This Golden Hour

103. Jason Weening and heydads.ca

• Timothy Eaton

Share episode

In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Jason Weening from Saskatchewan, Canada. Jason is a homeschool dad of ten, author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He shares his family’s extraordinary journey from Ontario to Saskatchewan, including a year of travel across the U.S. and six months in the Dominican Republic, all while homeschooling. We discuss the importance of intentional fatherhood, building a family culture rooted in faith and character, and practical strategies for managing technology and supporting your spouse. Jason’s candid stories, from living in a 15-passenger van to writing books inspired by his adventures, offer encouragement and actionable insights for parents seeking to lead their families with purpose and resilience.

Connect with Jason and Jason's Books

heydads.ca

Yes, Dear...I’m Watching Them

Riders of the Lost Reptiles


Books and Resources

Hannah’s Children

The Anxious Generation

The Five Behaviours

Family Teams Podcast

ACE - Accelerated Christian Education

Above Rubies 

This Golden Hour

Jason Weening:

When you get up, when you go down, when you rise up. Come in the house. When you leave the house, when your kids are fighting in the van because someone took the Cheerios or the goldfish squished in the scene and crossed the line and is fighting with someone. Those are the moments of teaching character and training our kids in those boring, mundane, conflict filled, tension-filled moments. Those are the moments that make a difference, I believe, because they happen every single day, multiple times a day.

Timmy Eaton:

Hi. I am 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. New 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 Jason weaning from Saskatchewan, Canada. Jason is a homeschool dad of 10. Author, entrepreneur, and speaker. He shares his family's extraordinary journey from Ontario to Saskatchewan, including a year of travel across the United States and six months in the Dominican Republic, all while homeschooling. We discussed the importance of intentional fatherhood, building a family culture, rooted in faith, in character, and practical strategies for managing technology and supporting your spouse. Jason's candid stories from living in a 15 passenger van to writing books inspired by his adventures offer encouragement and actionable insights for parents seeking to lead their families with purpose and resilience. Welcome back to this Golden Hour podcast today. We are excited again for another episode. Today we have Jason weaning from Saskatchewan. Thanks for being with us.

Jason Weening:

Thanks,

Timmy Eaton:

Timmy.

Jason Weening:

I'm happy to be here. This is great.

Timmy Eaton:

I just wanted to give a, a brief bio of you and then you can add to that. Things that I wanna highlight. First of all, homeschool dad of 10 children.

Jason Weening:

Yes. That's, that is not a typo. That is correct. Yes, sir. That, that

Timmy Eaton:

is just awesome, man. And I love the picture on your recent book y dear, I'm watching them and of I'm assuming it's a cartoon of you on the bike with all 10 kids on your back, true

Jason Weening:

story that is based off of a real story.

Timmy Eaton:

Okay don't share it yet, but that right after this, tell us that story. So Jason is a podcast host of helping Men Thrive. He's a blogger, a speaker, a writer of now is your writers of the Lost Reptiles, is that like a series?

Jason Weening:

It's the first of a series. So on this computer I've got. The next book is getting close to being done, so. Wow.

Timmy Eaton:

Well, let's be honest.

Jason Weening:

It's like half done, so we're working on it.

Timmy Eaton:

You could go find out a bunch of stuff about Jason on Hey Dads ca and I love the emphasis on intentional fathering and, being an intentional dad, that's something I share in common, and so we'll talk about that. But go ahead and add to anything you want.

Jason Weening:

Yeah. I have a great wife that, we never planned on having 10 kids, so we talked about having four kids and we can maybe get into that of what happened with our thinking and some things God put on our heart as as we has started to have kids and stuff. But yeah, we just moved from Ontario about a year and a half ago to Saskatchewan. We were in Barry Ontario, just north of Toronto, and I've been involved in manufacturing and then I was working for our church for a few years after that and I quit my job. We sold our house and we traveled around for a year and a half, and then we moved to Saskatchewan, so we had some adventures along the way. Yes.

Timmy Eaton:

What's the age range of your children?

Jason Weening:

So our youngest, who I just moved out of her crib just beside me here,'cause I was getting ready to this stall. She just turned one baby juniper and our oldest is 19. So we've got seven girls and three boys. We've got one set of identical 9-year-old twin girls in that mix.

Timmy Eaton:

So when you did that year and a half trip, where that was it nine of the 10 were on that trip or

Jason Weening:

there were nine of the 10 on that trip? Yes sir.

Timmy Eaton:

And maybe tell us about it a little bit. Like what were you doing?

