Chapter 148: Ginny Yurich obviates obsolete offspring with 1000 hours outside

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Neil:

Hey everybody, it's Neil Pasricha and welcome or welcome back to chapter 148, 48, 48 of 3 Books. Yes, you are listening to the world's only podcast by and for book lovers, writers, makers, sellers, and librarians trying to provoke all of us into lives of intention, lives of connection, rich, meaningful lives through the power of reading. And we have a super reader on the show today.

Her name is Ginny Yurich. You guys have been recommending I have her on the show for a long time. She's finally here.

And when I say she's here, I mean, she's really here. I mean, she really drove five hours up the road from Michigan to Toronto to hang out with Leslie and I in our home. And then we went for a walk, which is what we recorded for this podcast outside.

Why did we go outside? Because Ginny is the homeschooling mother of five matriarch and her family down in Michigan who has spirited a giant online movement called 1,000 Hours Outside. You know I'm a fan of 1,000, 1,000 formative books on the show.

1,000 Awesome Things was my first blog. I love this concept. Get three hours outside a day on average.

Why? Why 1,000 hours outside? And she's got trackers for it.

She's got ways to measure it, ways to kind of, the whole book that she wrote called 1,000 Hours Outside is like full of all these projects and games and crafts and stuff you can do outside to make outside more interesting and fulfilling. Why? Because we're not outside today.

We're inside looking at screens the whole time. We're getting outside for minutes instead of hours. And it's really killing us.

It's hurting our, it's hurting our bones. It's hurting our eyeballs. It's making us hunched over.

It is absolutely decimating our ability to thrive. And Ginny Yurich is here today to help provoke and prompt us all to get outside. But it's not just outside.

She's got a brand new book. It's coming out next week. It's a great book.

I got an early peek at it. It's called Homeschooling. You're Doing It Right Just By Doing It.

Now, I should say, Leslie and I don't homeschool. So why am I advocating a book about homeschooling? Because it's not about homeschooling to me.

It's about the principles, the ideas, the connection with kids. And we're going to talk about that and a lot of things, including parenting pressures, what it looks like to have your best day ever. We're going to talk about Dr. Peter Gray, raising wild children, old dangerous playground equipment, your vestibular sense, the benefits of spinning, why osteoporosis is actually a childhood disease, how to avoid doctor's appointments, and raising readers. There is a lot here to discuss. But without further ado, let's get outside with the one and only Ginny Yurich, Y-U-R-I-C-H, of the 1000 Hours Outside Movement and the new book, Homeschooling. Let's go.

We wanted to do this conversation outside, okay? So Ginny's driven here from Michigan in order to make this happen, which I'm really deeply grateful. And as we come up to the mural, which is about like 30 to 45 seconds away, that's a perfect time to say, so how did all this get started?

Oh, that's a good... I just have to put that out. It just has to sit down here.

We got to start with that. So people are like, for the people that know you, they love you, they've heard this a million times, for the new to Ginny people, we just got to get this on the record.

Ginny:

It's not really that great of a story. I just really was a crummy mom.

Leslie:

That's the story. You're going to say, oh, but it was the truth. It's such an important place to start because I feel like that's where you get us already liking you from the beginning instead of like, who's this mom that spends 1000 hours outside?

I can't do that. When you admit that you started from a vulnerable place, I think we all get on board. I'm distracted.

Neil:

We all are. That's the danger of a walking podcast.

Leslie:

You need to find a place to sit down.

Ginny:

I really do just like this whole concept so much. When you meet someone online, you came on my show. Look how beautiful.

Wow, Nick did wonderful.

Neil:

She's walking up to the bird mural right now. You're hearing a live reaction.

Ginny:

Oh, it's gorgeous. When did he do it?

Neil:

September 17th and November 1st, 2024.

Ginny:

Oh, he just did it.

Neil:

Yeah.

Ginny:

So what was it before? Just concrete?

Neil:

Brutalist, a brutalist. And I met this Russian guy in the elevator going down. I was like, so what do you think of the new wall?

He's like, I prefer brutalist concrete.

Ginny:

I prefer this. I mean, it's stunning. Do you know most of these birds?

Neil:

Yeah. Yeah. It's a black and white warbler, a blue jay, a white, a white-breasted nuthatch, a cedar waxwing, a northern flicker, a rose-breasted grosbeak, a white-throated sparrow, a scarlet tanger, a ruby-throated hummingbird, a European starling, a red-tailed hawk, a house finch, a ruby-crowned kinglet, a turkey vulture, a black-burned warbler, and a common grackle.

Ginny:

Isn't nature cool? There could be just one kind of bird.

Neil:

Yeah. Look at this. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ginny:

Wow.

Neil:

And we've only been here three million years, but like owls have been around. And I saw you at Jennifer Ackerman on A Thousand Hours. And like owls have been here 90 million years.

They've been here 30 times longer than the homo, like not homo sapiens, just homo, just like cavemen, like 30 times longer. It's insane.

Ginny:

Oh, so cool. The owls are really cool. They look like people.

Neil:

Yeah.

Ginny:

In a way. Yeah.

Their faces. What a cool place to live. It's a walkable city.

You say you started... Okay. I was a crummy mom.

And I was a crummy mom because I sort of just did like a very straight line of life. You know, it's like I went to school. And then after that...

Neil:

You went to school.

Ginny:

After that, I went to more school.

Neil:

Unique. Yeah.

Ginny:

Yeah. And then after that, I went back to school as a teacher. And so this was like a very straightforward, rhythmic, predictable life.

And when I was pregnant with our first, toward the end, I started to think, what are we going to do all day? And I had no idea. You know, my days used to be filled up very predictably.

And then you have this baby and you're kind of like, well, well, how are we going to fill this 10, 12? And it's so much time.

[Leslie]

I can really relate to that. Like, I feel like maybe, I don't know if this is the same for you as it was for me, but like, I'm a teacher as well. And I'd always worked with kids.

And I knew I was going to be a mom. And I was excited to be a mom. And I knew I was going to love being a mom.

And then I became a mom. And I'm like, whoa, this is way harder than I thought it was going to be. And I wonder if it's harder for people like us, who think we're going to be good, have been successful in other areas of our lives.

You can't just like apply the same, do this, and then you're going to be successful model.

[Ginny]

Right. Yeah. So I think I tried this schedule thing that some of my friends had done.

Basically, I started to look around and see what was everyone else doing, which basically is how I lived my whole life up until that point. And everyone else, well, some of my friends, they had already had kids, so they were doing a schedule. And they were living life in like these two hour time blocks.

And so it worked for them. I know you laugh.

[Neil]

No, I'm laughing. It sounds hilarious. But yeah.

[Ginny]

But I was like, no problem. I was like, I'll do the 8 a.m. block and the 10 a.m. block. And it was supposed to be like, they would have an activity.

[Neil]

Right. And then a nap.

[Ginny]

Yeah. And then a nap. But then the naps never happened.

So it was just like constant nursing and crying. And I was like, I am not surviving at all. I would call my husband at like one o'clock in the afternoon.

Like, how much longer? So I enrolled in a lot of stuff, because that's another thing that people do. I think to pass the time, but also like extracurricular, that type of thing, trying to get them ahead.

And that was also miserable.

[Neil]

Baby Einstein. Yeah.

[Ginny]

And like those classes are like 45 minutes. So you're investing money that, I mean, we didn't have money that we didn't have to load up a bunch of little kids to go to some class that they didn't really want to be at and try and like cajole them through it and then come home and it will be like 11 a.m. And I'm like, I'm done. Like, I'm already toast.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

So that was sort of my early motherhood. I got nervous about the cords there.

[Neil]

No, no. We're going to take a seat at the benches outside of the Toronto Archives as we hear your origin story more and then tip into your first formative book. And then as we get into that, we're going to walk up 122 steps up towards that castle.

Okay. Okay. There's a huge castle on the hill here called Castle Loma, and we're going to walk up the hill towards that castle.

But I want us to give it, we're going to have some bench breaks. It's a thousand hours outside. It's not a thousand hours always moving.

[Ginny]

And that's true.

[Neil]

You know.

[Ginny]

That's very true. Cause you could take your work outside.

[Neil]

Yeah. You could take your work outside. You could just chill.

So you think you're a crummy mom. You're enrolled in all these activities.

[Ginny]

I love my kids, but I hated being a mom.

[Leslie]

You're not really enjoying it.

[Ginny]

I wasn't enjoying it at all.

And one of the activities I did was Mops, which is mothers of preschoolers. I think they changed their name, but it was a program where you would go and they would take your kids for two hours in a class and you would be with friends. And my kids never made it through the class.

They would always be crying. So they'd always bring me my babies back. And I'd be holding my babies and talking to these friends.

And one of them was going to homeschool.

[Neil]

Oh, okay.

[Ginny]

One of these friends at my table was going to homeschool.

And we were also planning on homeschooling.

[Neil]

You were planning on this at the time?

[Ginny]

We were planning on homeschooling, but her son was one year older than our oldest.

And so she had started to research. I was like, this is great. She can do all the research and just tell me.

And she came one day and said, I've been reading, I've been researching. And she said, Charlotte Mason says that kids should be outside for four to six hours a day whenever the weather is tolerable.

[Neil]

Four to six hours?

[Ginny]

Four to six hours. And I thought in my mind, that's ridiculous. That's really ridiculous.

Who goes outside for four to six hours? Who has that amount of time to begin with? And why would you do that when there's all these other activities you can put your kids in?

And she didn't tell me that Charlotte Mason was from the 1800s. Shouldn't she have said that? I had no idea.

[Neil]

That's hilarious.

[Ginny]

I know some Charlottes. So I'm thinking this is current wisdom, current statistics.

So I found out years later that Charlotte Mason was from the 1800s. But then this friend said, well, we should try it. And I thought, no way we should try that.

I'm like, have you been to this program or that program? It's 45 minutes. The kids don't want to be there.

They're unhappy. It's awful. I'm like, this is going to be, you know, five, six times longer.

And she was like, no, no, I think we should try it. We're going to meet at this park from nine in the morning to one in the afternoon.

[Neil]

Oh.

[Ginny]

And you're not supposed to bring anything.

[Neil]

Oh, OK.

[Ginny]

I was like, we're not supposed to bring anything. I was like, I've got homemade Play-Doh. I'm like, I should bring everything, like my train table, right?

I mean, what are we going to do? And it was just a park. It wasn't even like you guys had this cool playground up the road, but it wasn't like that.

It was like just grass. And there was a little creek that ran through shallow creek. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this is going to crash and burn.

And I I tell people it was the best day of my life because it was the first good day I had as a mom. I hadn't had a good day. And our oldest was three at that time.

We had two younger ones. And I had not had a good day in three years. That's a long time.

Every single day.

[Neil]

To have your bearings, like to have your psychological bearings of what a good day even is.

[Ginny]

Day down, you just like, you feel like you're failing constantly. These kids are crying and the days are so long and you're exhausted. And what happened was we just laid our picnic blankets out.

We brought some food. And the older kids, she had two that were toddler preschool age. And she had a baby and then so did I.

So six kids. And the toddler preschoolers, they just ran around. I was like, I didn't even know kids could do that for four hours.

And they're running after stuff and jumping off of things. And the babies would nurse and sleep, not in two hour time increments, on their own time frame. And I got to have some conversations that lasted and weren't interrupted constantly.

And at one o'clock, I felt good. And the kids felt good. They'd had a great day.

It started there. It started in the fall of 2011 when we went to a park from nine in the morning till one in the afternoon. And it changed my life.

[Neil]

And that's 2011. Now we're talking 2025, 14 years later. Two additional kids later, right?

Because you had three little ones. Now you got five, kind of age eight to 15-ish?

[Ginny]

Yeah.

[Neil]

Right? And you have one of the most popular podcasts in the world, a thousand hours outside. You've written two books.

We're talking before your, I believe, third book comes out, which is called Homeschooling. I know, that's the title.

[Ginny]

It's just homeschooling. I'm so excited about this.

[Neil]

I like the subtitle. You're doing it right just by doing it.

[Ginny]

Yep, yep.

[Neil]

Right? So we're talking in advance of that. We might, maybe we should time this.

We'll drop this right as it's hot. So it just explodes your pre-sales, you know? But you got three books out.

You've got this active, vibrant podcast. You know, I'm a thousand awesome things, thousand farming a book, thousand hours outside. It was your people, your fervent community that's been emailing me, passionately commenting my things.

You gotta get Ginny on. Check out Ginny. Like, you know, seriously, like you have this, you're building a movement.

You've built a movement.

[Ginny]

Isn't that bananas? And I don't even know like what we're making for dinner. I mean, I'm not.

It's a, it's a kind of a bizarre thing. Like I'm not any type of special mom. I'm actually like self-conscious.

I'm like overweight, you know? But, and I'm not some outdoorsy, amazing, you know, person that's like skiing and doing all these cool things. I'm not doing any of that.

But the simple fact of getting outside changed my life. And then in turn, it changed the life, the lives of our kids and our family. And I started to learn pretty early on that when we let kids play outside and we don't have to bring stuff, you don't have to bring a train table or a scavenger hunt.

You can, but you don't have to, that that interaction and immersion with nature. And I know you talk about this a lot for mental health and happiness, but for kids, it helps their cognition. It helps their social skills.

It helps them emotionally. And it helps their physical bodies from everything from movement, which we need obviously, but also to like the eyesight and the full spectrum. I mean, there's so much going on with the body and I didn't know that.

[Leslie]

I just, I love talking to you, Ginny. And I think, you know, I said this earlier that I love that you're so open about it. You know, coming out of a place of finding motherhood hard because I think so many people do.

