At some point you will either return to the nest or land in a new hometown. You will park the car, enter your home, unpack your belongings, and put your luggage into storage. You will put your passports in a drawer and pay bills. This return may look different for other people. You may be a person who skips home with alacrity and kisses the front stoop while platters of “welcome home” food arrive from your beloved community waiting on the lawn. If you’re this person, welcome home and you can skim this what we offer here. Or maybe, you will decide to set down roots in a place you discovered while traveling. It felt like home, you made connections, and your kids are excited to be there again.

 

If coming home is more complex, then you’re with the majority of worldschoolers, and you will benefit from thinking about reentry even before you leave for the trip. For some, coming home can be the hardest part of worldschooling. Peace Corps Volunteers have an entire three-day training process for “coming home,” and they are prepared and equipped by career counselors, psychologists, and even nurses for unexpected possibilities that swirl around this giant step of reentry. No matter where you’ve wandered, you have changed. Perhaps your home has, too.

 

This blog will give you tips for an easier homecoming, permission to grieve the end of your trip, and avenues to weave meaning back into your life at home. We’ll cover the logistics of reentry and suggest ways to create a softer landing.

 

The Winding-Down Mindset

 

When the final months and weeks are upon you, your family might behave like those proverbial horses steering back toward the barn. Your minds may start to gallop home even as your heart wants to linger in the pasture. You may start marking the days with both sadness and anticipation.

 

You can start openly talking about things that you may all be thinking individually. Discussions about things you’ll miss or won’t miss may be equal parts joking and venting. You might be eager to see friends, curious about being home, anxious about all that responsibility that was packed away into cardboard boxes and stored in the garage for the year, excited for a hot soak in a tub, and yet uneasy about getting back into your routine. Perhaps remind your kids that you’ll be right there with them when the family’s gears shift. And then start focusing on all the good things waiting for you: friends, pets, favorite foods, clean laundry, that pillow.

 

Where will your last night be? You might, for example, camp on top of Independence Pass in Colorado, rig facing east, heading home. Or you might be in an airport hotel in London with your passport and burning through the last of your shillings. Eager but unready. It’s a common feeling among returned travelers that you are straddling two parts of yourself, that your peace of mind is now ringing between two clanging cymbals. Some family members may be more than ready, whereas others may not.

 

Creating a Soft Landing

 

Coming home can be an emotional process. We’ve found some tricks to make it easier, and we offer these suggestions to soften the landing.

 

* Spend some time, say, months or weeks before you return home, to get ahead of important tasks. If you start scheduling the appointments—trips to the orthodontist or dermatologist, for example—that may have piled up, you won’t be inundated with them at one time. Some need to be scheduled months ahead, so yes, you will need to use that calendar again.

 

* If you are not already working from the road, don’t be afraid to think about work before you get home. Explore employment ideas before you land.

 

* Make your reentry gradual. Try not to go from treehouse living in Laos to suburban sprawl in forty-eight hours, or from RV living in Utah to an apartment in Manhattan with sand still in your shoes. Instead of a direct flight home, consider driving or taking a train from the coast or a major city to help your kids visualize their unique place on this planet. You are still worldschooling, always seeing a teachable moment.

 

* Think about staying with a sympathetic family member or friend for a brief interlude before moving back into your house. Perhaps give yourselves two or three days of anonymity: don’t tell your friends when you are arriving. The big group chatter can be more overwhelming than helpful. Perhaps try reconnecting with those special people first; this can be especially comforting for your kids.

 

* If you’re returning to your old house, try to reenter your physical home without an audience of friends or family to welcome you back—you may have to manage their questions and small talk, and your family might be simply worn out.

 

* If it feels too easy to slip back into the old, busy way of life, perhaps you want to stay loose, flexible, and keep the options open. It’s okay to say no to an invitation and yes to more family downtime.

 

* A soft landing can simply mean building in two to three weeks before anything important is expected of you once you are home.

 

Parenting through Culture Shock

 

While you’re managing the details of reentry, you will no doubt need to be extra present with your kids and find ways to support their reentry experience. We might know what culture shock is—the feelings of uneasiness caused by experiencing a new culture—but reverse culture shock, when your old world feels unfamiliar, can be more surprising.

 

The effects may be different for kids at various ages, so expect a mix of emotions. Your children might jump on their bikes and peel out of the driveway on flat tires before you’ve been home thirty seconds. Or they may cry for most of the first week home. Kids are probably digesting much more, both positive and negative, than they can verbalize, so use those strategies that have always helped them process—it could be physical activity, an art project, or extra time to connect with you before bed. For right now, just be present.