Jason Weening:

Yeah not to get too political or, we were uncomfortable with many of the things happening in 2020 to 2022. Let's say that

Timmy Eaton:

I can guess what you're talking about. You're

Jason Weening:

in Alberta, so you, I think we may have a similar mindset on that. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton:

Anyways,

Jason Weening:

we, we decided we were going to try and go down to the States for a little while and see what we could do and just spend some time there. That was January of 2022, right before the Freedom Convoy, and we had friends that had tried to get across the border the day before us. Actually, they'd tried twice and had been denied. And anyways, we had a condo booked in Florida for three weeks. That was the plan we had. And they asked where we were going and that was what we had on the agenda at that point. So we went to Florida for a while and then we're like, okay, Canadians can stay in the States for six months. So we're like, okay, do we wanna do anything else while we're here? And we, I had some friends in the States, so we ended up traveling around the States for a year actually. And while we were gone, we sold our house. So I'd quit my job, we sold our house. It's crazy. While you were gone,

Timmy Eaton:

you sold the house.

Jason Weening:

So when we were going to the states, we're like, I dunno what we're gonna do with our house, and I don't know how long we're gonna be gone. So we had packed up everything into one room if we were gonna rent or we were gonna sell. Didn't really know, but anyways, it seemed like the Lord was leading us to sell our house in February after we'd been in the States for about a month. And so we listed it and sold it right away. Cash offer. Like it was amazing. So we were very blessed for that. And so once we had our house sold, we're like, okay, I'm never gonna be in a spot where we sold our house. I don't have a job. I quit my job. Why don't we. Just hang out for a bit, jump in and travel for a while. So we did that. So we traveled around the states for a year. You have to apply for an extension. If you're Canadian, you can for another six months. So we applied for the extension. Got that. And while we were in the States, we met a family in South Carolina and they had just bought a condo in Dominican Republic. And we'd always talked about doing some kind of. Missions developing world sort of experience with our kids. And so same line of thought okay, why don't we go to Dominican Republic for six months? So we came back to Canada for a month in January, flew outta Toronto to Dominican, and we lived there for six months, homeschooled our kids. And then one day a week we would do, I've, we'd go surfing or we'd go to an orphanage and paint. Walls or dig ditches. We help with baseball camps. I really wanted to give our kids an experience outside of Canada and so we were able to do that. We were very blessed to do that and grateful to do that in Dominican Republic and help some kids and help some families and. It was a win-win. Then we had to become normal again. So we came back and moved to Saskatchewan and I got a job.

Timmy Eaton:

When you came back from the Dominican Republic, you went to uh, Berry and then, and then moved from there?

Jason Weening:

Yeah. So we stayed with my parents for about a month in Berry. My wife and I flew to Saskatchewan for I think four or five days. Looked at. 10 properties or something. Picked a property, put an offer in it, bought it, flew back to Ontario, loaded up the van, and drove 30 hours a few weeks later to Saskatchewan.

Timmy Eaton:

Now, what were you traveling in when you were in the States for that year?

Jason Weening:

So we were in our big van. We've got a big 15 passenger van and we've got a bunch of friends in Charleston, South Carolina, so we were engaged there. I've got, I was in a friend's wedding there, we've been there a few times, and their church said, Hey, this family from Canada is thinking of coming here and there's a family in the church who had just got a fifth wheel trailer. Inherited it from their grandfather, I think, and they're like, Hey, it's just sitting in our yard. We're not using it. If you guys wanna stay in this trailer for a while, you're welcome to do that. And so we did that for a bulk of our trip. We went You're saying in South

Timmy Eaton:

Carolina?

Jason Weening:

In South Carolina, yeah. No

Timmy Eaton:

way. So

Jason Weening:

we were, we stayed in their fifth wheel trailer with, there were 11 of us at the time. And, and had a great time there. I wrote one of my books pretty much that's what I was doing while we were there, is writing the Danger in the Jungle Kids Fiction book. We traveled around too and we helped with the ministry in Texas and stayed in the dorms with our family for two weeks on the bunk beds in the dorms and we were helping cut wood and paint things and do things. So just through some of the connections I had in the States, we were able to. To stay in dorms and stay in fifth wheel trailers and we did it on the cheap. We were pretty blessed to, to be able to do that. So

Timmy Eaton:

I feel like I'm hearing more and more of these stories. I have a few episodes of people that have done a similar thing. One of my episodes is with a blended family and they had nine children that they toured the entire. Us and then some of the tip of Canada for a year before they went back to Denver. And that was a fascinating conversation. And our world's collide a little bit. I spent two years in the Dominican Republic in Sanso Domingo and Okay. In the capital. Yeah. And where did you guys, where were you guys at? So

