Whether you have kids now or plan to in the future, a huge part of your lifestyle designing master plan will ultimately prioritise your children and their needs.

After all, you need to nurture them, protect them, educate them and spend your valuable time with them.

We’re told by society that we must have a stable home for our children.

It's the number one reason parents stay in jobs they hate, take on second jobs to pay the increasing cost of living and make excuses as to why they can’t travel the world and seek a life of adventure.

“When the kids move out we’ll take a round-the-world trip!”

• Everyone ever

Well, I’m here to tell you that the notion of stability as a benefit to your children and their upbringing is just plain wrong.

In this article, we’ll delve deep into the reasons behind this logic, picking apart the old system and giving you real-world examples as to why a life of adventure is infinitely more rewarding than a life of stability.

So let's just jump right.

First, it’s important to understand a base level that almost everyone on the earth is expected to do for their children.

Since the dawn of civilization, we’ve been told to create a home for our babies, make them sleep in their own rooms, learn through mass education 5 days a week and protect them from a big bad world until they’re old enough to make their own choices, be that in their career, voting preferences, the works.

It's easy to see why this has been the norm for so long too. 99% of the world’s population is a workforce. The cogs that keep the world’s economic machines turning.

I’m not here to spout conspiratorial BS at you. It's not “all an illusion man”. This is just economics 101. To become an economic powerhouse and compete with other countries, you need to mobilise your population to actually work and produce something you can export.

Provide for your family, give them a good education, get them a job, let them fall in love, create a family, educate their kids, get them a job, etc.

Hundreds if not thousands of years of this approach have built empires, created superpowers, and forged entirely new industries.

Some nations have been extremely effective at selling the dream of creating a family, becoming educated, providing stability, being a patriot of your country and getting a career.

I’m not here to tell you that this approach is wrong. There’s definitely a lot of nobility in providing for your family and feeling that you’ve created something secure.

But it's vitally important you understand what security really is and the other options available to you so that you can make an informed decision about what's best for you and your family.

On the face of it, a nomadic lifestyle with your family may seem the complete opposite of what we should be doing. I’m here to tell you they are more similar than you’d think.

I’m a strong believer in boiling things down to their constituent parts. It makes the seemingly impassable mountain much more of a walk in the park if you can see how things actually are

So let's walk through the park together and look at a few of the important ways the world works.

This is a big one so let's dissect it. You may work 8-hour days, 5 days a week, with a few weeks of time off per year. You get paid weekly or monthly and you think the money you’re being paid represents the effort you put in or the responsibility you take on during “work hours''.

It's easy to see why people think this, but the truth is the company has agreed to invest in you based on the value of the return on that investment.

Ever heard the phrase “A valuable asset to the company” when referring to the workforce?

Maybe somebody said it to you once or it was mentioned in an appraisal.

This is more accurate than you realise!

Below is how companies view employees.

Companies purchase assets by employing people

The company hopes that owning this asset will produce more money than it costs. (Return on investment)

The company maintains these assets with time off, appraisals and occasional pay rises to keep them loyal.

If the asset no longer generates more than it costs they remove it (being fired) or sell it (voluntary resignation)

Have you ever thought while working “My time is worth more than this!”

If you have then I'm afraid you’ve swallowed the illusion that you’re being compensated for your time. But don’t worry, there is still hope!

Once you see yourself as an asset they’ve bought, you open yourself up to a wider world of income-generating possibilities. You no longer need to feel limited to working the hours someone else sets you, or to work 8 hours a day for yourself either if you’re self-employed.

You just need to create something valuable and sell that asset to others.

This is how the economic world actually works. Financial markets are about the value of assets, not the effort put in.

This is often why people complain so much about working “so hard” and getting paid peanuts while the “fat cats” seemingly do no work at all and get paid large bonuses.

The sooner you understand it's about the current market value for your services and not how many calories you burned during “work hours”, the sooner you can move on from a traditional approach to work and business and realise your ultimate goal of spending more time with your family.

This may sound like a massive tangent from the subject of why children need adventure, but it's an important perspective shift you need to make. You don’t need to work “full time” and never see your kids. You don’t have to find a job and sell your time to provide stability for your children.

In fact, children have literally no concept of work and time for that matter. They do however have a firm grasp of the value of family and a keen ability to learn quickly.

This is another stumbling block that it's important to get over when weighing up the difference between a life of adventure and a life of stability.