And I think right now more than ever before, parents are finding parenting so hard. And, you know, hearing something like a thousand hours outside or hearing something like homeschooling, like, you know, I'm a pretty confident person, but even in me, it brings up this feeling of insecurity that you also just spoke to, like this feeling that we're not doing enough or that we don't have dinner plan or that, you know, this added list of all these shoulds of how we should be parenting our kids. And so I love how in this movement that you've created, you so quickly come to a place of being like, this is not supposed to be like adding another thing that parents should do or another more complicated way to raise your kids.

It's not about pressure or perfection. It's just actually a way to simplify really, right?

[Ginny]

Like I think there's a bit of a letting go. And I remember, and this is not one of my formative books, but I know you're going to put it in the list because I can say other books because then you make the list.

[Neil]

Yes, that's right.

[Ginny]

The formative books are going to be a surprise. Like you're going to have to, you know, it's going to say the number and what time, but the other books, they're going to just go there and you can click on them.

[Neil]

That's in the show notes, threebooks.co. Yes, in the show notes.

[Ginny]

So Free to Learn was a book I read by Dr. Peter Gray.

[Neil]

Free to Learn.

[Ginny]

Free to Learn by Dr. Peter Gray.

[Neil]

Which is already on our top 1000, courtesy of Lenore Skenazy.

[Ginny]

Well, it's a phenomenal book.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

But what he says, and his book is phenomenal, but that kids are biologically designed to self-educate. They're biologically designed to self-educate. So the pressure's off a little bit that we can take our kids and let them do what seems like nothing, but it's really a lot that's going on there.

[Leslie]

You know, what it actually makes me think of is that like parents are also biologically made to parent. Like if we take away all of these pressures that we put on parents and these courses that you need to sign up for and these like, even it bugs me that we have like, you know, oh, that's so free range of you or like, oh, you know, you know, are you screen free or are you, you know, like organic and all these different ways, these different pressures on parents. But in fact, actually, when you strip that away and we go back to our instincts and that like, you know, 18th century inspiration to have our kids outside for as many hours as that, then we get to like relax and do it right because we're actually programmed to do it too.

[Ginny]

That's so good.

[Neil]

These comments by both of you, Ginny and Leslie, are reminding me of your first formative book, which is of course, Balanced and Barefoot by Angela Hanscom, H-A-N-S-C-O-M, published in 2016, by new harbinger publications. I have the book in my backpack. You brought your own copy.

The cover's a picture of a kid with long blonde hair and a ponytail wearing a floral print bathing suit, crouching in the mud with dirty hands. And yes, of course, bare feet reaching towards a small creek. The subtitle here is How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident and Capable Children.

Who's Angela? She's a pediatric occupational therapist. She founded this company called Timberknock an award-winning nature-based program.

She's got her master's in occupational therapy, undergrad and kinesiology. She's alive today. She's alive today.

[Ginny]

She's wonderful. We're friends.

[Neil]

She's the only living author of your three formative books, right?

Now, basically, she goes through how outdoor play and unstructured freedom are vital for children's cognitive development and growth, offering detailed research-based ways on why playing outside is really, really good for you. Dewey Decimal Heads follows under 304.2 for social sciences slash factors affecting social behavior slash human ecology. Ginny, tell us about your relationship with Balanced and Barefoot by your good friend.

I added a good there for you. Angela Hanscom. And we'll do this while walking slowly up the street again.

[Ginny]

Okay, this is surreal. This is surreal. I've heard you do this for so many people.

And you just did it for mine. I just think this is the coolest thing. It's the coolest thing for us too.

[Neil]

Thank you so much for doing this.

[Ginny]

Wow. It's a cool thing what you're doing though. Just getting people back to reading and the idea of focusing in.

There's so many books. It's hard to focus in. Focusing in on people's formative books.

Angela Hanscom is wonderful and Timber Nook is wonderful. Here's the thing about my three books. First of all, I was pretty self-conscious of them and thought about lying.

I don't know if anybody else thinks about lying.

[Neil]

A lot of people say that.

[Leslie]

A lot of people do.

[Neil]

We have some guests also that have just suggested books that are like from the last five years. And I'm like, come on.

Like, what'd you read a while ago? You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Ginny]

But some people are picking books from their childhood.

[Neil]

That's cool.

[Ginny]

And I always think that's super cool.

[Leslie]

Of course that formed you.

[Ginny]

But my whole life was fairly straight. And when you're talking about things that formed you, the three books that I picked, I looked back.

I bought them within a period of two months.

[Neil]

Oh, wow.

[Ginny]

I bought them the same year.

[Neil]

It's like a formative moment for you, right?

[Ginny]

It's a formative year because I realized that- Is this post that play?

[Neil]

Is this post that day?

[Ginny]

Yes, it's post the day.

[Neil]

Post best day ever.

[Ginny]

Post best day ever. Because then I started to notice that our kids were thriving. I was thriving.

So I changed what we were doing for early childhood and started to spend a lot of time outside. We skipped preschool.

[Neil]

Wow.

[Ginny]

That's a big deal. Huge. Like we're out of it.

They did.

[Leslie]

And you must have been lonely. Were you lonely while you were skipping preschool?

[Ginny]

Well, there was a few other friends that did it too.

[Neil]

That's all you need.

[Leslie]

That's a big, yeah. That's it. That's all you need.

[Neil]

That's such a game changer. We walked by a Waldorf Academy.

[Leslie]

Well, I say it thinking also about the fact that, you know, over the years while I've had kids at home with me and I've been at the park and there've been barely any other parents there, right? Like even when you're outside looking for the other parents, they're not always there with their kids. They're either inside or they're at work and their kids are in preschools.

And so it can be lonely trying to, you know, do these counterculture things.

[Ginny]

I'm trying to, with one hand, take a picture of the Waldorf window star. Isn't that beautiful?

[Neil]

You're not a Waldorf person though, right?

[Ginny]

Well, I was really influenced by Waldorf because they do later reading.

[Neil]

Right, right, right.

[Ginny]

A lot of outdoor time. A lot of outdoor time. A lot of natural choice.

Like look on the porch. They've got broom. See that wooden car?

[Neil]

Yeah, yeah. Wooden car, yeah. Bird feeders hanging outside.

[Ginny]

This is climbing furniture.

[Neil]

Climbing furniture, yeah. Well, the most popular school in Silicon Valley amongst the tech executives who ply us with screens and apps is of course the Waldorf Academy, you know.

[Ginny]

And they look at the little fairy door. They have on the tree. This is a cool place.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

Aw.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

I definitely was influenced by Waldorf. Now, we didn't go to the school. It was too expensive for our family.

And there's only one in our area. But a lot of those...

[Neil]

Conceptual alignment.

[Ginny]

Rudolf Steiner type things, yeah.

[Neil]

So two months span post Best Day Ever, you order three books, one of which is Balanced and Barefoot.

[Ginny]

Yes, and it gave words to what I was seeing. Now, I had read other books too. Dr. Scott Sampson came out with a book. It's called How to Raise a Wild Child. So he's from PBS Dinosaur Train. Richard Louv had had books out like Last Child in the Woods.

But Angela Hanscom was a mom. Her kids are the same age as mine.

[Neil]

Oh, okay.

[Ginny]

So she was on the front lines seeing the decline of skills in children as an occupational pediatric therapist. Maybe I said that backwards. A pediatric occupational therapist.

[Neil]

Yeah, yeah. All those three words.

[Ginny]

And she was seeing that these kids are struggling, including her own.

[Neil]

Right.

[Ginny]

So from a mom's perspective, it made a big impact on me because it was right sort of where I was at too.

[Neil]

Yeah, yeah. And the thing about this book is it's researchy. It's like page 13, comparing kids from 1998 to 2008, only 10 years, the number of sit-ups 10-year-olds could do declined 27.1%. Arm strength has fallen 26%. Grip strength has fallen 7%. I mean, there's studies quoted like this, three studies per page for like 100 pages. And it goes through every single thing that has gone down.

And every single thing has gone up. Like on page 82, the benefits of spinning. I was floored by this.

Research shows spinning. You know, you always see that kid on the park that's just spinning around and you think they're sorry to say this. I was always like, what's wrong with that kid?

They're just like spinning around.

[Ginny]

But they're brilliant.

[Neil]

They're brilliant.

[Ginny]

That kid knows their body is driving them on.

[Neil]

Apparently, they're activating hair cells on their inner ear, sending motor messages through their spinal cord to help maintain muscle tone and body posture. The vestibular senses that are grown from merry-go-rounds and spinners, which have been eliminated from playgrounds, has also led to a decline in alertness, attention, and a sense of calm.

[Ginny]

What's interesting is there's this fluid inside the inner ear. So she talks about this. It's called the endolymph fluid.

And that's moving around in your inner ear. And it's moving those hairs. There's little hairs in there.

And then the hairs have to prong back up to their original spot. And that's how your body learns where it is in space. And it's just really good for development, right?

So when you hit puberty, that fluid, it thickens. And so it takes a lot longer for those hairs to prong back up to their original spot. And you get motion sick.

[Leslie]

So there is a time and a space. That's why, like, it actually feels different to go in the swing as an adult than it did when you were a kid.

[Neil]

A roller coaster.

[Leslie]

Yeah, exactly.

[Neil]

You're like, whoa, my tummy's flipping on the swing. My fluid has thickened.

[Ginny]

I didn't spin enough. But even on a swing, it's different. So there's a time and a place for that.

My favorite quote from Angela's book is actually similar to the children are biologically designed to self-educate. She says, as adults, we may feel that we know best what we should do with a kid. But she says their neurological system begs to differ.

That a child knows how fast, how high at any given moment so that they're going to grow a little bit. They have that instinct in them. And that's how they learn things when they're little.

And they will continue to do that as long as we give them the time and space to do so.

[Leslie]

Full body shivers over here. It's just so true, right? And like it can be both to those physical things of like, you know, them being the experts on how high they should go up in a tree or how fast they should spin.

And it then extends into building their own trust with themselves so that they can apply it to way more complex things like which friends should they hang out with? What decisions are right or wrong? You know, what passions should they follow?

And if they learn that they're their inner guide instead of this external source, then their whole life falls into place so much better.

[Ginny]

Oh, it's so much practice that they're getting as a little child. Like no one would say to a six month old, I'm going to teach you how to crawl.

[Leslie]

Exactly.

[Ginny]

I mean, they don't even know how to talk. They don't know what day of the week it is. And yet they know how to learn from mastery.

And because I think we swoop in so young, we forget that their body has so much to offer. Their instincts have so much to offer. They're biologically, biologically designed to self-educate.

And that was probably one of the biggest things I got out of that time period was that this is OK. It's OK for me to step back. I don't have to be the one that's driving every decision.

I love that Peter Gray calls it because everyone says unstructured. Kids need unstructured play. He says it's not unstructured.

It's self-structured.

[Neil]

Yes. It's OK. It's better for them.

[Ginny]

Right.

[Neil]

You know, there's phytoncides released by trees that reduce cortisol, that reduce adrenaline. I'm interested in this quote.

I wonder what both of you thought, Page 22. We never saw peanut milk and gluten allergies when we were kids.

[Ginny]

Well, because of the immune system is bulking up. But some people would say that's because you're supposed to be exposed a little bit to those allergens. But outside is giving you a chance to work up your immune system.

The kids are supposed to touch dirt and touch all these different things. And then their immune system builds up to deal with them. I'm not super strong on the science there, but the outdoors, the dirt is good for your immune system.

[Neil]

I was also amazed by like the jumping off of like trees that are a bit too high or rocks that are a bit too high is like actually growing their skeletons. That was interesting.

[Ginny]

Yeah. So every time a child jumps and lands, Katie Bowman, she says osteoporosis is a childhood disease that shows up in adulthood. Well, why?

Because if we had a two-year-old right here, they would step up on this step.

[Neil]

Pointing on the stairs. All right.

[Ginny]

There's a little step and they would step up and they would jump off and jump off and jump off. And they might fall down a few times. And they get a little bit older.

And then if there wasn't a pot here, they'd be coming up onto a higher thing. And what's interesting in the perspective that I'm at, it's been a long time. Our best day ever was in 2011.

It's 2025. And we're still living the same way. And there aren't many other parenting hacks or parenting things that you learn that last that long.

[Leslie]

So how does this perspective that you hold and that you've kind of articulated for us, like how it plays out in those preschool years, how does it play out in your kids entering adolescence?

[Ginny]

It's wonderful. It's wonderful. We do not have all of these problems that a lot of modern parents have, which is fighting over the screens.

We just don't have those. And the kids are vibrant and healthy and they can have conversations. We haven't needed a doctor's appointment for an acute anything, except for one pink eye since 2011.

We have five kids. So this is clearing their lymphatic system and the fresh air and the full spectrum light and all those types of things. But it's just gotten more fun when they were all little.

[Neil]

Are they all readers?

[Ginny]

They're all readers.

[Neil]

They're all readers.

[Ginny]

They carry books around.

[Neil]

That's the thing, like all readers. You know you're doing something right. That tells you right away, like they're all readers.

[Ginny]

They're interesting. I just talked to Dr. Nicholas Kardaris. He has two fabulous books.

They're going to end up in the show notes. They are called Glow Kids and Digital Madness.

[Neil]

I listened to your interview with him. It was great.

[Ginny]

And he has talked about, well, in the first interview, he said kids will come into, because he actually works with clients. And he said the kids will be two, three years old. They can't even stack blocks.

They don't know how to play. Well, in the latest interview, he said this is a new thing. He's got kids that are coming in that he works with a lot of failure to launch, 17 to early 20s, addicted to pornography, addicted to gaming, addicted to social media.