 

When your family has been in close quarters in a camper, a boat, hotel rooms, or small rentals, the standard home can feel too big and isolating. You may find that you all still congregate in the same 100 square feet, even if your house is 3,000 square feet. For each of our families, this was a good thing: we wanted to be close (except for some teenagers, but that’s for the best). You will naturally start to drift apart physically again.

 

Like so many parenting conundrums, perhaps the best approach is to follow your kids’ lead. If they’re mourning the end of the trip, reminisce about it—tell stories and look at journal entries and photos—so they know it’s still living in your family memories. You can help spark their excitement at being back home by hosting friends, unpacking special things from storage, and spending time with pets.

 

Kids’ willingness to share their experience varies. Some kids want to talk about their Wonder Year with everyone they see. Others, perhaps the older ones, desire to blend in and be like everyone else. Still other kids overshare, and you may need to coach them on what’s appropriate.

 

Depending on who you are and where you’ve traveled, your children may grapple with the disparities of the world. We found that our older kids especially began to recognize all that they had. They tended to see education as a privilege rather than a chore. But what if a deeper confusion comes? What if the awareness becomes painful? If this happens in your family, keep that hands-on learning alive. Link up with organizations that do work that has meaning to your children. Annika’s daughter, Lorna, began volunteering with a local nonprofit that raises and distributes college scholarship funds. The Hunter family found purpose in making it their mission to reject all single-use plastic, a cause that united them during their Wonder Year. There are so many ways to use this type of questioning for forward motion.

 

Returning to Community

 

Be gentle with yourself while reconnecting with social circles. In the early days of reentry, you’re processing differently, and you’re not in sync yet. You have changed, and your friendships may rejigger themselves—some relationships may strengthen and others might wane. If you’re moving to a new place and folks know your story, you might have the awkward celebrity introduction of a Wonder Year family.

 

Stepping out of the box to go worldschool can seem like a provocative move to other members of your community, and their reactions to your choice might be surprising. After asking about your favorite place, some people will want a concise summary of your Wonder Year. Help your kids work out an easy go-to reply. There’s a lot to unpack mentally; our kids felt overwhelmed by the questions and the expectation that there was a simple answer. Other friends and acquaintances may ask how they, too, can do it. (We wrote this book because so many people asked, and we had so much to share.) Perhaps your return can be a passing of the torch to another family.

 

You might also need to manage others’ feelings about your trip. Comments like “You’re so lucky; we could never afford that,” or “No one got sick or hurt?” They may comment on the way you look. Maybe it’s great, gray, more groovy. Or maybe the best one is, “Well, back to reality. You can’t do that forever!” And to that, we thought some version of, Sometimes I wonder if that was reality—living each moment out loud—and this is a dream. Hopefully, your friends are waiting with open arms and want to hear how you’ve grown, how kind people are out there, and they’ll gamely eat all those new dishes you want to share.

 

Having relatives and friends visit during your journey can help blur the line between your traveling selves and your community. Shared experiences, inside jokes, and stories helped everyone feel more understood and ease the transition home.

 

Capturing Your Experience

 

It may be hard to fathom now, but one day your trip will be five or ten years behind you. Your recall may not be what it once was, and you’ll crave the details. Keep a record of funny stuff your kids said, observations they made, the magic you created. For nostalgia and a hundred other reasons, please make time to document your travels. For keeps. Write it. Frame it. Sculpt it. Keep it in whatever medium speaks to you. But please do it! Here are some lessons we learned.

 

For one, don’t wait to put together your final slideshow or photo album. It gets harder every day as new demands compete for your headspace. For another, get an early start on assembling your kids’ art portfolios and their flag or sticker collections. As you assemble these things, let your travel experiences wash over you, like a high tide on a remote sandy beach. After you document your year, you can also share it with your community. Here are some ideas:

 

Showcase Your Adventure

 

This won’t be your grandparents’ slideshow of their trip to Mount Rushmore. Involve the kids and strive to make meaning, tell stories, and explore conclusions. With all our easy-to-use photo-editing technology, you could simply choose your favorite shots, click slideshow, set it to music, and let ’er rip. You could also pick themes and let each child present one with accompanying slides.

 

Throw a Party

 

For true extroverts, you may want to throw a party for said slideshow. You could host trivia games like “Pin the Capital on the Country” or organize an “Our Trip by the Numbers” quiz (how many miles traveled? beds slept in? number of toes on Ernest Hemingway’s polydactyl cats?). Share foods you tried on the road or dance moves you learned. This is a quick, courageous way to share your year.

 

Create Keepsake Projects

 

One worldschooling parent was an Instagram holdout until month ten of the yearlong trip, and he didn’t want any kind of following other than his closest friends. The minute he landed in the US, he began posting one photo each day to remind him of the trip, of what his family had experienced exactly one year ago. This was a way to communicate nonverbally what his year had meant to him. Rather than trying to do it in real time, you could work on your keepsake project once you’re home.

