SNM100: 5 Secrets to Parenting Abroad

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five secrets to parenting abroad on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by CEO Pro Lap, the company that I trust to keep serving a master at the top of Google to save 10%. Use the coupon code. Serve no master at checkout. Go to serve. No master dot com Backslash CEO today. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams Now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. Not everything I do every day is about business. As much as I love talking about business, I love what I do. Everything I do is really built around giving my parents. You're being a parent and give you my Children the experience that I always wanted a child. Now I was just on the phone with my dad the other day, explaining how, like every other parent. I want to give my parents my kids. Ah, better experience I had as a child. But unfortunately, my parents were great. I was very fortunate, my parents, which means they set the bar very high to meet. For me to get my parents, my Children, a better experience. I have to be amazing. And when you're living abroad, you have a unique set of challenges that you can never think about before. You kind of never crossed your mind. How am I going to deal with these things? A lot of things that are so easy when your home country, all these systems that are set up in place, they become very hard. Recently, we were dealing with the government working on our wedding stuff, and it became very difficult. Any time you have to deal with bureaucracy pretty much stinks. And doing fraction another country is super annoying. I hate doing all of that stuff. They made us wait in this office fill. Most mosquitoes are biting me like crazy. And I was wearing a minute dang. Maybe I did get Dang find out. It was like, Why do I have to deal with this problem. Why is government so inefficient? And a lot of other countries you'll discover a government to run different ways. You have to deal with different problems. And one of the first things that you struggle with with your Children abroad is parent and parents is where am I gonna make it? That's why I'm going to educate my kids. I've talked in the past about homeschool options a little bit, but I just want to give you kind of big picture of you on the on the school here. It's, I'm gonna say this. I mean, the problem in this country, as in many countries, is massive corruption. So all the money that goes into the government doesn't make it back out. Unfortunately, here, probably 80% of money makes it in. The government gets stolen. So the schools are terrible. Not because the people are terrible, not because people are delicious, but because they have no funding. When I was in the mayor's office, I was shocked was horrific. In my town, it's in such bad shape. It looks like a bombed out building. That's Phil's mosquitoes. They don't have the money to paint anything. I guess I don't have any money to kill the mosquitoes. Or maybe they just don't care. But it was so bad and it's so unfortunate. But all of this stuff trickles down to look at the school. You all this is, you know, this is the only option. And somewhere I want to put my kids. No, I have a couple of firm beliefs about school. I'm not a big fan of the American public education system. One of my siblings went to public school. The rest of us went to private school. And let's just say the ones who went to private school making a lot more money. You can look at financial trajectories and see the difference between what we make anyway. I went to school. There's a direct correlation. It really, really makes a difference now. Maybe that just happens to be with me and my three sisters, and they were out liars. But I'm very cognizant of not only what my Children learn, what what gets put into their bodies. We send in the school and more and more it's making the news all the time. When they create these revisionist histories or they turn, you know, historical hero now that the persons of villain Oh yeah, he started that you wrote the Constitution, but now he's a bad guy because of something else. I don't really like historical revisionism as someone who majored in history in college, the thought that we can change history and turn heroes and villains. I don't like any of that now. I do like when we teach history of something that's unknown because it iss la times two people at the same event of two totally different encryption. 10 times we've seen that happens in the news all the time. He attacked me. He didn't attack me. You know all that stuff where he said, she said, Ah, lot of news is that way when there's a battle. Guess what? Whichever general writes the story, it's going to sound a lot different. So in college we learned to question history, but in school were taught histories of fact, and I don't like when they changed. All the facts I don't like when they alter history is that we don't like this person's. We're moving them from the title. Don't do that. I don't like when they modify lessons based on emotion. I'm like. No, I just wanted what happened. I don't like changing thing. And also there's plenty things in school that I think they teach your waist. I don't think any kid it will ever use trigonometry. That's adult. Maybe if you're