Jason Weening:

we were in Los Tours, which is North coast Samana Peninsula. We flew into Porta Plata. We are about four hours. East, I believe of Porta Plata. Okay. And about two hours from the Capitol, we took some bus trips to the Capitol, oh

Timmy Eaton:

great. Yeah, I speak fluent Spanish and it's very Dominican Spanish and okay. That was fun for me to hear you say that you guys were there. And it's funny'cause I was there from 97 to 99 and I haven't been back, so I'd love to go. Okay. Awesome. My

Jason Weening:

wife and I had done a missions trip there we'd almost been married for a year and we did a missions trip to Dominican and help build a house there. So we had known Dominican and we wanted to go somewhere that was not like.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah,

Jason Weening:

unsafe. Some people will tell you Dominican is unsafe, but we had been there and it was great. There was no problem. so I just released a new book in January. Called? Yes dear. I'm watching them. Yes.

Timmy Eaton:

Okay, there we go.

Jason Weening:

And the title of the subtitle is Stories of Injury and Adventure From the Front Lines of Dad Hood. So it's a bunch of stories about injuries and things we've done with our kids. But then at the end of every story like, you know, dad, I. Put your phone away and go wash the car with your kids, even if they're gonna scratch the paint, that's okay. So encouraging dads to do something. So on the front cover, my daughter did all the kind of comics in here and when we were in Dominican, we rented a little scooter, a little moped thing, and I think we saw six people on one.

Timmy Eaton:

Oh yes. I was

Jason Weening:

like, get guys, we can beat that. We can beat that.

Timmy Eaton:

I remember seeing women with like infants on the back of, they call'em in the Dominican Republic res. Yeah. And I remember seeing and like you said, just like a ton of people. And then they also have, their buses are called gwas and they just load them to the absolute max. So Yeah, carry on. They do.

Jason Weening:

Yeah. So when we saw people carrying. Propane tanks, like 20 foot pipes front to back, hanging off the, hanging off of these bikes and fridge. We saw a guy with a fridge on it, like they just, they get her done. So I said, Hey, maybe we can get, we had 10 of us on there, so it was me and all the kids and my wife took some pictures. We had kids on shoulders and kids on the back. A kid in front of me, kid behind me. So we all piled on and and if you see the video of it, you can hear the bike bottoming out on the.

Timmy Eaton:

People need to go see the the picture of it, yes, dear. I'm watching them and just get the caricature of it. What else are you up to? Like what occupies the majority of your time?'cause you've got a lot of titles there. You're speaking, you're writing, you're podcasting. Blogging. What's occupied trying as far as this stuff?

Jason Weening:

Sure. So I do also have a job and this is all kind of stuff on the side.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah.

Jason Weening:

But really, Timmy, my heart is to really encourage dads to be intentional. And I say in your most important organization, and that is not your company, that is not your business. It's not even your ministry or your church if you're involved in that. Your most important organization is in the four walls of your own home, under your own roof. And dad's gotta be reminded of that. We, I forget it how many times a week I'm sitting at the kitchen table staring off into space, thinking about a deadline or a project, and my wife is like hello. Are you with us here? Are you with us? Your daughter just asked you a question about this coloring picture she's doing, and yes. Timmy Dads we just forget stuff. So we need to be reminded. I don't know if you're familiar with Pat Lencioni. He's written a bunch of business books, five Dysfunction of the Team. He writes to business leaders. He says, we've gotta be the chief reminding officers in our companies. We gotta remind people about the objective, the strategy, the vision, where we're going. People are just getting sick of hearing about where we're going because of the reminders that they're constantly getting. And so Timmy, I think guys like you and me, we are the chief reminding officers. Yeah. For dads and C, the CROs, the CRO, not the CEO, not the CO, but reminding dads of what really is important and you've probably seen friends and acquaintances that. I have friends that are, we're crushing it in business, but at home things are starting to fall apart and separated and divorced. And one friend of mine said, he said, use me as an example. He came over to our house for dinner one night as he was in the separation process. He said, my wife and I didn't do this with our kids. We didn't sit down and have a meal and pray before the meal or read the Bible after the meal or whatever. He's if you're talking to dads, remind them of me tell them not to be like me. I was a bad example, and it just breaks my heart to me to see dads and families coming apart because it is the functional structure of society and when that starts to crack and break at the foundation, yeah, it's all downhill from there.

