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A recent post on the NuNomad blog talked about the pros and cons of travelling with kids at different ages. It’s an excellent post, packed with useful info for location independent parents – or those planning a nomadic lifestyle.

One of the things it brought to my mind was the need to keep your kids connected with the world beyond. But how do you do that safely in a world where the internet has brought not just benefits but real dangers to children?

In talking to friends recently, some of them were amazed that my seven year old had her own email accounts, but for me it was an obvious way for her to connect with friends and relatives abroad. She is an excellent reader and enjoys writing emails, so I just had to find a way to make it easy and safe.

To do that, I created an email account for her on my own domain, using Google Apps. I like Gmail because it has a great spam filter and since I limit what she signs up for there shouldn’t be any worrying emails in her inbox in the immediate future. She liked the fact that she could have a child-friendly theme (featuring dolls and ice creams, I believe). I disabled chat and contact sharing, but will review the chat decision when she’s a bit older. For phone calls, she uses my Skype account when she needs to chat.

Like most kids, my daughter loves games and many of these are online. I adapted some guidelines from an internet safety book someone sent me to create some rules that will keep her safe. She knows that she is not allowed to sign up for anything without asking first (and when she does I check the parental information thoroughly to see that her privacy is guaranteed).

For now, I am banning forums though she can use the private messaging system on some of the sites. I’ve found the Disney sites such as Toontown and Pixie Hollow to be pretty good, as is Moshi Monsters – and of course Cbeebies/CBBC is a great site for educational and fun games.

I have enabled Google Safe Search on both browsers on her computer to prevent her from accidentally discovering anything inappropriate. I’ve found this a better option than the parental control software I used before because it allows her to follow her interests while still staying safe (rather than blocking almost everything, which frustrated us both, especially when I kept forgetting the unlock password).

I’ve told my daughter about the importance of keeping personal details secure (no giving out her real name, address, phone number or email address). She’s been very good at sticking to the rules.

For older children, consider a contract with your child about observing the rules for internet safety – a good starting point for an online safety pledge is here.

The final aspect of making sure she stays safe is being in the room (most of the time) when she’s on the computer. That way I can use my parental sixth sense to spot any potential issues early. How do you handle internet and connectivity issues for your location independent children?

Image by JonathanCohen

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Emily Geizer.

Parenting is a job with a constantly changing job description. But if you understand your child’s perspective, your job suddenly gets a lot easier! This is a cornerstone of mindful parenting.

Mindful parenting requires us to deeply understand our child. By making choices that keep our kid’s perspective in mind, it is more likely that these choices will be in his best short and long term interests. This pertains to any parenting situation whether addressing a routine sibling conflict or a dramatic change, such as moving, location independence or schooling.

Study after study has shown that understanding your child’s perspective has a bigger, positive impact on your child than most other things you do. There are many other aspects to mindful parenting but understanding your child’s perspective may be the most nuanced and complicated…

This takes thought and consideration.

As with all significant relationships in your life, you must develop an ability to understand the other person in order for the relationship to thrive. This ability to step outside of your own viewpoint is a remarkable capability of the human mind. Use it!

I encourage you to start bringing your child’s perspective more and more into your own awareness. You can begin this every evening after your child is asleep. Reflect on the day from his perspective. Reflection is a cornerstone of mindful parenting. Below are some sample questions to help guide you:

1. Were there ways that he/she felt like he/she contributed meaningfully to the family’s experience?
2. Did he/she feel listened to attentively?
3. What difficulties did he/she encounter?
4. Did he/she experience positive outcomes?
5. What did he/she do in his unstructured time?
6. How are his/her relationships (friends and siblings)? Does he/she feel included and connected?

Reflecting in this way will lead to a greater awareness of your child. Every new discovery and realization can impact your parenting, yielding many unexpected benefits for you and your child. With practice and commitment, imagining your child’s perspective will become second nature and hopefully encompass all parts of the day.

Mindful parenting however is not a band-aid approach to parenting struggles. Rather it’s an entire parenting paradigm; one that offers tremendous value to your relationship with your child. My free e-course – A Crash Course in Mindful Parenting can help you parent mindfully. You can learn more about the course and sign-up for it here.

About the author: Emily Geizer writes useful parenting tips like this and more at, Child Perspective. You can read more about her free parenting e-course, A Crash Course in Mindful Parenting here.

