This Golden Hour

39. Pat Farenga and johnholtgws.com

• Timothy Eaton

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In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Pat Farenga from Boston, Massachusetts. Pat grew up in New York and eventually ended up in Boston for postsecondary studies. After completing his Master's degree, and with the challenge of finding available work in the early 1980s, Pat ended up working at a bookstore in Boston. Unbeknown to Pat, this bookstore was below the office of John Holt, one the most influential figures for the modern unschooling and homeschooling movements. When John Holt died in 1985, Pat became the publisher of the well-known homeschooling newsletter, Growing without Schooling (GWS), and president of Holt Associates. More recently, Pat has finished preparing all 143 issues of GWS and has made these available online. Mr. Farenga is an unschooling father of 3 daughters, an accomplished pianist and saxophonist, and he is a prolific writer, best known as the author of The Beginner's Guide to Homeschooling (1998) and Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling (2003). During our conversation, we discussed many of the unfortunate problems with the conventional school system and how it is designed to stifle curiosity and the love of learning. We also talk about how homeschooling and unschooling allow families to escape the arbitrary benchmarks that plague schools and their students. This episode is of interest to all who are seeking an alternative to conventional schools, and we are given access to many resources to help us improve education and lifestyle.

Connect with Pat Farenga
https://www.johnholtgws.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/Johnholtgws

Books
Deschooling Society
Instead of Education
Teach Your Own
How Children Fail
How Children Learn
In Search of Excellence

Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothering_(magazine)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svWynGm

This Golden Hour
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Pat Farenga:

I just came up with a headline from my latest blog post, which is unlocking learning opportunities. Free education from schooling, education is a big lifelong project. It's not just this little meritocratic, job you do till you graduate from college or high school, and then you go out in the world and that's the end of your education. And that's crazy. This whole idea that, what we do up until we're 21 is going to serve us for the rest of our lives. It's we need to configure this as a lifelong learning thing, but not this like mandatory continuing education.

Timmy Eaton:

Hi, I'm Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of this Golden Hour Podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill. You're listening to this Golden Hour podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with Pat Ferenga from Boston, Massachusetts. Pat grew up in New York and eventually ended up in Boston for post secondary studies. After completing his master's degree, and with the challenge of finding available work in the early 1980s, Pat ended up working at a bookstore in Boston. Unbeknown to Pat, this bookstore was below the office of John Holt, one of the most influential figures for the modern's unschooling and homeschooling movements. 1985, Pat became the publisher of the well known homeschooling Growing Without Schooling, GWS, And President of Holt Associates. More recently, pat has finished preparing all 143 issues of GWS and has made these available online. Mr. Frange is an unschooling father of three daughters, an accomplished pianist and saxophonist, and he is a prolific writer, best known as the author of the Beginner's Guide to Homeschooling and Teacher Own the John Holt book of homeschooling. During our conversation, we discussed many of the unfortunate problems with the conventional school system and how it is designed to stifle curiosity and the love of learning. We also talk about how homeschooling and unschooling allow families to escape the arbitrary benchmarks that plague schools and their students. This episode is of interest to all who are seeking an alternative to conventional schools, and we are given access to many resources to help us improve education and lifestyle. Welcome back to this golden hour podcast. Today is a special day for me. I'm actually traveling today and I'm in Calgary, Alberta, and we are so excited to have Pat Feranga with us and Pat Feranga is, an educator and a writer and an author and a publisher. And he is unique in that he has a close relationship or had a close relationship with John Holt, who in my view, this is my personal view. And I know a lot of people share it is really the father of the kind of modern homeschool movement that we have today. And so thank you so much for being with us, Pat.

Pat Farenga:

Oh, my

Timmy Eaton:

pleasure. Thank you, Tim. Really appreciate that. And if you, would you mind, I've read a few things about you. I know a little bit, I've heard about you playing the piano and the saxophone and the things that you've authored, but can you give us like, how would you give your own biography?

Pat Farenga:

Off the top of my head I was born in Bronx, New York raised there. My family moved up to Westchester, but my dad's business and all the rest of our family still lived in the Bronx. So I wound up going to high school in the Bronx and and that, and for the, and the reason I chose that, that high school was because. It was alternative school at the time they were trying a new program. And so I would commute down from Westchester with my dad, every morning because he ran a funeral home he had to be there bright and early for funerals then, he would either drop me off at the school it was called Fordham prep and and, I really enjoyed my time there was, it was so different than it was when I was in eighth grade. I remember walking home thinking, boy, there is nothing new in the world. All I'm doing is learning everything that's ever happened in life. And it just seems so close ended and stuff. And all of a sudden I was able to choose my courses. They even had a thing called X day, which was once a month where every department would just put on a special thing. I'll never forget the first time I learned about nuclear war was the science department showed a film. I forget its name, but it was, it was 1971 or 72. So it couldn't have been it wasn't that big a topic then, but it just really made an impression on me. And and I got used to this idea and their whole thinking was preparing you for college because this is what college is like, so I liked that. But by the time I became a senior every year, it got more and more. Traditional and to the point that by the time I graduated, they said the next class, they were just eliminating what they call the Fordham prep plan back then, just going back to becoming a, a classical, Jesuit prep school. So I just got a taste of stuff. So I, in hindsight, I think that sort of. Brined me for John Holt,

Timmy Eaton:

How did you hear about that school? By the way, how did you, like, how did you know about that? Or how did your parents because

Pat Farenga:

I, because I, when I was miserable with the thought of just going to another school, like from what I'd been in, it was a very kind, nice place run by a Catholic school run by very nice nuns. None of the horror stories you heard about, like I said, it just felt so. Shutter like well, I had to do is give right answers. It wasn't like, and everyone just assumed that would become a funeral director, even that. And the truth is I wanted to work in the business. So I was working in the funeral home on the weekends from sixth grade on. I enjoyed it,

Timmy Eaton:

and my dad Did you have siblings that went to that school as well?

