“Try different, try again. Don’t just try harder, try something different.”

– Andrea Fife

In this packed Q&A episode, we tackle the tough questions parents face in alternative education. Special guest Andrea Fife delivers a masterclass on supporting ADHD learners, revealing why traditional approaches often fail and how technology, dopamine, and understanding executive function are key to success. Plus, Isaac and Matt explore finding community, essential subjects, and knowing when to push vs. when to let go.

Learn:

How alternative education creates unique opportunities for multi-age relationships and real-world learning

Why executive function age in ADHD learners is typically 2/3 of their chronological age and what this means for expectations

How to help kids develop social skills in the age of screens (hint: model it yourself!)

The “three R’s plus entrepreneurship” approach to essential subjects

When to let kids quit activities vs. pushing through challenges

Why sharing your own struggles and vulnerabilities builds trust with teens

Chapters:

Chapters

00:00 Welcome Back to the Open Ed Podcast

00:46 Addressing ADHD in Homeschooling

02:06 Expert Insights with Andrea Fife

11:43 The Role of Exercise and Dopamine

19:32 Finding Community and Socialization

26:27 A Radical Approach to Education

26:54 The Importance of Basic Skills

27:57 Connecting Learning to Real Life

29:21 Nurturing Natural Aptitudes

30:32 Alternative Math Learning Methods

31:54 Addressing Parental Concerns

32:32 Raising Resilient and Responsible Adults

38:14 Balancing Fun and Learning

39:35 Encouraging Perseverance in Kids

47:18 Success Stories and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

[00:00:00]

Isaac: We are back the open ed podcast, my favorite kind of episode, Q and a episode, Matt, how you doing?

Matt: Doing great, Isaac. How about you?

Isaac: Great. We had so much fun on that last one. And, uh, I’m excited to jump in today. I’m going to kick it off.

Matt: questions from parents, aren’t we? It’s

Isaac: Oh, I love it. I love getting these questions and we get questions, we get stories. Uh, so keep those coming by the way.

Uh, you can, you can email us. Market at open ed. co. you can go subscribe to the open ed daily as well. We’re always soliciting questions. We’re going to jump in the first question. I’ve got a surprise secret weapon, that we’re going to have help us with an answer. So let me kick this off. First question.

My homeschool question right now is how to help my son with ADHD. Keep on track during his school day. I don’t just want to body double and be his task manager. I want to learn how to gradually little by little teach him skills to [00:01:00] manage ADHD himself. By the time he’s an adult, before I get to our secret weapon, I did solicit our team and we got two great answers.

Macy from our team says my daughter with ADHD. Is learning some tools through counseling like checklists, small rewards, go pet the dog after 10 minutes of math, timers, personal goals, planner, phone alarms, et cetera. Uh, it has to be her idea and her follow through. And then we check in location also matters.

She needs a darker room, no distraction and the rewards after a certain time. Haley from our team said, she agrees and her son has she has a visual schedule for him and a visual timer for longer task. Frequent breaks. He always has a choice on where he wants to work time of day also matters. And she said she finds getting most of our work done before lunch is best for him.

So I thought those were some great quick answers, but I want to really get into it with Andrea Fife [00:02:00] from our team. Who’s been on the podcast before, who is really passionate about this subject learners with ADHD. So Andrea, how would you answer this parent’s question?

Andrea: Yeah, it was a great question and I love the way that the parent phrased it. They kind of started with. I already know some strategies that work. For my child, just I don’t want to be the 1 that always has to be there to make sure the strategies are implemented. And I just, I think that’s so great. So, 1st of all, you know, hats off to the parent.

Who’s who’s there doing the work and who’s who’s figuring this out. but. That my my take on this question is to kind of back it up for a second and to recognize the strategies that help with ADHD. Uh, if they work, they work, uh, and they’re pretty likely to always work just like a person who wears glasses.

You know, if they get up, they need glasses to see. So they put on their glasses and the glasses do what they do pretty much every day, you take away the glasses, you, you, you know, take away that successful strategy. So, just thinking about the tips and tricks that help for [00:03:00] ADHD and recognizing they may need to be permanent in, in some cases is a good way to think about it, but that doesn’t mean it always has to be mom and dad’s responsibility.

Transitioning that responsibility to the child is absolutely possible as they get older. but again, I want to take a step back and just think about ADHD, some of its root causes and think about the fact that a lot of experts will agree that with ADHD, there’s actually a delay and executive functioning development.

Simply stated, this is a person’s ability to point the finger this way. People with ADHD are actually pretty good at pointing it this way and managing other people’s functions. But to turn it to themselves and to be able to apply those functions to themselves is really challenging. The math I like to use is just simple math.

Two thirds, two thirds of their current actual age is going to be an approximate executive function age. So I am the proud owner of a couple of [00:04:00] ADHD kids at my house. My 17 year old, I have to remind myself, he’s walking around with an executive function age of about a 12 year old. I used to teach fifth grade, so that’s easy for me to think like heading into sixth grade, heading into middle school.

That’s about where his executive function age. Is, uh, my 15 year old, he’s walking around with the executive function age of about a 10 year old. So it doesn’t mean that he can’t. I mean, they’re both honestly geniuses, uh, academic success off the charts, but that has nothing to do with executive function and the ability to manage yourself, manage your time, manage your tasks.

They’re totally separate. And I want to mention here, this actually doesn’t go away as you get older. It actually gets worse because if we’re applying a two thirds formula, you know, the deficit for a 6 year old is only about a 2 year gap. The deficit for my 17 year old. We’re talking nearly a 6 year gap.