And he said that a lot of these guys these age, I guess he was talking to guys, they cannot self-visualize when they read. And so he said that he would read a story like, and then the train left the station. And in your mind, you would have a mental picture of that.

And he said they don't have that.

[Neil]

That's an interesting thing to find out. It'd be hard to discover that.

[Ginny]

So then he asked the whole group, and they said we're all the same. They haven't developed the capacity for mental imagery.

[Neil]

Oh, my God.

[Leslie]

It's kind of the same as not being able to climb up the stairs. Like they haven't had the chance to practice it. Yeah.

[Ginny]

And it's all been fed to them. A pre, a pre done something to watch something to interact with on a screen. Then you lose.

That's a skill. And I thought I got actually emotional. I was almost crying because I thought, well, reading is such an important part of my adult life.

One of the favorite parts of my adult life. And what if what if that was capped? Because as a kid, I wasn't given the opportunity to develop mental imagery.

It's a pretty big deal.

[Neil]

Well, it seems like also interested in how he figures out how to work that back in.

[Ginny]

I mean, right.

[Neil]

You know, it must be so painful. And I hear this all the time. I mean, this part of the reason why, you know, the first value on this podcast is no book, shame, no book guilt.

And I partly say that so staunchly because I want to remove any expectations on reading. It's fine to read kids books. It's fine to read young adult.

It's fine to read comic books. Just to, you know, read what you love till you love to read. Like, we have to get back to that because that is the that's what's happened for me.

[Ginny]

Have you made that into like a bumper sticker?

[Neil]

No, I need your help. I like the next mega pack.

[Ginny]

Read what you love until you love to read. Well, I brought up Nicholas Carderas because you were asking Leslie about the teens. And he said that a lot of these teens.

[Neil]

We're going to dangerously listen to Ginny while crossing the street here in front of a college. OK, so we're pulling this off.

[Ginny]

Look at all these people outside walking around, though. This is so cool. He said that a lot of these teens are uninterested and uninteresting.

Uninterested and uninteresting.

[Neil]

Yeah, because all they're doing is, you know, I mean, parroting what they see, probably. You know, here's the latest TikTok viral meme. The conversation devolves into like meme exchange.

[Ginny]

Right. OK, so Kim John Payne, he wrote Simplicity Parenting. He says that low screen and no screen kids are enduringly popular.

[Leslie]

Goosebumps. Full body goosebumps on that one again. Of course.

Of course. Right. Because they're actually like head up from their screen, seeing the birds fly through the sky, climbing a mountain, talking to their friends, doing interesting things.

They're practicing those skills, just like those ones that were practicing to climb up the stoop and jump off there. They're out there living life the way kids have always been supposed to be.

[Neil]

I also feel like for me, I'm 45, like my ability to like come up with stories when we first had kids at night before bed was great. And my ability to like kind of have, you know, I was wondering about this or I had this crazy idea. Like I had more of that in me.

And now seven years or more than that, 10 years later, I feel like I'm losing. So in somewhat agreeing with your argument, but looking at myself personally, I'm losing my ability to make up wild stories at night before my kids go to sleep. I'm somewhat losing my ability.

I just don't say as much. I have this because I'm looking at screens all day because I'm looking at screens.

[Leslie]

You actually just said before this interview, I hope you don't mind me, like admitting this vulnerable thing that you said to me. Feeling kind of like physiologically a little bit more anxious than I normally do. I think it's because I've been on Twitter too much lately.

[Neil]

I did say that.

[Ginny]

Yeah, well, it's interesting. I think we're all struggling with that. And I think it's a good point to bring up that this is a protective measure, getting outside or just having time away from screens, whether because you're reading more, you're moving more, whatever it is. If you have time away from screens, it's a protective measure. And it's for kids and adults.

And I could have never predicted when our kids were three and under and there wasn't really hardly anything. Maybe there was Facebook, I guess, but there wasn't Instagram. I wasn't on social media.

Like I didn't make a challenge for social media for the turn of the year.

[Neil]

Your work has become disproportionately more important as the world has increasingly shifted.

[Ginny]

As has yours.

[Neil]

Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting too because you run a digital company.

[Ginny]

Right. So I have the same sort of things. About 10 years in, I started to feel like the nature wasn't enough.

And I added in the reading because our youngest was old enough to sort of have a little bit extra time for reading. And I tried to add in movement. I've not been quite as good with that, but I felt like I had to add in even a little bit more protective measure.

[Neil]

Right. A train's going by. I love that sound.

You know, it reminds me of like when you used to watch a movie and it'd be like Dolby surround sound.

[Ginny]

And like a kid would love this. If you had a toddler and you're in a walkable city, this is like the creme de la creme.

[Leslie]

We have sat watching this train go by wondering, like, how much longer is it going to keep going so many times?

[Ginny]

Look at it. And look at the red cars. And look at that.

I mean, it's wonderful.

[Neil]

It's amazing. Yeah, it's so stimulating. And as Nick Sweet wanted to point out, our guest at Chapter 144, he admires all the graffiti on the trains.

Like I was literally talking to him once. Oh shit, I just saw a full car go by. He was like talking to his buddy and he was like, I was like, wow, he's identifying all the people who've done all the graffiti on the trains.

[Ginny]

Wow. You know? Yeah, so this is the thing.

There is not much in life that is engaging to both a child and an adult. Like I always say, I don't like Candyland. And I don't...

[Leslie]

How boring that game is.

[Neil]

It is.

[Leslie]

I hate that game.

[Ginny]

Yes.

[Neil]

I do get stuck playing it occasionally, yeah.

[Ginny]

But you do it because you love your kids. You know, I don't like the Dora the Explorer. I don't like some of the movies we've gone to see with our kids.

I don't like that stuff. But we all like to be outside.

[Leslie]

Oh, yeah.

[Neil]

Oh, that's true. It's age. Yeah, it's like the Christmas song.

It's age limitless. Yeah, yeah. For kids from one to 92 or more.

Yeah. Even more. Under one, over 92.

[Ginny]

Yes, a baby, a newborn. And Angela Hanscom talks about that in that book, Balanced and Barefoot. She talks about infants, you zero to one.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, well, when they're two or three, I'm going to... No, she says that first year of life is really important for babies to be outside, but also teens and also your grandma's going to love it too. So what a thing.

[Neil]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. A hundred percent.

By the way, when you say you fold it in reading, you mean into your family life, right?

[Ginny]

Into my own, into my own more. I just made sure that I read at a minimum three chapters a day.

[Neil]

Okay.

[Ginny]

I probably read a lot more most days.

[Neil]

So this is interesting because you and I both have systems oriented minds. Like I just showed you in my house that on the inside cover of my dishes, I have like a tracker for which days I write, which days I don't. I have a tracker for which days I travel, which days I don't.

Because I have goals and how I want to be away this few nights as possible. I want to write this many days as possible. You have, of course, your very famous thousand hours.

You know, in the pandemic, Leslie was saying, oh, my friend Robin's doing the thousand hours challenge. I was like, what's that? Yeah, right.

[Ginny]

Hi, Robin.

[Neil]

Yeah, Robin's doing the thousand hours challenge.

[Leslie]

Yeah, totally. I just texted her this morning and she's like, oh my gosh, amazing.

[Neil]

In the pandemic. So like you have these sheets you put out and you know, people can like color in the number of hours they're doing. So trackers.

What else is going on?

[Ginny]

Well, let me tell you where that came from. So the tracker came because for two years we were doing that Charlotte Mason idea of getting outside for four to six hours whenever the weather is tolerable. And that's a good caveat, right?

The weather is not always tolerable.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

So four to six hours.

So we had usually picked three days a week. We get together with three or four other families and we would go for a chunk of time, four to six hours. So that was 18 to 20 hours a week.

And I read in Dr. Scott Sampson's book, How to Raise a Wild Child, that the average American kid was outside for four to seven minutes, but on screens for four to seven hours.

[Neil]

That's right.

[Ginny]

A day.

[Neil]

Four to seven minutes a day outside.

Hey, we've heard the stat that it takes a kid a whole week now to add up to half a day outside. That actually might be generous compared to the stat you're saying. So yeah.

So it was an interesting statistic. Kids have never been outside less than today. That's what we are agreeing on.

[Ginny]

And we're not anti-screen. Like our kids still watch TV and we've got some video game stuff. But I thought, well, four to seven minutes versus four to seven hours, that's a pretty big disparity.

And so because I'm a numbers person, like you're a numbers person, I thought, I wonder how much time we're outside in a year. So we were outside for 18 to 20 hours a week on average.

[Neil]

Okay.

[Ginny]

We're Michigan. So similar to you is a little more in the summer, a little less, you know, in the dead of winter. But still aiming for that.

[Neil]

So 20 hours a week times 50.

[Ginny]

And that was 1,200 hours a year, which at that time was the average amount of time that kids were on screens. And what I thought was, what if all of that time had gone towards screens?

Like how much less life would we have lived? And so it sort of came from that. I called it 1,000 hours outside because that's catchier than 1,200, right?

[Neil]

I'm bought into the 1,000 being catchy thing.

[Ginny]

Yeah, I know.

[Neil]

I know you are.

[Ginny]

We're like right there.

[Neil]

Well, 1,000 awesome things was my block from 2008 to 2012.

[Ginny]

Right.

[Neil]

Overlapping.

I'm doing 1,000 informative books. 1,000 is also the number of months in the average lifespan.

[Ginny]

It's amazing.

[Neil]

And it's the number of minutes in the average day.

[Ginny]

And if you get outside, if you aim to get outside for 1,000 hours a year, or if you aim to get outside really for any amount of time, you've got a single parent situation, split custody, dual parents working, you make a different goal. It's going to change your life.

[Neil]

Well, you also say openly that when you were a kid, you had two 45 minute recesses. I told my kids this by the way.

And a 45 minute lunch. So add that up. You were at two and a quarter hours, just within the school confines.

[Ginny]

Yes. Because for a lot of years, Neil, people made fun of this. So I never expected that I would be here with you ever in my wildest dreams.

Drive to Toronto. We're walking around. I have no idea where we are.

And here we are. I'm on this podcast with all these people that like other people know of. Dave Barry.

I'm like, how did I end up in this group of people? So I had no idea that it would catch on like how it did, but it used to be very normal.

[Neil]

Well, that's the thing. That's what I was going to say. My kids have 15 minute recesses now.

15. So like how much of time is there to like do anything once you've got your boots on and have to take your boots off? And then their lunch is like, how long was their lunch?

45? So they have to get this time. As you've said, it's on the parents now.

It's on the parents now.

[Ginny]

And this is in Angela's book. Going back to the formative books. She says that when she asks people who grew up in the 70s and the 60s and the 80s, maybe the 90s.

She says that people had three to four hours of time outside.

[Neil]

Yeah. It was just natural.

[Ginny]

Because of recess.

[Neil]

We're having to work back to something that was just way more kind of in the system naturally. And that's kind of what balance and barefoot is really all about. It's your first formative book.

I picked it because it was kind of like what the conversation was naturally leading towards. But you've also given us two things. One of which.

Do you want to do this one next? Or do you want to do this one next? Yeah.

Okay. One of which is called Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto. G-A-T-T-O.

Published in 2002 by New Society Publishers. My copy is a dark black and gray cover with a brassy all cap serif title saying, Dumbing Us Down. With a similarly brassy seal on the top right saying 25th anniversary.

John Taylor Gatto lived from 1935 to 2018. He died at age 82. An American author and teacher who taught 30 years in the public school system.

But then wrote a bunch of books criticizing the public school system. He promoted homeschooling, specifically unschooling and open source learning. This book is filed under 370 for social science slash education.

Ginny, tell us about your relationship with Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto. Gatto or Gatto? Gatto.

[Ginny]

Okay. So this is quite the title, isn't it?

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

And it's a little offensive. It's not one that you necessarily bring up like at Thanksgiving dinner. The subtitle is The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.

And I just want to say that John Taylor Gatto was a teacher, like you said, an award-winning one. I mean, he was like New York State Teacher of the Year, I think, twice.

[Neil]

Yeah, twice.

[Ginny]

So he was a part of the school system. And what he's criticizing is the system. He is not criticizing the lovely individuals that are day-to-day in the trenches with kids.

That is a crazy difficult job, as you know, Leslie. You feel like a clown. You have to have stuff prepared every single day.

You're dealing with all sorts of different personalities and adults and co-workers, and it's exhausting. So this is not criticizing teachers.

[Leslie]

Disclaimer here.

[Ginny]

Yes, because the title is definitely kind of offensive. And I think that up until COVID, I mean, even talking about homeschooling was definitely a little shaky. I mean, people would get pretty upset.

It's definitely gotten more mainstream since COVID. Yeah, it's a little bit more accepted to talk about it. But this is a formative book for me because I lived a life that was extremely straight and extremely rhythmic and extremely predictable.

And we had decided that we were going to homeschool for two reasons. One is that I taught public high school math, and I just, being in the classroom, felt like it seemed like a whole lot of wasted time at that point. And people would ask me, they would say, the kids, they would say, well, why do we have to do this?

You know, taking Algebra 2, and they're kids that are, you know, not going to go on into a math and science field. Why do we have to do this? And I would just say, because the government says you can't be left behind.

Wasn't that a thing?

[Leslie]

Right.

[Ginny]

It was like a whole thing.

[Leslie]

No kid left behind.

[Ginny]

No child left behind, whatever. It reminds me of that Trolls movie.

No troll left behind. And I didn't really have any good reasons. I think for some kids, it's great to go into those higher level math.

But for some kids, this is like a huge waste of their childhood. And then also at the same time, they switched to full-day kindergarten. Do they have full-day kindergarten?