an architect. But even then, I asked Architecture. They don't from one of my sibling one of my side. What my brothers in law is, an architect asked him, You know, I don't use trigonometry, and I'm saying, and I said, Oh, I just assumed that. Why did I learn? I thought, I can't name any other profession that uses it. So there are other things that they teach you in school that I think your waist and their programs. I think you're very valuable that they don't teach. It's very hard to get your kid into a music program, and I think music is more valuable in a lot of what they teach. And then, of course, in English class, they make you read all these books, and I used to when I was in high school, me and my English teacher my freshman year, we did not get a lot because we're very opposite. As much as I am a bit of a chubby guy and seemed limit me. I'm very much into a certain masculine strength in the books I'd like to read, which I'm sure that surprised by because, you know, I read books about spaceships and robots and dragons. I hated Catcher in the Rye. I hate that type of book. A lot of those books they make you really tell This is a great American story. Don't like it because the person that made character spent the whole book wining right. The catching right start's what happens. He loses the fencing team's equipment on the subway. That's his whole job, right? He's the manager for this team. He loses their equipment and just runs away. I don't like that. I don't like someone who, when they do something wrong, doesn't take responsibility for it. So me and my English teacher, we often clashed because I didn't like the books they were forcing me to read. They're always trying to find that great American story and force you to read it, and I get it. They're historical authors who are important to American history, and they did great things, but more and more when you look at the books, they force you to read, they're not good. I remember we had this summer reading program and they're like, Oh, you gotta read books in the summer And I read all these different books and big reader And I remember one summer I read Show Gun, which, if you've ever had it's a nightmare. It's a really big book. It's one of those classics and they said, Oh, this isn't on the list of this encounter with 1000 page book and they go No, you should have read this 80 page book about their parents, team bears or whatever the Bobbsey Twins. That doesn't interest me. So there are things that I experience is a child in school that all my Children to go through, that there are parts of education every parent feels right, like all the kids learn this. Not that, and I mentioned before high field education. I wish my kids would learn about. I wish I'd learned about credit cards. I wish I'd learned about home repair. I wish I'd learned about fixing a car. There's a problem with my scooter right now, my motorcycle, but it's not a moped head. It's in between my little scooter where it turned the engine turns off all the time. When you're driving, just turns itself off. We take your mechanic on the island all the time. They Oh, no, This is fine. This is normal. You're supposed to the highway. The engine just turns off. Why are you complaining? I would love to be able to fix that myself. And in fact, where I live where I grew up in Nashville, there's, Ah, race, car, school. There's a school for people that want to become NASCAR mechanics. And I looked at it. And you know what? They don't offer anything for regular people who won't know how to work on their own cars. I find it unbelievable. I couldn't believe it. I went to the website. I read all their stuff. I was like, I bet it could take, like, a six month course to get a basic understanding of how to handle my own car stuff. Nope, that interested in me, but not interested in doing business with me? So there are a lot of things I feel we're wasted time and to a lot of things that I would rather have my kids learn. So I'm looking to education school choices here. Very limited. But fortunately, when you're another country, you could do whatever you want in America right now, even if you try and home school in many states, they give you the correct unless they have to teach your kids this even if you don't believe in it, you have to feed your kids this even if you know what's wrong. And there are certain things that I think our subjects that are way too political, and I think they're a waste of time. I mentioned this before, but I mentioned again. One of the big debate is whether to teach your kids about evolution, right? This is the big fight everyone has about homeschool, and for me, who cares if it doesn't affect my child's life, then it doesn't matter to me. I don't care whether I don't think it should be a big subject at all. I think it's done because there's no evidence I said to May remember, I said, I mean, I was in high school. I said, In my teacher, you believe in this story of evolution. I said, Can you tell me animal. It's evolved in the last 100 years, and it's a no. No, of course, not takes way longer than that. Well, then, why does it matter? It is not happening if I'll never notice it in my lifetime. It doesn't matter. I actually know what the animals that makes us now. That's about how they got there, because how they got there