And it’s important to note that executive function continues to develop until about 25 or 30 years old, [00:05:00] and then it stops that’s in all brains. so for an ADHD brain. Um, that means that I topped out somewhere around the executive function age of probably 19 years old, so I can successfully do without accommodation anything that you would expect early in college person to be able to do.

But if I want to succeed to a higher degree than a typical early college student, I need tips and tricks that I implement regularly, just like I also wear contacts. I need to wear them every day or I don’t see well. I also need the tips and tricks that help me with ADHD. Every day if I want to succeed at a level that is similar to my more nerd to the, you know, neurotypical development.

So the big, big, long backstory there because

Isaac: This is like a masterclass. This is amazing.

Andrea: I’m going to breathe here for a second. I often forget to do that when you get me talking about my passion, which this [00:06:00] absolutely is. So, uh, so going back kind of to the original question, um, which I’m going to paraphrase as how can I prepare my child to handle their own accommodations?

my advice is this, uh, teach the strategies. Model out loud whatever it is that you’re doing that you figured out helps. Talk about it out loud. Let them hear what you’re doing and then explicitly teach the steps just like you would teach math strategies or you would teach, you know, whatever your reading strategies are.

There would be some, some explicit instruction there and transfer of information. Do the same thing here. Teach it explicitly. Uh, if body doubling works. Help them identify peers that they can body double with. if checklists help. teach them how to make one. So that’s how you start to transfer that, that skill set.

Is you say, look, checklists work every day, but I do not want to follow my child around well into their 40s making their checklists for them. If I want to see them have [00:07:00] successful skills that are going to empower them as an adult, because they’re gonna need them, um, then I’m going to teach them how to make their own.

Uh, if your ADHD or struggles with overwhelm and you’re constantly breaking things down into smaller bite sized pieces, teach that strategy or even better. If you can find technology that helps with that, find that and empower your child with the technology. That helps. We use tons of technology tools in our house so that I can say, okay, I figured out what works, but I don’t want to be the one running that every day.

Let’s turn that over to a technology tool that, that can take my place and tell my child is ready to do that on their, on their own. if rewards helps, and that is so common that rewards helps. talk to your child about what kinds of rewards help and teach them how to celebrate their own successes.

Really, really important here to recognize that for a person with an ADHD brain, that is always going to need to be an external reward. Many people have this [00:08:00] idea that if I do an external reward for a while, it will eventually become intrinsic, and we can just move that over to, oh, but they’ll feel so good when they accomplish that.

If that was possible, Those of us with ADHD would not have half the struggles that we have if that’s the way that it worked, but that’s impacted by the executive function. We don’t have that internal reward system. It doesn’t work very well. So, so external, uh, stickers, prizes, literally help me as an adult.

and. The if it works with your household values, the more often you can eat your rewards, the better, uh, an M and M at the end of a challenging task doesn’t need to be the whole bag, you know, but a small reward for a small accomplishment. And if you can transfer that skill to your child to say, hey, it seems like this is going to be a challenging task.

Can you break it down into steps? Great work. What do you think is going to work as a reward when you’ve reached each of those benchmarks? Fantastic. Can you go to the pantry and go ahead and grab those? We already [00:09:00] have those snacks that we bought in advance in case a hard task came. Uh, how many do you think that you should get when you have reached that benchmark?

And just guiding them through that process out loud. Eventually you’ll see. They’ll start to do it for themselves. They’ll sit down to do a hard thing. All of a sudden, they’re up and you’re like, Where did you go? Why are you not doing the thing? And they’re like, Oh, I needed to go grab stickers and a sticky note pad because I want to break this down into chunks and then I want to reward myself when I’ve reached the benchmarks.

And you’ll just be like, We did it! I think we arrived. I think we did it. And today today they leveled up. So, um, yeah, teach it. That’s that’s how you do it. You teach it. But in order to teach it, you have to know how to do it yourself first. So there’s definitely a step and nobody’s going to be better at it than the person who’s right there in the environment.

With that ADHD brain, what, what I’ve found, honestly, is, you know, I, I coach the other adults that work with, with my kids, including their [00:10:00] pediatrician, including teachers at any, you know, academic settings they’re in, I’m the one who’s in the best position to be able to help my child write their user manual for their brain.

We talk about all the time in our house. Let’s write the, let’s write the user manual. But if I do a good job of that, then I should be able to use the user manual and train my child on their own brain. but first I have to write the user manual.

Isaac: I love it. What a, what an amazing answer. I feel like I have learned so many things I didn’t know or had never thought of before. I’m curious. You mentioned the technology tools. Have you ever tried or your kids ever tried? Using a chat GPT or something and saying, Hey, can you take this complex task and break it into really small tasks for me or for someone with ADHD?

Andrea: Uh, yes, absolutely. absolutely. Uh, the emergence of, of AI is huge for people with ADHD. you know, you can go straight to the source with a tool like chat GBT, or there’s some really great apps that are actually there’s. There’s a lot of great housework apps. Most people with [00:11:00] ADHD struggle with chores, and there’s a lot of ones that are actually designed to break your chores down into manageable steps.

there’s even like a body doubling chore app out there where you can follow along either, anyhow, you can pick which path, the more chaotic version or the more straightforward version, uh, the emergence of technology tools. To support ADHD brains is, is huge. there is so much available and it is so helpful.

Isaac: I love it. Thank you so much, Andrea, for coming on and taking that question on. I read that and I was like, I don’t have experience with this. I don’t really know what to say. I don’t know if Matt does. I know somebody on our team who’s really passionate. So appreciate you coming on and helping us.