Pat Farenga:

Yes, my two younger brothers. All three of us went there. Yeah. It turned out well for us. But it's not the same place it was. And like I said, I think I just caught it at that that sweet spot, yes. And I had this background of understanding how children can be involved in an adult's work. What could be more adult than hanging around a funeral home? I realized again in hindsight, yeah, I learned about manners and blending into the background, just being, how to be helpful, and stuff like that. Without being taught in the conventional sense oh, this is what dad does. This is what his associates, what the other workers do, you just. You learn by doing and who,

Timmy Eaton:

Who initiated the idea of switching to the other school? Is it you being like mom and dad?

Pat Farenga:

When they asked me if I wanted to go to the local Catholic school in Westchester or the public schools public high schools, I was like, no, I want something different. What else is there? Unfortunately, my dad. His brother had gone to Fordham University. My dad didn't. But, he knew about the prep. And so he said why don't you come down? So I'll never forget. I went to an open house. And there's the other thing. Fordham Prep was on the campus of Fordham University. So When I got there, I saw a college for the first time in my life. Recently graduated eighth grader. And I was like, wow. So this is where I'm going to go to school, and then when I heard like the presentation about how you're going to work with a mentor every day and, you choose your classes. And then at the end of the day, you sit down with the mentor, talk about what you did, they go through the book, make sure you went to where you said you were going to go, stuff like that. And, it's that's different. Sign me up. Wow.

Timmy Eaton:

No, that is that just, that's just resonating what you're saying about the environment of wherever you're learning. That's just another principle of education. But I remember when I was in high school, I went with a friend who ended up going to Notre Dame was about South Bend is about two and a half hours from where I grew up in Chicago. And when I went to that campus, I have never been that inspired to learn. Like I was just like, holy cow, I want to learn things. And then when I ended up going to to school in the West, I the campus was beautiful and it really does engender a desire to learn. And so that, that's, that, there's implications of that for people at their homes the environment matters. So I like that it had that effect on you at an

Pat Farenga:

early age. Yeah. And then as I think, thinking about this conversation, it's yeah, and then in college, I was getting, I went to a Boston college because I want to study Irish literature. It was something I was very involved, involved with. It's still love. But They only had a couple of teachers who taught it, and I went through all their classes halfway through sophomore year. And Professor Dalsimer was her name. She was a fantastic teacher. And she said would you like to spend your junior year abroad in Ireland? And I was like, sure, that sounds great! And it all worked out because they, it was all very informal still. This is 19 what the late 70s, 78, 79. And so they didn't even have a formal

Timmy Eaton:

program, but it wasn't like a study. It wasn't like a study abroad. It was just like, she's, she just asked you.

Pat Farenga:

Right. And so she was able to arrange with the, the faculty over there. And then, once my dad heard that the tuition was going to be literally Maybe a quarter of what it was paying for a year at Boston College, and that included my airfare. It was like, wow.

Timmy Eaton:

Let's do this No, that's what a great experience. Holy

Pat Farenga:

and again, it was like, you know being on a And in another type of educational environment shows you like just how cloistered we are here, I was able to take classes I could sit in on other classes I didn't have to always sign up for them, and I was I just had so much fun going to like class like I was studying irish literature and stuff But I also got involved on the basketball team on the dramatics club and And then a philosophy of religions guy is Professor JCA Gaskin was his name, and he, he could just, he was so brilliant with his lectures were just, I didn't want to miss a single one. And also, it was that conventional old style like British thing that you know they wore robes and. And it was funny hats when they were lecturing and stuff. It was a completely different field. It was engaging

Timmy Eaton:

you.

Pat Farenga:

And then I got back, it was senior year and I was a double major. So I had to fill up a whole bunch of communications courses. And I, and then I said, what else can I do? I want to go back to Trinity. So a friend of mine said there's this great philosophy teacher, the professor Kobayashi. And I said I'll sit in on his class and he didn't mind, so I did. And next thing this guy. Would invite his class over to his house for dinner and then conversations about what was you know, philosophy and life at that dinner. And I was like, yeah, this, this to me was worth it. It didn't go, I didn't get credit for it. It didn't go on my transcript. And by the way, everything got frozen during my junior year. I didn't get credit for that junior year. It's like my GPA at sophomore year was what I came into in senior year. I really just also got this feeling like I'm really glad that I decided to learn what interested me because it furthered my development and my abilities to, to feel firm about yeah, I think I want to try this. Also the ability to say, no, this isn't working for me,

Timmy Eaton:

I, and it sounds like you had like even from an early age, a desire to learn.

Pat Farenga:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think part of it was just, both my parents. They weren't out on schoolers or anything, but if they were, my mom grew up on a farm in Texas and my dad grew up in a funeral directing family in the Bronx. And they had completely different experiences, the reality is I was pretty much left on my own and I had a rich environment. There was a lot of books. I had a piano that, you know, and the thing was, it was a player piano. So that's how I learned to play the piano is I would put my fingers on the keys while the player was going and then when the piano roll was rewinding, I would try and duplicate

Timmy Eaton:

it. How old were you when you started doing that? About

Pat Farenga:

eight or nine. Yeah, maybe a little younger. But I remember my mom saying, Do you want piano lessons? I said, Yes! And so she said, Great! And the first thing, this is like such a school thing. So then, she finds a teacher, and the first thing he tells me is, Oh, the piano's very hard for a young man. You should start with the accordion. And I guess that was a very common.

Timmy Eaton:

Really? I'm not aware of that. And

Pat Farenga:

I was, and I hated the accordion. Like I just had two lessons. No, the piano's right there. Why can't I learn this? And then later on in my twenties, when I wanted to learn the saxophone, the first teacher says you got to learn the clarinet first. And then I found a teacher, this lovely man, John Payne, who says, Oh no, you want to learn the saxophone? I'll teach you the saxophone.

Timmy Eaton:

Oh, isn't that true? Like just keep asking around that's interesting about the accordion though. I did not know that I've got three sons that play the piano and I've never heard that idea that you're, that's a prerequisite.