 

There are so many creative ways to memorialize your trip. We encourage you to find your medium and hold on to your journey.

 

Preparing Your Kids for School

 

Maybe you’ve fallen in love with worldschooling and you plan to bring the mindset home. Some families are so transformed by their Wonder Year that they change their education approach from what they did before they left home. They might become full-time homeschooling families, change schools, or even choose to keep traveling. Wonder is their middle name.

 

For everyone else, we hope that you’ll still hold a worldschooling mindset for whichever approach you take with school. Here are a few considerations for kids going back into classroom learning:

 

* If you are returning to your same school district, we recommend meeting with your contacts there soon after you arrive home. Let them know what you did. They may ask to see some type of record that details what your kids learned. If you were more DIY with your educational approach, this is when all the explicit goals, standards, and objectives might come into play. Maybe they will ask your kids to take a placement test or to see samples of student work. This is where that journal, reading bibliography, writing portfolio, math workbook, or printout from online programs will really come in handy.

 

* The more you’ve leaned into unschooling, the more challenging a traditional scope and sequence might feel for your kids.

 

For most of us, long-term travel is not something we can do indefinitely. That might be hard to grapple with if worldschooling made you all the happiest learners of your lives. (Two families we interviewed each completed a one-year trip, came home for a few years, and then went back out for Wonder Year, part two.) By contrast, you may be totally relieved that you can pass the baton back to a cadre of professionals. Either way, prepare your kids to see that school is just one more tool for learning. The world isn’t going anywhere.

 

* For those kids reentering a traditional school, help them transition in the weeks before. If you feel like there were some holes in their learning, take time to evaluate that now and/or consider hiring a tutor. Reach out to old friends or, if your kids are entering a new school, ask if there’s any new student-buddy program. Having a connection can alleviate a lot of stress.

 

* Know that the immediate effects for worldschooling kids might also be a renewed appreciation of home and a new perspective of their education. They might find certain subjects become more alive (and less abstract) for them, like geography, geology, or history.

 

* Six, twelve, twenty-four months without sitting in a traditional classroom reprograms a kid. They will probably be asked to sit still for longer than they have for a long time. Many kids spend most of a Wonder Year in flip-flops, and dress codes can feel stifling. Buy some school clothes that fit, and do what you can to get them prepared. Yes, there may be apprehension, but your kids have already proved they are adaptable.

 

Keeping Worldschooling Alive

 

Just because you’re settling down again and unpacking those suitcases doesn’t mean your mindset needs to be stationary, too. There are still ways to learn from the world around you and keep your eyesight trained to that larger perspective, the farthest horizons.

 

Translate your traveler’s experience into being a superstar host. Make it a priority to meet the family of the new kid at school or on the block. Invite exchange students into your home for a semester. Extend invitations to all those people you met on the road or friends and family you want to see. Sometimes the invitation is all that’s needed.

 

Your family may have developed passions for cross-cultural connections. Perhaps you’ve discovered a cause or issue that motivates you to learn more. Continue to feed those interests by watching documentaries, finding a pen pal, or exploring museum exhibits. Look for volunteer work or fundraising opportunities. Many communities have intentional cultural exchanges or organizations that link individuals and families with ESL learners.

 

You can even incorporate worldschooling into shorter vacations and field trips. You might feel more inspired to visit regions close to home that you never have before. Maybe you have a specific area of interest, say, American blues music, and you’ve never been to Mississippi, or perhaps you’ve longed to visit Washington, DC, as a family, to learn more about the American political system. You could have more of a Wonder Year–styled spring break than a pure mission of relaxation. The beauty is that there’s room for both.

 

Ongoing Reentry: One, Three, or Ten Years Out

 

For many returned worldschooling families, nostalgia is ever present. The trip lives in the idealized world of life with fewer constraints. Its essence is aspirational. These families play the “remember when” game and always have stories on hand to rebond.

 

As time rolls on, you might find that your kids, now young adults, continue to identify as world citizens and carry with them a love for adventure and curiosity. Living on the road shows them that it’s okay to want a life of togetherness, simplicity, freedom, and perspective. Annika’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Lorna, who had been back for almost three years, remarked, “I don’t like living in one spot for too long.” 

 

Another common theme for returned families is an added sense of confidence. Many feel they did something hard and out of the ordinary. They managed logistics; they helped make decisions; they connected with people whose cultures and backgrounds were different from theirs. They’ve been out there and know that, despite what the news might show them, the world is not scary, people are kind, and difference is beautiful.