Timmy Eaton:

What is it that like I mean I can make some obvious guesses, but what is it that makes you so passionate about that that topic? That, that yeah.

Jason Weening:

A lot of guys come at this from like a place of their own hurt, from their father wounds or whatever, but I had a great dad and he was humble. He, if he screwed up, he'd say, Hey, I'm sorry I made a mistake. You forgive me. He told us I love you. So this is not coming. I love I'm, have a great relationship with my dad. It's not coming from that place of hurt. I had a mentor that told me when I was like 18 or 19, he said he started a group. He's we're gonna learn how to become better husbands and fathers before we become husbands and fathers. And he is like, if you, great dads. You can go have a coffee, buy'em lunch, learn from them, ask them questions. How'd you become a great dad? Why are you a great husband? Vice versa. In business, if you've got mentors, guys, you wanna be like you're trying to grow a certain kind of organization. Seek out guys that are in that space and learn from them, and grow from them and ask them questions because what one man can do. Another man can do. And ultimately it comes back. It comes to my faith. I believe God has created families as a key building block and homeschooling is a big part of that. And teaching and training our children in character and values, in love, and serving and being a blessing to the world, all that. In my opinion, Trump's math, science, geography, et cetera, because we need kids and people with character in the world today.

Timmy Eaton:

And I think your opinion is very well supported. I can't even think of an example of an interview I've had, and this is over my hundredth episode. I just can't think of an example where somebody said their number one motivation to choose homeschooling was based on academics or something other than family related. You and I were talking about the AHHE Conference, the Alberta Home Education association conference that I just presented at. And I was overwhelmed because I was talking about the role of dads and specifically being intentional in their role as homeschool fathers. Yeah. And I was just overwhelmed with how many people came to me afterwards talking about different ideas and concerns, and it was so enjoyable. And so I think this is a very relevant topic with the exponential growth of homeschooling both in US and Canada. So I'm glad we're on the same page there. Can you tell us a little bit about when did you guys start homeschooling and what was your first exposure? How'd you get into it?

Jason Weening:

So we started right away. Our oldest has been homeschooled all the way through. I was homeschooled. I went to a small private school. I went to a big private school, and then I went to a public high school and I went to college after that. So I feel like I saw the spectrum yes. Of what was out there. And when my wife and I started talking about our oldest was getting four or whatever, we're like, Hey, what are we doing for school? We talked about it and decided that. Really, we felt God had put us as parents in the role to educate and train our children from a biblical perspective. And so we jumped in and started let's be honest. Who's doing most of the homeschooling? Yeah, there's my wife, but certainly as dads and husbands, we are supporting our wives and helping as much as we can. Our oldest is 19, so it's been at least 15 or 16 years of homeschooling those all the kids.

Timmy Eaton:

How long were you homeschooled for?

Jason Weening:

I was homeschooled, I think to like second, or I'm gonna say probably my first two years. Then a small school for grade three and four, then a bigger school AF five to eight, and then high school after that.

Timmy Eaton:

And that was you and all your siblings? Or was that

Jason Weening:

I'm the oldest, so my brother was homeschooled for a little while after me, and I think my sister maybe started at the Christian school we went to in kindergarten. I'm one of four, I don't think my youngest sister never was homeschooled, although she's now homeschooling her kids as well.

Timmy Eaton:

No way. That's awesome. Do you know like why your parents decided to do it?

Jason Weening:

It was crazy to do that back in. Yeah, this is 80. 5 86. 87. Yes. That neighborhood. And they felt, they went through a radical faith conversion just before they got married. And so they were not wanting to send their kids into the public school system which ended, they started with homeschooling with some resistance. Probably from family and friends. Oh, yes. But there was a community of a couple families in our sphere that we're doing some homeschooling. Like you said, it's growing like gangbusters now I think I was talking to the, one of the guys on the board for the Saskatchewan home-based educators, our Saskatchewan group, and he said the numbers went up up, up, up, up 2020 on. And they're not really coming down. He's like, It's not like people pulled their kids outta school and put them back in school. It just keeps growing, it sounds like.