[Leslie]

Yes, yeah, they do.

[Ginny]

Was it always full-day kindergarten?

[Leslie]

No, it was a switch in the last 10 years.

[Ginny]

Yeah, and it was a switch for us too. And I was in the administrative wing when that switch happened. And it was pretty life-changing because I got to see firsthand the teachers who were fighting for the kids, for these little kindergarteners who were saying, well, if we go to full-day, they're going to need a nap.

We're going to have to bring back stations. I was like, I didn't know they got rid of stations. Stations were like, you remember that?

They have like a doll station and a book station and cars and Play-Doh.

[Neil]

The water station.

[Ginny]

Sure, there's all these stations. So they'd gotten rid of that. They said, we need to bring back stations.

They're going to need to play. And when the final decisions were made, they did not listen to the teachers. And so much of the time went to academics.

And the same thing in our district. I just spoke at a school district at a board meeting. And I spoke at a board meeting.

And because the same thing, the four-year-olds that are in there for pre-K, they're getting 20-minute recess once in the afternoon, nothing in the morning and a 40-minute lunch recess. But that's also your time to walk to the cafeteria and get your food. So we made this decision to homeschool for the sake of time.

Pretty much. And now I have a lot of reasons why I love it. So I'm always hoping to not be offensive if you're listening.

And it's a, you know what?

[Neil]

It's touchy.

[Ginny]

It's also touchy.

[Neil]

We want your most acerbic self.

[Leslie]

Yes.

[Neil]

We want your honest views.

[Leslie]

Well, and I can just tell that you're the type of person that is speaking from your heart about something that really matters to you. And that you respect that someone else might have something else that really matters to them. And that's okay.

[Ginny]

And that people are limited. People are limited. You know, that there may be a mom that's listening that says, I really want to homeschool, but I can't for this or the other reason, or financially, or there's just a lot of factors in life that I really want to be compassionate about.

[Leslie]

And you're so inclusive in the way that you talk about all of this. Just even a minute ago saying like, if you're not able to do that four to six hours a few times a week, like just even one little change, right? So like walking your kid to school versus not walking your kid to school.

It would change your life. It would be a big deal. So we can make little steps towards a more homeschooling like life, even if we're not fully going to go into homeschooling.

So you tell us, you go the full way with us.

[Ginny]

So I knew we're going to homeschool for those reasons. But I was really shaky about it.

[Neil]

How did you define homeschooling at that time in your head?

[Ginny]

Well, so the story is that I was going to copy what they do in the public school at home. That was my plan. I knew where to find all the content expectations because I was a teacher.

So my plan was to print out this list. And I remember them. One of them was like determined between yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

That was a content standard for kindergarten. And I was like, I can teach that. You know, maybe they might already even know that.

You know, one of them was for phys ed. It was like can throw the ball with one hand with the other foot forward, which I actually learned the other day that that's what you're supposed to do when you bowl. And I don't do it right.

Josh was like, no, you're supposed to like the one foot goes in the other hand. Yeah, I don't do it right.

[Neil]

Foot forward. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So it's like planting with your left foot and but pulling back of the ball bowling ball with your right.

[Ginny]

Yes.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

That's apparently how you're supposed to do it. I must have. I never learned.

So I have a hole in my education. But that was my plan. And at the time, I think this is sort of the story of my life is like nothing really worked out.

So I had to adjust. It didn't work out for me to do the two hour time block thing for my kids. And I had to adjust.

And I was planning on printing them out like a scroll. I mean, I thought I'm going to roll this out. I'm going to tape it to the wall.

We're going to check it off. Well, at the same time, when our oldest was heading into kindergarten, he was five. I also had a three year old and a two year old, and I just had a baby.

And at the same time, at the same time, my husband lost his job. He was out of work for three months. He was not a teacher.

He's in. Well, he works for us now, which is really cool. It's a cool, cool thing.

But he was in sales. He's OK.

[Neil]

He lost his job at the SAC. He's going to be like all these young kids.

[Ginny]

You butchered my job.

[Leslie]

You don't even know what I do, honey.

[Ginny]

Oh, I should have done better. Sorry, Josh.

[Neil]

No, no. Here's all you do. You take a deep breath and you start back on the sentence you remember.

[Ginny]

Well, I don't. I don't totally know. And so that's going to be the problem.

I've got nothing better. I will say that he's very successful. Like he'd worked his way up in these companies.

He was helping sell like web services for really big companies. And they're redoing their websites. And he was well known in his field, going to all the big conferences.

Everyone likes him. He's got a great personality. So there we go, Josh.

All right. I love you. So he was in that line of work.

Lost his job for three months. And also, we lost our home. We had been renting from this woman, and she wasn't paying the mortgage.

And we didn't know. And so all of a sudden, there was foreclosure notices showing up. And so we had to move.

And in a moment, I was realizing that I'm not going to be able to do this homeschooling thing like how I thought. So I had heard inklings from Waldorf people, from the Waldorf people. My midwife, her sons had gone to the Waldorf school for a little while.

And she was telling me how they don't start reading until kids are eight. And they wait until seven or eight. They wait until the adult teeth are in.

And that signifies that the internal organs have formed. And so they can have a really good eyesight, really good hearing. Otherwise, maybe they're not hearing the difference between D and P or B.

And you know, so I'd heard that. You have to be able to reach over your head and touch your ear. I'm actually doing it right now like a weirdo in this park.

In order to show that your body is ready to read. So I'd heard about that. And then they introduce it in story form.

It's just a really beautiful thing. And in Finland, they also don't do formal education until around age seven. And so I thought, oh, I've got a couple years.

But I was really, really nervous about it. And people asked about it. I remember I had a friend over and her son was in first grade.

And we hadn't done any formal schooling. None. Her kid had done maybe two years.

And she asked me, well, what are you guys doing? And I was like, nothing. That was the wrong thing to say.

I should have said that. She never came over again. But we are doing everything.

The kids are learning. They're growing, like the Balanced in Barefoot book. Their self is driving them on.

And they're learning. But we weren't really doing anything formal. And I was just kind of nervous about it.

And John Taylor Gatto's book is about the hidden curriculum. And I think often we look at the rosy things. We look at when people want to talk to you about homeschooling, they say, well, what about prom?

What about calculus? How are you going to teach that? What about dual enrollment?

What about all these different things that are wonderful about your school years? And there are a lot of wonderful things. But he's bringing up, well, what about these things that no one's talking about?

And I'll give an example. So it's a very short book. I mean, you'd read it in a day.

It's like 10 bucks.

[Neil]

It's a bunch of essays and speeches he's given really just put together.

[Ginny]

Yes. And it's about the things that no one's really talking about. And one of the ones, like apathy.

You know, a kid in the school system can really start to learn apathy. They can start to learn, like, you know, there's some segregation there. That type of thing.

[Neil]

How about this, page five. Indeed, the lesson of Bell's is that no work is worth finishing. So why care too deeply about anything?

Years of Bell's will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do.

[Ginny]

So that's one of the things, right? So the one that really stuck out to me was the one about that you have to wait for someone else to give you permission or to tell you what to do. And it reminded me of my own life that I have felt lost as an entrepreneur.

No one is telling me what to do. And yet our life is increasingly, the world is increasingly going toward entrepreneurship. Kim John Payne says by 2035, something like 75 percent will be entrepreneurs or have a mix of several jobs trying to make ends meet.

And so it is a tricky thing when you have a K-12 education. And often for me, it went four years further and then really went five years further than that because I went right back into the school system. But when you have a life where someone tells you what to do all of the time, and then all of a sudden you don't have that.

And so what you're learning is dependence.

[Neil]

Yeah, of course. Of course. Of course.

And you have that one on here, actual dependence. Yeah, exactly. This is the most important lesson of them all.

This is from the book. We must wait for other people better trained than ourselves to make meanings of our lives. Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide what few we have time for.

Actually, this is decided by my faceless employers.

[Ginny]

I mean, he is. He is cutthroat. I mean, he's got his one of his books is called Weapons of Mass Instruction. He just went for it.

[Leslie]

And I think he's not trying to be inclusive and welcoming in his language at all. I think he's just being a man in this.

[Ginny]

Right, right. He's trying to maybe show that there's another side to it. And I related a lot to the book, and it gave me a lot of confidence moving forward in this day and age with the decision that we made.

And so that's why it was incredibly formative for me. And I go back to it a lot. Even that one that you just said of the millions of things of value there are to study.

I never thought about that. Well, there are millions of things of value to study. And it reminded me of my own childhood.

I have a brother who was like he would memorize the backs of baseball cards. He knew everybody's stats. Well, that's not a part of the school system, but you can use those types of things to develop your brain and to learn all sorts of other things.

And it's a way to learn that's cross-curricular and cohesive. There's a lot to think about.

[Neil]

Also, passion. You're learning passion. You're learning natural benefits of things you pay attention to.

Like one of our kids gets up early every morning, goes downstairs by himself. No one's awake in the house. And he just pulls up paper and markers and pens and just draws for hours by himself.

You can't quite articulate the value, but you can see that it's there. And I did ask you, how did you define homeschooling when you started this 14 years ago? And you said, I was going to print out the curriculum, put it on the walls and go through step by step.

So now you've got a book about to come out called Homeschooling. How do you define what that is today? And what would you say would be the first steps for people that are interested in it to kind of how do they take those first steps that you kind of plunged into?

How would you recommend them do that today?

[Ginny]

I would define homeschooling as parent-directed education. Some would define it as parent-directed, parent-funded education. There's a little bit of warfare.

That's totally the wrong word. That's the one that came to mind, because it's not that big of a deal. But there's definitely some dissension there on who funds it.

But I would say homeschooling is parent-directed education. And that might include...

[Neil]

Because some people think who should pay for it?

[Ginny]

In a lot of places, the government does pay for it.

[Neil]

All homeschool, but you send me the stuff.

[Ginny]

Yes, yes. And so the government pays for it. And all the different states are different.

So the parent directs. Now, that doesn't mean that your kid is always home. That might mean that your kid is doing a co-op.

That might mean that your kid is doing a part-time program. That might mean that your kid is, you know, doing online.

[Neil]

Right. That word direct is really key. It's not parent presence.

[Ginny]

Right.

[Neil]

Because as soon as I say homeschooling, people are like, I can't do that. I got it. I'm busy all day.

But you can homeschool without being home because you're directing the education.

[Ginny]

You're choosing what it's going to look like for them. And the...

[Neil]

Permanent co-op.

[Ginny]

And the thing is, is it doesn't take all that long. So one of the things that John Taylor Gatto said that blew my mind is he said that it only takes 50 to 100 hours to reach functional literacy. So that's not like the gold star standard.

But the interesting thing there is 50 to 100 hours is to get you to the point where you could learn anything that you wanted to learn. That's not that much time. Now, he says it's got to be at the right age and stage.

It's maybe not when they're four. It might be when they're nine. It might be when they're 12.

I love this woman, Dr. Carla Hanford. Find it in the show notes. She wrote this book called Smart Moves.

Why learning is not all in your head. And she didn't learn to read till she was 10. She's a PhD.

She's in her 80s. And she said when she was a kid, it didn't really matter. But if a kid today didn't learn to read until they were in the fourth grade, they would go into life with all sorts of stigmas.

[Neil]

Well, they'd be shipped well away from the school probably by then.

[Ginny]

Yeah. So at the right age and stage, it's 50 to 100 hours to functional literacy. And what I've seen, similar to your son, and this is kind of what you were talking about, Leslie, these premises can be built in no matter how you choose to live your life.

You can have open space so that your kid has time to self-educate.

[Neil]

So this is good. So what are the principles of homeschooling? One is open space.

[Ginny]

Well, I think that in general, and this is why the book is called You're Doing It Right Just By Doing It, is because as a homeschooler, you cannot recreate the classroom. So I talk about this experience where I went and substitute for kindergarten. And I did it one time.

I was so tired. I was like, this is the most tiring job. These wonderful teachers that are dealing with these little five and six year olds.

And the lesson plan, because I was substitute teaching, it was just like this on a little clipboard. And it was minute by minute. You know, it was like 852 to 855.

You sing this song. 855 to 858. Read this book.

858 to 904. And I was like, well, someone had to go to the bathroom. I'm already behind.

Someone has their shoe. They have to be tight. And someone's tooth is wiggly.

And they're talking to you about their cousin. And I was like, this is so hard.

[Neil]

Leslie also taught kindergarten.

[Ginny]

Oh, what a saint. What a saint.

[Neil]

No, one year, right?

[Leslie]

Yeah, just one year.

[Ginny]

To even make those lesson plans. I mean, that was so much work for that teacher.

But I think that when you pull yourself out of that system, you sort of think, well, I have to have every minute filled. And you just simply cannot. There's no way that one adult can fill every single minute of the day for one child.

Sometimes there's more than one child. And so there's just left with open space. There's just time.

[Neil]

Oh, that's open space.

[Ginny]

Based on.

[Neil]

I was thinking physical space. You mean curriculum space.

[Ginny]

But even just in the day, time space is really what I'm thinking.

[Neil]

Time space, right.

[Ginny]

And physical space, right? Like where you have places in your home, maybe different places in your home that you can go.

[Leslie]

Different places in your neighborhood that you can go. So are these things that you're suggesting to somebody who is either fully homeschooling or to potentially a teacher or a parent who is operating inside of the. Homeschooling principles.

[Ginny]

Yeah, you sprinkle in a little bit of boredom.

[Leslie]

Like we could have our kids still going to school and have some of these homeschooling practices in place by having the open space in the morning or on the weekends or.

[Ginny]

Yeah. And you see it like with the Waldorf, same thing. So you could sprinkle in some of that.