Pat Farenga:

Really, it's just, it just amazes me how without even seeing it, If I could play the piano or anything, I like just looking at my fingers, just, Oh, no, you should play please. So it

Timmy Eaton:

wasn't like you're, it wasn't like your parents were like trying to look for alternative things. You were initiating the questions and then they discovered this, the prep school and then, and your brothers followed that direction as well. And they saw that

Pat Farenga:

how much I enjoyed it. Yeah,

Timmy Eaton:

yeah, we'll take us from there and then and then you did your university and you just loved learning basically is how I would explain it.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah, I think that's true. And I still do, yes, fascinating places, it's endless what you can learn. But yeah, so then I decided that I wanted to be a teacher and cause obviously to me at that time, the people who impressed me the most were professors and teachers. And it was, that was drawn to that. But again, like in hindsight, it's that's cause that was my environment, later on when I started hanging up with theater people and music people, then I started to realize that, Oh yeah, maybe I want to be more like the Levins or Dave Brubeck. But until I discovered them, it was pretty much. The teaching thing. So I went to graduate school. I got my master's in English, came back to here, and I, there was a late 70s Yeah, 1979 1980. And just like now, we're in this terrible recession. Well, We're not in a recession yet. Inflation was high, all that stuff. And so jobs are really hard to find, and taxes were being cut. And they cut the taxes so much in Massachusetts that they had to fire teachers, they were laying teachers off rather than hiring them. So When I got out of graduate school, I went home to live with my parents for a while, and I was working at a department store in the toy department. It was the only job I could get then. And then I said, my girlfriend became my wife. Lives in Boston. I can work in a toy store in Boston. I figured, and just stop spending money, driving to Boston every week. So I did. And I wound up working in a bookstore instead. Yeah. So still running a cash register, assistant manager, blah, blah, blah. The usual, Oh yeah. You're an English major. Here we go. Yes. And then waiting on tables, that was the fallback position if I needed it. Yeah. The good news was right when I was working at the working there, John Holt's office was in the building above the bookstore.

Timmy Eaton:

Just like totally by chance.

Pat Farenga:

Totally by chance. And after I got to know the, one of the I got to know everybody in the bookstore because it was the assistant manager, but one of the, one of my colleagues there, her husband was volunteering at Holt Associates. And doing word processing and back then that was a real big skill to have for offices. Wordpress, because there were separate machines, there weren't apps and computers. There were literally huge typewriters and little floppy disks like that big, that held 12 pages. I remember John was thrilled. He had, he'd hold his little great disc of 12 pages.

Timmy Eaton:

We have no concept of that, do we?

Pat Farenga:

YeAh, it's so funny. So I said, sure, I'll volunteer and, learn about word processing. So I did. And I volunteered. And John Holt was nowhere to be found because he had just published Teach Your Own. And he was doing a three month tour of Scandinavia, addressing You know universities and TV shows and audiences all around. And,

Timmy Eaton:

And this is what year then? This is this is early 80s?

Pat Farenga:

1980, 1981, in 1980, 81. Okay. I'm pretty sure it put, yeah. It was probably

Timmy Eaton:

81. So he would have just recently have written Teach Your Own and then moving into that, those circles

Pat Farenga:

then. Oh no, I mean he founded, John started Homeschooling in 1977. And he started Growing Without Schooling magazine that year too. anD so he had been publishing, he wrote the book instead of education at that time, 1976, at the end of the book, he called for an underground railroad to take children away from the compulsive, bad effects of compulsory education, which I hope we'll eventually talk

Timmy Eaton:

about. Yes, indeed. Yes,

Pat Farenga:

indeed. But people wrote themselves, John, you don't need to have an underground railroad. You can, they're your children. You can teach your own. And then he discovered that there were people throughout the United States. Who were doing this, who were already doing that. They were not organized in any way. So he started the magazine as a way to just put everyone in contact with each other. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton:

I think and this is Nev, these are never reliable statistics, but I think it was somewhere in the late seventies, about 10,000, like documented homeschool families or something. Yeah. And then it quickly jumped. Even documented. Yeah, exactly.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. I, that's an es I think it was all estimates up until the late, late 80s when they started to finally count it. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, John always, he died in 1985. And I think he said like, I don't know, maybe there are 25, 000 people, families homeschooling that he thought, but again, it was hard to tell because the more, it's just like anything, the more you learn, the more you find other people who are interested in this. Well,

Timmy Eaton:

and a lot of homeschoolers, especially at the beginning times, they were not making themselves known. And so there was no, there was, they were not volunteering that they were doing that because there were repercussions.

Pat Farenga:

Yes, thank you. That's actually the point I wanted to make that's exactly right. So a lot of people were still underground, and in fact, I remember, when I was doing the subscriptions for GWS, we have what we call the brown paper wrapper folder. And those were people who did not want any return address. Nothing to say growing without schooling on the

Timmy Eaton:

outside. And what did you call it? What was the nickname?

Pat Farenga:

It was the brown paper wrapper. Why is that? Cause we would we had preprinted white envelopes that had the address, return address stamped on it. So instead we just have to go find like a brown envelope. But just shove it in there, and then

Timmy Eaton:

handwrite. I like that. And just real quick, before you keep going with that, just because some, a lot, with so many new homeschoolers, a lot of my audience will not know what GWS is growing without scoring. So maybe give us just a little of that and then carry on with what you were, where you were headed. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

So John started the magazine growing without schooling in 1977 and he was really adamant. You can read this in the first issue, but. He didn't like the word homeschooling, because, he's not talking about selling and buying curriculum and then administering it as a teacher. He was like, turn your home into a school. That could be the biggest mistake you make. Exactly. Yeah. And he, that's where he came up with the word unschooling. Which is a real word. Like unschooled musicians, people have natural talent and stuff. Yes And you can look it up in the oed it goes way back hundreds and hundreds of years But john used it specifically to mean You know, people who are not following school methods, not doing school on a consistent basis, because, and a lot of, and before that, a book that really influenced John's thinking, a lot of people's thinking was called Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich. Yeah. And in that book, I've even really got in a lot of trouble because not trouble, but he got a lot of criticism, a lot of flack because it's like, what do you mean blow up the schools? And, and so that, that was really difficult. And then same thing with unschooling. John realized as soon as you put that word into the atmosphere. Yeah. People say, Oh, so you don't teach your children anything. And it's

Timmy Eaton:

Oh, so I know it's just so hard before the scales fall from people's eyes. It's just so hard to help people to see.

