If you’ve never worldschooled before, it can be very common to browse through Instagram and Facebook and get a case of FOMO. It’s so easy to romanticize traveling long-term with your family. While family travel and worldschooling are incredibly valuable, it often comes with unique challenges that you may not see on social media.
We’ve asked three veteran worldschooling families what challenges they face on their worldschooling journey and how they overcome them.
Challenge 1: The mental load of travel planning
If you’re traveling for a long period and hopping from location to location, it can be very tiring to always have to figure out daily life in a new place. Everything from finding accommodations, transportation, and even the nearest medical facility in case of emergency can be exhausting to do over and over again.
“Everything is new and takes a lot more thought and care, even seemingly small things like going to the grocery store,” Tiphini Axtell, full-time travel mom of three teenagers and creator of the_axplorers social media brand.
“We call this travel planning fatigue and it is a common thing experienced among full-time travelers.”
It’s especially hard if you’re doing remote school and work and need to be online at a certain time of day. Trying to locate good internet and sync time zones just adds to the stress.
“Between time zones and spotty wifi, it’s a bigger challenge than we anticipated.”
To offset some of the workload, Austin Croteau, another full-time travel mom of three kids, recommends using worldschooling Facebook groups as much as possible.
“Join every worldschooling/location-based Facebook group you can,” says Croteau, who runs the @thewingingitmom Instagram account.
“You may think Facebook is dead, but I can’t tell you how much information I’ve learned from worldschooling Facebook groups from pop-up hubs we want to join, to accommodation recommendations to just being able to ask a community of like-minded people questions!”
There are several worldschooling Facebook groups you can join: Worldschooling Notice Board, We Are Worldschoolers, Worldschoolers, Digital Nomad Families, and Worldschool Hubs & Events Community just to name a few.
Challenge 2: The urge to overpack
We’ve all felt the urge to pack that one outfit we’ve never worn or that 3rd pair of shoes…. just in case. And oftentimes, when you’re traveling with little kids, the urge is even stronger to pack it all into your suitcases: all the diapers, all outfits, and all the snacks.
Not only can this packing style lead to extra luggage fees, but it’s also just a huge hassle to manage heavy luggage while also managing kids.
“We all strive to pack light, but with travel worries underpinning our packing, we often pile too much into our bags,” says Stephanie Tolk, founder of Deliberate Detour.
“Yet we’re so much happier freely navigating city streets with light bags than we are with heavy ones.”
Her advice is to join expat Facebook groups in your destination and ask, “What can I not get in this city?” Or “What’s expensive there that I should bring from home?”
“In Costa Rica, it’s peanut butter. Pack that, and plan to buy most of what you need on the road.”
Croteau agrees that packing light makes traveling more enjoyable.
“Almost anywhere you travel in the world they have kids of their own and will most likely have everything you need. For example, diapers, pacifiers, wipes, medicines, clothes, shoes, literally anything…especially in Asia!”
Another packing tip, according to Croteau is to invest in quality, durable luggage.
“We spent a lot on our travel stroller and two pieces of luggage which have all held up amazingly. However, our 1 large suitcase was from TJMax and it has broken six months into our travels. I’d rather spend twice the price and have something last, especially since you are using it so often.”
Challenge 3: FOMO
“When you first start traveling full time you want to see it ALL but that is a surefire way to burn out,” says Axtell.
It’s natural to want to see and do everything in a city — after all, you may not have a chance to return! But most family travel veterans recommend a slower travel schedule, especially if you have younger kids and plan to travel for weeks or months at a time.
“When we begin to research a new country, we may feel drawn to all there is to do, from north to south, east to west,” says Tolk. “But when we move too fast a few things happen: 1) we tire out from the transitions, 2) we miss the opportunity to immerse into the local community, 3) we never learn about richer, more authentic opportunities and remain tourists, surrounded by tourists.”
Slowing down helps you appreciate the natural rhythm of the location, often allowing you to form deeper connections with locales and other travelers.
Challenge 4: A rigid academic plan
Most new worldschoolers start with a very specific vision for what and how their kids will learn. While having a plan is good if it helps to provide a direction for your travels, it can become a problem if you feel you must stick to the plan even when obstacles inevitably arise.
“We pulled our children out of public school to worldschool and had a vision of meeting state standards while abroad, with my husband teaching math and science and me teaching humanities,” says Tolk.
“That flew out the window rapidly due to 1) our children wanting us in the parent role rather than the teacher role; 2) our parental lack of consistency and rigidity, and 3) the allure of new cultures that were more appealing than sitting in front of computers.”
Axtell agrees. While most worldschooling families strive to educate their children outside of the classroom, often what happens is families will simply implement classroom practices while on the road.
“Despite having done a lot of work to retrain our brains about all the different ways education can look, we still had a bit of a fixed/rigid mindset around what “real learning” needed to be.”
Over time, however, her family became comfortable with the fact that learning doesn’t always involve books.
“We have found that we are soaking up so much by simply living in new places, interacting with locals, visiting museums and historical sites, etc. The learning the kids are doing is so rich and seems to stick with them more than just reading about a place in a book.”
“My advice is to keep your eyes open for experiential learning opportunities on the road, notice all the children are absorbing, and value learning that’s happening apart from state standards,” adds Tolk.
Challenge 5: Desire for non-stop big adventures
What we see on travel Instagram most of the time is non-stop crazy adventures: from scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef to hiking Machu Picchu, these posts usually generate the most love on social media.
However, don’t feel bad if your travel budget doesn’t allow for these grand adventures. Traveling with kids is still worth it — and often, the biggest opportunities for growth and connection come in tiny moments from finding a new favorite cafe to figuring out how to communicate in a new language.
“The most magical moments are often the smallest. You take off expecting to have all these non-stop epic adventures and you do sometimes. But really the juicy goodness comes in the smallest of encounters and moments.”