Timmy Eaton:

No, it legitimately in the United States and Canada legitimately doubled. When I say legitimately be, because everybody was, saying they were homeschooling during that time, right? They weren't philosophically homeschooling, they were just trying to figure stuff out with their kids home, basically. But the numbers have legitimately stayed. They've doubled. Like they went from 40,000 in like 20 19, 20, 20 to 80,000 plus now. And then in the states, there's different numbers ranging from 3.5 to 5 million different homeschooling. Families. Yeah. So it's crazy. Like the growth is crazy. It's a very relevant, good time to be talking about that subject. But, I was gonna ask you just a few questions. If you're cool with it, just what you have like learned and found about your role, because like you said, I think the number is somewhere around 95% of principal homeschool parent is the mom. And so a lot of times the dad's role, when you ask homeschool moms and dads, they'll say he supports me. He's okay with it. And so like you and I were talking, I've created this course called Proactive Homeschool Dad, or PhD.

Jason Weening:

PhD. I saw that it's supposed to

Timmy Eaton:

make people feel pretty good and and I have, I break it down into different roles, but I wanted to ask you about different aspects of these roles and just get your opinion. Are you cool with that?

Jason Weening:

Absolutely. Fire away, Timmy.

Timmy Eaton:

So I, so some of these will be pretty direct questions and you can just take whatever you want. Yeah. But when did you feel like you started like learning about homeschooling as a philosophy? Because you came from a background of having been homeschooled a little bit, but did you like, do anything intentional or deliberate about learning about homeschooling?

Jason Weening:

Yeah, like for me, she probably brought it up'cause she was looking at it. And thinking about our kids, I didn't even think twice about homeschooling. Sure.'cause like I said, I'd had the experience. I'm like, yeah, let's homeschool our kids. Yeah. I had no problem with that. So we went to a bunch of conferences and stuff. It, there were some Ontario homeschooling conventions that we went to. We went to a big one down in the States in Cincinnati. And those are a lot bigger than, those are

Timmy Eaton:

huge. Yeah.

Jason Weening:

We did begin to learn and explore. My wife had been a teacher at a A CE school. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that curriculum. No. But then that was the program I had used when I was homeschooled in the eighties, which is still around accelerated Christian education. Oh,

Timmy Eaton:

okay. Oh, yeah, okay.

Jason Weening:

So we had started looking at, and so she had taught at a small private school teaching that curriculum. And so we were familiar with that. We didn't actually, I don't think ever use that curriculum, but it got us in the door, I think, to, to researching and looking into homeschooling. But yeah, she looked after the curriculum and stuff and yeah I can't honestly say like, there was tons of research. I'm like, yeah, let's do it and let's

Timmy Eaton:

do it.

Jason Weening:

Let's go. It seems like a no brainer.

Timmy Eaton:

When you said that when you're, was it, is your oldest a daughter.

Jason Weening:

Yeah.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah, because our oldest is a daughter too. We have six kids. And when she would hit three or four, that's when my wife started asking a bunch of questions. I always tell this story about how she started asking a bunch of questions, and then that led to lots of discussions with other people. We had never gone to any conferences though, literally until a few weeks ago. And even though we've done it for almost, you know, 17 years really. We had never been to any conferences anywhere. One because they're far from where we've lived. Sure. Couple times we lived close to where they were. But anyway, that wasn't our style, Sarah, my wife, just picked and pulled from different places and from lots of literature. And and then, do you do anything on an ongoing basis now to learn or to keep up on what's going on in home education or is that more of the realm of your spouse or. No,

Jason Weening:

we both, she definitely is in the curriculum space, if you're gonna say that. But I love reading, I love listening to podcasts. And so actually right now we're in the program called Family Inc. Which is run by a. A business called Family Teams by Jeremy Pryor, and it's about developing your business as a family and integrating your family, and it's a lot of homeschooling families are involved in that. Cool. In that coaching program as well.

Timmy Eaton:

Is that Canadian?

Jason Weening:

No they're outta Cincinnati. I. It's called Family Teams. Great podcast. So yeah, I'm always learning, growing. I going to these homeschool conventions recently I was at three this spring and I had a booth there, but I'm like, I want to go to all these sessions. Like I know if I was in Alberta, like Timmy Eats, talking about dads I wanna sit in that session. So I did get to sit in a few, I'd scoot away from my booth and hurt a few, but. Yeah, there's so much out there and especially, I'm getting a lot of questions from parents about social media, phone use, screen time, et cetera, et cetera. One of my talks this year was about screen time and what, yes. This disaster gong show that phone and iPad and screen use has been inside.

Timmy Eaton:

I know.

Jason Weening:

So yeah, I'm always learning. I love listening to podcasts and I'm reading a book right now, it's called Hannah's Children, and it's the lady's first name is Catherine, but she went and interviewed moms of five or more kids, moms that had university degrees that was part of their, like research samples. So these are educated women and she asked them why. Why are you bucking the trend of 1.2 kids or 1.6 kids and so it's just story after story. A lot of it is faith-based. Some of it is not faith-based. Yeah. And people just felt like they wanted to have kids or their husband it, some of it was driven by their husband, but just super interesting to hear perspective from other. Statistically larger families and their mindset behind it. It's called Hannah's children. It's just very interesting and highly like research based content.