Pat Farenga:

And that's, and that we're still there. We are still there. I just came up with a headline from my latest blog post, which is unlocking learning opportunities. Free education from schooling, education is a big lifelong project. Yes. It's not just this little meritocratic, job you do till you graduate from college or high school, and then you go out in the world and that's the end of your education. And that, that's crazy. This whole idea that, what we do up until we're 21 is going to serve us for the rest of our lives. It's we need to configure this as a lifelong learning thing, but not this like mandatory continuing education.

Timmy Eaton:

I know. I know the compulsory aspect of it is just so interesting when you actually think about it and how commodified, commodified it's become. And yeah, amen. It's lifelong learning. It's just a way of being.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. Yeah. And certainly, as adults, we're seeing this on steroids. It's every couple of months I got to learn new programs or new ways of doing things online or, it's the rapidity of change and Goodness knows what, chat GPT and all that stuff is going to work. And meanwhile, we're still, telling our kids, or, you still have to learn all these things. Most kids probably can learn computers quicker if they would get access to them. And someone, the hole in the wall experiment by Sugata Mitra. tHat, that really proves that, kids can teach one another how to use technology. In fact, that experiment also showed

Timmy Eaton:

in total poverty.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. In total poverty. And they could learn English because the instructor, one of the kids who ought to read English with the other, but they all did was they wanted to learn how to use the computer, how to use Google, how to do searches. But we completely, it always cracks me up when I, when parents, and it doesn't crack me up, my child is not doing well in school. And and they're bored and of course they are. It's hard unless you're right where the teacher wants you to be, they got 24 or 25 kids in the class, it's really time to

Timmy Eaton:

switch things. And I'm an educator and I'll tell you what's frustrating is that like you, when you try to introduce something that's a little bit unconventional or different from you're up against, you're up against the product of what a school system has produced. And I'm always careful not to demonize, but the fact is. It's the truth. It has, produced these kids that come in with no anticipation of, I'm going to learn, I'm going to, I'm excited to be here. I can't wait to learn what's there. And, I know there's some natural things for some kids but when you've gone through a system that has taught you not to be excited about that, sit down, listen, we have this adversarial setup, you against me and and it's

Pat Farenga:

hard hitting the students against each other. Who's got the highest. And, and then the other thing that, it's just this general idea that every 10-year-old should learn the same thing in the same way at the same time. Yeah. Why?

Timmy Eaton:

Why did common, why has common sense escaped the masses? Yeah. Why is that? Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. You talk about the frustrating frustrations of your job. John Holt got fired from every job once he, for 10 years, it was a nice fifth grade compliant, fifth grade teacher of the year, how children fail at school is a charade of learning. The teachers participate as much as the students, and that's why, what they, the tests they pass on Friday, they can't pass the test on Monday. As soon as it's over, you forget that. That's not learning, that's just gaming the system, and it, there's so many things to say on that there is, I would just say this then I'll let you ask it.

Timmy Eaton:

No, carry on. You're good.

Pat Farenga:

We have to remember that schooling is a technology. And it's a technology that works if you can find people in a room and make them repeat things over and over, and then reward them, or punish them based on how much they remember and give the right answer. That's how they work. And, I first read this in de schooling society and it's always stuck with me. Schools in Peru. In America, Canada, China, they're all the same in the sense that they have blocks of time, bells ring, and the curriculum is administered, so what changes is the content of the curriculum, but the technology of the school is the same universally around the world, so it's a very strong way, technology. And we misuse it. We overuse it. Because, we all know that unschoolers will take classes. They want to. I don't know anything about, Japanese. So when my youngest daughter wanted to learn about Japanese, I found a tutor. And then we found a community college course that you could take. Yes. cOmmunity colleges let children 14 and up at the time. Now it's 16, but, they allowed Audrey and her friend Willie to take Japanese there, so it, there, there are a lot of ways that, people just, people want to learn, but they don't want to be forced to march through the.

Timmy Eaton:

And the current way is not cultivating that, it's not cultivating that desire to learn or that, it's not common sense that like the, we are we're humans. Like we, we have a desire to learn and to figure things out, we're deadening it.

Pat Farenga:

That's right. We were deadening it. I remember there was I think John even wrote this in a letter or somewhere, but I remember him saying it. So there was a school, I think it was in Florida or Texas, an alternative school called the Lamplighters or something like that. And, and their model was we're gonna, light your child's, flame let your child's candle for learning, and John was a psych. Oh, gosh. Every child is born with that candle already.

Timmy Eaton:

It's the schools that are putting it out. You don't need to, you don't need to light that. You need to get out of the way. Yeah,

Pat Farenga:

yeah, yeah, exactly. Get out of the way. Don't leave that candle alone.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes. So we, so Let's go back a little bit. So so you, and I appreciate you describing what we're growing without schooling. When I think of I think John wrote at least what is it? 10 books, I think, and, but yet the growing without schooling really brought together the ideas on a, on an ongoing basis that was benefiting so many and is. The, and as I've looked at things, those are just as relevant now as they ever were because it's based on principles of learning and education that are transcendent. This isn't it's going to go out of style in 2060, like these are principles and what I, when I listen to podcasts sometimes, or I listen, or I read articles or something, I'm going. There's a lot of effort going into education and a ton of money being spent. And i'm going we are complicating something that is actually way more simple. Don't just get out of the way and let these flames that already exist and just don't put it out Just don't put out the flame and If you read to your children and like you said you facilitate, you don't know Japanese. So you facilitate that. It's just a very common sense, natural solution. But yet we, we create these systems that actually kill the desire to learn. And then we base it on a very peer oriented cultural evolution that, that occurs inevitably in any system. And then we want people to be critical thinkers and problem solvers. It just doesn't, it doesn't add up.

