Latest / The Uncommons / Why We Chose Homeschooling for Our Kids | Ep9

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Why We Chose Homeschooling for Our Kids | Ep9 · The Uncommons

• speaker-0: is homeschooling the right thing to do or not. speaker-1: School is not just about education. They are being exposed to a culture. speaker-0: Just even the form of school and the way the kids are sitting. They were developing these kids for the revolutionizing of the society for production. Molding these free spirits into a cage. speaker-1: I want them to be raised with our values, not with an institution value. The amount of education, honestly, the kids need to be ahead of school curriculum is four or five hours a speaker-0: If you want to teach him history, think AI should teach him Benjamin Franklin himself. We'll come out and teach him history of the US. speaker-1: In the U.S., kids are exposed to porn between the age of seven and 10. That's the reality of the world today. It's scary for me to send my kids to school. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's episode. We're your hosts, Harisa, Paige. And today we're going to talk about the idea of homeschooling kids. We pulled our kids out of school two years ago. We made that decision. Well, so this is the second year that they're out of school. And we have three kids, the little one doesn't really count because he's turning three next week. He's alive. We kept him alive for three years. Big achievement. The middle one is five, turning six soon, and the oldest one is eight. So those two would technically be at school, second grade and kindergarten. We started homeschooling because of a few reasons. ⁓ One was our lifestyle, we travel a lot. Second was our values and what... speaker-0: Thanks. speaker-1: how we wanted to raise our kids and the upbringing that we wanted to have for our kids and the standard that we set for that. But mainly it was this idea that we were raised with the theory that kids are like a blank slate and you can mold them and you can make them become this thing that you have the ideal image that you have in your mind. And that's how we were raised. But another perspective would be that they're born with certain traits and certain personality, certain nature and certain strength. So our job as parents are not really the manufacturers to make them into what we want them to be, but rather it's we are the facilitators to help them grow and become better at what they're already good at and the way they were born. So that's how this idea of homeschooling started because then in that sense, we need to really know and have the one-on-one attention with each kid to know what's their strengths, what's their weakness. Do we want to double down on their strengths? Do we want to help them a little more with their weaknesses, to help them along the way with where they're going and the gifts that they're born with? That's how we look at it, right? So that's how we started thinking about homeschooling. mainly, I don't want to get political today. but there's a lot going on at schools now, especially in California, especially in certain states, that we didn't want, we want our kids to be exposed to the world, but we don't want them to be exposed to everything at this age. Maybe later on, they'll be more ready for it. But there are certain things that we definitely don't want them to be exposed to that we will cover. But also, it's been a gift for me. It's the best. thing that we did, honestly, because that's how I feel about it. I know you have some objections to that, and I know there are certain things that you're concerned about, but let's go with it. I'm very happy. The last two years have been amazing for me, a lot of work, but it's been great. speaker-0: Yeah, I agree to most of that and the reasons why we chose to do what we chose. We thought about it a lot. Our older son was eight, who was from a different mom, started going to school at two. And ⁓ I think he did really well at the age of two. And, you know, at the time, I didn't know it was the right thing or not, but we just the level of what I thought he would get at home, I didn't think was going to be adequate for him to grow. But I think I was wrong. You know, to what he needed, just, you know, your mom kind of a thing, right? But also his mom needed to work and so forth. I think that was where we started having our first child in school and then ⁓ Mika, our daughter, who's very poised and very wild and opinionated and she knows what she wants, she doesn't want. She was going to a Montessori school and she hated it. speaker-1: She actually brought up the idea of homeschooling. She brought it up. she came, she was three and she came home one day and she's like, mom, please don't send me to school. Don't send me to school. I want to be homeschooled. I'm like, what do mean? I want to be homeschooled. She's like, cause you know, I don't go to school and I stay home and you teach me and I'll be homeschooled. And I'm like, ⁓ okay. That's an idea. speaker-0: Yeah, she's incredible. she's... ⁓ speaker-1: I don't know where I should get it from. It's like the idea of... speaker-0: Yeah, I don't know where these kids get half of this stuff from because they don't go to school, right? And we limit their exposure to screens. speaker-1: Yeah, they didn't watch TV until very recently that I'm new and improved mommy so I let them watch 20 minutes a day which most of the times they forget but if they remember they'll watch 20 minutes. speaker-0: Yeah. And what I've seen with the kids on the screen time is that they become extremely creative with their time. Right? So they're not, know, and I know we're talking about homeschooling, part of homeschooling is the kids that they interact with. Right? And what they learn from that. They learn more from the kids, which I love. I like the idea. He's being exposed to everything, good, bad and evil. speaker-1: Yeah, you wanted to send them to public. speaker-0: I still think it's your public school, not full-time, but ⁓ I went to private school and I went to public school and then private school and then public school. And as I got older and I went from a private school like a posh private school in Iran to before the revolution to a public school, it was, I was in beginning of junior high school or junior high school-ish at the time, before, like right at the beginning of junior high. And the kids that I saw in public school, they're like, these kids were smoking and cursing and shit I've never seen before in my life. And it was like going to another world because I wasn't prepared to deal with these people. It was weird. And when I moved to the US, we lived in LA. speaker-1: Mm. speaker-0: And they were doing mandatory busing to integrate the black kids and the white kids. And I got bused that I didn't speak English well. I had just come to the US and I was hanging out with all the black kids. And they were great. They were my best friend. the first week I was there, I was getting my ass kicked every day. And it was rough. That was traumatizing. But I learned to cope. I learned. that I was a small kid and all these big, huge basketball player kids, you know? And I made sure that within three or four months of me being in that school, I controlled the school. was like a mafia. speaker-1: That's you. That's your personality. speaker-0: Yeah, but I learned. But I tell you, I learned. I had to survive. I don't know. mean, you become who you are and your personality develops. When I came from Iran to the US, you know, I lived in a nice house. I was a pampered kid and I moved here and we were immigrants. You know, you have money issues and I get, you know, getting my ass kicked every day. had to, you know, and then when I couldn't move back. the regular school that wasn't being bused, I had to ride my bicycle for like an hour to get to school. was like not what I was used to. And it toughened me up. I wasn't the same kid as I left Iran. And I think part of my, I don't know if it's successful for me, whatever success I think I got, I attribute the fact that I was an immigrant. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: The idea and the concept of kids having some pressure on them for growth, I think is great and it's healthy. It's just like our residents and interns when we train them, we put a lot of, mean, not these days anymore, but back when, when doctors were doctors, offensively, is that, when you're on your 36 hour shift and you're, beat up and you you can't think anymore and you have to push yourself to otherwise your patient's gonna die, it allows your brain to function at a different level. There is a level that it drops off, You stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, your learning capacity goes up, but at one point it just drops and good teachers, professors or whatever is to know when to do that, when to stop, right? speaker-1: But the tricky thing is that there is no formula, so each kid has their own. speaker-0: They're all different. So going back to homeschooling, the main reason that we started homeschooling was we put our son in a kindergarten, in a great school, a private school, and they had, you know, I went there and I'm like, oh my god, these guys have a robotics class and they make robots and they have the geography teachers, you know. teaching them geography by going to a new place and taking videos and bringing it about like crazy shit. You know, I was like, ⁓ my God. speaker-1: podcast lab for their first graders. speaker-0: First grades at Paul, yeah. So they do out of the box stuff, which we both thought it was like, oh my God, this is great. Super expensive. One of the best schools happened to be in Vegas because the Vegas school system sucks. It's a disaster. But this one particular grade school, and we went to eighth grade, is like top 10 in the country. Right. So great. put them there. And even in that, we realized speaker-1: like 50 years speaker-0: that they were not able to identify some of the gifts that our kid had and some of the not so gifted things that he had, right? So we are... speaker-1: Kids don't get the one-on-one attention. They No matter how great the school is, no matter what the teacher to student ratio is, it's not possible to be able to distinguish each kid in each subject matter and be one-on-one close to them. Especially, some kids are bolder, they stand out. Our son is not that type. He is more reserved. So it's much more difficult. because he wouldn't voluntarily show what he's good at unless somebody by chance stumbles upon something that he's really good at. speaker-0: Yeah, I again, you know, you and I agree on most of this would be on some. ⁓ don't think it's humanly impossible to have teachers that are in tune with their their their students and understand what it is. ⁓ Like that school, I don't think a 24 year old would be in tune enough or experienced enough to be able to identify speaker-1: to go. speaker-0: different variations of kids. you know, smart, not so smart. speaker-1: But you don't know what you get. Even if you go to the best school and pay like 30, 40k a year kid, you don't know what you get as far as a teacher. You could get lucky in public school. You could get lucky and have the best teacher. know, when we were looking at private versus public, what's around us, I talked to our moms in our neighborhood who send their kids to the public school and they said, well, it really depends, especially after COVID. It's crazy. Like whatever you talk to people about these days. It's like, especially after COVID, there's a caveat, right? Especially after COVID, you could get some good teachers, but if you get lucky, basically. And then you've got to be on top of it. You've got to volunteer at school. You've got to do this. So it's not like a send them to school and done sort of thing