These parents have avoided traditional school education for their children and instead have opted for a life-time trip around the world. From Bali’s beautiful beaches to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, the King family have seen them all.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 What did Paul and Caroline King sell before they began their constant world travel?
2 How many countries have they visited during the year?
3 How long did they stay in Italy?
4 How old are Winston and Henry?
5 Who are their teachers?
6 What was Caroline’s experience of school?
7 Do the children want to go to school?
8 Where was their house before their adventure started?
9 How long did it take them to sell their possessions?
We didn’t think it was ethical for our children to be forced to go to school. Instead of reading about it in a book they see it for real.
Paul and Caroline King have shunned the conventional lifestyle, selling their family home, taking their two young children out of school, and leaving the daily grind behind in favour of constant world travel.
When you travel with kids people are nicer to you, which is pretty good.
I think we’ve been in 25 countries during the year. We went to Israel for a week and Palestine. And we stayed in Egypt for like 2 months.
What country are we in?
Ancient Egypt.
Okay.
And we went to Italy and we stayed in Italy for a month.
One of my favourites is Bali.
Most places that we just go to and stay, after a couple of days they’ll say, “Oh, this is the best place I’ve ever been.”
The Kings believe in attachment parenting, which for them includes breastfeeding and co-sleeping.
I breastfed Winston, he is 6 now, until he was 4, and Henry, I’m just feeding him if he really hurts himself or has something really traumatic he still gets to, that’s how I calm him down.
Always on the move, 6-year-old Winston and his younger brother Henry, who is 4, are taught by their parents.
We didn’t think it was ethical for our children to be forced to go to school when they didn’t want to and when they were forced to learn things that they already knew or didn’t want to learn. Instead of reading about it in a book they see it for real. So it’s much more interesting. I remember when I was in school I thought it was really boring to learn about the Romans. I was falling asleep at the table, but now when you see it in real life it’s completely different, it is so interesting, you just want to learn more. So the purpose of doing this in countries that we go to, we have projects about the stuff that’s there. So when we visited Pompeii we learnt all about how that happened.
In Sweden I went to school every day.
And how did you find it?
There is more stuff to do than just going to school.
We actually would like to find some school that fits with our beliefs, but we just haven’t found it yet and they don’t want to go to school now and for us, we think that we shouldn’t force them to. But if they want to go to school, as long as it’s voluntary, they can of course go there.
The family decided to give everything up in February 2015 and haven’t had a permanent home since.
We had a really big house in Sweden like we were putting all our time in to making the house look nice, it just got so dull. We worked with importing Cashmere hammocks and rugs, we wanted to live like digital nomads before, we just had to do it. It took about 6 months to sell almost everything. We had one suitcase with clothes and regular wash kit stuff, we had some workbooks for the kids and books for reading, so they don’t miss anything.
For now the Kings have no plans to stop traveling.
We are going to go drive back to Prague and gonna stay there until October and then I think we go back to Bali for the winter.
You can go and live anywhere and it’s absolutely fine.
All the time people say, ‘I always want to do that’, and I just get so annoyed, we’re just tell them back, ‘So do it then’, and then they come up with all these different excuses that they have, whether it’s work or family or they don’t have enough money or anything like that. But the truth is if you just don’t do it then you’re never gonna do it!
Key:
1 Their family home.
2 Twenty-five.
3 One month.
4 Six.
5 Their parents.
6 It was boring, she fell asleep.
7 No.
8 In Sweden.
9 Six months.