If you have a child that's six and not reading and that school is hounding you, then you could say, oh, well, I don't care. Or these some of these the doctors and things like I really like Dr. Madeline Levine, Dr. Victoria Dunkley. They all say things like I prescribe no homework.

I'll write a prescription. This child does not have to do any homework. And I.

[Neil]

Oh, the doctor prescribes that. The doctor. Because Leslie's always talking.

[Leslie]

I'm actually like I'm sitting here right now feeling really quite lucky to be in Canada and to be in Toronto, I have to say, because I know that, you know, there still is probably some dumbing us down happening in our Canadian school system. But I do think when I think about teaching kindergarten, like there was so much open space asked of me as a teacher. I know at our kids school, like the kindergartens have a designated outdoor space.

It's just for them and like a certain number of hours a day that they're supposed to be outside. So thankfully.

[Neil]

Five, three, one, none of whom have ever brought home any homework.

[Leslie]

Oh, that's so we are very lucky to be operating in a system that is a little bit more towards these best case scenarios. There's still, of course, room to grow. But I think, you know, yeah, there are people in much more destitute situations where their kids are programmed to the minute and not outside as much.

[Ginny]

So it's very common to have a first grade where we're in a packet. You're going to they're going to bring home a packet of worksheets. It's very common like that.

And so Dr. Not Dr. John Taylor Gatto calls that surveillance.

[Leslie]

You're just checking on the parents. And I mean, one stat that we've that we've talked about is that there's no research that supports any homework other than reading. Like there's never once been one study that shows that kids doing homework benefits anybody in any way.

But teachers just do all of this busy work because they think they're supposed to or they think the parents want them. And as a teacher, I've had parents ask for homework. Like when I wasn't giving homework, I've had parents be like, please, please, please send homework.

We need math packages.

[Neil]

I actually loved that we went to I went to our oldest third grade classroom. I took a picture of this. I wish I could pull it up right now.

But he's in third grade public school, Toronto District School Board. And the sign on the wall said, here's your homework tonight. And I could tell by the sign it didn't change all year.

And it was like seven things. It was like, number one, help your parents cook dinner. It was like that.

It was like, number two, work of the home.

[Leslie]

Sometimes we've had some teachers that have said that, right? Right. Like your homework is work of the home.

[Neil]

If you have a dog, walk your dog. It was like stuff like that could go on the poster.

[Leslie]

We're going to make this like manifesto, right?

[Neil]

Yeah. Oh, that's really good. Manifesto genesis session.

[Ginny]

I think that's a good reminder that work of the home. And he uses the phrase curriculum of family. And I've always thought that was really beautiful.

Your family has a curriculum. And I think that those things are what make people unique and have unique experiences. And then you talk about where you came from.

And like you were talking about your seventh generation, eighth generation. You got grandparents. You can walk to their house.

It's like these are the unique things about us. And I think those should be celebrated. And there's just some really thoughtful things in John Taylor Gatto's work that I'd never been exposed to.

And it really changed my view on a lot of things and gave me a lot of freedom and permission.

[Leslie]

Yeah. I love the permission piece because that's kind of where you started, right? Was talking about how like you felt a little bit wobbly or you felt a little bit, you know, that there was maybe some like external pressure to be doing things that you weren't doing by homeschooling.

Um, and I, I even in my mind was making connections between you just quickly dropping that you used a midwife or, you know, I imagine that we would probably line up about some more like peaceful, intentionally parenting and you're not doing consequences. You don't have your kids in time. I was like all of these, these old outdated expectations on parents that you should be doing this and they should be meeting these benchmarks or whatever.

It is actually a very active, conscious choice to not do like sometimes not doing is just as even potentially more of a choice. I'm not going to go to the hospital to have my baby, right?

[Neil]

Like that's the line for the manifesto. Not doing can be more doing than doing.

[Leslie]

These are big, these are big decisions. Why do we choose not to do?

[Ginny]

And I guess I didn't realize that there were other ways to do life. I had no idea. I mean, I grew up with some like really good friends that were homeschooled and I would spend the night at their house. We never talked about it.

Never. How did we never, how did I never say, well, what do you do all day? Never.

[Neil]

Even to grow up with friends that were homeschooled is, you're lucky that you had that and that you had other families that also were doing this.

[Leslie]

And that you found a partner who wanted to do this too.

[Neil]

Oh yeah. I bet you a one parent wants to do it a lot, right? Whereas you'd have to kind of get to, what percent of people...

[Ginny]

You give them that book.

[Leslie]

We're dumbing them down.

[Neil]

What percent of people homeschool?

[Ginny]

I think it's around 5%.

[Neil]

So 5%. It was like, it was like probably lower before the pandemic than spike to 100% in the pandemic and that has gone down, but not down to where it was.

[Ginny]

Right. I think it's, I think it was maybe around 2%. So it's doubled.

[Neil]

Right.

[Ginny]

And there's a lot of variations on it now too. So I'm not quite sure what people count as homeschooling.

[Leslie]

Yeah, exactly. Like, does it count if your kid is doing online school? Like, you know, that, there's come risks of that too.

[Ginny]

If they're home and in your home and you've chosen an online program that takes them a couple hours a day, like I would consider that. That's the parent has chosen. Right.

The government didn't choose or the state municipality or whatever. You have chosen. They're going to do this online program.

[Leslie]

I guess I just have a little bit of like a social justice concern for, you know, hopefully we hope that when parents are choosing, they're choosing based on what's best for their child. But what about in the situations where a parent say like, is anxious for their child to be exposed to germs or doesn't want them to cross the street and has them doing like online at home school and therefore is like holding them back.

[Neil]

Would that not risk like social stunting? I mean, you have five kids. That's not the like homeschooling in the way you're thinking of it.

Right.

[Ginny]

Right. And I do think, you know, the title of the book, the subtitle of my book is you're doing it right just by doing it. And I know I was like, people are going to push back because they're going to say, well, what about, and they're very rare cases, but there are cases where it's a front for abuse and the parents are abusing their kids at home and they're saying we're homeschooling and they're not.

And that's not homeschooling.

[Leslie]

No.

[Ginny]

Homeschooling is what you were talking about earlier, which is that you have an innate drive and you love your kids. No one loves your kids more than you. And that drives you to, to offer them the best of the opportunities that you can find for them.

And socially, you know, that's one of the things that people bring up a whole lot. And I always say I taught high school. So there was some really weird seniors.

I mean, it just, it just sounds awful, but it just, they were like super awkward. I would find that.

[Neil]

You can make it through the traditional school system and still be weird.

[Ginny]

Yeah. Your person. And that, and I also don't think weird matters.

I think quirk is, quirk is fine. And, and what I would find is that when the parents would come in for parent teacher conference, I would be like, Oh, I get it. You know, your, your personality, you come into the world with social skills, you teach.

And so we're teaching those to our kids. Don't talk too much, you know, you know, make sure you're asking questions, all of these different things. I read this thing.

It was, um, Tom Corley has a book called Rich Habits, Poor Habits. And there is this, I think a version for kids and there's, uh, my midwife sent it to me. It's this 40 questions.

It's really interesting. I'll send it to you. It's 40 questions.

It's called the rich parents test or rich habits test or something like that. And it's these 40 questions. Are you having your kids do these things?

I don't care if my kids are rich, but it's about habits of successful people basically. And of the 40 things, not one of them has to do with grade point average. Not one of them has to do with standardized test scores.

It's things like, do you call the people that are important in your life? Do you call them for their birthday? Of 40 things.

You require your children to read biographies. Ooh, interesting. That changed my life because I just read Steve Martin's biography based off of your 2024 best books list.

And I, I thought it was a little slow until about the last third. And then I'm so glad I read it. And I wouldn't have read it.

And I probably might have, I don't quit books too much. I know Austin Cleon says to quit books. I don't quit books too much, but I might have set it aside.

Like Moonbound. I'm really the talking badger. I'm like, am I going to make it?

[Neil]

It's a toughie, Robin Sloan, Moonbound. But Steve Martin's book. We do also say quit more to read more on this show.

So we'll have to talk about that separately. Otherwise it could clog you for the next one, but it doesn't seem to be clogging you. You just go into the next one anyway.

[Ginny]

Yeah. Well, the Steve Martin one was really, he was performing for no one. He's performing for no one.

He's, he's in these spots and he's performing for no one for, for years. And then all of a sudden, you know, things get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And now he's performing for 20,000.

Now he's performing for 45,000 and then it peaked, it peaked. And then he started to say, oh, there's empty seats. I haven't seen empty seats in years.

Now there's empty seats. And so I just think when you read biographies, it reminds you that no one has a straight shot to the top. Everyone has slogged through and struggled.

And also the peak may not be what you think it might be. And you get there and he said he was lonely. He was going back alone.

He's having to get shuffled out. It was really fun for a period of time. He would do his show and then he would go stand outside.

They would go walk around outside and there's, I don't know, a hundred people. And then it got too big for that. So the biography is a really interesting, calling people on their birthdays, calling people on their birthday, limit of junk food, limit of screen time is one of them.

So it was something like my kids watch no more than an hour, no more than an hour of screen time a day. A limit of this amount of calories of junk food to a degree. One of them is about exercise.

The birthday one came up twice because then it said something about how you acknowledge their significant life events. That's social skills. My kids are encouraged to express gratitude.

I know more of these than I realized. They're encouraged to express gratitude for what they have. They're discouraged from listening to or engaging in gossip.

[Leslie]

So like I'm sitting here with absolutely no doubt in my mind that kids growing up being homeschooled by you or somebody like you or somebody who reads your book and is inspired by you are going to develop all of the skills that they need to thrive in the world. Like that's just, I'm so, so, so confident in that. The thing that I'm a little bit less ready to totally feel confident about is the wellness of the parents.

Like, how do you think about that? Because I feel like for me, one of the things that gets in the way of me being able to be like, yeah, I could totally have all of my kids home is my own wellness and me needing some time to myself and me liking to have to be with them a lot. And then also liking to have other parts of my own identity explored and celebrated.

And so how do you, how do you think about that and recommend that for homeschoolers?

[Ginny]

That's a good question. I love my life and I have no regrets. If I were to do it over again, I would do it all the same.

I would skip preschool. It has not mattered. Now we have kids that are, our oldest is 16.

And I remember he got it. He has an internship in the field that he really likes. He wants to go into movies.

He wants to create movies and write scripts. And he got this internship where he does video work. And I just remember thinking like no one asked him what age did he learn to read?

Did you go to preschool? Like that wasn't a part of it. But for a lot of years, I was like, oh no.

I would do it the exact same way. I have grown so much as a person and the 50 to 100 hour thing, which I brought up earlier, which is not, you know, you don't only spend 50 to 100 hours in childhood on learning, but it doesn't take as much time as you would think. People say about two hours a day would get you through all your subjects for all your kids, for them to be really well-versed in a lot of different things.

So there just is a lot of time. There's a lot of time for me. There's a lot of time for me to grow.

I've been challenged to learn a lot of things. And so my life was just this boring path and it has exploded and expanded since we made the decisions to do things a little bit differently than the way I went for many, many, many, many years. But your question is a really valid one.

I think that for the time when you have little kids, like seven and under, I think seven is kind of a pivotal age. That's just hard. Those are really hard years.

And eventually it shifts. Whether your kids are homeschooling or not homeschooling, those are hard years. I spent time this last weekend with some friends.

They both had four-year-olds. I was like, oh my gosh, these kids are so busy. They're so volatile.

They're so upset about this, that, or the other thing. And you just, you kind of forget. But once they're out of that, your life really does open up.

And I feel like I've expanded as a person because of it. Yeah.

[Leslie]

Yeah, I can see. I can see how it's...

[Neil]

It's not an empty screen, so...

[Ginny]

Yeah, they have some screen time.

[Leslie]

And some free time. Do you have, do you pull...

You can central in your own time. And how do you call in the village to raise, like to raise your children and support you while you parent?

[Ginny]

Well, we have a lot of friends. I mean, a lot of friends. And we've had friendship up and down too. We also had a big, I mean, this past year, we had a massive friendship blow up.

And, you know, those things happen. But I've also learned that friends come and go. And that's a thing also that I want to teach my kids.

[Neil]

A reason, a season, or a lifetime. Have you heard that before?

[Ginny]

Oh, you know, all these things. And you always are putting them in the podcast too. One of the ones you said was Warren Buffett.

It was like, give them enough. It was about money.

[Neil]

Yeah, so when you... For anyone that's listening to this, that's extremely wealthy, rich, that could potentially trouble their kids life by giving them all their money. Warren Buffett says, I want to give my kids enough money that they can do anything.

But I don't want to give them so much that they can do nothing.

[Ginny]

Yeah, you're always, you're always coming out with these one-liners. That was a good one. Reason, season.

[Neil]

Ah, so my mom used to have, someone gave her a greeting card when she, like for one of her birthdays, when she turned 50 or something. She cut, so my mom, she cut off the front of it and framed it on our kitchen wall. And I can still see the actual colors and everything.

And it said, because I guess, I don't know what the friend wrote inside, but the front of the greeting card said, friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. So I'm presuming the inside of that card said, and you and me are lifetime ones or whatever, right? Like, but, but I don't know.

Cause I never saw the inside. Or maybe there was like a friendship blow up. I never saw the inside of the card.

It was just all of her card framed in my kitchen.

[Ginny]

Aw, well that's a wonderful way to teach about socialization.

[Neil]

Yeah. Yeah. As the snow starts falling around you.

[Ginny]

This is awesome.

[Neil]

That's what's great about outside too. Ever-changing, the wind changes, the noise changes, people walking by change. Jane Jacobs, who lived in Toronto, called the view out your window, the ballet of the street, or the sidewalk ballet.