Matt: Hey, any, anytime.

hey, before you drop Andrea, I’d love when I was a teacher, 1 of the things that helped students in my classroom that struggled with ADHD was getting exhausted at recess, right? So talk to me, you know, share a little bit around the role of just. [00:12:00] Exercise activity, and really, you know, there’s many research articles that say boys in particular just need to get exhausted before their brain is in a state ready to learn something.

How does that tie with ADHD category?

Andrea: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a super interesting way to describe it. I think that the, that the effect is the same, but I think I would describe it a little bit differently. The importance of recess is so huge, getting outside, doing all those things. But I would say that one of the main reasons why that that helps so I talked about the executive function The other major thing at play for most adhd brains is a lack of dopamine we’ve really really irregular dopamine levels.

and you dopamine is required for focus It’s just required you have to have it or you can’t attend to the task and people with adhd really struggle to to maintain that dopamine Going outside running around Being excited about something, just getting to do that is one of [00:13:00] the quickest, most recommended, safest ways, to increase dopamine.

so I think a lot of people might observe that and think they needed to be worn out and I would actually say it’s the opposite. They needed to be excited. Uh, they needed to be engaged. They don’t have to be engaged in what you need them to do. They just need to be engaged. You just need to flood the brain with dopamine.

and when it’s there, then the ADHD brain is, is practically unstoppable. Now that’s the flip side of that. If you’ve ever known somebody with ADHD, you’ve probably observed hyperfocus, which is they are so in the zone that to get them to do anything else is. Is next to impossible. And so it’s it’s a regulation issue on on both sides of the coin.

and people with ADHD can’t always control. Where they direct their focus. but getting those dopamine levels up in, in our house and it’s different for every person. So you have to kind of talk to that person and figure out what works. But for my 17 [00:14:00] year old, if he climbs something, he’s like good to go.

So, super boring task that he needs to do. Like, we need to fill out a job application or something. And it’s just grueling. Uh, we’ll take the Chromebook on the roof. Literally. We, we take boring work on the roof at our house. So just increase the dopamine and all of a sudden the work can get, uh, the tasks

Isaac: That is amazing. Yeah, this one looks kind of boring. We better take this to the roof. That is, that is, uh, that’s great. I love that.

Matt: No, thanks, Andrea.

Andrea: so I’ll leave you with one parting thought, one of my favorites, ADHD YouTuber, Jessica McCabe of How to ADHD. She’s got this cute little song I love. it says, try different, try again. and so that would be my, my parting thought when you’re working with your children on these skills.

You might. Feel like you want to say I need you to try harder. I need you to try harder if you just try harder but I love the phrase try different try again if what you’re doing isn’t working Don’t just [00:15:00] try harder, try something different. Whether that’s climbing the roof, or something maybe a little bit less extreme.

Whatever it is, whatever challenge you’re facing, just try something different. There’s a good chance that simply different is going to engage the dopamine and you’re going to be good to go.

Isaac: Wow. I love it. Thank you so much.

Andrea: Thanks for inviting me. Great to see you both.

Matt: Thanks, Andrea.

Andrea: See ya.

Isaac: I almost feel like we need like, ADHD corner with Andrea or something. That was, uh, that was amazing. got more than I bargained for. It’s funny, Matt, she mentioned, um, and this relates to a little bit similar to a couple of the questions we’ve gotten. When she was mentioning household chores, that that’s something people with ADHD, uh, often struggle with and using some of these apps and things to, to do household chores.

It reminded me, cause we’ve had some parents ask, okay, if I’m, if I’m trying to teach my kids or have my kids do stuff or learn stuff, how do I know it’s the right stuff? And I, growing up homeschooled, my [00:16:00] mom was not very good at being on point with various subjects, curricula. it was like we would, you know, she would go to a book fair and buy tons and tons of books, but then we would never stick with them.

And she always felt bad about that. But one thing she was always on point with was household chores. All of us kids always had household chores, a lot of them from a very early age. And we always had to get those done. There was no negotiation there. We could find ways to sort of like trick my mom into getting out of our homework sometimes, or clever ways of convincing her that, you know, what we wanted to do was, and, but the, and when, as I, as I got older and especially when I entered, I went to a high school and then I went to college, I realized that the household chores were.

So valuable for my academic stuff. I went to a typical high school my sophomore year and I found so many kids struggle to keep up with homework and I never did. I would often have it done before I even left school for the [00:17:00] day. I’d be doing it like during the other classes, which maybe wasn’t a good idea, but because the transferability of like task management.

Just the ability to get things done on a schedule to break them down. Okay. It’s every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, my duties are laundry and sweeping the floor or whatever, and checking those off and having that. And so I think it’s underestimated the transferability of just task completion and household chores are a great thing.

If you have your kids at home, cause they help you with the house, keep it clean, it’s beneficial to everyone. But it’s also, it is transferring to the kids, just the ability to get things done. And, and once they can do that, they can point that at anything and apply that to anything.

Matt: No, I totally agree. As we raised our 5 children, we had lots of chore charts all over the place and, and they laugh about it. We, we have, fun memories of the chore charts and things that they did or didn’t do or told us it was [00:18:00] done. And they tell us later, it wasn’t done. And, but, you know, even like Jordan Peterson, a brilliant behavioral psychologist talks about the importance of.

Wake up, make your bed like that impacts your entire life just doing a task like that. So, I think, you know, we’ve learned as parents and, you know, we’ve seen the value of some of those just household chores. You’re contributing to this community called family to the household. We live in, and you can see instant success.