won't affect what I do tomorrow. Well, well, effect. What was the weather? Another scientific theory that I struggle with is there's a law that says life only comes from life. They used to believe that if you had rotting meat, it would turn into animals because maggots would grow from it before they realized that no flies had to plant the bag. It's when no one was looking. So we learned all these studies that say it's always the rule. Life only comes from life, not life can't create life. And people like to quote, there's a There's a study. They won the Nobel Prize for proving that an experiment. If you have enough chemicals and stuff, it will create biological compounds, except for later on. They took the Nobel Prize back because those guys faked the research, but they were often teach that in school. Do they? They don't often teach you that. That whole study was faked in. This guy's got a lot of trouble. Those guys are still remembered a lot of schoolbooks, without saying, Oh, by the way, this study was faking. These guys were, you know, defrocked and shamed. So I don't like to go down that hole path, especially with science. But there's a lot of things in science, and we're not sure yet or doesn't matter who cares. We don't have gravity works figured out what then Let's do that in school. I want to teach things that are practical that affect my Children's ability to live, to support themselves and to go forward into the world. So those are more important to me than getting caught up in these debates. Whether for you, it's a debate about religion, whether your religion is religion or the religion of science, I don't care. People that are obsessed with either side of that debate are wasting time, and I don't like people that waste my time, and I really don't like people that waste my Children's time for me. You can cover both ideas. Evolution and creationism takes an hour to coverage. That's it. There's no value. There's no life change for my kids. There's no change to their income or their trajectory. If they spent six more butts learning either of those, what a waste. What a waste of my Children's time to learn, something that won't affect their ability to support themselves. What good is knowing everything about evolution if your kid is stuck working minimum wage? No thanks. Thank you, but no things. I want my kids to make more money. I want my kids to be self sufficient as early as possible, so I know we've gone down a little bit of a rabbit hole. But these are things you can really think about when you're raising your Children abroad is that you don't have to worry about anyone deciding what you can and can't teach your Children. You could find curriculums that you like. Me and my girlfriend created very custom curriculum for our Children. My daughter is three years old, and she's already learning addition and subtraction blows my mind. I didn't learn that stuff talks about seven rain, but ahead of the curve, maybe I was six, I don't know, but I was. I wasn't three. I didn't even win the office till I was five. So we were able to push our Children and teach them at their correct rate. Being abroad, where you can afford different things and you can afford different types of schools, give you a lot of other options. A lot of people immediately go. I'm gonna send my kids to the American School. But is that always the best choice where you live where I live? My daughter goes to a private school two hours a day. It's more like a fun day care for two hours. It's not a very serious school. You don't go to seriously wonder three. It's like pre pre pre kindergarten. I don't know if she's going to stay there. Beyond that, I'll have to see what their curriculums like. But I am very involved in seeing what they're teaching her. I don't my Children learn things that I think are stupid that go against my personal beliefs or that waste our time. And then the thing to think about is television. When you're living abroad, you start to notice how the stuff they show on television is very weird where a bunch of television shows here that I don't care if the nanny's watch them, but they're not a lot of watch from the kids in the room. I don't like the message. There's certain messages that I don't agree what they could push in television. And if you don't think television political, you're not paying enough attention if you'll notice. Over the last year, while there's been a big immigration debate, most television shows reality shows everything. They have the story have a story about Someone came in the country. You know where you want to call undocumented worker Little, Little Red. I don't care. I don't live there anyways and always a really positive story, right? They always bidding, have stories about that two or three years ago. They're constantly taking political messages and slipping them into Children's TV shows. If you watch Sesame Street now, the quality of Sesame Street is dropped to the floor. Sesame Street, when I was young, was about counting was about learning Your alphabet was about friendship. Now most of the lessons are very much about diversity. As someone with the mixed race family In fact, I'm the only white person, my entire family. I don't care about diversity. I just don't It doesn't out my kids. I rather right Kids learn how to read