It’s pretty obvious that a mass education system provided by the government is going to be the cheapest option when it comes to educating the workforce of tomorrow.

It’s a handy double-up for childcare too while parents get back to their jobs and keep the economy turning.

The thought of not utilising this free education system seems nonsensical, right? If you have to educate your own children, what would that cost? Not just in terms of educational materials but also your time and resources, at least one parent is unable to work in the traditional sense, coupled with an increasingly challenging educational process as the children grow older.

Surely getting a job and using the education system in your country is a cheaper, more stable option?

Here’s the kicker…

The house you own or rent, within easy travel distance of your children’s school, is costing you money. You need to maintain your employment status to generate that income and you need to keep on working every month to make sure the pack of cards doesn’t fall down.

If you are unable to work, whether through injury, redundancy or an inability to keep your job for whatever reason, the cost of your setup will soon become apparent.

The cost isn’t just financial either. Often it's also a huge cost to your mental health. Trying to maintain “stability” for your child is costing you your life.

Whether it's working long hours, grinding in a stressful job, or keeping up with the cost of your lifestyle, it all adds up and could all fall apart very easily.

With the cost of living currently on the rise, this tightrope you’re walking has become even more apparent.

Your budget is being pushed to the limit, adding stress to your life and potentially even giving you less time to spend with your children in order to make ends meet.

What if there was a way to step off the tightrope and actually spend more time with your children? What if this actually cost you less money? What if the dream life you’d love to provide for your family was actually better for you all?

The cost of your child’s education is so much greater than just the school you send them to.

In fact, it's entirely possible that traditional education could be detrimental to their future anyway.

Ok, I admit I ended that last chapter with quite a bold statement, so let’s understand this one a little more and explain why it’s a big deal.

We live in a technology-driven world where reducing costs and creating ever more efficient business processes are the norm.

If there is a way to automate something and reduce the need for humans, it's going to happen eventually.

In fact, this process has increased in speed over the last few years with the advent of advanced robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and a culture of reuse rather than replacement.

All of these factors reduce a company’s expenditure and can be managed with a much smaller number of humans.

So what exactly will our children be doing to generate an income when they reach adulthood?

What kind of future are traditional education systems preparing our children for?

Not only that, but the types of jobs currently available may be replaced with cheaper workforces overseas, as remote working becomes ever more popular.

Why pay someone in the USA or the UK to remote work a job that could be done by someone in India or China for less?

Many industries, from manufacturing to engineering, customer services and IT, have been victims of an increasingly well-educated workforce in countries with lower costs of living and lower wages.

Our children will need to find careers and build businesses that are robust enough to tackle both of these aspects.

Something that can withstand increasing automation by technology and remain valuable when other parts of the world could potentially offer the same service for less.

I’m not going to list jobs and businesses here, I’ll save that for another article, but it’s important to understand that a “well-rounded education” followed by years of college and university is not the answer to the rapidly advancing reality of future business needs.

There’s a world of opportunity out there when it comes to employment, not only the opportunities on your doorstep. The internet has created markets and given access to potential customers from all over the world to buy products and services from anywhere.

The methods behind gaining customers, doing business and exporting products have changed immeasurably over the last 20 years and this changing of the guard shows no sign of stopping either.

What works one year may be old news 12 months later. There is no longer such a thing as a secure job for life. The idea of relying on a pension after 40 years of service is now well and truly over.

All of this is a wonderful thing and we’re still at the beginning of this incredible change. But rest assured, things will continue to change.

Are your children ready for this?

Are they aware of the possibilities?

Do they know how the world works and how many wonderful opportunities are out there for them?

Isn’t learning this a more important lesson that will make your children more resourceful, open to change, willing to take action, open to making mistakes and ready to learn?

Lets say your child has a love of animals. They clearly love to be around animals and have a natural connection to wildlife.

Traditional thinking would say “this child could work as a vet, maybe at a Zoo, maybe at an animal shelter!”.

This mode of thought would favour nurturing a base-level education and working hard to keep them in school, with years of studying and training before finally being sent out into the world to work with animals.

Out of the box thinking would say something very different…

“Helping animals is her passion. She could create a passive income business that generates wealth and gives her the freedom to explore all sorts of volunteering and charity work with animals all over the world”

An upbringing based on adventure teaches us about opportunity while giving us the confidence to try new things and the flexibility to turn things on their head without the fear of failure.