And feel like you’ve been productive for a moment. And those are things that are needed for to set the stage for more challenging activities in your day.

Isaac: Yeah, 100%. I know a lot of parents get really stuck in like the grades. I want my kid to get good grades and be taking, you know, whatever honors classes and the academic success. And so that’s all that they focus on. And I think the stress that comes with that for one is really [00:19:00] high, but to a lot of the things you’re, you’re hoping your kids can learn.

Actually can be learned at a base level with just simpler, simpler things like household chores. So, because as they go on in life, that A. P. biology class in high school is probably not gonna be that relevant to them. Their ability to complete lots of different tasks in an orderly fashion is always going to be relevant to them.

So, here’s a couple of questions that we got that came in. One, and this is a, this is such a big one. I hear this all the time and I face this myself because we’ve moved to new state several times. Where can I find other families like us to hang out with where can I find if my kids are not in school every day that social component, that community component, especially if you’re new to a community or you’re new to open education, alternative schooling, where do you find people?

I’m curious your answers to that, Matt. Maybe, maybe you could give me a bifurcated answer. Give me the like pre social media answer. What did people [00:20:00] do? And then, uh, the, the answer today.

Matt: Right. Cause social media answer today is, is there’s lots of Facebook groups. There’s lots of, you know, that want to be found there’s co ops and, and Instagram accounts and thought leaders and YouTube channels. So there’s a lot around social media, but That’s not the only way. And that’s not how it’s always been done.

what we’ve experienced is being out in the community during the day, right? if you go to a park, if you go to the zoo, you go to the museums, uh, you’re out in the community during the day, you start to run into families who are also doing things during the day. And you can, it’s fairly easy that to ask, Hey, I see you’re here with school aged children at 1 o’clock at the zoo.

Uh, do you homeschool or do you do open education? Do you do alternative education models? And they usually families get excited to be able to connect, you know, on demand like that. So I’d say. You might be shy, but don’t [00:21:00] be shy. People are wanting to find like minded thinkers and, everyone is struggling to find that friendship or that connection with their child.

I remember our second son struggled to have a connection with, with a friend. And so I moved in and they just, connected and it was. It’s an answer to our prayer to have one of our child children find that one friend and it made all the difference for the last couple years of their, you know, K 12 education.

Isaac: Yeah. Uh, if, if they’re out with kids during the school day, and then if they get out of a van and like six kids come out of it, those are, you know, now you’re like, okay, hold on, this is probably a homeschool. No. I love that you said that though, because. Even in the age of social media, where you can go and you can Google homeschool groups near me.

You can go to a homeschool. Legal defense has a great database of homeschool organizations. Uh, you can go on Facebook and start searching for homeschool [00:22:00] groups in your town. You said you can find a lot of stuff. Even there, there’s so much more like it takes a couple of years in a new city in particular, before you find all of these things you didn’t know about, they’re not always the most Google searchable.

They’re not always up to date. They don’t always have websites and that little hack that you gave. I have not even necessarily intentionally. This has happened so much. This is probably how my wife in particular, who’s usually going out and making all these connections has, has met so many of the people in groups.

It’s just. Being out and about at parks and at places, seeing other people, and then making yourself just go talk to people. And even if you don’t naturally want to, my wife has gotten really good just last night at little league practice. She’s like, I wanted to just sit there and read a book, but I was like, all right, I’m going to get up.

I’m going to go talk to all the other moms that I see here. And one of them homeschooled and she wouldn’t have known that. And they live right nearby us and they have kids, our kids ages. And even though they’re [00:23:00] both on social media and they both, they didn’t find each other that way. So just being able to, to go up and chat and say hi to people.

and when you, you know, being out and about and being social, and that’s also a great thing to model for your kids. Yeah. when they just see that you’re willing to, I know this is a funny thing, but this current generation of kids, whatever you call them, Gen Z, or I’ve heard different things, they struggle more than I think any other previous generation in going up and talking to people face to face.

Cause they’re so used to having interactions mediated through screens. And so I’ve noticed like my wife and I really try to, to model that. And then we try to challenge our kids with that. Like, we’ll go, you know, I don’t know if I, I didn’t, I got the wrong thing on my order. Go, go ask the waiter, like go ask the group, right.

That doesn’t seem, but that’s like a scary thing to a lot of kids. And I think, um, homeschooling often, you know, back in the day, they’d say, I’m worried, aren’t you worried about socialization, but I’ve actually noticed the opposite. That homeschoolers are used to that kind of interaction and being, you know, going out and saying, Hey, do you [00:24:00] also homeschool?

And doing it with people of all different ages. And so you kind of, there’s a bonus, right? You meet people that way, but you also kind of, kind of learn and model, confidence and being outgoing and, and social.

Matt: Yeah. And I, let me drill down on one of the things you said, multi age group. Relationships is something that is really strong in families who are doing alternative education model. they get an opportunity to have teenagers chatting with 10 year olds and 10 year olds chatting with teenagers and.

Mentoring young kids and just interacting with different age groups teaches something that traditional zip code and birth year cohorts don’t. And so I think it’s really powerful for that. And again, to your point, it doesn’t have to be a learning setting. It could be the grocery store, right? Or the mall or somewhere where you’re you’re during the day, see families together and around and and just engage with them and have fun with it.

Isaac: We’ve also found [00:25:00] that, uh. if you have kids that bicker and fight with each other a lot, sometimes this is a way to where they find these bonding experiences. So we’ll, we’ll go to a store. Sometimes we’ll say, okay, kids, you go and return this thing at the return desk and 1 of my daughters.