anyways. But it was just one of those things that we tried it. We enrolled him for the best school. And I don't think it's about which school we send them to. I think just the idea of the way schools work wouldn't fit what we are looking for, at least at this stage of their lives. Maybe five years on the road, three years on the road. I'm not married to the idea of homeschooling. I think we might change our mind. Most of our friends who've done homeschooling or tried homeschooling for a few years, usually when the kids get to 12, 13 year old, they're like, screw you guys. I don't want my parents anymore. I just want friends. They're gone. They want to go to school. Our kids, when we give them the ⁓ option of do you want to go to school or not, of course they said no, they want to stay home because at the time the oldest was six years old. I mean, what do you expect? Maybe you're right. Maybe they could give the one-on-one attention or be so in tune with the kids, which comes with experience. But then there's no guarantee that you would get that amazing teacher, especially when you look at teacher salary, which is very low. finding amazing teachers. It's just harder than ever now. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. So especially at these instrumental years, one of the things that I think you are right and like I think about it more and more now is that, you know, the cruelty of the children that surround your kids and I don't care where you go. Like, you know, I came to this, you know, this great school and there was, you know, one kid that was just like bullying everybody and just being speaker-1: six years. speaker-0: They bring the trauma of their home life into the school. at least getting immune enough until the kids are resilient enough and they'll build their resilience and understand what's right or wrong and have a better form of who they are before they get exposed to that. As opposed to getting exposed at a younger age where they haven't developed their own little defense mechanism. speaker-1: and transfer to speaker-0: I think it's an important excuse and I'm really happy about that. I just still think that the social aspects of socialization, interacting with other kids and so forth is really important. I think one of things that we need to consider now, when I took Leon, my son, to his dental appointment, he had to pull his teeth because of his accident. So we're trying to find teeth for him. So we to this prosthodontist and he was homeschooled. and a great guy and he was saying, it was great because you know, my fondest memories are all the homeschool kids used to hang out with each other. Before we made a decision, I listened to the book called, what is it called? Mass Instruction, Weapons of Mass Instruction and talked about just even the form of school and the way the kids are sitting. speaker-1: Weapons of man speaker-0: They're developing, they were developing these kids for the revolutionizing of the society for production. They wanted to get mass production. They wanted to get workers that are all the same. I I hate to say that, but even with my businesses, I want to make sure that we have the standard of care for our patients that are exactly the same. speaker-1: house of schools started. speaker-0: So all providers are, you gotta do this and you gotta do that. We wanna make sure that we do that. So the schools were done the same way. It was a Polish design school of producing workers. Right, so they get them at a young age, as young as possible, put them in school, in rows, obedient, you can't talk, you have to wear uniform, you have to have, know, and this is what you could do. Imagine a kid who's full of life. speaker-1: . speaker-0: And we can see our kids. Our kids can sit still for a minute. speaker-1: They can. They cannot. And if we put them at a camp or something for like a couple of hours, come home and they were telling us what to do the whole time. Like for them, it's like it. speaker-0: like y'all know them. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the so so they beat these kids to to sit still for eight hours. I can't sit still for eight hours. Right? speaker-1: They don't, move around a little bit. Yeah, they go to recess and... speaker-0: While at school, and then recess and Allah by the way, it's not normal for kids. They're molding these free spirits into a cage. Right? speaker-1: Yeah. I mean, schools are more, more like luxurious and glorified these days. So it's not like the tables are not like the benches that we sat on. They're a little more pretty and colorful and all that. it's the concept of it is the same thing. The biggest thing for me was and is that I am not ready for my kids to be raised by an institution. School is not just about education. They are being exposed to a culture. If there are 24 different kids in a room, each one of them brings their stuff from their home. So your kid is being exposed to 24 different homes and whatever that kid comes with, it could be their emotional baggage, it could be their mom and dad fighting, it could be whatever they're exposed to at home. Plus, now each kid's age of four and above these days have a phone in front of them. So the amount of exposure they get or tablet, the amount of exposure they get with that is added. And then our kids go, they don't have any screen at home, they don't have phones, they don't have tablets, and they are being raised with our values and nothing else, right? And I don't want them to go to school and be institutionalized. I don't want them. other people, teachers that are minimum wage, other kids' trauma, whatever they bring from their home to be raising my kids, you know? And I think exposure is important. I think exposure is extremely important. I agree that the kids need to see hardship. They need to see what other people, but they need to have a sense of reality, of life. Obviously, I don't want my kids to be