Timmy Eaton:

You mentioned like speaking on screen time. Can you give us a little bit of. Just nutshell type, what are you saying about it when you're speaking and and is your audience typically at a homeschool audience or where are you? Yeah,

Jason Weening:

like those three conferences were Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario homeschooling conferences this spring. And so I did one talk last year about pornography, which kind of led to the screen use topic. And this year's talk that I did was based off the book by Jonathan Haight called The Anxious Generation. And he talks about boys and how screens have affected boys and girls and how screens have affected girls. And social media is a big part of that. And image and mental health. And there's a pretty clear statistical connection between social media use going on Totally. And mental health going down

Timmy Eaton:

inarguable. Yeah.

Jason Weening:

And so basically, he emphasizes he talks a lot about the public school system and like phone free schools, not just a phone free like hour or not just phone free classes because at lunch hour, boom, the kids all go back on their phones, but totally. From school up, from beginning of school to end of school, no phones. And kids start to interact. Instead of sitting beside each other and texting each other, they're looking at each other in the eye and talking. Go figure. Imagine that. For boys, he talked a lot about pornography and just, man, that is a scourge on our civilization right now. A friend of mine says, it's like giving, you give your son a phone and you're putting a strip club in his pocket, like the accessibility. Which is nonstop, the affordability, which is totally free, and the uh, anonymity that, that people don't have to know. You can sit, you could go sit out in the yard, you could sit, on the school bus. And so just, we gotta put healthy boundaries in place. And some people would shoot for abstinence of phone use. We gave our daughter a flip phone when she left home at 17, and so I'm one of the crazy ones that's no phones until you go. She went on eBay and bought herself an iPhone after that. I'm like, okay, that's fine. You're, she was 18 at that point. I'm like, you can make your choices now, but I'm not giving my 13-year-old son a phone. I'm just not doing it. And have you guys been able to

Timmy Eaton:

stick to it? Have you been able to stick to it with your other children?

Jason Weening:

Yeah. Like none of our kids have phone. We have a 19-year-old, a 17-year-old, a 18-year-old I think. Yeah, no, I know. 19 18, 16, 13 are our teenagers and the oldest has a phone. She's been gone for two years. She's back home now, but none of the other ones do. We have an iPad like community, family, iPad, that's usually in the kitchen. We don't have a TV in our house. We don't watch tv. But don't get me wrong we will watch YouTube. The boys are watching trick shots by Dude. Perfect. Then yeah, whatever. We're, they're watching some stuff, so we're totally, you're being

Timmy Eaton:

you're being intentional. We're trying to be intentional and it sounds like we for whatever reason, we didn't even do it as like this huge philosophical decision. We just, my wife and I were never really TV people and we never had it. So we've never had that in our home in our 23 years of marriage. And my wife especially has done research. I've done a fair bit myself on just screen use and the effect and the Dopamine hits that you get every time you're texting and all those things. And our like you said, like our daughter was 18 before our oldest, before she had a phone, and then it's gotten progressively younger as they've Dr Like we have more drivers in the home. And so we have d deliberated and deliberated over. But, and I think that's might be the most important thing is that we should be grappling when people are just, when they just acquiesce to it. That's where it becomes a problem. But I get it too'cause it's it is such an annoying part of a reality and I should change that language because. Until I see that in a more positive light and, be really constructive. It becomes like a drag, for me and my kids. And I gotta make that more positive. So I appreciate you taking that subject matter on. That's, and

Jason Weening:

It is, it's inconvenient at times, don't get me wrong, so I have a phone and my wife has a phone, and now our oldest has a phone. So if we also have two younger drivers that are 16 and 18, but they'll borrow one of our phones. If they're going to town we'll send them a phone, and I do keep thinking we all survived. I know. 15 years ago without phones and none of us died in a ditch on the side of the road. Maybe some of us did, but I don't know anyone that, did

Timmy Eaton:

I say that stuff all the time? My kids hate it, but I'm always like and didn't need it. And the girls

Jason Weening:

will go to town and go to youth group and if they didn't have, they don't have a phone and say, everyone else has a phone. You, one of your youth leaders will let you borrow their phone to text me. And that's happened on occasion. I haven't got much pushback from the kids. No, I don't think they've really given me any pushback on that. It's the boys that are. They're asking more oh, you got an old phone. You got a broken phone? Oh, can I use it? Can I use it? I'm like. Heck no, you cannot.