Pat Farenga:

Anyway.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

I, and one of the things that gets me is like people always say so you want, just like that criticism of de schooling. Oh, you want to blow up all the schools. It's no, I. I want us to be able to do what we're doing because we have the right, they're our children, we're citizens, certainly in other countries you don't have this, in some states in America, it's very free to homeschool. Yes. Regulations and all others like where I live, you have to, send them reports and stuff. It varies. It's still growing, and we're not tearing down, unschoolers aren't asking for the, for money, but most of them aren't, in fact, I write and teach your own in many places about how public schools and alternative schools have cooperated with homeschoolers. Yes. Worked out well. And

Timmy Eaton:

it's improving.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah, and why can't they, let's just let that happen. We don't need to pass laws, because if you're worried about children learning, then invite them in, see where they're at. That's really well said all of them. And then we know that, of course, the big thing is educational neglect, they say, Oh, your child doesn't know how to read and they're in sixth grade. That's only because, we decided third grade is when everyone should learn to read but There's no biological imperative that says, Oh, it's time to learn to read

Timmy Eaton:

now. No, there, there needs to be, and I'm sure there's lots written on the arbitrariness of benchmarks. Like when you're dealing with different individuals and then you have these, like the things that are supposed to just fit them old. And it's just that's hard.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. Yeah. And then the mold keeps changing. Everyone, do you really need four years of college to become a computer programmer? We've seen that's not true at all, many ways to get in the field of computers. Yeah. If you want to get into more advanced and elite stuff, whether you need supercomputers and access to those sorts of people and experiences. Yeah. I'm

Timmy Eaton:

not going to go get and go get what you need. Go get what you need and be deliberate about the things that you're pursuing. But when you don't like, more and more, I can't believe how much I'm hearing the highest educated people saying. You don't really need college for that. You don't really need this. You can learn if you've got a library card and you've got a brain and you've got the internet, man, you there's, make sure that you're using it for you,

Pat Farenga:

right? Exactly. You use school. That's the way to do it, and what you'll find is you don't need as much as they say. And I think that the pandemic really showed that to a lot of elementary school and high school parents, just watching their kids. They're at these screens is, they're trying to figure out how to make them work and, get all hung up on one, one student, which happens. I know I teach too, classroom situations, but that means the other kids are just bored and they say, and it's just. There are and I think a lot of parents realize yeah that was like schools. I remember a lot of time in my school experience looking out the window, whenever I think back

Timmy Eaton:

on LA. Oh my goodness.

Pat Farenga:

That's so true. That's my first memory is looking out the window. And

Timmy Eaton:

I'm glad you had a window to look out. That's a good thing. Yeah, right? I was lucky. So if we go back to your, so like you were you're at this bookstore and then you run into, that is just to me, that is beyond coincidence. That's that has to be some kind of higher intervention or something, because what, and then what did you find, talk a little bit about did you find that like the ideas were just like, how did they sink into you? And like, how did you get, how did you get connected?

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. Let me see if I can give you a short version of this. Yeah. So one of my first jobs when I got there was a teacher on it, just come out and hardcover. And so I was taking it out and putting them up on the shelves and it was next to this paperbacks of how children fail, how children learn and never too late and so on. And I got interested in never too late because of the music angle, but I still hadn't read any of his stuff. Cause I honestly thought I was only going to be there for a couple of weeks, learning word processing. Yeah. I go get another job, but one night, John came back from Scandinavia and he lived alone in his apartment on Beacon Hill. So very often he would just come up to the office and read at night because, there's thousands of books there. And he would, he read honestly at least two or three books a day. Yeah. Just, he was an incredible reader. And Illich at Penn State. Oh my gosh. There were dropped books off it is how you know where he was staying. I'm not kidding a stack of books like that From the library that he had asked. I don't think I knew that you

Timmy Eaton:

worked with him. You worked with yvonne

Pat Farenga:

I studied with them. Yes. I didn't know that. Darren Calvell and Gene Burkhardt, who both worked uh, you know, helped out at GWS and worked with John. They invited me to go with them. And yeah, I'm very fortunate, not only to have gone to Penn State to be with him, but when Yvonne came and his friend Lee Hynacki came to Boston, we had dinner with them at my friend Gene Burkhardt's house, and Lee came to the office, and we had a nice meeting there. We met everyone at the office. Yeah, these connections are strong. But no, I've lost my train of thought. We were

Timmy Eaton:

talking about sorry, that was just, that was impressive, but you were just talking about how John would read stacks of books and Yvonne would read stacks of books.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. Because I've worked nine to five in the bookstore and I was volunteering at night, and I go upstairs and there's the man himself, right? So he asked me, who are you? I told him, and then we heard that I was from the Bronx. He was like, oh, yeah, I grew up in Manhattan. It was a young man. We talked about that. It turns out that he loved big band jazz, which I'm a big fan of. And so we immediately connected and started. I remember at one point we were humming the Harry James solo from Sing. And that's where I knew I like this guy. And and then and then it came, so I said, so what do you want to do, Pat? Clearly, you're not, going to be packing books for the rest of your life. I said I want to be a teacher. He said, why? I said, because I like working with kids. And John looked at me, I love him, he took his glasses off, really gave me a good look in my eyes and said, Matt, you've got it all wrong. If you become a teacher, you're not going to work with children, you're going to work on children. And that's when I said, and he was like, have you ever read my, any of my books? I said, no, it was a truth. I've heard some issues in GWS and I still couldn't get my head around that, and then he said, what about a de schooling society of books by Yvonne Lillard? I said, nope. He says look, read something by him or me. And then I'll talk. I just spent three months in Scandinavia talking about this topic. And I'm not going to argue with, unless we're on a level playing field. Yes. He was very honest, and so I was like, okay, so I remember I took teacher on the hard cover. And when I got on the bus to go home that I couldn't get into it. And the next day I came in, I remember his office manager was Peggy Durkin. I walked up to Peggy and I said, This guy's crazy. This doesn't make any sense. It's hard to get into John and John's thought. In the middle of it, why don't you try how children fail? Cause each book is a journey towards teacher on teacher own. Yes. And I was like, okay. And then how children fail made sense that really hit me that I got because I was that student. That, had other interests besides what the school was, but I was that disruptive, I just knew that I could wait until school was over and then I tell out of there and, go play. My brothers and I used to play those Avalon Hill board games. We had a bunch of friends around, do that and play the piano. Just let me get through this and then I will go do the, what really matters for me. And and. So how children fail really influenced me, and I have to add this. When John was dying and we were trying to figure out like who would succeed Donna as editor was Donna was a second in command, like she was the associate editor, but she was going to get married. And she was, it was unclear, like how long she'd be there. So he said, Susanna Shepard, and she was working at the Klum Laura school at the time. She just graduated from college and went to work for Klum Laura. But it turns out John knew her because she read How Children Fail when she was a fifth grader. And she wrote to John as a fifth grader saying, You are right, man, this is what school is like for me and the two of them had this lovely correspondence from them. Wow. Crutter immediately says, see if she'd be interested. So I contacted her and she was interested and thank God that worked