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If you are anything like the three of us, you’ll very likely have several projects on the go at once. That plus looking after the kids and maybe travelling the globe makes for a tribe of busy parents!

Jonathan & I frequently ask each other “What on earth did we do with our time before we had Mali?” – yet when we look back over the past few years of being location independent and running our own businesses, we have launched more projects, serviced more clients and generally just achieved more since being pregnant with, and then subsequently having Mali.

It’s most certainly not been easy…working until 2 or 3am as a new parent, when your baby still wakes for feeds every 2-3 hours is tough – and when you add travel to the mix, you can quite easily find yourself reaching breaking point much sooner than ever before.

So just how can you fit it all in? I asked both Sharon & Amy for their tips, and I’ve added mine at the bottom…

Here’s what Sharon said:

As a location independent parent you are always juggling. I know I am. Yet I still manage to handle parenting responsibilities, keep my writing clients happy and have some fun.

One of the things I have struggled with is letting e-mail be a tool instead of a distraction. I manage that by checking email at set times during the day (8 AM, 12 PM, 3 PM and 7 PM). I also use a get-things-done (GTD) approach to processing mail, by responding immediately to what I can deal with, or archiving and labeling mail as “do now”, “do soon”, “someday” or “wait for response”. This keeps my inbox under control and then I can work through email in priority order.

Two more important tools are Remember The Milk (RTM) and Google Calendar. RTM is a task list application, which integrates with my calendar and email. It’s easy to set priorities and move tasks around. Google Calendar is not only great for managing work commitments, but for scheduling family time. I have multiple calendars: one for my daughter’s increasingly hectic social life, one for my personal commitments, one for holidays around the world and a work planning calendar.

It’s important to me to make time for family — that was part of the point of becoming location independent — so in my head I schedule a couple hours every afternoon for family time.

My last big productivity “secret” is matching the work I do to my creativity peaks and troughs. That means that I do most of my writing in the morning when I am most alert, saving the afternoon for editing and other less creative tasks (though sometimes editing can be quite creative too).

I also operate a reward system for myself, especially when handling a task that I don’t find particularly inspiring. For example, I’ll allow myself a 10 minute social media break after one hour of successful work or set a target for completing a certain number of articles before making myself a cup of coffee.

Here’s what Amy said:

Prior to establishing my social media business, I was engaged in full-time education as I completed 3 degrees in English literature. Juggling research, work and home-education has been exceptionally challenging and it has only been possible to keep all the balls in the air through the establishment of routine.

For example, when the children were much younger, we established meal times, bath times, nap times and bed times and these remained fixed for as long as those times suited us as a family. By setting this structure it then became much easier to work in and around business and study commitments.

As the children got older we started to introduce a certain amount of structure to their learning. While we are ardent supporters of autonomous child-led education, for practical purposes, some established routine to daily learning has allowed us to establish and grow our business while ensuring that our children are receiving the education they need to continue widening their horizons.

Today that routine consists of maths exercises, project work and music practice before lunch, followed by free-play, story-writing, drawing, science experiments, documentary watching in the afternoon, and then a film before bed. This obviously does not account for the days when they have lessons in music, tennis, drama, and Hungarian or when we have excursions to workshops, historical sites, family visits etc.

This kind of structure means that when the children are engaged in their learning I can be working on emails, article writing, research etc. while remaining available to them if they should need assistance. I can also monitor that everything is going smoothly, give comments on their work and mark the exercises they’ve been set.

Without this basic structure, it would be very difficult to keep everything in balance. It also allows me to look back over the week and assess what has been achieved both by my kids in their learning and myself in my work, and gain satisfaction that we are all making progress and attaining a desirable level of productivity.

Here’s my advice:

To some extent, as relatively new parents, we’re still finding out what works best when it comes to running a location independent business, being nomadic and being parents to a 6 month old. My best advice so far is this:

As soon as you figure out what schedule your baby is on (or you determine what schedule they’re on, depending upon your parenting approach), fit your work in around it. One of the main benefits of running your own business and being location independent is that you don’t have to stick to the norm, you can simply implement what works for you.