Timmy Eaton:

You as a boy in particular cannot. So here another question I have, again, like these come from different identities. Like this course I created is basically years and years of me making mistakes, as a homeschool dad and challenges. And so I've been able to like sift through that and whittle it down to these six different identities. And the first one was learner. I was talking about learning about home education. The second one I call it be a companion. And the idea is like being on the same page with your spouse about like your reasons for homeschooling. I always tell the story about the kids in the early days, there was like tons of stacks that my wife would deliberately place all over the house, stacks of books and different learning places. And I'm getting frustrated as a clueless homeschool dad going, why are there messes everywhere? And she's going mess. Is, those are like beautifully placed stacks of books and that's what our kids end up doing by default, because there isn't a TV and there and it's beautiful. And anyway, so I had to learn the hard way. But would you say that you and your spouse are on the same page as far as your motivations and your main reasons to homeschool and the, and in the supporting role? And then how did you get to that place if you are.

Jason Weening:

Yeah, we have not struggled on that. We struggled this afternoon actually having a conversation because someone needs to upgrade their phone and we were talking and my wife's I don't want any of us to have phones at all. I'm like, so our oldest daughter is going to work at a ranch or a camp thing this summer, and they need to have access to Google Calendar and whatever, WhatsApp and communication stuff on her phone. Yes. And she's got an old model that won't handle some of the stuff. It's a really old model. And so she's I need to get a phone. And I'm like do I just get a new phone? And then we just slide all the phone models down a level to the next person. That's when the boys piped in oh, take you on phone. Really Timmy though, we've, we get along great. I have a great wife. Sure. We disagree on stuff, our heart is to love and train and disciple our kids and be a blessing to the world with our family. And we talk about, like that phrase being a blessing to the world. And yeah. It's, we're figuring it out. We're figuring it out. And there's tension. Don't get me wrong. I said to someone the other day I'm really good at getting good at saying, I'm sorry because I've gotta apologize to my teenage daughters for dumb things I said, or to my niece or nephew. Totally. Or someone has said at Thanksgiving, or to my wife, because I said something. Dumb. And it's I'm not perfect. I, I am far from perfect and made thousands of mistakes. So trying to figure it out. Do best I can relate.

Timmy Eaton:

I won't tell you the details of what happened this weekend when we started talking about finances, but it, what? I didn't handle it the best. I'll tell you. I'll just say that much.

Jason Weening:

I understand.

Timmy Eaton:

But what would you say then if somebody said to you, they said, Hey. What is like your like family member or friends, so Jason, like what's your main motivation? If you had to like, choose one or two? What, why are you homeschooling? What, and would your wife say the same thing?

Jason Weening:

Yeah, she totally would. Our main motivation for homeschooling is to disciple and to train our kids to love Jesus and to grow in character. That is our motivation, and it comes out of Deuteronomy six. It talks about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and talk about it with your children. When you get up, when you go down, when you rise up. Come in the house. When you leave the house, when your kids are fighting in the van because someone took the Cheerios or the goldfish squished in the scene and crossed the line and is fighting with someone. Those are the moments of teaching character and training our kids in those boring, mundane, conflict filled, tension-filled moments. Yeah, those are the moments that make a difference, I believe, because they happen every single day, multiple times a day.

Timmy Eaton:

That's so well said. Within that idea of being a companion, being on the same page with your spouse I always talk about crafting a purpose statement or a purpose document, and you just crafted, it's such a beautifully stated purpose statement. And so I can see that you and I assume that your wife live by that. So that's so cool. What let's talk about that

Jason Weening:

for a second. Go ahead if you don't mind, because I believe having a purpose matters, when we had four kids, I started doing some research into like family coat of arms and family crests and this kind of family identity thing. And I couldn't find one for my family. My grandparents all came to Canada from Holland after World War ii, and I tried to find if we have a crest or something, a lot of English, Scottish, Irish families will have some sort of tartan or family thing, but we didn't have anything. So I said, all right, I'm gonna. Make up my own. So I got some books about Build Your Own Family Crest. It was literally like a coloring book. Like here's shapes you can use. And I started sketching it out and thinking. So then we had this talk, this purpose talk like, and we wrote down in a book, what are our core values? Yeah. To go back to a business model, businesses Built to Last. Core values, mission statement, vision statement, all this stuff. So we wrote out a list. We decided our core values were first, love, then wisdom. Then courage. Love matters the most. We want to have wisdom. We wanna make good choices, and we wanna have courage. We wanna feel the fear and do it anyways if we're scared to do something. Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. So like not having

Timmy Eaton:

a phone when everybody else does.