Timmy Eaton:

out. Yeah, little did she know she would be become the editor. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

Oh, yeah. And, you talk about growing without schooling right now. Tim, I'm in the process of redesigning the whole website and there's 143 issues of growing without school, and we've published for 21 years, or more, 1977 to 2001. I can't do the

Timmy Eaton:

math in my head. Yeah, that's 20. Yeah, 24 years. Yeah. And,

Pat Farenga:

And and so I finally got, I, one of the first things I did was get them all scanned and they're on a site called issue I S U U. But now issue and it was for free. So for all these years, I just had them up there. And then I'm slowly organizing them, retyping them into these volumes. Like, well, Here's the

Timmy Eaton:

first one. We have, that's the one we have right now. I've got that right here.

Pat Farenga:

And so you can see yeah, the type is a lot bigger. It's easier to read. But yeah, I'm very deep in this project and yeah, here, this is, you can see this is issue 56. You can see how, every issue is just cramped with

Timmy Eaton:

stuff. No, I noticed that on your, when I was reading on the website, I was noticing how just like how much information there is. And it's just so rich. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

And now that I'm going through it again with, some professional help, it's like. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there that people have probably haven't seen because it's been buried. But now I'm really excited because I've got all 143 issues. That are now going to be accessible through, through there and you can buy them as PDF flipbooks now. I'm so excited to figure out how to work that out. So between that and I'm going to be able to excerpt from them more. And I already started to do that in my newsletter.

Timmy Eaton:

Our audience needs to know like what that means. And so I don't, I, I'll talk about that maybe when I do the, when I do the notes and when I do the intro, because that is just like, that is just a treasure to have for each

Pat Farenga:

of us. So thank you. There is so much good stuff. And to me yeah, when I put them in this, we cut out the ads, we cut out a lot of the resource information, because that was a big function of Growing Without Schooling. Again, The internet should have helped this. It's surprising to me how it's actually caused more, more silos, but GWS was not about creating silos. So we had this, it was called the GWS directory and let's see, every issue had it. And so here, here's a sample additions to the directory. And basically it just says, it just has, people would write in and you would just. But in what your state was, state and country your name in your family name. And then you put in the first names of your children in their birth year. So like we have a Dottie Hinkle and she had Daniel 1980, Carl 82, and then their address and then people were right. And then it turned into the GWS travel network. People were dying to find other people who are homeschooled. aNd that really helped. Now, we never had more than 5, 000 subscribers. That was tough for us. Once we hit five, that we really had a hard time getting past that. And then and then, as I said, the silos became more and more prevalent, particularly in the late nineties and early aughts and and. The internet made it very

Timmy Eaton:

easy. Yes. I was going to say, we just take it for granted today. When I hear that, I just go, man, we're so blessed. If John Holt could see where things were today and what, the challenges that homeschoolers have are a lot of times self imposed because we have all of the same resources that were relevant then are relevant now. And we have sufficient, but yet we have, how much curricula is out there and how much. Oh. Which is good in some ways, but it's also overwhelming when let's just simplify this and come back to these basic tenets and fundamentals. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

And I think that's one of the things that educators I think fail to understand about John you hinted at it right at the very beginning of our conversation. He was more a philosopher of of education and of children and he always started from the child, everything was, how would a particular child react to this? And then how do you calibrate. Your work with that child. Do you know what

Timmy Eaton:

he was reading? Was he into Charlotte Mason? What was he reading that was because he was probably, I can only imagine that John was grappling with what he was observing as a teacher, his own thoughts. And then, but I'm not totally aware of what was he reading and what was he working with?

Pat Farenga:

All right. hE didn't, he kept up with the main things that he read were books about management, he really, because he kept saying if this is because if schools are preparing people for work, what does work want? Yeah. So books like Theory Z and Search of Excellence, all that stuff that were popular, management books back then, and they're in the catalog, you can see he would add these books. They're not education books, but it's like you wanted and he kept emphasizing. These guys are talking about teamwork, and they're in the workspace, they're talking about ongoing learning, revising things that you think are done, coming out with new ways of doing it. That's not what school's about.

Timmy Eaton:

And even if I can pause you there for a second even that is it's. Sounds like all these new ideas that people are having are actually not that new because we for example, employers today are saying like, if he's coming at it from a management, like kind of view, like they're looking for people who know how to learn, like it's less about, it's less about what are the particular knowledge. Base that you have, it's about, do you know how to learn? And especially with the day of, like you said the chain, the rapidity of change, you have to know how to learn and you have to love learning. And then it doesn't actually matter what you do because you have those instilled in you. And so he was. ahead of the game, I'd say.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. And, and he was very skeptical of a lot of the technology because he was in how children fail. He was a real proponent of Cuisinart rocks, which are a mathematical manipulative. And he thought that these were great. And then when you read in 1983, he revised how children learn and how children fail. Based on, because they were written in the 60s, and so 20 years later, based on his experiences with homeschoolers, he wrote about his new thoughts, and so rather than, re excise the old text and add his new thoughts, he kept the old text in, and then drew, there was a line down the page, and you could Get this if you read the books, they're the revised editions. And John said, about queezing our rods. Yeah, I thought they were a good idea. How foolish of me. Now I know. There are so many ways to learn math, but when you're in a classroom, you need novelty. What we found is homeschoolers You know cooking, doing housework with me and my daughters, trying to remember, we're fixing electric outlets, and, trying to figure out like, is it, the polarizations and stuff like that, getting that that's where they started to understand numbers and, and how to use them, school has it wrong. You teach them the numbers and then you say, here's how you use them. Whereas kids are like.

Timmy Eaton:

No, you need a reference point. You need a reference point of by which it's made relevant. And then you learn it. Then you care.