These are the skills that create resourceful kids, flexible enough to take on whatever the world throws at them. If you’re more flexible, the fear that things may break becomes far less.

It also teaches children how to weather the storm, take the good with the bad and make the most of situations. Something no stable, predictable academic upbringing can provide.

Why wait until after their formal education to teach them how the world really functions? Children don’t need protection from the world, they need to learn how to work and thrive within it.

So I hope it’s abundantly clear that a stable life is not the best thing for children.

Sure, it’s one way of looking at life, but it is by no means the only way and, in all likelihood, not the best way for your kids.

Maybe now you understand that showing them more of the world and how it works will open their eyes to new ways of learning and new possibilities for their future.

But what next?

Isn’t it a huge risk leaving behind a familiar life in a familiar country and travelling to lands unknown?

I get asked this question all the time. People see extended travel as something that is risky, breaking away from the norm and gambling your life just to have an adventure.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s just a perspective from those that have never lived it.

Ask any digital nomad or world-schooling family and they’ll tell you that the truth is way cooler.

The fact is there are very few countries that you could live in which wouldn’t enrich the lives of you and your family.

I do, however, fully admit that some countries are better to start with than others. Some countries are the perfect introduction for your children to get to grips with the idea of living an adventure rather than a dull life back in your country of origin.

Your children are still learning about the world, so throwing them into a culture that is wildly different to the one they’re used to probably isn’t the smartest first move.

Your perfect introduction destinations are those that offer something different to what your kids may be used to but have all the modern conveniences they’ve come to expect.

Europe is a great example of this. There are multiple countries within easy reach of each other, all with interesting takes on a similar cultural history.

It’s easy to get around and, in some countries, it's easy to get by with English and pick up the local language quickly too.

Another option is going to countries that share your primary language and outlook. An obvious location is Australia, where the landscape is wildly different yet the culture is very familiar to USA and UK citizens.

For the slightly more exotic choice, you can look at nations like Malaysia and Thailand, which are very well set up for tourists. Both have fantastic infrastructures for tourism and a lower cost of living.

South East Asia is a great destination for adventure while being relatively safe and well set up for overseas visitors.

Keep in mind that adventure comes in many forms. It's not about constantly being on the move and sometimes finding a place to settle for the entire length of a tourist visa is all you need. Setting into a new town in a new country can be a fantastic adventure.

Our children find a new type of supermarket in a new country, a new swimming pool in a new condominium, and a new set of kids to play with from a world schooling hub an adventure. Adventure to you may differ from the adventure your kids would love.

Make sure to be fully open to them and find out what lights them up. What kinds of adventures would “sing” to them? It’s a fun conversation to have and involving them in the entire process will only educate them more.

“Learning should be a joy and full of excitement.

It is life's greatest adventure”

Taylor Caldwell Novelist

Over the years, I’ve watched children grow and friends and family become older and more mature while experiencing the world around them and getting massively influenced by it all.

The problem is that a repetitive lifestyle doesn’t breed excitement and curiosity. A “one size fits all” approach to education doesn’t teach flexibility and the seeking of opportunities.

What you think is stable and safe could actually be harming your children’s flare for life.

We’ve all seen the light in the eyes of young children. Almost every day is an adventure to them, free from the school system and instead learning through play all day long. So wired that they barely want to go to sleep.

Then we send our kids to school and slowly, as they become teenagers, the fire starts to dwindle. The endless cycle of school runs and dull lessons in stuffy classrooms starts to extinguish their love for adventure and curiosity. They long to get the school day over and get back to chatting with their friends on social media.

Who can blame them? We did this to them. We decided the world would have to wait. We told them to “go to school, get an education and get a job”, but they didn’t ask for this.

Compare this to the children we meet every day when we travel the world as a world-schooling family.

Children of all ages play together. Eloquent and empathetic children support others of all ages rather than being boxed into classes with only those of their age.

Community-curated classes are created by groups of world-schooling parents. Adults and children all share their adventure experiences, recommending where to go next and how to make it happen.

Adventure-led children are not socially inept, they’re not behind in their education and they’re not lacking in basic life skills either.

Some of the most well-rounded children I have ever met were living lives of adventure with their families and all the richer in personality and life experience for it too. The teenagers are engaged, included, and excited about their experiences, often with a raft of friends from all over the world.

So far, in our experience, there really is no downside to the effect of an adventurous life on children.