earlier, okay? And I'm sorry if you disagree with that, But for me, my goal is always I'm very much capitalist. I'm very much into my Children being what they care of themselves and mastering the art of diversity will not affect my daughter's ability to make money when she's 18. It will not help her anyway. So it's just empty time. Sure, I think it's fine. Yeah, you should like everyone from every race and judge people by the content of character. That's all fine by me. I believe in that stuff. But when my Children learning, I want them to learn things that are valuable, and I want to avoid political messages I don't agree with on certain cartoon shows now, and you'll see this more and more. This is appearing more and more in the media. They're trying to normalize Head Ophelia. Recently on an episode of Adventure Time. One of my friends saw this and you know, one of the like, an old man joked around about dancing with a little kid on their bed, and it was a little bit over the top and intimate, my friend, a common, would be uncomfortable. And then they have a bunch of dancing and fun times to normalize that. They're just doing soft stories right now. But I promise you this. It's appearing more and more in magazines. It's appearing more and more newspapers where they're saying, Oh, I'm not a monster, I'm just different And it starts off in the very left wing, the very friends they start publishing these stories, they start soft and little stories appear in the news a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. They're showing up in cartoon shows. I don't like any of that stuff. I don't want my Children exposed to that. Now you can call me whatever you want. Okay, maybe I've got Victorian values, but I don't want some old creep trying hurt my Children. We already dealt with that. Okay, I already literally dealt with. And one of the reasons my family had to move was that someone did try to do something horrible to one of my Children. So for me to see that on television to see shows where they normalize it a little bit or they're just planning those little seeds. I see it in the news and seeing these shows that appears in cartoons here. I don't want any of that. I don't like that stuff. I know my Children exposed to think that I have a major problem with, and I will always have a major problem with hurting Children. I don't care how many stories they posted the newspaper about how someone isn't really a bad person or just different. No, if you hurt my kid, I'm okay with that, Okay? I don't three, Only three year old data. 50 year old made them Victorian whatever. Maybe I'm too conservative, but I don't want someone to hurt my child. And as someone who literally dealt with that, who had to save my daughter when she was less than 18 months from being hurt? Yeah, to me, it's really close to the boat. I don't like that stuff, so I control what my Children are exposed to buy, only showing them DVDs of TV shows, which means my Children are now watching classic Mister Rogers episodes from the 19 seventies. Guess what? I've seen them all and I know what they're gonna be exposed to. I like using old TV shows. I like using old cartoon shows for the same reason my Children, as I mentioned recently, watch a lot of the Pink Panther. Guess what? Paint mother smokes. It's okay by me. I don't smoke anymore. I offer Never smoked another. People that work in our house smoke this scene. The cartoon. Who cares? People are so obsessed with you can't let him watch something smoking in a show. It's much more important to watch a show where they slip in a little hints that pedophilia might be OK. No thanks. I'd rather choose smoking if I'm to trust you that you were having some horrible happen to my daughter again and having my daughter get exposed to a smoking cat, I'd rather watch the smoking cat. Okay, as someone who's been in the middle of that nightmare, that's my choice. And I'd rather be a conscious choice. Most of us unconsciously choose what we expose our Children to when you let your Children watch TV. Have no idea what's being put in that you don't notice the political messages. You don't notice the all of the stuff in there. Okay? I don't want my Children watching side live because all it does anymore is have story after story against the president. Now, I don't care which side you're on. Whether you're probably Cantor Democrats, I'm really not into being anti president. To me, the presidents of President it is not. So when you voted for, it doesn't matter. You should respect them. Okay, I respect the president. Country live in the same way. I didn't vote for him. I can't vote here. I want my Children to learn a level of respect for authority. That's something that's a value to me. So these shows right. They're so busy pushing their political views, they're ignoring the sub message they're doing there. A lot of people right now, especially college campuses and a lot of TV shows more more anti free speech. They say, Oh, you should only like to have free speech if it doesn't hurt other people's feelings. They're constantly pushing this and it's very terrifying to me because if you could tell someone else they can't say what they want, then they could do the same thing to you. As soon as you remove free speech, America will start to collapse. There's a reason