Pat Farenga:

Exactly. Exactly. I remember this. I'm just, I'm having so much fun going back through these back issues. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's so many great memories there, but there's this one quick story that, that this woman wrote in Stephanie Judy was her name. She was a good contributor to the magazine. And she said that, she, she had a six or a seven year old neighbor. Helping her with her three year old. And so she said, Oh, could you pour her half a glass of milk? And the six year old looked at him and said, I can't, I haven't had fractions yet.

Timmy Eaton:

I bet you can figure that out.

Pat Farenga:

BUt that's how school messes with you. And under my, I can't tell you how many times, it was the instructions to the test that confused me. And then I later realized when I got to college, that was deliberate. They deliberately make the instructions confusing to see if your comprehension is strong. It's oh, great, you're tripping me up right from the start.

Timmy Eaton:

I want to be mindful of your time. I'm just looking at the clock. I want to make sure we Oh, yeah. Wow. I just, I personally could go on forever, but I definitely want to be mindful of your time. So you just make, just be bold with me and tell me when you're like, we're done. Let's give it another 10 minutes. Okay. Okay. Can you like, if you're talking to I just don't know if our listeners I just want to say it I don't know if our listeners understand who I'm talking to and I really don't know. And you're. Because you're just probably just going, no, I'm just a normal guy, but we're talking to Pat Feranga who worked with John Holt. Like we're talking about the beginnings of homeschool as we know it, in the modern era. And I don't know that my listeners know because there's such an influx of new homeschool. And that's really my target audience is new homeschool families. We have the statistics say that we have legitimately doubled since COVID, which is very recent in Canada. So they don't know all this and I'm going. So if I'm talking to Pat Ferenga and I ask him, what are absolute necessary? I don't want to say it that strongly, but what are the books that you would say? No, you got to read this just to help you understand the world that you're entering as a homeschooler or an unschooler. What would you tell people? And not only that, what books, and then what would you say to new homeschoolers, like what would be your counsel to new homeschooling or new unschooling families?

Pat Farenga:

I think that, in terms of recommending books, I'm very conscious that you really have to meet people where they're at. I was nowhere near unschooling when I first met John Holt, so it took me a while to get my head around that idea. Yes. And I would not immediately start to start there unless there were people who were looking at homeschooling and found it was just too schoolish for them. It was too much to consumerist. Oh, yeah. Buy a curriculum, administer it. That's it. And then fill out the paperwork and then get on with your life. I remember in the early days there was a magazine that was very popular among unschoolers called mothering and the head of mothering magazine, Peggy O'Mara McMahon they used to Calvert which is still around. It's a curriculum. But what they found is. Cause they lived in a, they had a tough school district. And so they were worried about reporting. They wanted to have a

Timmy Eaton:

bonafide product, a

Pat Farenga:

bonafide curriculum. But then what they found out is they hated it as soon as it arrived. It was like, oh, this is, but then they said, all right, what we're going to do is what we're supposed to send in every week, a report to them about it. So what they did was they did the entire course in six weeks. Then they filed everything away and for the rest of the year, just once a week, they go to the file folder, pick it up and send it out, and that was for like two, two or three children. It wasn't just one. And then it reminds me of my daughter Lauren's experience when she was in she was our oldest and she wanted to get go to community college for her psychology class. And she didn't understand statistics. So they said you're going to have a fundamentals of math class, past that, then you'll get it. This community college, she was 16. There were people who had graduated high school. There are people in their twenties and thirties, all taking fundamentals of math with Lauren. Six months in six months, she completed all the math, all the fundamentals she needed to then enter the psychology one on one. And she got her BA in psychology eventually was able to transfer it for a four year college. And then she got her a master's in social work after that, but again we didn't spend all her elementary school years, harping that she was bad at math. Yeah she was working as an assistant manager at a restaurant. She knew how to close out a cash rent. She knew enough math to live, but statistics and the curve and all. Okay, fine. But when she needed to learn it, she did.

Timmy Eaton:

And it didn't take 12 years. It became relevant, and when it becomes relevant and you care, you just do it. And we think that has to happen post 18. But kids are doing that at 14 and 15. And we shouldn't, and the more that we come at that with surprise Oh my goodness, they must be gifted. The more that we treat it that way, The less likely it is that more kids are going to have that experience, which actually the many more kids could have, we just have to have the mentality, the mindset change about how early people can do this.

Pat Farenga:

to Get back to the question. So if someone was coming at it from a religious perspective, I would say, try Charlotte Mason or the books of Raymond Moore, and then, if someone wanted, more structure Montessori Waldorf. Although I, I'm, I'm not sure that, I know that there are people who use those methods in their home, but I'm not sure that Montessori and Waldorf actually have programs for homeschoolers.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. No, but they just teach principles and they're and it's true. Homeschoolers will use that. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

And so I would, start where they are, and then Awesome. And then, I, now that I can make these magazines more accessible, I'm really excited

Timmy Eaton:

to be telling, yes, I am too.

Pat Farenga:

buT yeah, because there you see yeah, there, there are your classic unschoolers, the kids just, live in a farm or something like the Colfax children, they raise dairy goats, and the next thing you know they're research scientists who have graduated from Harvard. Yes. Yeah. That does happen, then there are other people who like, I wanted, we're going to do math, every day we just want to do math. An hour of math or a half hour, whatever it is. Yeah. And then they could do whatever they want. Yeah. And then we, everyone's structure, other people like at one point, my daughter, my youngest daughter, I was taking her to karate classes Japanese tutorials and plays. She was very active in plays. There's one mom who wrote a book called car schooling, yes,

Timmy Eaton:

But I'm with you and John Holt about the idea of schooling is a problematic word in some ways. Maybe some people are just roll their eyes at the semantics of it but it is, it's I don't know. It's just growing without schooling is good. And just learning, maybe we just, we're just learning. That's

