a bigger part of your life and the schooling system also have started to work with you and get stars and stuff like that, and we are in a place where we don't do chores. We believe and it takes longer time that our children should, for example, help at home.

0:27:38 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
By themselves.

0:27:41 - Jesper Conrad
Because they understand that, hey, it's a family I take part in. Mom and dad have more time to do pun stuff and to see the value, and it would be much easier to just say go do this then, to ask politely and talk with your children and make them understand the value of what they are doing. But it also makes them understand their value.

0:28:07 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah, you know what, the little children who are just little, they just want to help all the time. I would have done it in 20 minutes, but okay, let's do it together slowly and that's what this learning at home that we cook for an hour, but it's an activity.

0:28:26 - Jesper Conrad
And I remember when the iPad's team we saw ourselves one day giving our kid an iPad because it was easier, and then we were like, okay, what are we doing? What is wrong here? But then of course, parents do it and we have done it as well. We are no saints, but I think the most important thing me and my wife does in our personal travel as parents is that we take the torch. And also when we start out, when we say, okay, did I really just give my child an iPad because I wanted to talk with you instead of involving my child in our talk. Okay, let's be better.

I always strive to be better and to accept that we don't punish ourselves. But I just admit here, with the talk to you, how we have done as well, because otherwise people can think, oh, I'm a fat parent, no, but your parent will maybe drain because you've been at work 10 hours away and then you don't care to use time with your child because it's talk so much and you need to do the dishes and cook and we have food and have something ready for tomorrow. And then it's easier to just, yeah, let someone else handle it, for example, an iPad, and that is quite sad when you get down to looking at it, but it's understandable, because people are drained, because they are spending too much time on work or social media. Yeah, here we are.

0:30:10 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Also find this interesting, that it's, whatever situation there is, you're involved and there is other way of just, and it's a bit gift because, yeah, it would be easy to drop the kid in the morning, see it in the evening or never go to this class around, and then it would be an easier option, but also you lose an opportunity to show them from a human perspective. Look, I look, I make mistakes, but I can make progress or I can resolve with my partner, or I can. I don't know, because part of my family is my friend is seeing how I interact with my family, meaning my parents, and seeing the evolution of the relationship, and I don't hide from them. I say at this and I explain and I try to do my best and this also part of this experience that you don't separate your parts of your life and just involve your child where it's suitable or whatever it is.

0:31:40 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, and a fun thing. When I look back at the educational history and also just how we take care of children today, then I'm 47. And when I grew up it was something like 10 to 50% only. That was in nursery homes, where today it is 80 or 85 in Denmark and that's on 40 years. It have changed from being weird to send your child to a nursing home and kindergarten was more normal. But if you go back to the 50s in Denmark, which is only 70 years, then kindergarten's were only for poor people where there was only one parent, so that parent couldn't both work and be at home. So it was places to store your child where you was out working, and today it has become the norm that we somehow.

I believe that there. I don't believe it's freedom for women to separate from their children. I believe that part of the freedom fight. There's no doubt that stuff was wrong, the way women were treated earlier. But now, if you can work from home or if you as a couple can decide that one of the parents stay at home, then the ultimate freedom is to be able to choose to stay with what matters most, which is the light, yeah, but the wall on school day and I end up talking a lot, so please ask questions if you have something.

0:33:45 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
I wanted to ask about two things, so I give you the two questions so you can. You were, your son was starting to be school age. You took him to try the school. He didn't like it and he never went. Then you try the homeschooling, but you were just like, no, we are just going to live like it. And then, first, still in one place, you still didn't travel, right.

0:34:21 - Jesper Conrad
Yes, yes.

0:34:24 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
And so they were little, they were like yours apart yeah.

0:34:31 - Jesper Conrad
The story.

0:34:34 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Sorry, no, please, and I just, my kids are still very small, but it's very. Sometimes it can get challenging because they have so many needs of little, tiny humans and I want to be there and help them with everything and they're just learning to work with their emotions. You know, it's completely different than when they are 10. So I cannot imagine yeah.

0:35:03 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah. So then what I decide? Your question is Okay. Sometimes, as a parent, I don't feel that I'm doing it good enough towards my children and my my. The fun way to train that around is you are one person to treat children Right.

0:35:33 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
No, we are at home with my partner both of us.

0:35:38 - Jesper Conrad
Okay, then you're two parents to treat children. Okay, let's take a school setting, or let's say they are not in school yet it gets worse when they are school. Kindergarten, there might be three adults to 22 children. So who do you think will do the better job? Yes, you will. You will be a shitty mom. Sometimes you will be a great. You haven't slept good enough and you don't feel you're doing it good enough, maybe, but the alternative.

0:36:13 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah.