You know what I mean? Another great testament to walkable city, by the way, those look looking to, look into walkable cities a little bit more. I recommend the book Walkable City by Jeff Speck, chapter 52, introduced to us by Ann Bogle in chapter 48, I believe.

I like to think of the show as a 333 chapter book that you could potentially read or listen to from chapter one to 333, or for somehow, in some reason, in the year 3214, if someone stumbles upon, you know, an old hologram of chapter 142 and they are referred back to, I like the idea that you could then, you know, how you flip a book and open in the bookstore, you could then flip to the chapters you want.

You know what I mean? And I don't think you need to read a book front to back ever. Speaking of reading though, I will say we've opened up homeschooling quite a bit.

There's principles of homeschooling we've discussed. We've defined homeschooling then and now. We've talked about some of the challenges.

We've talked about your arguments against some of the more common kind of questions or criticisms or challenges that you may hear. So I want to take that one notch further with your third and final book, which by the way, I read all three of them. I loved all three of them, but this one in particular was like, this is going to be in the best of 2025.

This one, or I already know because this book blew my mind and I've already been recommending it to so many people. And it is called Learning All the Time by John Holt, H-O-L-T. The cover is like a totally white cover with kids painted hands and footprints in bright blue, red, and green.

You know, it was published in 1989, but DiCapo Publishing. And the subtitle is very interesting. How small children begin to read, write, count, and investigate the world without being taught.

And I was like, well, that didn't, I thought, like that doesn't make any sense. John Holt lived from 1923, born in New York City to 1985, died in Boston, age 62, was an American author, educator, and a proponent of homeschooling, specifically unschooling, and a pioneer in youth rights theory, which is interesting. What's this book about?

This is why it blew my mind. It shows how children learn to read, write, and count in their, read, like reading in their everyday life at home. And adults can just respect and encourage this without actually doing it.

Like, it just, it's so interesting, this book. It follows under 372 social sciences, education, primary education, elementary education. There are parts of this book that I've, literally, I was stunned at.

I put it down, I highlighted it, I folded it. And I was like, oh my gosh, my kid's actually doing that. And if I just listen and nudge and say, like as he's saying, then the kid's going to recognize or they're going to recognize another letter.

Like he's teaching me how to teach my kid without saying anything. So amazing. Tell us about your relationship, Ginny, with Learning All the Time by John Holt.

[Ginny]

Oh, what a subtitle. What a subtitle. So I bought these books within two months of each other.

I didn't read them right away. This, I read the first two together. And then this one, I didn't read quite as quickly.

I just was mulling over that subtitle for a really long time because I didn't believe it. Same thing, same thing. How young children learn to read, especially read, read right.

And so then I had this experience where, and actually what changed my life in this book is not that part, but I want to, I will talk about that. I, my youngest, we have five kids. That gives me room to experiment.

[Leslie]

Totally.

[Ginny]

So for our oldest four, we waited until they were seven and no longer, because I was really nervous about it. And, you know, are people judging me and that whole thing.

So at seven.

[Neil]

Seven for what, reading?

[Ginny]

For reading. So I went with the Waldorf thing, basically because that's all I could do. All these little kids.

And then I kind of kept with that. It worked fine. I did this book.

It's called How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It cost $20 and it was kind of boring, but everybody learned to read by less than 70 something. And they were fine.

They went from being illiterate at seven to within two months reading Magic Tree House and then onward and upward. They read all the time. Well, our youngest, when she was four, we hadn't done any reading lessons or writing lessons, nothing formal.

And we were getting ready for a birthday party where we were putting kids' names in a hat to pull out. It was a Dude Perfect birthday party. We do watch, see, we watch YouTube.

So the kids know Dude Perfect and we're pulling names out of a hat. We were going to do Wheel Unfortunate at this birthday party. And we're sitting at the kitchen table and everyone's- Dude Perfect.

And Wheel Unfortunate.

[Neil]

Just so I don't know what either of those things are at all.

[Ginny]

So Dude Perfect is, they're YouTubers.

[Neil]

Okay, YouTubers.

[Ginny]

And they do trick shots. So they do, they can like, they would make a basket from here all the way over there. And they do trick shots.

They've gotten huge. They have this warehouse. Our kids think that they're cool.

And so the Wheel Unfortunate is one part of their episode where they spin the wheel. And if you get stuck in that segment, you have to do some unfortunate thing. It's like shave your eyebrows, something like that.

So we were going to do this at the birthday party and we were putting people's names on slips of paper to put in a hat to draw them out. So our youngest daughter, she was four. We haven't written anything.

We read tons of books. We sing her name. She likes letters.

I mean, they get curious on their own. And she took a slip of her paper, of papers, just sitting on the table. She takes a slip and she wrote her name out.

Every single letter, six letters, writes it right out. And I was like, what in the world? I didn't have to teach her.

We didn't have to have a lesson. I didn't have to write it on any board. And then she took another one and she writes it again.

She takes another one, she writes it again. She took all the papers and then she has to cut more because we need more papers because this is what we're doing for these other kids. And so then I'm like, well, she's getting fine motor.

And for years, three years, every once in a while, she would come to me with a stack of little sheets of paper that would all say the same thing, like hug me or I love you or mommy. And it reminded me of when they're learning to crawl or when they're learning to walk, that they do enough repetition till they have that one mastered and then they go on to something else. And so that was her little way.

And I didn't do the hundred easy lessons with her. She's eight and she reads everything.

[Leslie]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ginny]

We didn't do any lessons.

[Leslie]

I love that.

[Neil]

From the book, what children need to get ready for reading is exposure to a lot of print, not pictures, but print. And this is the part I like the most. They need to bathe their eyes in print as when smaller, they bathe their ears in talk.

[Ginny]

Yeah, and what he says is they have to know that it's beneficial for them. So he would say like, if you're trying to teach someone to talk, the first thing that they need to know is that this is gonna benefit you. You're gonna be able to communicate her.

So they get to an age where other kids are playing games and they wanna join in, but they can't read. Or they wanna go read the sign, but they can't read. And so I have a child that I did not teach to read, not one lesson.

And she walks around the house every day with an I Survived book. That's her favorite series right now. She loves those.

She has one in her hand constantly, anywhere we go, she brings those. And I just ordered her your favorite book. Have you only put one out?

On 100, the episode 100, you put out one of your formative books.

[Leslie]

I just ordered her that one.

[Ginny]

She's gonna love it.

[Neil]

That is still one of my favorites.

[Ginny]

And she's eight. So it's like the perfect age, but she just loves, she has just recently, we got her four books about chemistry. That's what she's interested in.

There's a Smithsonian, the DK book, and she just carries them everywhere. And I didn't teach her.

[Neil]

Do you not find that your kids, cause you are also exposing them to screens and I do watch YouTube. Does that not become more seductive than reading?

[Ginny]

Well, we limit it.

[Neil]

What's your rule? What's your home?

[Ginny]

What's your house rules? You get an hour-ish, you know, at the most.

And it's not even every day because I always say our best days are the days where we run out of time for screens. So if we're home and there is time and we wanna play a video game, sure, you got an hour and then you're gonna turn it off. And that's similar to that Tom Corley thing.

[Neil]

And we do Sundays, Sunday screen days.

[Ginny]

And we have limits.

[Neil]

We're binging on Sunday, daddy's football.

[Ginny]

And that's fun.

[Leslie]

They get two hours on Sunday and they don't have any screens on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

[Ginny]

And that's Waldorfy. Do you know Waldorf has a policy or at least they used to that there was no screens?

[Neil]

I've wondered about that. Even though we both align on this, I've wondered if we are inadvertently creating a lock up the liquor cabinet.

[Leslie]

I don't know. I think I say that.

[Neil]

And then when they have the ability to have full binge anytime, like-

[Ginny]

No, I don't think so. And here's why.

[Leslie]

And it's not as strict as I just made it.

[Ginny]

Because it's the way that their brains are structured. They're structuring their brains toward hands-on living and screens are the aftereffects. So I've always said, our best days are the days where we run out of time for screens.

And screens are the second choice. They're not the first choice. And so what happens is when you have a teenager, their brain is wired for real life and interaction.

They're not the uninteresting people that Dr. Nicholas Carderas is talking about. They're wired for this. And so their brain has already been wired that way.

So they do not. That's what everybody says when they go off to college. They're not the kids that go off the rails with screens because that's not how they've grown up.

[Neil]

It's almost like you got to protect screen time from a certain age to a certain age. And then it is enough to make it so that you are unlikely to fall into a screen.

[Ginny]

Yeah, their brain has formed based around real life experiences. But I'm gonna tell you about why this book was formative to me because it's not that. I only sit here today because of this book.

And the other books led to it. So that's why they were formative. But this book in particular, I read.

And there's a section in there where he talks about how kids don't see adult work. And it said that if you're an adult, kids need to see adult work so that they can know what is it like to build a table? What is it like to write a book?

They're so siphoned off from that. And he says, if you have no skills, which I thought was really funny because I think a lot of parents reading it would be like, well, I've got nothing. You know, I'm supposed to show kids, whatever.

I don't have anything. He says, well, you should learn something and allow them to see you learning. And I read the book and we were, I mean, I was still really trying to like, I mean, I want to just have it be just like school.

I would love that. I want to be in control. I want to check boxes.

This is my personality and it's gone off the rails. And then I read that and I was like, shoot, I'm not doing that. I am trying to direct these kids for the most part.

And then I started to think, well, am I growing? Am I stepping out and showing them bravery? Are they seeing adult work?

And then it says, as they get older and older, they have more of a view of what the adult world is like. So I asked Josh, I was like, hey, in this business that you do that, I don't quite know. Can you take our kids?

You know, I'm like, I've read this book.

[Ginny]

Look at it.

[Ginny]

It says kids should have a view of adult work. He was like, absolutely not. I cannot, you know, I'm in these meetings.

I'm having these client dinners. He's like, I cannot take them. I was like, okay.

What if we zoom in? Can we FaceTime? Like, can you FaceTime?

Can you set up a little iPad? We're going to watch you while you do these presentations. He's like, no, I cannot do that.

And so I was like, I have to, I have to have something to show them. And I already had 1000 Hours Outside. I'm sorry, just a blog.

It was just for sharing the fact that this had changed our life. And I thought I could probably do a little bit more with that in order for it to be a vessel to help our kids have these adult experiences. And so we made a line of t-shirts and they're hideous.

They're so ugly. I look back now and I'm like, I cannot believe anybody bought those t-shirts. And they did.

I spent a thousand dollars, which is a ton of money when you've got a bunch of kids and you're on one income. And I thought I am just wasting this, but I was so challenged by this to have something.

[Neil]

Great work to show them adult work.

[Ginny]

Yeah, and they came and we had a meeting. The t-shirt guy came over, we sat, everyone had a little clipboard. We're choosing colors.

And they sold. And one of the stories I talk about often in that particular instance, and now it's been a lot of things, that I go speak at places and the kids come up and they do music.

[Neil]

Are they helping with the podcast?

[Ginny]

Not yet. They're going to help edit. I think our oldest will help edit when he gets a little older.

He's working on audio things. And then they've been on here and there. They've been, you know, they joined in on the episode or we talk about it quite a bit.

But there's a lot of options.

[Leslie]

If inadvertently, this actually is part of what allowed you to take care of you while you homeschooled, you know, like that was back to our conversation before. Like, I know that maybe wasn't your initial motivation. Like you were wanting to show them your work, but it sounds to me like you actually really did keep your own life alive beyond just taking care of and directing your children's learning.

And I think that that's something, at least that's eye-opening for me as somebody who doesn't, you know, see homeschoolers lives up close. And when I've talked to some people who are homeschooling their kids, their whole life is about homeschooling their children. And I have talked to some moms who feel like they're kind of just like drowning in that, right?

Because they're only living and breathing their children's schooling, but not necessarily taking care of themselves and their own wellness. And I wonder if maybe you got some of your own wellness taken care of by having your own project.

[Ginny]

So what if homeschooling is mainly modeling? And that's sort of the direction that he's going with this, is that if you're growing as a person, so I would think about my own kids, like they're nervous to talk to the librarian. And I thought, well, am I putting myself in any situation where I'm nervous?

So I started to say yes to a lot more things that I normally would say, absolutely not. I don't want to do that. I'm super nervous.

[Neil]

Like what?

[Ginny]

Like, well, even this morning, I'm like doing my nebulizer before I drove over here. And then I had a parallel park and I had to try and figure out how to drive out of the parking garage. And I'm like, these are things that I'm actually not very good at.

I mean, that's, you know, or speaking at different events or writing a book. I mean, I was a math teacher. Math teachers don't write books, you know?

So I said, thank you so much. I say yes to so much more because of that one section of that one book. And so the story with the t-shirts is that we order these thousand dollars of t-shirts.

Kids help pick, they're in this little meeting. They were pretty young, like 10 and under. Yeah, it was.

It was a fair amount of t-shirts and they all sold. And so what happens then is when they all sold, then we just reinvested that money and we got more t-shirts and the guy that we ordered from, his name's Paul. He's this older man that lives in our area.

He's fantastic, super nice. And he would always get me t-shirts real quick if I messed up. I would send people, you know, they're helping me package.

We're sending the 2T, it was supposed to be a 3T. We sent the wrong color. There's all these issues and he would always be resupplying me with t-shirts really quick.

And then eventually it got longer and longer and longer and I'm not getting the t-shirts as quick as I used to. And finally I said, well, Paul, what's going on? And in front of my kids, he said, when you started ordering t-shirts, it was right in the middle of COVID and Michigan, everything was really shut down.