isolated and not know what world we live in, but... I personally think it's important for them how they get exposed and how much they get exposed at what age. If the idea that kids are born with set of strengths and gifts and we need to just facilitate and make sure that they go towards what their gifts are, if that idea is true, I think one of the biggest roles that we have as facilitators, as parents, is to remove roadblocks. And some of those roadblocks are implied at schools. It's emotional traumas, emotional difficulties that kids are exposed to at school. we're talking about very young age, right? At this age, our oldest is eight year old, the emotional stuff that they're exposed to at school and for eight hours that they're gone, they're suppressing the whole thing. I don't think they have the emotional skills to regulate enough. Like right now at home, We help them to regulate. Like I can be there. And by the way, there's three of them. They bully each other. They fight. They still have all that. They have their own ecosystem, you know? But I'm there if I need to facilitate an emotional regulation, if I need to help them, like, take care of each other a little better, if I need to help them not bully each other, you know? But at school, I'm not there. And honestly, I don't trust the teachers enough. I don't think they have the bandwidth. to be there, be present for every little thing that happens. So that's just what I feel. And again, I am aware that I have this shortcoming that I want as a mom, I wanna be overprotective, I wanna protect them from the world, I want them to be ⁓ isolated in a way and not be exposed to a lot of shit in the world, but I'm aware of that. So I don't want that for them. Like I don't want to be that overprotective parent. I want to be able to let them go and be exposed to shit, but I want them to be exposed to it when at least emotionally they've had enough growth. And I want them to be raised with our values, not with an institution value. speaker-0: I get that, but they need to learn how to remove these obstacles themselves and not you. Eventually, but some of these obstacles and the learning of those obstacles has different layers. know, obstacles that are, you know, grade one, grade two, grade 10 are different obstacles, right? And if it's, I think it's a fine balance. It's a fine balance is, you know, you remove enough obstacles. speaker-1: Eventually... speaker-0: that would really generate the most impact, but not handicap them in a way that they have no idea how to manage life. Right, so that's, think it's a fine line. So I think there's positives and negatives in everything that we do. I think homeschooling is great, but then you have to the time and the ability to do so. speaker-1: Yeah, it takes a lot of resources, of course. I think we're fortunate enough to be able to do it. A lot of people that I know actually in homeschool communities, ⁓ they do not have the resources that we have, but they still do it. They still manage somehow. They drop their level of comfort and life. They manage their expectations from life in a way that the mom can be home and do that. We hired a teacher to teach our kids. We didn't have a teacher for a few months, so I taught them. ⁓ I've just noticed that since I am more present with them and since they're not gone for so many hours, I mean, it's ridiculous how many hours these kids go away at this young age. Since they're home more, they're together more, they don't give me as much pushback. They don't fight me as much. If they do, they know that the next day they can go to school. know, I mean, there's no option of giving mommy hard time in learning. When it's learning time, it's learning time. They can express their opinions as much as they want when it's not learning time. And I listen. But when we're learning, there's a hard line. You give me a push back tomorrow. You're at school. I don't care. So they know that. And I think they've tried to test the boundaries a little bit and now they understand that. No, we don't do that. But they learn peacefully. They cry sometimes, but hey, at least I'm there. It's better than, I'm sure they will have the same amount of upset, if not more, at school, but they have to manage it on their own and be emotionally suppressed. And I feel like that becomes chronic when it's eight hours a day. We were raised by our mothers. and grandparents and aunts and like as a tribe, it was a tribal living, you know, in the Eastern societies. I feel like here kids are raised by institutions. You know, they go, we send our kids to school at two, two and a half under the same mentality that, OK, well, they're old enough. Let them get to an age that they're old enough so they can go and they'll be young. And the school is good for them. You know, at two, I don't know what. Part of school can be good. What part of being away from parents from home for so many hours can be good at the age of two. But hey, we fell for it. We fell for the same trap that I call it the Western trap. But I think it's just the culture. It's a cultural thing. speaker-0: Yeah, then, I mean, having been in both sides, East and Western culture, this is an environment that ⁓ family is second and growth and financial growth is first in the US. Yeah. you can see, I mean, I've seen the amount of mental illness and so forth that is, and the West is significant anymore than what we saw. speaker-1: Enjoy. speaker-0: in the east that your priorities are a little different. And this is a country of production, right? You know, got to produce. speaker-1: Even people that don't go, even their moms that don't go to work, but I hear it, it blew my mind the first time I heard it, that, I can't wait for spring break to be over so the kids can go back to school, or I can't wait for summer break. Somebody take these kids to school. Kids go to school during summer too. I could not wrap my head around it. At home in Iran, I