0:36:14 - Jesper Conrad
Well, that are foreign from your children, that don't have loved them with all of their heart. In the same way, who do you think does the better job? And I think it's very easy. So yes, of course it is. You're capable also see you when you aren't filled with the energy.

0:36:42 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
And if it changes a lot how it is when they are.

0:36:49 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, it's. Life is complicated and it's just different stuff. Some of it is a lot easier Going to the toilet as an adult alone with one baby on. If you haven't tried that, I've been truly missed. That changes. You get the toilet to yourself, for example, or you take a shower without making sure that everybody's OK, so you get more free time. And when they start to read is wonderful, they want to start to read.

0:37:27 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
From wanting to make them sleep nap times baking for a trip, and give myself peace and respect for that capable. And I thank God that.

0:37:42 - Jesper Conrad
I don't know if you with the sleeping and some people call it coachly, it was a term. We just see it's not an, isn't? It's not a book we have read. We just go to sleep, sleep in the same bed, and we actually still prefer to sleep in the same room Because it's just nice. It's nice to be able to hear each other breathe and you sit with each book. So, yes, it gets easier. When they start to read, that's fantastic, but then when they become teenagers, there's a lot of. It's a wise transition in a life to become A teenager. You go through so many emotions and then you are the ones they talk with, which is wonderful, but sometimes you can have a teenager just talking for three hours, and so it's different challenges, but it's. I wouldn't change it.

0:38:44 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah, but the dynamics of siblinghood, that's what you ask.

0:38:53 - Jesper Conrad
Would you?

0:38:55 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
supporting the relationship that they are growing up this way, that it is a class on their siblinghood.

0:39:04 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, and then there has been written a very short but wonderful article about the sibling jealousy and basically what she says in it is sibling jealousy comes from the children not feeling seen and heard by their parents. They like each other but they want the. They want to be fooled by their parents and understood and heard.

0:39:37 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
We had the sorry to interrupt you.

0:39:39 - Jesper Conrad
No, no, please.

0:39:40 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Because I just give an example we had. So our daughter was born one year ago and maybe when she was half year our oldest started to be jealous of the father and we realized what we did was like the middle one went to him super like this and the small one was with me and she was like, what do I do? And then it was about my husband, who had to reestablish the relationship with her from not being a baby anymore who who needs all this? But from being also like a baby, being also like little, like a child already not a baby, but a child and to give her this, I see you and we do this activity of drawing together and we do bicycling together and I have interesting talks with you. And that's when the jealousy disappeared. It took a couple. It took a couple.

But it's very intense emotionally because of course but what do I do? What do I do? But it was, I couldn't really do anything because she wanted to reestablish that with Thomas and of course. That's also a beautiful learning we had.

0:41:09 - Jesper Conrad
And it is just super wild. I took from experience of our oldest. We had her on an alternative school. That was our personal journey. I knew family number 4 or 5 or 6 in Denmark that started homeschooling at that period. Maybe there was more, but it was so uncommon we hadn't heard about it and we didn't know the options. So our oldest went to school, but a very alternative preschool based on a French reformist called Silesien Franeuil A very interesting thing in a school which is they have groups from 6 years to 12 years and you go in the same group. So they don't believe in ageism in that way. But I remember the feeling I had with our oldest where, whatever there was, I searched for the responsibility to be placed outside the family Because we had outsourced her education and emotional well-being in those hours.

And I think it's okay to accept that it is actually quite hard to take on the responsibility of your child's emotional well-being and education.

0:42:49 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
But it's so simple, you just ask them.

0:42:54 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, but it doesn't mean you can get into an intern in a term. Am I doing it good enough? If you aren't questioning yourself, you aren't doing it good enough. That's the important part.

0:43:09 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yes, we also had a moment during this jealousy phase that we were like, okay, we will go and see some.

0:43:18 - Jesper Conrad
There must be someone else who can fix it for us.

0:43:22 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
And we went to see the alternative school and we went and we laughed. I was like oh, I want to go, I want to go to this school. We went home and I asked the children and they were like no. But to them the concept of going there even was like distant galaxy. They would not comprehend it, or something.

0:43:55 - Jesper Conrad
We actually tried to ask our children still if they want to go to school and one of them said, yeah, that could be fun. One of our girls said that could be fun, how is it? And we said every day that's crazy. And I was thinking maybe once a month could be fun or something and I just loved that I could be going to try.

0:44:23 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
And we went to school, and we went to a school or a gathering.

0:44:28 - Jesper Conrad
Yes, there is something in Germany here in September where we hope to meet other people, and we should have been to something in the UK, but then we traveled and meet with the school and our travels All the way. People are in their journeys. Some people start with home schooling.

0:44:52 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Just meet people on regular basis, also outside. Of.