Pat Farenga:

just it. It's like people won't accept living and learning and no, you're only learning if you're being graded by a teacher, and that's crazy. That's resulted in this, this weirdness. We're like total weirdness. If the transcript becomes your job application and that, you're what makes your job application successful, it's just and that really burns me up because so many, you know, if they're just going to look at your record and make a judgment on you, just on that, it's just colleges are these very fretful educators who always how do we know what they've learned? And, if they're capable of college level work I've been in this business 42 years now, and homeschoolers have gotten into all the Ivy League, not all, I can't say all of them, but many of the Ivy League colleges without traditional transcripts, as well as other places and jobs. They know how To take non traditional applicants, they know how to do this. Yes, they don't want to,

Timmy Eaton:

but it is improving. Like again, you've, you're coming at this, like you said, 42 years, but we, the modern homeschool families, we don't even know the sacrifice and people, the price people have paid to get us to a point where it's not so strange that we get into universities or that, that people are accepting an alternative way or that you give, my daughter. She literally, a lot of her portfolio and transcript was here are all the books I've read. And, people are going, wow, they're not saying to show me your, show me this test or what you got in this. They're like, I can't believe you did that. And your volunteer work and your instrument and your extracurricular involvement. Anyway, so amen to what you're saying.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. And a lot of admissions officers look at what you do with the resources you've had at hand. It's not like necessarily what prestigious classes did you take? I'm thinking of my friend, Maureen Carey's daughter who got into Harvard, but during the interview process, she was always into acting. She, she was a really talented actress as a young child and teenager. And and then when she, decided to try and make some money at it. She wound up working at one of the hospitals in Boston, pretending to be a sick patient for doctors in training. And when she did her interview at Harvard, they were very impressive. Yes. Yeah. And people forget Oh, if you're going to be an actor, you're going to go to Hollywood. It's not

Timmy Eaton:

necessarily. Oh man, you got to think outside the box and do stuff like that. That's awesome. Yeah.

Pat Farenga:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Being, yeah, and that I think is one of the great values of homeschooling and unschooling in particular, because, if your child wants to raise dairy goats, you can figure out a way that can happen. They want to explore science. I remember I was on the today show, I'm going back 20 years now, but with this young lady who was an unschooler, we did this whole project. I think she was only 10 or 12 on exoplanets. Which I had never even heard of back then, and she'd won an award and all that, and it's just yeah, why, why would we make them sit through like a whole year and then okay, then we're going to have a science fair. And you talk about exoplanets. She needed to talk about exoplanets.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes. Oh, that's awesome. Maybe I don't know, there's so many things that we'll just have to maybe do this again sometime, but If what would be like, what would be your parting council to new families that are just brand new, they don't have this background, they're coming. A lot of them from this, they're products of a traditional school system. We call it traditional. I think, I don't even know if that's fitting but the public system. Or conventional is a better word. What's your counsel to new families that are really they know that they don't like what's going on in schools. They don't like necessarily the curriculum that's taught. They don't like the government hands on a lot of them. So what would you, what would be your counsel? But they're overwhelmed. They're going, man, I don't know where to start. And today is different from when you and John Holt, what are you doing? There's so many homeschoolers and it's way more accepted and there's tons of curriculas out there. What's your counsel? What would you say? And then after that, please tell us how we connect with you and and things you're working on currently.

Pat Farenga:

Yeah. All right. My, my counsel is what are your child's. interests. What do you want to do? Ask your child, what do you want to do if you're home with us? What, what projects, what, what things and and discuss how you can facilitate that. How can we make that happen? And that may involve, of course, it may involve you having to learn something, buy some books to help

Timmy Eaton:

them out. And a lot of times it'll involve you probably having to expose them to things because a lot of times kids will say, I don't know because again, they're a product of a system and they're a product of a family or whatever. And you go let's start really exploring and take your time on that. And I love that. I love the focus on interest. So

Pat Farenga:

Yeah start there and work from there, and if you want to use a, if you're uncertain, okay, start with the curriculum, but don't. feel you need to use it. A lot of people spend a lot of money on it. And so when it starts failing they stick with it because they spent the darn money.

Timmy Eaton:

Be willing to just get rid of what's not

Pat Farenga:

functioning. You have to be willing to do that because there are, even if you don't do the unschooling approach or eclectic as some like to refer, fine. There's many other. curriculums out there, you, you can find one. So don't be afraid to get rid of it. Importantly, if it's not on the curriculum, like Japanese for six year olds, run with it. Figure it out. Manga, the anime, she's not interested in that anymore, that's what got her into the language and culture, which is still interested in.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes, that's awesome. Tell people where we connect with you and then you've already talked about how you're like some things you're working on. And then if there's anything else, if you don't. Want to say you don't have to, but if there's anything else you're working on that people can be aware of, and then how do we connect with your work, John Holtz works, that kind of thing. Where can we find you?

Pat Farenga:

You can find, always find me at www. johnholtzgws. com. And as I said, in the next couple of weeks, I'll be debuting a completely revised website with a much more material organized.

Timmy Eaton:

That's in the next couple of weeks.

Pat Farenga:

I hope so. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. I start my training next week, where they're going to train me. Now that they've got it all organized, now I have to learn how to manage it going forward. That's incredible. Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah, but it's got everything. There's audio recordings of John from the eighties. When he was interviewed on Fresh Air, this very popular show on National Public Radio here. And Some videos that I've found there, although those have been on YouTube for a while, but again, a lot of people don't know I have a YouTube channel, the GWS YouTube channel. And the project I'm working on, in fact, I'm going to start doing it this weekend is I'm going to, I'm going to go on Tik TOK. I've decided that, I need to reach Facebook and and LinkedIn. But I need to reach young, the young families. That's my feeling. It's just I'm dealing with too many people my own age and they more or less get it or they don't. They just like to argue with me and that's fine. But yeah, I want to meet the people who've got the young kids who are looking for, alternatives, alternatives to school.

Timmy Eaton:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking time. That is so rich. And again, to my listeners, I just hope you realize at some point who we've been blessed to talk to today and the beginnings and we're talking about very foundational the beginnings of homeschooling and unschooling. And so really appreciate you taking time to share with us today.

Pat Farenga:

Oh, thank you for inviting me, Tim. It's a pleasure. Hope we talk

Timmy Eaton:

again. Have a wonderful day. You too. That wraps up another edition of this golden hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it. If you would take a minute and give us a review in Apple podcasts or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.