don't remember packing lunch for school until I was in high school. We would go in the morning, we would... learn whatever we needed to learn, come back home and be home by noon and have lunch with mom. And like we were raised by our parents, you know, now kids go from our son used to be at school 7 50 a.m. before eight and picked up by the time you go through carpool lane at four, you know, and get home and then eat something or go straight quickly, change in the car, go to other activities and Do whatever they need to do, come home, eat super fast, go to sleep, but they have to be up 6 a.m. the next day. And it's like a hamster wheel. Like we condition them for this hamster wheel since they're so young. We didn't grow up with that, those kind of conditions. And we still have to go to yoga and meditate to be still and be present. Now I can't imagine, like, are we raising robots? Like these kids that from the age of two, three, they're on this hamster wheel. Like how are they gonna end? How are they gonna be still and present? half an hour time they have per day to be free, they're on a screen like this. Like, I just don't get it. speaker-0: Yeah, so it's certainly a cultural difference. At the end of the day, is homeschooling the right thing to do or not? I think at the younger ages, the older age will remain to be seen. But I think overall, our kids are doing well. And they do have an ecosystem of their own. another thing I feel like is that The siblings are so much closer. They're just with each other all day long every day. Yeah, which is fine. Yeah, it's like they fight by day, but they're growing up with each other as opposed to each go to three different schools and coming home, eating dinner. speaker-1: And I find a lot too. how much time did I get to spend on this? speaker-0: and then have Saturday and Sunday to do stuff. speaker-1: Well, Saturday and Sunday they have to go to classes. Kids that are at school during the week, like Saturday and Sunday they go to classes. We do no classes Saturday and Sunday. Maybe a little bit of soccer because we have to. But yeah, they're very close together. They have their own tribe and they give each other enough hard time to have problems to deal with, obviously. One thing that I've noticed is that since they don't go to school and they don't get that much exposure to other kids, I mean, we do. ⁓ play dates and stuff but they don't have the constant exposure to other kids all day. They're so thirsty for social interactions with other kids. Like if they have a play date it's the biggest reward for them and they like milk every second of it because they just love being around other kids. versus before I had to be like, go, go socialize. I'm no, I'm not even with you, I'm like, no, please go, go like be with other kids. But now, like as soon as there's another kid, they're just so happy to be around them. But I know that the socialization, like being a part of a community is probably what they're missing the most. There are communities of homeschoolers that we could be a part of, we're not. speaker-0: Why not? speaker-1: That's just on me. speaker-0: I think at this point at least they need to do that because I mean it's time. speaker-1: You know, because that's important. You know, feeling of belonging to a community. I think that's very important. I'm just very selective with who is around us and I have not found the right group for our kids. Well, that's, that's on me. I need to be a lot more proactive, but I know that that feeling of community is something that they're missing and we need to work on it, especially since AI is getting so big. and God knows what the future is going to be like. speaker-0: I think as kids are more into looking at screens and they're spending more of the time that we have, I mean, we've unfriended friends because of the amount of screen time their kids have. speaker-1: So we go to dinner and we're like the kids are gonna, they socialize and interact with each other and each one of them shows with their own tablet or if they don't bring a tablet like 10 minutes into it they get their mom's phone because the mom can't handle them sitting without a phone. speaker-0: I remember we were staying at one of our friend's house for the weekend and the two daughters had their headphones on, plugged into the tablet separately in order to eat food. That was the routine to eat food. And I just couldn't deal with that. I can't have my kids around these kids. I hate to say that. I'm not going to tell people how to live their lives. Our option is to either be part of it or not part of it. But I was vehemently against that to have my kids feel like eating, is, when I was in India monasteries and, you know, up there for a while, ⁓ when food time was there, nobody talked. and you were in silence. You eat your food underground, you know, sitting down cross-legged and eat your food so you could be connected to the ground and connected to your food, nobody talking, and just every, every, you know, spoon you took or whatever you ate, you're sitting there and connecting with your food. speaker-1: Iran is the same thing, how we grew up, we always would sit on the floor, eat on the floor, have the spread, but it wasn't a silence time, it was a time of sharing together, sharing a meal together, talking, being close, being connected. And then it was really shocking to see these two, three-year-old kids sitting with headphones on staring at the screen and they wouldn't eat if they didn't have that. speaker-0: So as more more kids are addicted to screen and the studies that are coming out now is the actual brain mass of children that are on screen is less. Intelligence levels are dropping completely, reciprocally to screen time. They're directly correlated. So ⁓ I think ⁓ the ability to have social skills and the ability to be able to think freely, to create without somebody, something showing you what to create and what's being created. And the ability to interact when everybody else is on a screen is gonna be the most valuable thing that somebody could have. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: And I also believe that like, you know, if everybody's buying real estate, you should sell. If everybody's selling because they're freaking out on the stock market, I think you should buy. And if everybody's on screens, because that's going to be the culture of the future, whoever is not and is developing the ability to interact and socialize and be able to connect. speaker-1: Yeah. you speaker-0: in a real way without screen or AI, those are going to be the leaders of the future. Those kids are going to be the ones that are going to be carrying the baton from point A to point B because you could always hire someone who's a good coder or programmer, but you can't instill the ability to socialize, interact, and connect with other people. speaker-1: which is essential for bleeding. speaker-0: for leadership. ⁓ for that point alone, I'm really, glad on how we're our kids. speaker-1: But you know, the amount of exposure that comes with that screen, I mean, it blew my mind when I read the statistics that in the US, kids are exposed to porn between the ages seven and 10. That's the reality of the world today. then it's scary for me to send my kids to school, honestly. Like the same school that we're talking about, which is, sent our son for a year. And it's one of the best schools in the U S they just were on the news because of three kids. We're listening. This one kid, ⁓ at a trip school trip, and it's just like the kid that was the victim of it. He went and told him, please change my room. Nobody listened, you know, and the other three kids were sent to jail to adult jail. It's just, it blows my mind. The amount of. trauma and the amount of like shit that the kids would be exposed to, I don't want them, save them from the world. You I want them to have enough exposure, but hey, exposure to what? You know, what are we trying to do with these kids? It's just, it's scary. Honestly, it's very scary for me. Like I would rather raise them myself. I would rather instill the values that I know we live by in them. and let them get to an age that the level of vulnerability is a little lower, that they can at least decide, they can at least have some strong pillars to gauge the world against, rather than, I mean, we did that. We sent our kids to school at two and a half. I just don't know what we were thinking. It was one of those things that we were a part of the brainwashing. I tried to... ⁓ sleep train for two and a half nights, which was the biggest mistake I think I've made. And the second biggest mistake was sending him to school at such young age. Like who does that? But that was the culture. That was who we were surrounded by. That was all the moms were doing that. They were waiting for the kids to be like two and a half, three maximum to send them away so they can breathe, which I understand the breathing concept because we don't get to breathe much, but I mean, at what extent? speaker-0: I think it comes down to a lot of values and personal values and cultural values, right? If you choose to bring a child in this world, then there are certain obligations that you must carry. And culture to culture is different, right? Some cultures are like, oh yeah, we're just going to have kids. don't know, to have kids, and by the end the day, 18, I want to kick them out. And just like a whole different... culture as opposed to, know, this is my responsibility and I want to do whatever it takes. Now I'm generalizing, not everybody's the same, but culturally there's a level of acceptance that would not be accepted in some other cultures. Whoever has a child must think really, really hard about what they're willing to give up before they have that child. I didn't know. I had no fucking clue. speaker-1: Yeah, but your personality wise, you're the type of person that would give your like 200 % speaker-0: Yeah, that's just, that's just, but it's not what I thought it's going to be at all. speaker-1: But I also think there is a balance, you know, there is a lot of people don't go towards the homeschooling part because of the fear of, what if I can't do it? What if it's too much for me? I know a lot of people say, tell me a lot of moms tell me I really want to do it, but I know myself, I know I'm going to lose it. I know it's like more than I can handle, you know, and I think that that's good to know. You know, it's good to know that this is my capacity. And if I'm going to ruin my relationship with my kids every day because of this, then maybe it's healthier for them to go away. But then there's also ways to manage that, you know, just because it feels overwhelming, it doesn't mean that you can't do it. Like it feels overwhelming to me a lot of days, but I have learned to put some systems in place so I can breathe or I can get away or I can come here and do this while my kids are at a library right now with a teacher. You know, so ⁓ we are creative. We find a way. speaker-0: Yeah, but overall, think the right decision is a good thing for us at this point and for the reasons we just talked about. And time will tell, right? Yeah. Time will tell, but... speaker-1: And also they travel a lot. A lot. We're trying to stay put. speaker-0: We haven't traveled as much this year, but yeah, we travel a lot and we take our kids with us everywhere. speaker-1: So they get a lot of exposure, you know? They don't sit in a class reading and learning about stuff and needing their teacher to go to Africa and bring them videos of her and where she is as a geography teaching. They actually go and do it. speaker-0: Yeah. So again, the only discrepancy I see is that like at a younger age, kids want to be home at an older age. They want to go and then at the older is where they remember and the growth happens. They're going