Would be like, I don’t want to do that. I’m all nervous and shy. And one of them is like, yeah, I’ll do that. And so I will assign it to the one who’s shy, knowing that she will ask for help from her sister. And then they’ll go do something together instead of fighting. So, we’ve got a question here on subjects.

Are there any subjects? I absolutely shouldn’t skip. Even if my child isn’t interested in them. Really curious to hear your take on that, Matt.

Matt: I’m probably fairly traditional in this sense in that the, I call it the three R’s plus entrepreneurship. So I do, I do believe that there’s a role for daily interaction with read something, write something. Practice a little bit of math. you know, as, [00:26:00] as young children are growing, uh, doesn’t that be long?

Doesn’t that have to be killer? It’s just, you know, have, have some read, write and arithmetic every day, a little bit of something, but then wrap around that with entrepreneurship, explore the world. See how you can engage with science and social studies and history and geography and all those other subjects in the context of the world you live in.

And, uh, so that’s what I would say. How about you?

Isaac: I started off pretty much in the same place. And then at one point I got like much more radical. Yeah. I was reading about the Sudbury Valley school and reading a free to learn and just like, Hey, don’t make them do anything. Just let them pick whatever. And, and while theoretically.

I think there’s actually some really strong cases there. And I don’t think it’s impossible for that to work. I found it too stressful to be that fully hands off. so like, I think I’ve come down to basically the same place. Okay. Reading, writing, and basic math. If for no other reason than that. [00:27:00] There’s so, so like math is an interesting one.

If you have a kid that’s totally uninterested in math and they’re not going to really do anything with math, you know, you could say, well, why make them just let them do whatever there is a level of stress, um, that’s Even socially for them in a world in which there are certain expectations around math at certain ages.

Now, once you get into any of the advanced math, you can pretty much be fine. But if they’re struggling to quickly calculate a percentage of tips. When they’re, if they’re a waiter or something like that, because they just ignored it because they didn’t care about it. Like, that’s just kind of a, it’s like a hardship.

That’s not really necessary. So I’m okay. Being like, look, you’re going to learn the basics on these 3 things. Trust me. It’s going to make your life easier. It’s going to make my life easier when I’m working with you when you’re a teenager on budgeting or something. If you don’t know anything, and we’re starting from scratch, that’s going to be a lot harder.

So I have a basic agreement there. I think the key with all of those actually. Okay. Is trying as [00:28:00] best as possible to connect it to a, a relevant context for the kids. So, find something that they enjoy reading, have them write things that they enjoy. And sometimes that’s, you know, writing things in the context of, uh, texting their friends or, um, a game that they’re playing where they can chat with each other.

Uh, it doesn’t have to look like the standard curriculum approach

Matt: Yeah, definitely. It was not a

Isaac: to read and

Matt: five paragraph essay is not what we’re talking about as a required writing task. It, you know, we’ve had kids that love to transcribe YouTube channel, You know, interesting dialogue and just see how it’s, you know, show them as 2 people talking and put them in, you know, format, like a screenplay.

Those types of things can engage people who don’t think they’re writers. To just write down stuff or write, you know, write a story about, you know, just summarize your favorite athlete of what they did and in their [00:29:00] last basketball game, you know, just things like that. Just to get the practice. It’s not like you’re becoming a writer.

You’re just practicing the exercise of writing something. And that is inherently valuable that I think communication skills in general are needed throughout your whole life.

Isaac: one thing that, is kind of counterintuitive, I guess, so I, I used to approach it. Like if, if I notice one of my kids struggles with a particular thing, then I would tend to be like, okay, I need to, push that thing that they’re not that good at more. Now, I’ve almost taken the opposite approach where if there’s a kid that’s just not that good at math naturally, and I can just tell, I’m like, okay, get them the basics, but don’t worry too much.

But if I notice one of my kids has a little bit of aptitude. Instead of being like, oh, they’ll be fine, right? The default is, oh, they already know that stuff. It comes easy to them. They’ll be fine. I’ve actually tried to reverse that and say, if I know it’s full aptitude, I got to pour fuel on that and let them make that connections.

Like, my youngest is the only 1 of my 4 kids who is sort of quick with math and I’ll just [00:30:00] notice in little ways. He’ll be looking at the directions when we’re driving and he’ll. He’ll quickly be like, you know, Oh, it’s going to be whatever. He’ll do like little subtraction, little stuff. He’ll, he’ll mention things that I’m like, Oh, he put that together.

I didn’t teach him that. And so I’m trying to, to, to not say, Oh, good. I get to relax with him. He’ll be fine with that, but to go the opposite direction, like

Matt: down.

Isaac: yeah, exactly. And, and see where this goes. Um, because that’s when it really gets fun. If you find something with your kids where they do stand out, that does come easy to them.

Let’s disproportionately focus on that with him. You know?

Matt: no, that’s great. And, you know, many states have actually adopted computer science as replacement for math credit. And what I like about that is that, uh, learning to code using code. org or whatever Khan Academy type tools are out there for free, helping your child or scratch is a great intro to, to programming is a great math instruction.

And so if, you find your child that’s struggling with traditional math [00:31:00] curriculum, try some, you know, to Andrea’s point, just don’t try harder. Try different. And try something like coding or scratch or whatever and help them learn those principles, which are very mathematically based. And that’s really great math.

Isaac: Yeah. It’s funny. I never really liked math that much and I love philosophy and I took a community college. I had a, um, it was like a logic course, maybe symbolic logic, which was technically a philosophy course, but I get in there and it’s like, oh, you’re taking arguments and turning them into little symbols like a and B and C.