It’s a cliche quote, but it is most certainly true. Education is best learnt when applied and adventure-led lifestyles let children put theory into practice on a daily basis.

When locations change, culture changes and even the views change, our children can apply their newly gained skills to another location, another culture and another landscape.

Mass-educated kids are expected to learn for many years without applying their knowledge to something tangible.

Adventure-educated children apply it in real-time, learning as they go and influencing what adventure to take next to nurture that learning process.

This topic comes up more than almost any other.

“It’s all very well, but what happens when they become a teenager?”

I’ve heard this so many times now, people think that it’s just a temporary phase and that settling down and offering stability must happen eventually.

It's easy to understand why this thought crosses a lot of people’s minds. The teenage years can be tough for everyone involved.

There are so many hormones flying around. Once beautiful bonds between parent and child can fray and perform a complete 180 in only a few years.

In traditional living models, this happens because the teenagers have no direct influence on the world around them, despite the fact that they might now have the abilities, the know-how and the desire to exercise this influence (which is probably the case even if they come across as lethargic and disinterested).

Teenagers still have hobbies and passions that light them up. This shows us that they are still able to fully engage with the world around them. It’s just the rest of their dull day that switches them off.

You may be wondering if this switch-off can occur while living a more adventure-led lifestyle.

Will your children quash your love of adventure and hide away in a hotel room, longing for a more stable life?

I asked a number of world-schooling families about their experiences with their children and the impact living an adventure-led life has had on them. The good and the bad. Here are a few fantastic quotes that really sum up the experience both for parents and their teenagers.

“If your child craves connection, you have no control over who that may be with when they are sent to a school in your home town. While you’re not seeking to control them entirely, you can have a say in the types of people you are around. Open-minded, worldly and curious kids that can have a positive impact on their lives.”

“Let your teenagers have a say in where you travel and what you do there. Giving them an active role in selecting destinations will give them a sense of control they may feel they are lacking in their lives.”

“Some children see the positive impact travel has on their lives and have a real sense of curious exploration. Others will feel quite the opposite and crave a base where they can make friends. Both of these are valid and should be nurtured. Find families with children like yours and work together to find a base for them.”

If your children ever experienced a life before travel, then they will always have a connection to somewhere they once deemed home. Things like social media are entirely set up for people with a stable lifestyle, so you can’t avoid the exposure they will get to what is deemed a “normal” life.

By the time nomadic adventure-led children reach their teenage years, they are generally open-minded and supportive human beings. They still face many challenges as a teenager, but they have the skills to handle them with a much more positive outcome.

Finding other families with teenagers can be a challenge. Because it's perceived that travelling with children is hard and with teenagers even harder, it would appear a larger number of teenage families return home.

This perpetuates the issue by meaning there are fewer teenagers for other teenagers to bond with while travelling. The solution to this is travelling to destinations where you know there are families with teenagers. Also, you should try bonding via zoom calls and online messages so that they hit the ground running on arrival.

For some, a nomadic existence is utter bliss and will remain so. Moving slowly from country to country exploring the world.

What could be better right?

If your answer isn’t “YES!” Then don’t worry you’re not alone. For some, this is a “family gap year”, for others it’s simply an acknowledgement that this life won't suit everyone forever.

That’s totally normal.

There’s no single approach to life that suits everyone and certainly no set template for adventure-based living.

So for some, “home” is and always will be somewhere in the world, while your travels are the adventure and escape from that mundane and “stable” life.

If this is the case for you, home will inevitably be missed at times. The safe, familiar surroundings of your country of origin or a place you feel more comfortable in than anywhere else will call to you.

The safety and security of a parent’s management of that adventure-based lifestyle are what keep them going when surrounded by new and exciting locations.

At some point though, it's entirely likely they’ll want a few weeks in a location where they don’t feel the need to rely on anyone.

Travelling families with teenagers often allow them a month or so with a grandparent to recharge their emotional batteries before rejoining their adventure once more somewhere in the world.

It's also a chance to stretch their wings a little and travel alone, at least back to a destination where you as a parent feel comfortable with and where there’s a relative waiting for them at the airport.

While a life of adventure and travel is very exciting and different, over time it becomes your new normal. Things that were once an incredible novelty and a fresh new perspective on the world are now just your everyday life filled with many of the daily routines and responsibilities of your old, “stable” life back home.

In actuality, this just means you’ve gotten used to your new life and have mastered its eccentricities.