to take them to Africa, to get them to Sofar, whatever, right? To see it. And so we also expose our kids to a lot of high grade education, like out of school. Tennis class for example, they don't go to group classes anymore because they get private classes or piano, whatever it is. They get a lot of private stuff. speaker-1: ⁓ Yeah, it's not like they're sitting at home, homeschooling, doing nothing all day. The amount of education, honestly, the kids need to be ahead of school curriculum is four or five hours a week. Maximal. Even three hours at this age, three hours a week. Our kids are way ahead of school curriculum. I we don't even follow curriculum. But if you were to gauge them, it would be a few years ahead because speaker-0: I'm sorry. speaker-1: the amount of one-on-one attention that they get. But they also do a lot of stuff. Like I have them on schedules. You know, they go to robotic class, they go to engineering class, they go to art class, go to violin, piano, horseback riding, tennis. Like they do a lot of dance, soccer. They do a lot of activities, which in those, in some of those, they're sharing it with other kids, so they socialize too. But I don't let them just sit home. and do nothing, that would be hard. Because if there's no structure, it's hard to manage them because then they have a lot of opinion. speaker-0: One thing I do like, because I'm a big AI guy, is, and I've seen it, I just came back from Abundance 360, which was unbelievable with Dr. Peter Diamantis. And we had Dr. David Sinclair there, who was the god of anti-aging and rejuvenation. We Dr. Bob Herriery, who was the god of... stem cell treatments and I'm part of stem cells, but you know, our keynote speaker was Elon Musk, you Elon came out and you know, but you know, we're seeing these developments of AI and robots and the robotics, it's just like our world is going to change in such a huge, drastic way that I personally would love to have that home school and really like one end of the spectrum where the The majority of the kids are in the middle of the spectrum. just go to school and they get there and learn that. And have also this AI-driven schooling, which they talked about as abundance, that these AI universities that have the one-on-one attention, so the AI teacher develops a personalized understanding of your kid. Our boy, the reason we took him out of school is because he's absolutely gifted in mathematics. He's in second grade, he's doing sixth grade math and he only goes to school three hours a week or something like that. Three hours a week. Incredible. speaker-1: of math. He gets it. speaker-0: And that's why we took him out of school because I knew he was good at it and I'd teach him. She'd say, yeah, he's great. He's good. Whatever. Average. And then once we realized that he could add, in kindergarten, three layers of numbers within a millisecond, which is not normal. I'm like, okay, we gotta pull him out. There's no way. So if you have this homeschooling, but I wish, and I would love to have, if they have any screen time. to get them to develop their own AI instructor, which is that it grows with the kids. So if the kid's gifted in mathematics, it'll take them and knows the back and forth of how well this kid can count or do ⁓ algebra or... ⁓ speaker-1: mean that's going to be the future anyway. speaker-0: It is, but not a lot of people are implementing them, right? A lot of people are going to school and they're not doing any of that stuff. So I'm saying you homeschool, but on the other hand, you take them to the extreme advanced portions of homeschooling with AI that they get a teacher as they grow. Like I have my own chat GPTs for every single thing that I do. Agents. Agents. And I'm going to move these agents to cloth. which becomes like you, but me as an attorney, me as a doctor, me as a real estate guy, me and all the stuff that I do, and they just run shit for you, right? So it grows with me. It knows my decisions. It knows how I think about this one decision and then applies the legal portion with the medical portion, with the loving portion, whatever it is, and is able to even be better than I am, right? The future of humans, think, is going to be over within our lifetime. We're going to be cyborgs of some sort, So we'll have this intelligence level, right? It's going to happen. I don't give a shit if people say, it's scary, it's never going to happen. It is happening. It's already there. I'm looking at the robots from last abundance meeting, which they were kind of you know, robotic. And now they're dancing and they're following and they're doing two-step and shit like that, you know? And it's... it's progressing so fast. So being able to have that available for our kids that grows from the age of three, right? And sees the development of this child and gives them, you know, the right amount of input and knows how much they can tolerate and knows, well, you know, he's grown, now he can tolerate some more and some more and knows maybe our boy should be calculus by now. We don't Right. Or maybe he has the same talent. speaker-1: Thank speaker-0: in reading or maybe he has the same talent in coding but we don't know enough speaker-1: He does. We don't know and some of it I really don't want to know. I want him to be kids. I want him to enjoy, want him to have fun, I want him to play all day. Like that's what kids do. speaker-0: Yeah, but I agree, but they're playing all day long. They have so much of that, that if you take one hour out of the day to get this complete speaker-1: do take it out of the We do take the one hour out of the day. We do take more than that out of the day to do learning. But we can switch it. speaker-0: Now I'm talking about AI learning. having their own, and we have access to it. I have access to these teachers, right? Because we get it before anybody else gets it because of abundance, whatever it is. I mean, you want to teach them