that free speech is the First Amendment, the most important one without free speech, without to say the things that other people doesn't really, who would never have new ideas and new thought. What happened when a little scientist in Rome said, You know what? I don't think the earth centered universe, I think the sun is I think we rotate around the sun. They burned at the stake. That's what happened in our free speech, man. I'm into free speech. I'm into the Constitution like I don't want to change it. So when there's TV shows and messages like that, I don't want my Children getting caught that I don't my Children being told that your opinion if it hurts other people's feelings isn't allowed to be expressed. I don't like that very uncomfortable that I I'm very fascinated because it used to be left. It was all about free speech, and now it's all the right. That's about free speech, very baffling to me, this political shift. But to me, there are plenty people that I massively disagree with, but I don't want to take away their right to free speech because then they could take away mine. And the people that want to remove their enemies right to free speech don't understand that. Then there's we'll get lost next. It's it's a slippery slope. So, yes, I've leaked out a couple of my political views. I believe in the Constitution, basically my core political views. And I don't believe in hurting Children. So when you could have your Children exposed to television in America televisions on all the time, you can't control your should be watching anything that he be getting educated with weird P essays that go against your religious, political or personal beliefs. A lot of the news Now there's a trend now talking on the news about Oh, it's all they're all against fake news. But the sights complaining the most are the ones that published most fake news. One of the biggest complainers about fake news is Brian Williams, who got fired because he told dozens of stories I was in the helicopter. Get hit with a missile was one of his lies never happened. He got fired from his job because he's the king of fake news and always complaining. Other people doing fake news. I don't like all that stuff, Okay? I don't like Children seeing all that garbage, so that's why show them stuff from the past. I much prefer that much control, that control, which shows they watch. And I know what the messages were going to be because I've seen them all before. I don't my Children to see something I haven't seen. You can also the same thing with friends. Is there certain Children here that I don't love my daughter to be too much friends with because their parents are a strict or their parents don't care. I have, ah, number friend anymore. But there was acquaintance who, over time I got so sick of who is probably, I would say, not the worst parent I've ever seen. But one of the worst has Children on Lee speak the dialect of our island. We don't speak the national language and they don't speak in English. And he says, Oh, what? He wants to take him back to his home country, Australia, like they'll figure out when they get there. I've known Children have been through this. It's so traumatic. His Children will always have an accent. His Children will always be treated as second generation. As first generation, they'll always be treated like they just arrived. They won't be treated the same way. When your accent isn't perfect, people treat you differently. I know this because I've experienced in many countries whether you're in an English country or another country. His Children could have perfect English accents if he'd just taken the time to teach them English being bothered. And when they go back, even if they do pick up English is gonna be a lot of tears and a lot of pain. And suddenly they're in a place where no one understands what they're saying at all. Then horrific. I don't want kids hanging out with those kids. I don't my Children take out this kid's too much because I don't like that style of parenting of the don't care style. I'm very conscious. I'm very obsessed with my Children's future. Most of the money that I bring in most of my building of the growing of this business is about my Children. If I was single with no kids, I wouldn't barely be working. I could sustain my lifestyle pretty easily would have such a big house would have all these nannies wouldn't have some bills. So really, my business is for them, not me. I've done it up. Take care of myself, taking care of your kids. It's very important that if you're on the same path as me, then you're really digging this message so you can control who their friends are. You control who they hang out with a little bit more, and even if you're living in America should do the same thing. One of problems. When you said you could just school, you never know where they're gonna come home friends with. But here I have a little bit more level of control. Have that level of Drew. It's important to me, so I can see they're hanging out with that. Pay attention, say I don't wanna hang out that kid too much. I don't know that kid around too much. I don't want to get out the kid whose parents do different things, so this kind of rolls into safety and safety is really important to me. So whenever my daughter is on the motorcycle, whenever she's