He said, everything shut down, all the schools. I was making shirts and for sports and all these things. And he said, it all stopped and your business kept mine afloat.

And I was like, that was really life-changing for all of us because you learn that when you step out and do hard things, new things, even if it's not the most wild thing in your dreams, it will intersect with the lives of other people in ways that you never can anticipate or know. And so it's just been a really fulfilling thing to have read that and to try it and to look at my life as something that's a model as well as like a shepherd, you know, or however we look at parenting.

[Neil]

You are spurred into increased courageous and bravery and leadership and modeling from the book, which only amplifies what your kids learn.

[Ginny]

And it opens up opportunities. Like our kids have, they have pictures of themselves with famous people, which they're not, I mean, they're like, I don't even know what level famous that they would be, but you know, they're like, they like this set of singers or, and here and there because of my own platform or own experiences, like they get to meet that person. And it's just been very eyeopening that when we grow as people, it opens doors for our kids as well.

[Leslie]

Brené Brown says one of my favorite quotes of hers and of parenting in general is who we are matters much more than anything we do. And I love that that just takes off some of that pressure that we feel as parents. And I think you are talking about that so beautifully that you are really working on yourself and you're getting yourself outside and then your kids are outside.

You're reading more and your kids are reading more. You're taking risks and then your kids are taking risks. You know, you're growing as a human and therefore they're growing as humans.

And I think that that's just so inspiring. You embody that. So it's an inspiration to talk to you.

[Neil]

It really is. It's almost like that's a wrap because that was such a good little. It was really good.

[Leslie]

I mean, Leslie, wow.

[Neil]

I mean, yeah. See why I begged her off a field trip. She was supposed to be at Little Canada today, which is.

[Leslie]

I really wanted to go on a field trip with our 10 year old. Meet all his friends.

[Neil]

Yeah, that's the one thing about parenting competing demands, especially with husbands with podcasts. Hey, to close things off, let's do a few fast money round questions.

[Ginny]

All right, here we go.

[Neil]

But you know, some of these because you've listened, but.

[Ginny]

Yep. OK, there's like one time like I would prefer this one over that one. Let's see what happens.

[Neil]

Well, do you want to be? And even to ask you this, I also have forgotten to print them out. So I'm going off my head here.

Do I remember my own questions? First one is hardcover, paperback, audio or E.

[Ginny]

OK, paperback. 100% paperback. I like that because I'm lazy and they're and they're easier to open.

So paperback to me is easier to read than a hardcover. If I didn't have kids and probably down the road, audiobook is something I really like, but they interrupt all the time and you're constantly having to rewind. But I like the idea of audiobook because you hear the words.

So there actually are a lot of words that I don't know when I'm reading a book and I don't even know how you would pronounce it. So I think that that would increase my vocabulary if I were listening to audiobooks.

[Neil]

That's interesting. We've only ever adjusted one value on the show since its inception on March 31st, 2018. Chapter one with Leslie Richardson.

And it was the value real books.

[Leslie]

I love how you always have to just say my last name, my full name there. Leslie Richardson. Even though I'm sitting right beside you. And am your wife.

[Ginny]

And she's also on episode 100. What else? A lot of them.

[Neil]

We've only adjusted one value on the show and it was I had the value originally real books have real pages and then I received quite a lot of hate mail about it. And so I ended up changing the value slightly to real books are real pages, comma, audiobooks and ebooks are beautiful mutants. And I still got hate mail.

So now I've deleted the value completely. Although I will say I just read a tweet that went viral online by Naval Ravikant, who's a dream guest for this show, by the way. Naval, if you're listening, come on on.

And he said he said this is what he said. I don't know what you what you think, Ginny. He said, listening to your books instead of reading them is like drinking your vegetables instead of eating them.

Oh, he probably got a lot of hate mail, too. Oh, I'm sure he did. He's very polarizing.

But what do you think of that?

[Ginny]

I think audiobooks count. And I think that there's a lot of value. Like I'm missing the value of an increased vocabulary because I don't listen and I wish I could listen more.

[Neil]

I just can't not in a season of like, you know, you're an audiobook aspirant or aspirant.

[Leslie]

I was going to say it reminds me of how if you would have heard it on an audiobook, then it would be in your mind. Yeah. My dermatologist said the best sunscreen is the sunscreen that you wear.

And I feel like that applies about books, too, right? Like the best books are the one you read. Like if you're actually going to listen to an audiobook and that's going to get the book into your brain, then it got into your brain.

[Neil]

Exactly.

[Ginny]

And there's benefits there that aren't even some podcasts, too. Yeah, there we go.

[Neil]

Hey, hey.

[Ginny]

And you're going to learn words like aspirant.

[Neil]

That's going to go in the show notes. The word of the chapter, if it's a real word, which is questionable. I have to check the Scrabble Dictionary.

What's one book you wish you could reread or read again for the first time?

[Ginny]

Hunger Games. All the way, Hunger Games. Oh, so good.

Oh, I love the Hunger Games. Katniss, are you kidding me? We went and saw the movies and I was like 30.

And it was like, I mean, it was all teenagers. And like me and my 30-year-old mom friends. I mean, I love Katniss and I love Hunger Games.

[Neil]

Well, I loved Hunger Games while I was reading them. They certainly stuck me in. But looking back, I'm like, wow, the child on child.

I read all of them.

[Leslie]

Our Hunger Games story? Oh, I forgot about that. Neil was reading Hunger Games on our honeymoon on a cobo.

[Neil]

And it was pre-honeymoon.

[Leslie]

Oh, yeah, it was pre-honeymoon. And he was reading Hunger Games and we were so into it, like lying on a beach, reading this book over and over and over again. And then he stood up and he stepped on it and it crunched the e-reader and he read the end of the book on his iPhone because he was so into it that he wanted to finish it.

[Neil]

First I went to bookstores in Havar, desperate for a paper copy, but there was no English copies to be found to read the last 10 pages.

[Leslie]

It was so juicy and good.

[Neil]

And he was so into it. Download the e-book reader app, then I think I had to buy it again just to get the last 10 pages like while we were away.

[Ginny]

They're so good. I feel the same way about Harry Potter.

[Leslie]

It was worth it.

[Neil]

I've stepped on a lot of books. I only break the e-ones. What is your book lending policy?

[Ginny]

Oh, I don't give out my books because I've written in them. So actually one time...

[Neil]

But you just showed up at our house with a bag of books for us.

[Leslie]

No, no, they were not to be given.

[Ginny]

Oh, they're not for you. I was just showing you. Those are my books. She doesn't move around the world without her books. I would buy, I would buy people. I was just showing you them.

[Neil]

Because you inspired... You showed a Jonathan Franzen book.

[Ginny]

But that was on your list. I was showing you, I picked I think six books from your 2024 list. That I was planning on reading.

So Breath was one or Breathe, I guess was one of them.

[Neil]

Breath by Nestor.

[Ginny]

Yeah, Breath was one.

[Leslie]

Is your mouth tape ready?

[Ginny]

Yeah, oh, I do mouth tape. Yep, I'm a mouth taper.

I got hostage tape. I wear it at night. So then, well, there's a brand.

There's actually a brand called hostage tape. It's great. It's a good brand of it.

[Leslie]

Neil needs that because he fully like talks and laughs and snores through his mouth tape.

There you go.

[Neil]

Yeah, it's a gift for all when I tape my mouth shut.

[Ginny]

So I was showing you, I was trying to show you like, oh, I think I'm reading six books. I've already chosen six from your 2024 list. And then there were some older ones that I was just showing.

[Neil]

So then were you saying you don't lend?

[Ginny]

I don't. I don't lend because my books are, I mean, written in to the nth degree. I buy.

So if there's books, like I gave away this book.

[Neil]

And I know your pen.

[Ginny]

I got this book. I know.

[Neil]

Oh, it's the same one I use.

[Ginny]

The V5s. I gave away for Christmas this year, Will the Circle Be Unbroken by Sean Diedrich. It's my favorite book that I read in 2024.

It's just like, he is an incredible writer.

[Neil]

Sorry, what do you mean you gave it away? How many copies did you buy?

[Ginny]

I gave away six. I don't have that many friends.

No, you bought six. I, that's embarrassing. I should have said like, I've got 60 friends.

This is a problem. Every year I try and get something for my friends. Like this one lady was selling these cute little pencil pouches.

And I got it like in September. And I was like, how many friends do I have? Probably 20.

And so I'll buy 20 and then it would come at Christmas. And then I would feel like I'm super lame because I'm like, I don't have 20 friends. So in my closet, I have got like extra pencil pouches.

I've got these cute little vases that like for like a single flower that says, I'm glad we're friends. I have extras of everything.

[Leslie]

It's good to have a gift cupboard.

[Ginny]

So this year, this year I did six and I did have six people to give it to. So I do have at least six friends.

[Neil]

Well, just buying six of any book is like

[Ginny]

But I do buy, there we go.

[Leslie]

You have five kids. There's no room for friends.

[Ginny]

Can we homeschool?

[Ginny]

There's no room for anything. But I do buy books for friends is how I do it. I don't lend any.

[Neil]

Okay. So we got all the way back to my book lending policy is do not, do not lend. Buy.

Buy in multiples.

[Ginny]

And I think buying books is a good thing. I think the library is great too, but I also think it really supports authors. And I think in this day and age, you're investing in something that's really important.

And I like, I love giving books as gifts. I love getting books as gifts. I got a book this for Christmas from my sister-in-law.

It is, you're going to love this. Okay. It is meals that you can make with Costco ingredients, all Costco.

So, you know, sometimes you go to Costco and you're like, okay, but I don't have, you know, the cilantro. You can't get whatever, but every single recipe is strict Costco. Wow.

I was like, this is a life-changing book. And there's, and the lady, I bought another one because she made, does it with Trader Joe's too.

[Neil]

I was imagining this like, throw a couple of those fudgy Costco muffins in a blender and make a nice sauce for your.

[Leslie]

Really good olive oil, quinoa.

[Ginny]

There we go.

[Leslie]

Big Parmesan cheese.

[Ginny]

And it's got a picture of all the ingredients and you're like, oh, I know, I know that thing, but maybe I've not bought them all together. So I like books as gifts for sure.

[Neil]

How do you organize your books on your bookshelf?

[Ginny]

Oh, okay. This is good. Okay.

I've got, we just have to keep getting more bookshelves. They're all over the house and we're constantly looking for them. So in the hallway going into our room, there's three bookshelves in a row and then one on the other side.

And in my closet, there's another one. So the middle shelf is all people that have come on my podcast. And also, but they have to be a book that I would possibly go back to.

So like yours would be there, right? There's interesting stuff in here. The buckets, that like really changed my life.

Actually, I talk to people all the time about the buckets. I'm like, no work is good because you have to have the three buckets and they're going to give structure to your third bucket. And it's really, like my mom was saying the other day, I really like to volunteer.

I like to have this structure to my life almost in a way they're retired, almost in a way that was like apologetic. Like, you know, I should just be living this freedom. And I was like, no, no, Neil says you got to have the three buckets.

[Neil]

The week has 168 hours in it. So divide by three, 56, 56, 56. Yeah.

[Ginny]

So I have the ones that I would go back to. And then if it's a podcast, I wouldn't go back to their book. It goes to the basement, but it's on a spreadsheet so that I can find it if I do end up needing it.

[Neil]

Sorry, the spreadsheet is tracking the books in the basement?

[Ginny]

Yes, because everyone's like, find my book. Yeah, I can't find it.

[Neil]

So your spreadsheet is, all your books are in a spreadsheet?

[Ginny]

Well, the ones in the basement are on the spreadsheet.

[Neil]

Oh, if it makes it to the upstairs, doesn't need to be on the spreadsheet.

[Ginny]

I would never share that.

[Neil]

It's like your card catalog.

[Ginny]

Yeah, but I would never share who's in the basement books.

[Neil]

No, I know. But you have a tracker of them. It's not like you're dumping them to the curb.

[Leslie]

Password protected.

[Neil]

Seth Godin told us way back in chapter three, that he gave away a ton of his books and then he started getting notes like, hey, found this book in a used bookstore that said like to Seth from, you know, friends, right? So when a book is like signed to you and you give it away, that creates like, you know.

[Ginny]

So my left bookshelf has books that are about nature, that the people haven't been on the podcast. And it's got some kids books that are all about nature. The right bookshelf is the bottom section is people that are going to be coming on the podcast and I still have to read their books.

And the top of it is books like John Taylor Gatto and John Holtz. I've got a whole section about education, but also people I want to get on the podcast. Like I've got Jocko Willink, all these people that basically...

Yes, they keep saying no, or they're like absolutely. Bear Grylls is on the list. He said no.

I'm trying to think who else I've got. Or it might be someone like they've been on already, like Gretchen Rubin. But then I got a new book of hers.

And so like the next set, so like yours will go there. Like yours will go on the, well, let's talk about this other book of yours that we haven't talked about yet.

[Neil]

Right.

[Ginny]

That's where it will land.

[Neil]

You can have guests multiple times, which I'm jealous of, because sometimes I have someone kind of like I had Jonathan Haidt on chapter 108. No, I wasn't 118. It was pre 100, actually.

And then, you know, The Anxious Generation came out like two years later. I was like, I really want to interview him about The Ink's Generation, but like I can't really crush the format here.

[Ginny]

Oh, that's interesting because he wouldn't come on mine until The Anxious Generation came out. I had to wait two years for an interview with Jonathan Haidt because I wanted to talk about Coddling of the American Mind.

[Leslie]

Right.

[Ginny]

And they said, no, check back in two years.

[Leslie]

Well, hey, at least they knew it was coming down the pipe.

[Ginny]

Yeah.