And then you’re doing these. It looks like a math equation. This looks like algebra. And I was like, wait a minute. And that’s what coding is. It’s a bunch of if then statements. And I was like, Hey, I actually love this. Like, why didn’t anybody tell me that this is another way to approach math? okay. So we have.

Helena, she sent a list of questions. She said Questions that keep me up at night, , [00:32:00] which is great, great framing, because I think as a parent we all have those . lemme, I wanna get into a couple of these. Am I teaching my kids well enough? Oh, uh, how do I teach my kids to be resilient, responsible, confident, and good adults?

And I, I love that question because I think that’s really the question.

Matt: And that’s the quest.

Isaac: Yes. Yes. Not like how do I make sure they know math? How do I, those are all sub questions. How do I raise them to be good people, to have good lives and to do good? I think that’s just such a, such a great question. So Matt, I’m going to let you answer how to raise your kids to be good adults.

Wait,

Matt: of us knew, right? As parents, that’s, uh, that’s our dream. And, uh, that’s, that’s what I think is the eternal struggle, right? For parents to, even as you, you know, we’re parenting adult children now, our youngest is 22, our oldest is 31. [00:33:00] So,

Isaac: so it doesn’t stop. I’m not off the hook at some

Matt: not, uh, it just changes, you know, the relationship you have as parent child continues.

Uh, and you just. We’re now figuring out how to be the right parents to our adult children and grandparents or grandchildren. And so that’s, you know, always the struggle. You want them to be healthy, happy, resilient, confident, uh, interested in their life. So how to do that? I don’t really know. So that’s the, that’s the short answer.

Uh, but some of the things that I see people try and we’ve tried over the years, um, is to what we’ve been talking about double down on things they’re interested in, add fuel to their fire when they, when they show interest, support them in their, in their interest pursuits. But also know when to back off.

Uh, sometimes I’ve found myself, you know, a child was interested in this topic. So we’re feeding the [00:34:00] fire, feeding the flame. And then 3 weeks later, I’m still talking to them about it and they’re like, I’m done. I’ve moved on to another thing I’m interested in and yet I’m still feeding that interest. And then it’s kind of an awkward moment, right?

And so. But by demonstrating you’re willing to invest in and support them in their interests, and then also respect when they’ve moved on that creates some, some good conversation that is healthy. even, you know, that applies to competitive sports is a big example of that, right? That 8 year old is the shining star of the team.

And so you. You get them into all the club teams and you’re focused in a coach and a trainer and then one day they wake up, they’re not interested in that sport anymore, but you’ve invested so much that you’re and you think they’re so talented that you just don’t let them drop. And so that creates burnout conflict, all these things as the, as the child [00:35:00] gets into the teenage years.

We see so many great athletes in 10, 11, no longer playing that sport at 15, 16. And so that’s, I think that might apply to other skills and things is know when to invest, know when to let it go.

Isaac: 1 thought I’ll throw in there on the sort of very broadest topic of raising, raising kids to become good adults. This is probably the hardest thing when I, as a parent, or just as a person, when I do stupid stuff, when I’m not a good adult, actually going out of my way to acknowledge that. And even share that and point that out.

It’s amazing how much trust that builds, especially when you have like young teenagers, they’re always fighting with you and they’re, they always think you’re wrong and you’re always trying to like, you know, show them that you’re right. And so you have this feeling like you can’t, you can’t let down your guard.

And even small stuff, like, you know, if I’m gossiping about somebody and then, and if I recognize it and stop [00:36:00] and say, you know, I shouldn’t be talking about them like that. That’s, that’s not a good thing to gossip. Sorry about that guys. Something so small like that, you’re, it’s amazing. You’ll almost see it in their faces immediately.

The level of respect they’ll have for you. They’ll open up to you. It’s very, very hard to do, but just owning it when you’ve, when you’ve made mistakes and telling your kids about mistakes you made when you were younger as well. kids love to hear those stories.

Matt: They do and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll get really personal here for a moment. So again. My wife, Amy, and I have run open ed for 16 years. And much of that time, our children were, you know, teenagers or, you know, young teens, and tried to not bring the stress of running the business to them, and we thought we were doing them a favor.

By shielding them from the stress that Amy and I were having in, in running a business and, you know, really challenging the status quo of education was not a simple thing. So there’s many nights that Amy and I were totally stressed out, but we tried to not [00:37:00] have that impact our kids. We tried to show positive, you know, modeling that as they got older and we started sharing some of the war stories.

Where we were extremely stressed out. They said, thank you for sharing that. I, I kind of wish you would have told us that then we feel like all we were shown was just the positivity. We didn’t realize you guys were stressed out after we went to bed and thought then when we are stressed in our life, that’s unusual because we, our parents are hiding that stress, right?

So again, I’m getting very personal here and just saying. Kids need to see that there’s both sides of that and be more open around the good and the bad, the excitement and the stress, model that, let them see that that’s okay to have both reins of motion. So anyway, there you go. You got it on the podcast

Isaac: No, that’s amazing. I thank you for sharing that. I know that, you know, as kids, especially in those teen years, again, middle school and high school, they. When they’re going through [00:38:00] hard things. One of the feelings they often face is that they feel like they’re alone. They’re the only person who’s had to go through this.

And when they find out like, no, even my parents have, have gone through things like they struggle to, they suffer too. It’s, it’s, it’s huge. So I love that. so I’m going to combine these two questions into one. Am I letting my kids still be kids while helping them learn what they need to know? And then how do I encourage them to do hard things?