on the scooter, she has to wear a helmet. I bought a really cute hello Kitty helmet. Although the kids are jealous of its so cute. None of the other parents on this island, by how much for the kids and the parents were helping house to make my girlfriend wear helmet and she was wearing yesterday. Everyone was making fun of her laughing because she looked like a Power ranger. Guess what? She was in the car when I was away. She didn't wear the helmet. She had a car accident. She almost got really, really, really hurt. She's a giant bruise on her arm. She landed the wrong way. I wouldn't have a girlfriend anymore waiting to be off. She got so for me, making her wear helmet. That's important. It's not because I want to be strict, but it's because the number one cause of death on my island it's car accidents. Every couple of weeks, someone gets hurt. Horrific Lee, because they weren't right helmet. So as a parent, I create these rules that are designed to keep my Children safe. I'm not very strict in other areas. For child safety is very important meeting way. Have a door in the back of our house that leads right into a major road. Nannies used to walk in and out that door all the time. Our dog ran out the door six months ago, died in front of my daughter, got run over by an ambulance. So guess what? I locked that door off, I said. No one uses the store anymore. It's not safe. If you wanna hang out, play play in front of our house, where we have a pool of garden on the beach. It's the safe side. You don't need a watch on the motorcycles driving by. It's too dangerous for my little kid. I don't my daughter running into the road thinking about safety, making it a priority. People have this feeling that if I'm international, the laws don't apply to me, and the laws of physics don't apply to me. Go to India. Every single foreigner has an injury from a bike accident. They don't wear helmets, they're on. They're all hurt. It's all dumb dumps. So I hated going to India and I'll never go back. Was a terrible experience. Everyone's hurt, so making safety a priority is really, really important. And of course, the final thing to look at the fifth thing to look at when you're raising your Children. Rotary printing about is the culture. There are parts of the local culture that I expose my Children to very extensively. Very much. My Children are learning about farming they're learning about even on food killing on animals. Because guess what? I don't want my Children to think that cow is something that just comes out of a factory. So my Children are very much exposed because when the middle buying a farm, we're trying to grow our food to that part of life, that farm part of life, which, ironically, my mother spent her whole life escaping. But then there's certain parts of the local culture that I got into. Most of the parents here let their Children run around naked and street till about 78 years old. I don't let my Children play in the street, and I don't let my Children playing street naked. That doesn't interest me. I know my Children, you know, being covered in dirt or those things. So there's something few of parents do here because every hands off that I'm not into was there other things that I'm very much interested in. My daughter. I make her swim every day, even if she doesn't want to. I want to remain a storm swimmer. My son. He swims all the time, too. He's been swimming since about three months old, is not good enough to swim on his own. But he loves being in the water, and he's very comfortable, so he'll be a very strong swimmer very soon. These types of teachings are absolutely critical when you live on an island. So when my Children exposed to a lot of most things Children exposed to, ah, lot of cultural things to their nannies that I'm fine with. But I don't let my Children go to the cock fights at all. My Children to see two chickens fight to the death for sport. That doesn't interest me, so there's parts of the culture I let him expose soon's project culture that I'm not that interested in. And these are decisions and things you should make at watch when your parenting abroad, if you pay attention, the five key steps you can give your Children are really big advantage of life. You can create Children outside of the American educational system outside of the English educational system who have a real chance at a great life. Two of my Children turn 18. I want them to be able to make enough money to support themselves. I want them to be able to speak multiple languages, play an instrument, have some artistic ability. I want them to have a skill set. That means if I wanna be a musician, I can't want to be a painter. I can't if I wanna be a translator, I can't. So they have a set of skills that are valuable and that will prepare them for life in a way that I'll feel comfortable don't like. Okay, they're ready. That's really as a parent. That's all you're trying to do is get your kids ready to be adults themselves. And so these air five of the critical components the key ways to really prepare your Children for life When your parenting abroad. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. You've just listened to another amazing episode of the serve. No master podcast. Make sure to subscribe, and we're back tomorrow with another amazing episode.