[Neil]

And that book, by the way, number one on my best of 2024. So we've talked about your lending policy. We've talked about your guys, your books.

[Ginny]

We talked about my right bookshelf is fiction. And my favorite fiction that I read in 2024 is called God of the Woods. Oh, it was really good.

And the other was Circle Unbroken or something. Well, The Circle Be Unbroken. That's a memoir.

And I love Sean Diedrich books.

[Neil]

The memoir of who?

[Ginny]

Of him. His dad took his life when he was in middle school, 12. He dropped out of school and is this really incredible writer and performer.

And his story is really touching and he's funny. Because you're crying on one page and laughing in the same page. I mean, they're just phenomenal books.

[Neil]

Wow.

[Ginny]

That's the one I gave for Christmas.

[Neil]

What's the last children's book you bought for somebody?

[Ginny]

Well, The Sideways Stories.

[Neil]

Oh, Sideways Stories, where he says Lewis Sacker. Yeah. Okay.

Chapter 68.

[Ginny]

Chapter 68.

[Neil]

We gotta go pick up our kids from school.

If they weren't at school, we would have to pick them up.

[Ginny]

We could be doing this together.

[Neil]

Now, the final closing question. We didn't even get to talk about your podcast, but I wanted to talk about a lot because the thing is, you started a podcast when there was three million podcasts already existing and you've gone to the top of the charts. Like your podcast is massive.

Your audience is passionate. You have created something that is like this five million podcasts. Like it's hard to stick out.

So I was gonna, I had a whole series of questions I didn't get to about like, how did you do that? What's your advice for other podcasters? And as we trundle back here and start our pilgrimage walking, because we found out pretty early in this conversation when I was listening that we were like all jimmying around with wires and backpacks.

And we just started to sit in benches. That's how we had to make this work. We...

[Ginny]

And I have a cold. So I was kind of like, I'm sucking in all this cold air and it's getting to my lungs and I'm trying not to cough. But it is interesting that we were, I was warm, warm enough while we were walking. And that's what people always ask with the winter.

It's like, if you're moving, you're usually fine. Exactly. But once you sit, like my toes are pretty...

Numb. Yes.

[Neil]

You come out of the word numb. You've created a movement. You have a huge platform.

You've created a great, great podcast. You have two books out and a third one on its way, homeschooling. So my last question, which could either be related to reading or it could be related to writing or it could be related to what you've grown and are putting into the world is, what is your one hard fought piece of advice you would give to those listening who aspire to be doing things in line with what you are, have created?

[Ginny]

That's an excellent question. My answer is, I'm chewing on a cough drop. It went into the microphone.

That's kind of embarrassing. My answer is don't quit. Because I think that everybody has dreams and passions.

You want to make sourdough bread and sell it. You want to become an author. Actually, this is the craziest thing.

So when I was crossing the border to come up to the wonderful country of Canada, the lady in the booth was like, who are you going to go see? I was like, some friends. How do you know him?

I was like, well, they've been on my podcast and we're going to go hang out. I'm going to go hang out with them. She was like, well, what's your career?

I said, well, I'm an author and a podcaster. She was like, I've always wanted to be an author. And I sat in that spot for probably 10 minutes.

And we talked about how to become an author. She took down my information. And she was at the border.

Everyone's always told me I'm good with words. I'm good with words. I know people are probably like this lady.

What does she have in her car or whatever? But anyway, I just think that you have these dreams, whatever that they are. Everyone listening has their own dreams of what they want to do.

But when you start to pursue your dreams, you're going to have days. This is a loud spot, isn't it? Do I wait?

Do I keep talking? You can keep talking. I know you like the background noise.

[Neil]

I like background noise.

[Ginny]

OK, so everyone is going to have times where they get discouraged. And your book isn't going to sell as good as you hoped. I mean, I really got a lot out of when you said I wish I would have called that book The Resilience Equation.

I've talked to other people about that because when you try new things, inevitably, you're going to have regrets and you're going to do some things wrong. You're going to have time when you're sick. You get tired.

Someone's, you know, passing away in your family. And so I think a lot of times people throw in the towel because it doesn't blow up as soon as they thought it would or because they have a hard season. And I think you just set it aside.

Maybe you pull back, but you don't give up altogether on the thing that you're doing. So that would be my advice is don't quit.

[Neil]

Don't quit. A magical outdoors conversation with the one and only Ginny Yurich. If you are listening to this and you have not already downloaded or subscribed to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast or joined the movement or checked out Ginny's books 1000 Hours Outside until the streetlights come on or her new one, Homeschooling, please do.

And are you at Ginny Yurich? Is that your, I don't, I'm not a social media person.

[Ginny]

Yes, and this is the most embarrassing thing ever because I should have done it at the beginning. It's Yurich. So I should have said it at the very beginning and I didn't.

And then I was like, oh, he probably won't say it again. I'm just going to leave it.

[Neil]

Meanwhile, Leslie asked me and I said it so confidently because I heard about another podcast, which also and I probably should have.

[Ginny]

I'm just not. So my name is Ginny. It's short for Virginia.

And so my whole life, people call me Ginny and I just, I'm not going there. I don't care. Call me what you want.

I'm not every single time going to be like, no. I didn't say Ginny, did I? No, you didn't.

Okay, but I'm just used to, I'm used to people calling me the wrong thing.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

And I don't really care.

[Neil]

Yeah. I had that with a girlfriend, Gillian, people would say.

[Ginny]

Oh, gosh. Yeah. So you just kind of, like, if you're the type of person that's used to getting called the wrong name.

[Neil]

Yeah.

[Ginny]

You don't really correct. But then I think, well, this is way worse than yours. But you do a good job of saying pass, reach up.

You know my little app.

[Neil]

That's so funny that you know that.

[Ginny]

And I have always said, yes, I say Ginny. It rhymes with skinny. But that's kind of weird because I'm not.

And so it's just awkward. Or, well, here's the scoop. I was named after my grandma.

It's Virginia, but people would call me vagina. Oh, my gosh. We'll end with that.

I'm just kidding.

[Ginny]

And we'll end with that.

[Ginny]

But what's the little way to memorize your itch? Your itch? I just say like chicken, like a CH.

[Neil]

I'm like a mosquito on you.

[Ginny]

Your itch. It's your itch. Or, yeah, you're rich.

Follow your itch. You're rich.

[Neil]

Oh, follow your itch.

[Ginny]

Or, like, you're rich. You're rich. You're rich.

But, you know, it's like that's not my. You know, that's like my husband's name. So I'm like, I'm not.

I'm not about to come up with some cool thing.

[Neil]

Ginny, you're rich in spirit. You're rich of mind. You're rich in love.

It's been a pleasure having you on Three Books. Thank you so much.

[Ginny]

I love what you do. This has been such an honor and a total thrill. And I'll remember it for my whole life.

Thank you so much. So great chatting with you, Ginny.

[Neil]

Thank you so much.

[Ginny]

Thanks for having me.

[Neil]

Hey, everybody. It's just me. Just Neil again, hanging out in my basement with my pile full of wires on the brown couch.

And you might hear some, like, drilling and stuff in the background. We got a basement flood situation happening here. So now we have people in here helping us.

Like, how do you unflood a basement? Well, what you do is you look outside your house for, like, cracks. And then you try to fill all the cracks in.

That's as scientific as it gets. You look outside your house for cracks, and you try to fill in the cracks in. Which can be a loud and long process sometimes, and potentially expensive.

So that's where we are today. But we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the conversation we had with Ginny Erich, which quotes jumped out to you.

Here's a few for me. Low-screen and no-screen kids are enduringly popular. So true.

So true. There is not much in life that is engaging to both a child and an adult, but we all like to be outside. Also true.

And the story of my life is that nothing really worked out, so I had to adjust. I love that there's a lot of resilience in Ginny. Did you hear that?

Like, I tried this, it didn't work. I tried this, it didn't work. If you go to her website, if you sign up for her email list, you can kind of see that in practice.

She's, like, trying things a lot. There's a trying things gene that she has, which is inspiring in and of itself. I took a lot away from this conversation.

Everything will be at threebooks.co slash chapter slash 148, which is where the show notes will live forever with every book that Ginny mentioned. Every conversation topic we had is all going to be up there, plus a lot more quotes, because I've got piles of quotes in front of me right now, and I can only say a few of them. But I can read you the top three books that we add to our top 1,000.

That's what I'm going to do right now. Ginny has added three books, including Balanced and Barefoot by Angela Hanscom. That would be, I think, number 569.

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto, G-A-T-T-O. That's number 568. And Learning All the Time by John Holt, H-O-L-T, number 567, which is a really fascinating book.

By the way, I'm teaching my younger kids to read right now, and there is such an inspiring chapter in that book, Learning All the Time, about how to actually do that. And basically, the takeaway is, don't do anything. Just lie beside them.

Smile. Don't correct them. Don't dress them out.

Just listen and let them stumble. Let them trip over the words. Just let them.

Let them. You've heard that before from Mel and so on. So, Ginny, thank you so much for driving all the way up here from Michigan.

Thank you so much for coming on three books. I hope you all enjoyed listening. And now, if you made it past the three-second pause, I want to welcome you back to the end of the podcast club.

This is one of three clubs that we have for three bookers, including the Cover to Cover Club and the Secret Club, which I can't tell you more about. But you can listen to a voicemail to find out. That would be 1-833-READALOT, R-E-A-D-L-O-T.

And without further ado, let's go to the phones right now.

[Tabitha]

Hi, Neil. My name's Tabitha, also a Canadian. Calling this morning, I'm a new fan of three books.

I'm working on becoming a Cover to Cover Club member, but really wanted to share that I finished listening to the Oliver Burkeman podcast, and the quote from James Hollis that you shared about family was a wow moment for me. It was a quote that I sent to my teenage boys this morning, because I don't think it can encapsulate any better the way that a parent feels about their love for a child. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Have a wonderful day.

[Neil]

Thank you so much to Tabitha for calling 1-833-READALOT. And of course, when you say the quote about family from Oliver Berkman, I'm like, what was that quote? And so I went back into my notes that I used to prepare for Oliver Berkman.

I've got a 26-page 5,308-word document that I've saved to prep for him. And I have both the quote from 127 from James Hollis, which is, What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents have not lived. But I am actually thinking that the quote you're probably referring to is the one that he talks about family on page 132, which is, The modern family is one in which the divergent values of our separate souls are supported, valued, encouraged.

Diversity is not just tolerated, it is affirmed as the radical gift of relationship. Conflict is mediated with accepting love despite disagreement, and no one carries the assigned burden of becoming something other than what they are. I'm guessing that was it.

That's a big one. I should print that out and put it on the wall. That is a great kind of encapsulating quote.

Kind of reminds me of the Brené Brown, you know, manifesto. She has like that whole parent manifesto. Thank you so much, Tabitha.

And if you're listening to this right now, give me a call, 1-833-READALOT, R-E-A-D-A-L-O-T. You can type that into your phone and just, you know, comment on the show. Tell me something you like, something you don't like, a guest you'd like to have on, one of your formative books.

There's no such thing as a wrong way to call. I love hearing from you. And Tabitha, send me your address because you know whenever I play your voicemail or read your letter, I always love mailing you a book after.

Speaking of reading a letter, this chapter's letter, which I forgot to put at the beginning, but sometimes I put them at the beginning and sometimes I put them at the end. There's different places to put the letters of the chapter. Comes from Jason Langan from Haverford Middle School from Havertown, Pennsylvania.

Writes, Hey Neil, hope all is well. I just wanted to share with you a new virtual scrapbook of my students' favorite awesome things from your original list. We've shared this with our families and are now working on a rap using iambic pentameter to put these things into one song.

Awesome. Now, confession, I have been getting a letter from Jason Langan from Haverford Middle School for, I want to say, maybe 10 straight years. He emails me every year and he's got a scrapbook or he's got submissions from his students about awesome things.

He spirits the awesome thing philosophy into classwork. Like, Oh bubble wrap, you joy unwrapped a simple sheet but oh so strapped with tiny bubbles rose and rose a perfect joy that always grows. Or how about this one?

This one comes from Cameron Diaz. The fries at the bottom of the bag. Deep in the bag after your food, the last golden fry starts to brighten your mood.

Drenched in salt and covered with care, you eat that last fry and give it a happy stare. Jason, I love you. Thanks for the letter.

Drop me a note so I can send you a book. All right. And now it is time for the word of the chapter.

And for this chapter's word, let's go back to Ginny.

[Ginny]

I would define homeschooling as parent-directed education.

[Neil]

Kind of only made sense to go with homeschooling. I mean, it is the name of her book, which wasn't it so cute as she laughed at that. She's like, it's just called homeschooling.

It's just homeschooling. But you might not know, as I did not, that homeschooling, while that has appeared as a compound word formed by the words home and school since the 1850s, the actual verb homeschooling, that's new. That didn't start until the 1980s.

It's kind of maybe one of those things where you don't need it till there isn't it in a way. Like, of course, homeschooling makes sense objectively when almost all schooling is at home, but as it goes the other way and almost all schooling is in schools, well, then homeschooling becomes its own verb and stands out. Well, anyway, maybe that's the point of it.

I don't know. I don't know. Ginny Yurich, it was a slice in a tree and a pleasure to have you up here in Toronto for our second outdoor chapter in a row, like Nikisha and Ginny back to back outdoors on the sidewalk.

I don't know. I just love getting outside. 1,000 hours outside is, I think, a noble direction for us all.

Thank you so much to all of you for listening. Until next time, remember that you are what you eat and you are what you read. Keep turning the page, everybody, and I'll talk to you soon.

Take care.

Listen to the chapter here!