0:45:01 - Jesper Conrad
People is not difficult, but the again the schooling process. It's quite fun that you as an adult believe that children need to be surrounded by 27 or 28 people on the same age and that they need to have at least two or three play dates a week and they need to hang out with friends. If you turn that around and look at yourself and look how you, as an adult, prefer to live, I do not want to be socially active with a lot of friends three to four times a week. When I want to be socially active, when I want to be socially active, I want two good friends and maybe two times a week maximum. One is fine enough.

Some of my best friends, one of my best and oldest friends we talk every year, every second year. We are what I call now. I call it, we are lives, what's the word? Not watchers, but we are like we follow each other's life on a deep emotional level and I will find a witness like witness. He's a witness to my life and I'm a witness to his life and we are cool enough with talking two times a year and we feel emotionally very fantastic and it's one of my best friends. And turning that around to my friends. When we talk with them about visiting their friends, they are like, yeah, it could be, yeah, I would like to see him, maybe during the fall, it's fine. And then they hang out for some days and then they have a good balance. Right now, actually, we have a one of my son who is 16, best friends.

We got to know them when he was in Denmark as 10 years old. His mom wrote out in the Danish home school community any home schoolers out there would love to come and meet. And we were like, yeah, come and you can stay with us for some days. And then they lived together with us for a week and our children became friends, even though they didn't share language. And then we went and visited them in France Now and that's also a fun way on schooling and home schooling can work and one school His mom.

He was in a state where he was like, mom, I really want to be better at speaking English. And she was like, why don't you go and try to live with someone and still gain this? I don't want to do that. But what? It's the comrades, you could just go on and stay with them for a month. And she knew how we are. And so she called us and said hey, can Swan, come and hang out with you guys for a month? And you're like yes, but we are traveling in a seven meter car. So we built a bed on top of the driver's seat and the co-pilot's seat for him, and then we have been together with us now for five weeks and go home on Tuesday and his sole goal was to force himself into a reality where he needed to speak English.

0:48:43 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Wow.

0:48:44 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, and now his English have been tools like crazily during five weeks, because often it's the question of dairy, because you have to work out your dairy, but you're not just not used to using it. He still has a very French accent and it's fun and I can only say forget, so we don't talk a lot in French.

0:49:07 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Also I get a situation like this. One just describes you don't. Okay, I don't want to offend anyone who is in the school system, but you have as opportunity to have just random things falling into your life.

0:49:26 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah, there is space for it, and our oldest is 23. Our youngest is 10. And at some point I did a calculation saying how many years would we be forced to live around this school? We it was a fantastic school, and it was more than 20 years. We would have children in school, and that was just terrifying because it also meant that I, as a person, needed to live the same place. And if you start to living at the world like that, then you ask yourself how much of my life is planned for how many years ahead, because I want my child to be in a school, because you want your child to be in school. Then you also end up in a reality where you need a house and it needs to be close to the school Okay, then you need, and if it's far away from the school, you need two cars maybe and stuff like that. So there's so many choices in people's life, that one being to not being around their children.

0:50:45 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
One important, interesting questions I wanted to ask was about your project that you have coming up and about the coaching you do, and about so, when there is five people in the family, everyone has something they want to fulfill their own cup, and also it includes the parents, and you will always have to discuss these things. Otherwise you have one person, oh yes, and you only discuss more.

0:51:22 - Jesper Conrad
to older the kids.

0:51:24 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Yeah.

0:51:26 - Jesper Conrad
Yeah and yeah. That is that we chose a lot Together and with our children and we try to make plans for then stuff happens that comes up that are interesting, and then we do something else. But there's a lot of talking and we try to plan in chunks where it's okay. We want to be in Germany for 14 days and then everybody have a saying what they want to see. Then we want to go to France, and now we actually have the longest plan.

Now we go to Sweden in a week and then we come back to Denmark, I hear, for a week and go to Germany for one to two weeks. Then we go to France, to Normandy, then we want to go to the Camino, so we will walk the Camino, then we will stay a little in Barcelona, and then I'm already stressed out by all these things. So I'm like, can we find a place to just chill? So we will try to find a place during the winter to just hang out For some months. But so a lot of planning and, most of all, the most important part is to not have a parently decision on what is important. We keep remembering to ask our children what is it you want?

0:52:54 - Ema Werner aka Earth Ozina
Can you? Tell us a little bit about your projects.

0:52:56 - Jesper Conrad
Yes, I'm in love with an instrument called the hand pand, so we have made an online course platform where people can learn about the hand pad. Then we coach people Sicilians and train psychologists. Basically, we say to people hey, you're okay, there's nothing wrong with you, chill. It's the world that is crazy, it's not you. There you can save a lot of money just remembering those words. It's the world that is crazy.