So I’m combining them and, you know, Just let kids be kids. Let them kind of just have fun. But at the same time, I need to make sure they’re learning certain things. And then also try to make sure that they do hard things. I’m combining these because this relates to what you said about sports before. I’ve often faced these moments where my kid doesn’t want to do something or they want to quit something.

And I have to try to figure out, is this just because they don’t want to do it because it’s hard? They just, they’re just being lazy or they’re just, they’re a little bit afraid and they just need to overcome that. Or is this because I’m pushing them to do something that’s really, they don’t need to be doing [00:39:00] and they can just go and do what they actually want to do.

And I’m curious if you have any sort of heuristics for yourself in trying to figure out what it is when your kids like, can I please quit karate? Can I please not do this math thing? It’s like, okay, no, I got to, I got to teach them to do hard things. I got to make sure they get what they need. Or is it like, yeah, okay, that’s cool.

You can do that. The answer is sometimes it needs to be one and sometimes the other, but it’s where it can be really hard to figure out. And kids, as they get older, can get more savvy at kind of bluffing you a little bit, and giving you reasons when the real reason is they just don’t feel like doing it.

How do you approach that?

Matt: No, I think that’s probably one of the hardest questions to answer because of what we all just, you know, what we had been talking about with feeding them with interest, supporting them, helping them, but then knowing when to say no. Or let them say no, or let them quit, or let them go a different direction.

I don’t know how to, I don’t have any tangible, [00:40:00] ways that we’ve made those decisions. But I remember one time, if I had to get them up out of bed for, in the morning for a baseball practice. we were done like that was to me. Hey, if you can’t set your alarm and get up and get to, you know, upstairs, you’re excited to have me drive you there, then I’m not going to drag you out of bed to get to baseball practice.

So that was one of our thresholds was, are they showing up stairs without us? You know, we’re going to be supportive. I’m going to have, I’m ready to drive you to practice, but you need to be in the car, ready to go. And if not, then. That might not be the right thing for you. So that was 1 of our thresholds was, would they get up and go?

the other thing that I just wanted to add on this question is this. Analogy we sometimes use around weightlifting. So just give me a minute on this one. So, you know, we want our children to do hard things. So that’s more on that subset of that [00:41:00] question of sometimes though, we then think that hard thing is they should go lift a 500 pound, you know, weight that, and when they don’t do it, Oh, they can’t do hard things, right?

Because we’re wanting them to lift a 500 pound weight. But in actuality, we need to just break that down into they need to first lift a one pound weight, that’s okay that they’re just lifting a one pound weight. And that won’t feel like they’re doing hard things because it’s not that hard to just lift a one pound weight.

And so then you start just helping them lift a 10 pound weight next month, next week, next year, whatever, and help them just build some exercise and some strength. Rather than say, I need to do hard thing. Go lift a 500 pound weight. It’s, it’s too much. So break that off, break it down and let them feel highly successful at building up their strength.

And before long, they’re going to be lifting a 100 [00:42:00] pound weight, which is actually a really hard thing. Right? So, anyway, that’s that’s an analogy we’ve used on on helping people in entrepreneurship or in life don’t discount yourself because you can’t lift something too heavy. You’re just not building up to that yet, but you can get there if you want.

Isaac: I love what you said about. If they weren’t getting out of bed on their own to go to baseball, we were done. And it’s so funny because when it comes to, especially sort of sports and elective extracurricular type activities, it’s really easy to get sucked into as a parent, just all day long. You’re just running your kids around to all these different things.

It’s super inconvenient. It’s really stressful. You’re, you’re gone all the time. Life is very chaotic. If it’s something your kid doesn’t even want to do, like if you step back and you’re like, wait a minute, I had to force them to go. And it’s really inconvenient for me. What, what is going on here? But it’s so easy to [00:43:00] just get stuck in that and not see, like, I, I, you know, my son loves baseball and he’s been playing and it’s just funny.

There’s always a couple of kids on the team where you’re like, the kid is begging to not be there. And the parent looks so stressed and trying to get them there and you’re like, you don’t have to do this to yourself. It’s okay. It’s okay. I think that’s a great heuristic.

Matt: it’s culture. It’s, you know, what will parents think of me? All those things. Like we had people criticize us when we let our child who didn’t want to play it anymore, not play. They’re like, Oh, you’re letting them off the hook. You’re not teaching them grit and, you know, resilience and, you know, stick to it and this, and I’m like, that’s not where we’re going to make that battle.

So we’ll focus on those skills elsewhere, not on ones they’re just absolutely miserable doing.

Isaac: So I’ve had a couple on this question of, you know, like, Hey, is your kid just being lazy and you should make them push through. We’ve tried a couple of different things. Um, 1 is like, [00:44:00] almost like a, just like a timing thing. So if. If we have a kid that wants to quit our class or whatever it is, sometimes trying to tease out, is this really not a good fit?

Or are they just like, nervous about this week’s test? Or are they just trying? We could we’ll say something like, all right, if you really don’t like it, well, 1st, like, why? What don’t you like about it? What do you think you’d want to do instead? You know, how would you want to use that time? And then. How about you finish the next, whatever, two, you know, two months and then let’s revisit and if you do everything well during those two months, And you have a good attitude about it, then we’ll do something else or whatever.

Sometimes you can, and then often we’ve done that before and one month in, they’ve been like, I’m so glad I didn’t quit. I love it. Now. They just got through a hard part. There was something they weren’t telling us. They maybe had a, A fight with somebody or they were, you know what I mean? There, there’s something that, and so sometimes that can help you if you’re unsure about their motives, if you know, [00:45:00] they just aren’t into it, it’s not the right thing, just quit, don’t stress about it, but if you’re unclear, sometimes just giving a little waiting period and being unthreatened as a parent, being like, okay, that’s fine.