history, I think AI should teach it from Benjamin Franklin himself, will come out and teach them history of the US. Or Changyoo's Khan would come and teach them about the history of what happened in the, you know. the Mongolian time, you know, or the development of the earth or whatever it is. That's what I think we should do. I really think we juxtapose these two things to have let's play, be kids, have fun with our siblings, homeschool, whatever it is. And then we have this that gets their mind growing. I honestly think that combination. is something that is going to be unmatched on every raising children that we want them to be leaders, we want them to be the thinkers of the future. And if they understand this science before anybody their age understands what's available, and then we can maximize their brain capacity by a learning system. that is way greater than anything that we could do, right? We're limited. And those kids' brains are not limited. And if you have somebody that knows history, geography, da-da-da-da-da, within millisecond, they ask me questions that I don't know. I mean, I don't know, 90 % of the questions they ask me. I forget the planets, which order they're in, you know? speaker-1: Yeah. I'm going cut. We talked to a friend that was actually homeschooled, we didn't know. And he is very, very, very successful financially. And he has had his own company since he was little and then he sold it and all that stuff. But he was saying one of the things that attributed to his success from his homeschooling was that he was given books by his mom and told, go figure it out. And he he developed that ability to go figure things out on his own. But with AI, now you can ask any question and there you go, you got the answer. speaker-0: there's no reason to go to a forum to go figure things out anymore. If you ask a shitty question, chat GPT is gonna give you a shitty answer. So it's not trying to figure things out, it's trying to identify what is the right question, which is trying to figure things out. But I think it's one layer above and beyond trying to figure things out. It's trying to figure out the right questions that will give you the right answers. And that's what our world's going to be like. So when they have these AIs or these learning, machine learning, that you need to learn how to talk to them because our life and our world is not going to be the same in five years. And if all those kids are going to do what these guys are doing five years from now or three years from now, but these guys have already figured out how to deal with machine learning. and they have their own instructor that is developed with them, they're going to be light years ahead of anybody else. speaker-1: But do they need to be ahead of it? Why? Because why is this life such a competition? speaker-0: Yes. Why not? Why not? Absolutely is a competition, you know why? Because if not, we'll be sitting at cavemen like we were thousands of years ago. I mean, are where we are because of growth. It's not gonna stop. If you're not gonna be able to stop, I mean, you could stay there and you could learn to be content at home. You can learn to be grounded and sit on earth and meditate, which is great. But he just cannot be an ostrich, put your head on the ground and not say la la la la la. I don't want to know what's going on in the outside world because it's already going by you. And it's going so fast that you can't blink. speaker-1: And this is why you need mom and dad both because if it was up to me I would be like just stay home just play. speaker-0: Yeah, that's exactly what's up. That's why I'm like... speaker-1: That's why I need to feminine and masculine too. speaker-0: Right, and that's why ⁓ I'm telling you, I mean, we need to bring AI learning into our lives. Especially that, you know, they don't go to school for eight hours, right? And other kids, they go to school, they want to play video games, which I think is not so bad, to be honest with you, a little bit, because it trains your brain. But this, the AI learning, and the ability to, I mean, they're inquisitive right now. They want to know and we don't have the answers. Our parents didn't have the answers. We have more answers than our parents did. We're smarter than our parents and they're smarter than their parents. But the next set of parents are the AI that know everything. Everything. speaker-1: So we'll work on it. We'll see where that takes us. If we end up having AI agents training our kids' we will have to open up more to screen time, if that's the case. But even if it's like twice a week or like half an hour each time, I think we can just keep the questions and ask. I mean, right now they ask chat GPT, whatever they want to ask. So it's not like they're not exposed to it. They just do the voice thing and get the answer. But ⁓ it would be cool to have an AI agent that can figure out what they're good at and excel them in that and like work on their weaknesses little by little. Something, it would be like a perfect teacher. Something that a teacher would ideally do. Well, we'll figure out if such an AI agent exists. speaker-0: There is. I don't have any of the universe. speaker-1: ⁓ man, okay. All right, we'll report on that. speaker-0: Thank God for this podcast because otherwise this never would speaker-1: I'm not. You know why? Because we would not sit down for like an hour and discuss one thing. We would be interrupted 25 times at least. we'll work on that. AI agent to grow our kids' brains in specific subjects and multifaceted stuff. We'll come back with a report for that soon, hopefully. speaker-0: Okay. speaker-1: Thank you for listening, thank you for watching. We're so happy and grateful that you're with us. today was the ninth episode. Next week will be the tenth one. And I feel like that's a good milestone. I'm very happy with it. I think our studio needs a little bit of an upgrade coloring and stuff. Soon.