Nothing makes this more apparent than a trip back home. While you’ll be excited to catch up with friends and family for a short while, a reverse culture shock will soon kick in.

You’ll far too easily slip back into that stable, mundane life you had before you decided to travel and the familiarity of your surroundings will soon shine a light on just how awesome your adventure-based life is.

I’ve seen this countless times in travelling families and digital nomads. A quick jaunt back home soon reminds them of why they love to travel the world and live in exciting new locations.

For many, it may be a financial impossibility to travel “home” for a quick recharge. Or the much more likely scenario is that you just don’t want to go home, even if you do miss elements of your past life.

There are of course ways and means to get a home fix without going home. The internet has made that much easier in recent years.

It's important to take some time out to understand what it is you’re really missing. Is it friends? Family? Routine? Your favourite coffee shop in your hometown? What is it about those places and people that’s currently missing from your adventurous location?

By investigating those details, you may find that there’s a running theme throughout them all, or there’s something bigger going on with your situation that needs addressing.

Are there needs that aren’t being met?

Is your routine not allowing for the things you really need to support a healthy mind?

Is the work / life balance out of alignment, causing your adventure-based lifestyle to not meet your expectations?

This is something all families will face, especially as your children grow older. It may be that your children love travelling with you and could think of nothing better. But it is much more likely that at some point, they’ll not only miss their country of origin but also demand to return there.

This isn’t something to ignore, so it’s important to include a chapter on this subject. It’s always better to be prepared and face this demand with both understanding and support.

Of course, while this request for stability could be a well-thought-out decision for some time, rarely does it manifest itself in calm and collected words. It is much more likely to emerge as a sudden explosion of emotions, with tears and heated exchanges as the truth comes to light.

The younger the child, the more likely this manner of communication is to happen, so reading the signs early can save a world of pain for both you and your offspring.

There is of course every chance that you, as a parent, feel the urge for stability too. After years of overseas living, we too have experienced this, where the intrinsically familiar can feel like a refreshing change.

I’m not going to preach a specific method of combating this feeling. It's a deeply personal one and it's entirely possible that you may experience this differently to your children.

It's just important to understand that it is very likely to happen, so you’ll need to have the flexibility to roll with it. That might involve being financially secure enough to return home to a potentially more expensive cost of living or even having the emotional maturity to handle a move “back home”.

If you’re an adventure seeker at heart and you’ve instilled mindset this into your kids too, then oftentimes the return to a traditionally “stable” mode of life is short-lived. You may be home for 12 months, perhaps longer, but at some point the urge to broaden your horizons will kick back in again.

Of course, there’s no guarantee of this, but I have seen it in multiple families over the years, including my own. Once you’ve “taken the red pill” and opened up your life to a wider number of possibilities, it's often difficult to fully sink back into that “normal” life.

I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with a stable life. You haven’t failed if you return to one. An adventure-led life is merely another option, so you’ll know what is the best fit for you and your children given their needs as they grow older.

Monitoring your children’s needs and knowing what would benefit them the most is really the key to all of this. After reading this article, you may find that what they really need to nurture their personality and growth is stability.

It may be that regular new locations aren't a good fit for your children’s personalities or that slower travel with longer periods in each country is much more rewarding.

Maybe they want to have a say in exactly where you go and what you do, no longer happy to just follow their parents everywhere and bored of museums, water parks and road trips.

Choosing a more adventure-led life comes with extra challenges and an acute requirement to know your children well and ensure that they are getting the most out of the life you’ve chosen.

Generally speaking, people that opt for a more traditional, stable life aren’t even aware of what would really benefit their kids. Instead, they choose state schools, full-time jobs and a life of compromises, a choice their children are also forced to take.

Parents often have to work late and commute long hours just to pay for the house, the bills and education. Kids then find themselves in a school they may not like or feel is a good fit for them with only a small pool of children their age to make friends, or possibly enemies, with.

For some, this regimented routine might actually be a good fit. For others, it's the exact opposite of what they need.

Whatever you choose, the important thing is to find out and to a certain degree take an educated guess at how their surroundings, schooling and daily life will affect their growth.

This is the toughest nut to crack for any parent, whichever life you choose. I’m not gonna lie, you’ll always feel like you’re ruining your kids' lives on some days.

But so far, in my experience, I feel like that a lot less often when my children are living their best lives, filled with new friends, ways to learn and places to learn too.