For example, we currently choose to spend pretty much the whole day together as a family and then, when Mali goes to sleep (usually around 7pm), we get to work. In the days when she wouldn’t sleep until 10pm, it was exceptionally hard and Jonathan would often find himself working until 3am. These days it’s more manageable – knowing you only have a certain amount of time in which to get your “to do” list done, really focuses the mind and reduces the time-wasting. We’ll often get done in 3-4 hours what seems to take many people (often non-parents!) a day or more!

Another important part of being productive and utilising your time in the most effective way is to focus on what matters most. That is, when you have a “to do” list as long as your arm (as I frequently do), I often have to accept that I am just not going to get it all done when I want to.

Instead, I focus on what matters most. I do this by asking 2 simple questions:

1. If I don’t do this today, what is the real impact going to be tomorrow?
2. Which of these tasks will take me closer to where I want to be?

It’s hard to let go of the other stuff but I’m getting increasingly better at it, out of sheer necessity. As I said, we’ve not got it perfect yet but we’re getting better.

What are your top tips for productivity and getting things done as a location independent parent?

Are your children ready to make the leap into location independence?

So you’ve decided to become a location independent parent. That means your children have to become location independent too – and for some children that could be a big problem.

For many younger children, routine and familiarity are everything, while for older ones, it’s attachment to their peers that may prove a sticking point. It’s a real worry for parents, who may worry that their children may not settle into the nomadic lifestyle and won’t be happy when you move abroad.

The lesson I learned when moving from the UK to the Caribbean is that preparation is everything. Here are some strategies you can try…

Check Out Your Location Independent Destination

Many people spend a long time planning for their next move. If this is you, and you’re planning a semi-permanent relocation to somewhere that you visit regularly, schedule a family trip to that destination to ‘sell’ it to your kids.

Plan some fun activities that they will remember when you return to your current home, so they will have something to look forward to when you move. If you’ve got friends with children, plan some get-togethers so that when your children arrive in the new location, they already know someone there. That will ease the transition for them.

Living Space

Do you already know where you’re going to live? Then show it to your kids. If a visit to the location is feasible, then do that, otherwise use Google Earth and other web resources to give your kids as much information as you can about the country they are moving to.

Use the Internet to find photos of the place you will be visiting, research fun activities in the area and generally get informed about your destination. With older children get them to help. They can create a wish list of things to do when they arrive and prepare a scrapbook to tell their current friends about where they will be going.

In our case, we were relocating permanently (more or less, anyway) and we were able to show our daughter the house and her room. We took photos back to the UK with us so she could show them to her friends. We started this process about nine months before the move.

Education

How are you going to educate your children?

You may already be homeschooling, in which case you will be doing the same thing in a different location. If not, let older children help you research schools and visit them all when you arrive (preferably before the start of the school term or semester).

Hook up with a couple of expat groups who may have children in the same schools. This will give your kids a small circle of friends to start with.

Focus On Fun

If your children have any favourite activities then find out where they can do these in the place that you are going. It will help them to feel that they are not leaving their entire way of life behind.

Also, explain to your kids why you are going and what benefits you think it will bring. Kids have a sense of adventure – so appeal to it!

Preparing To Move

Get your children involved in the preparation process. Even children as young as three can make decisions about which toys to take and which to leave in storage. We gave our daughter a suitcase of her own so that she could decide what would go with us and what would come later.

Be sure to explain that toys which are being boxed are not being thrown away but saved. Our daughter was also happy to help wrap items for packing (even if we had to add some extra tape later!).

Keeping In Touch

The great thing is that these days, moving halfway around the world doesn’t have to mean losing touch with your friends. Photos of the people and places they love really help, so get that camera out!

If you have email, a laptop with a webcam and Skype, your kids can talk to friends and family back home, which will make the transition easier. When my daughter first used a webcam, she was very excited. And now, she regularly Skypes with a friend in Gibraltar while they play an online game together.

Talk, Talk, Talk

For us, the key aspect of the whole thing was communication. Our daughter had lots of friends whom she’d known since birth and was a bit upset about leaving them. All our friends talked to the children about the fact that we were leaving, but would still be in touch.

We spent lots of time together, took lots of photos and exchanged Skype IDs. Since we’ve left, several of my daughter’s friends have come to visit and we’ve been back to the UK once. And although she missed her friends at first, and still talks about the UK, she’s settled well into her new life.

Photo credit: Japs – TheGypsy)