If you want to quit, let’s, let’s, let’s talk about it first. Cause I just want to make sure, you know, I’ve had this myself where I thought I wanted to quit something and I ended up being glad I stuck around. How about we see it through until this date and then we take a look and reassess that can work really well.

And then another rule

Matt: No, I like that. I like that a lot that it’s, it’s kind of a try different, it’s not a dry, different category, but just, give yourself a little bit of time, uh, let it sink in a little bit. Just, and then get to the root causes. Andrea also mentioned that of, you know, get to the root cause of what’s causing them to say no.

If you kind of, as a parent really think they would like that, if they would just give it a little shot, try to drill down to the root cause.

Isaac: yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that becomes even more important if it’s something that they were just sort of neutral on and we just sign them up for and they don’t end up liking it. I’m less worried about trying to figure out what’s [00:46:00] going on. Like, ah, okay. They don’t like it. If it’s something they really wanted to do and they begged to do, and they were all excited about, and then all of a sudden they don’t want to, that’s where I’ll, I’ll try to push a little further before I

Matt: that’s a good point.

Isaac: decision.

And then I’ve learned over the years to almost do the anti sale if they’re like, Hey, I really want to take this class. I’ll be like, Nope, you’re not going to like it. This, this, and this. And I’m going to try to test up front and then say, okay, if you want to do it, here’s what it means for me and mom. It means every twice a week, we’re going to have to drive over here and do this.

And this is, I’m willing to do all that. But I want to make sure you’re in. And if you’re in, I would like you to commit to do it for at least this long before you decide. And then that way you’ve kind of had this negotiation up front. And they, they put it in a different bucket so that it’s not, cause some kids will just like ask to do everything and then want to quit everything.

And if you want to try to figure out, um, that can help to be, to be upfront about it

Matt: think it was a great idea to demonstrate impact into the family culture, right? The family household has impact on people’s choices. And it’s okay to, to bring those up and [00:47:00] to discuss them and, and support, you know, interests like that. So,

Isaac: Yeah. But making, making trade offs transparent, it’s kind of where that, like, if you want to do this, here’s what it means. You won’t be able to do these things and these other impacts. That’s okay. I just want to make sure, you know, it’s, it’s amazing how helpful that can be. Okay. Let’s bring it home with, we have one, um, It’s more, it’s actually more of a story or a statement than a question.

So I’m going to bring this in here. This is from Keely. She says, I, I would love to see you highlight some success stories for older kids noted. Keely, we’ll try to sprinkle in some success stories here. I have a graduating homeschool senior. This year is knocking it on the park and applying to college.

Can’t tell you how many parents have come out of the woodwork, desperate to hear that you can keep homeschooling and rock it out at the high school level and beyond. We’ve heard nothing but good impressions of homeschoolers from admissions counselors. We’ve spoken with from schools that he’s interested in.

So, I love that. Like, Just sharing, not, not just [00:48:00] questions. I’m going to see in Charlie, if you can take notes of this, if we can pull in like one or two stories, each episode, just to share about, you know, here’s, here’s a kid that opened up their education and here’s something that worked well, just to have that, that inspiration, uh, and Matt and I don’t have to just continually refer to our own limited set of experience, but pull in stories from others.

So if you have a question or a success story, something that you’re really excited about, something that was really amazing to see with one of your kids. Shoot us an email. You can just email market at open ed. co. We will bring those in and we’ll try to, uh, to get them on one of these episodes. Matt, do you have any final closing thoughts?

Matt: I will just say on that note that having done this for 16 years, I do have more stories than just my own children. Right?

Isaac: I, that’s true. I know.

Matt: Thousands and tens of thousands of families. And they’ve shared stories with me over the years that just are jaw dropping, awe inspiring, everything you could think of, like, there’s so many [00:49:00] from kid earning a pilot’s license and, you know, getting a job with Delta at age 18, or, uh, you know, getting coding bootcamps and getting a job offer from a tech company to be a junior web developer, or.

Someone’s starting a cosmetology license and business or, uh, you know, professional ski racers or entrepreneurships making a hundred grand in their first summer of, of selling their, their product. Like they’re literally unlimited to the four year scholarships, to getting their bachelor’s degree before they turned 18 to like literally everything under the sun, uh, one of our, on our website is a video of a student who was an actor in Hollywood.

And would do schooling on the set as he called it. Uh, you know, those stories are just so many, uh, that sometimes we have, we don’t take the time to highlight them. So I think we should incorporate some highlight stories in all of these episodes.

Isaac: Yeah. [00:50:00] Yeah. That’s I I’m excited about that. Actually. We just, we just got an email this week from a, open ed student who went on to do stop motion animation on a bunch of film projects. And if I remember the story, it was like, parent was a little nervous. About letting them kind of pull away from the traditional path and go pursue their, you know, love of stop motion animation, yeah, there’s just, they flood in.

So that’d be a great thing. We’ll try to put together a couple for each episode that we can share little highlights, of all the different ways, all the different ways you can succeed. And that’s the whole point. You open up your education, see every option on the table for whatever your kid needs.

And success has, you know, No one definition. There’s infinite ways as many people as there are. There’s ways to succeed and have a good life.

Matt: Agreed.

Isaac: Love it, Matt. Thanks so much. We’ll catch you next time.

Matt: See you, man.