Jason Weening:

Exactly. That's wisdom. That's parents who love you. It's all three. And that is courage. So we created a family crest and we drive that home. We come back to love, wisdom, courage. When we make decisions, I could do a better job of being that chief reminding officer at home of what our core values are, but driving to that purpose. So that's one thing we did to keep us this is what our family is about. The second thing that we did is an idea I stole from our pastor at our church. He would have an annual theme every year for the church, whatev missions focused or whatever the theme was. And so 10 years ago, we've started, we've been doing this for 10 years now. We came up with a family theme for 2015. Put it on the wall. I can't remember what the first one was. The second theme was double and we were trying to go over and above that year, so 2016, we had twins that year and double, like if someone asks you to help say, yeah, can I help? Can I stay longer and help? Are there ways that we can give double and help double? And so on our wall, the whole year we had a sign on the wall that said double. And it was just a constant reminder that this year we're focused on, going the extra mile.

Timmy Eaton:

Go with twain. That's right. That's right.

Jason Weening:

So 2025. Our theme is peace makers and we have a sign on the wall in our living room, and I was reading an article in a homeschool magazine, I believe it was Above Ruby's Nancy Campbell. I don't know if you've heard of them. No. They're outta Tennessee. And there was an article, it was about like peace in our home. We're called to be peace makers. It doesn't just happen. That means we take the chaos and we make. Peace out of it. And so we've got peacemakers on our living room wall and that means in the van when you're fighting over Cheerios, guys we're, remember we're peacemakers this year, even in the van even. We're driving three hours in the van, we're peacemakers this year and we just went to visit some friends two weeks ago. And after we left they said, we thought it was gonna be a bit chaos, all the kids and stuff, but it really felt peaceful. And I said to my wife, I'm like. Boom. We're doing it. We are making peace and being a blessing to the world. Wow. By having that purpose and that focus doing the best we can. So don't be fooled that it's always peace here. We need to make peace because there's a lot of chaos.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. I really appreciate you giving like a kind of a practical illustration or implementation of that purpose in action. And so that's really helpful for people to hear. That's something I really try to drive home to with people that I talk to about just homeschooling in general, but obviously just families or being their families. Yeah. A couple of the other titles that I talk about is just being an advocate and being a participant and being a protector and a listener. And anyway, and I go into detail about what those are. One of the things that I, that is a surprise in what I do there is about being a protector. And the idea there is we have a role as homeschool dads to protect. Like the schedule. I don't know what happens with you guys. But like sometimes people think that because you're homeschooling, you're just always available. And nothing's really happening, and so sometimes we just sitting around

Jason Weening:

all day waiting for something to do.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. But I get why people think it,'cause they just go and it is one of the beauties of homeschooling is the flexibility and the freedom of schedule and the freedom of time. But what have you been able to do as far as your role as a dad? In kind of protecting the schedule, protecting your spouse from your children perhaps, and protecting your kids from perhaps ideology or anything else like that. When you hear that idea of you're, you have a role as a protector what does that make you think, or,

Jason Weening:

I love it. I think that's a great question and. I dunno. Some somewhere I heard protect, provide and there was another P word. It's like this is the role of us as dad. Preside, I think was the other one. Anyways, that's our role as dad. We carry those roles and when I think of protector, we just talked about cell phones son, 13-year-old son. I don't hate you on all your friends have cell phones and you don't. It's not because I wanna make your life miserable. You know why it is Because I was a 13-year-old boy too, and if I had a cell phone, I know what I would be looking at, probably, and I didn't have phones. I do this because I love you and I wanna protect you from going through the damage that so many young men have gone through that has wrecked their lives and their marriages 20 years down the road because of. Some pornography addiction. They got hooked on when they were a teenager. So we're not just gonna do that forever, but then we're going to have conversations along the way, which I think is a key role of being a yes. Why are we doing this? Why are we having these talks? What's to, it's to help you. My, he was 10 at the time, my son. We don't pay for a Spotify premium, so we don't have a premium membership. We have the free Spotify things, and that means you get ads that come up on your Spotify playlist. So the kids are listening to music and my son is looking at the iPad playing Spotify. Some album cover with some half naked girl comes up on it. He goes to my wife immediately. He's mom, I just saw something on the iPad. I was listening to my songs, and this ad came up, or this playlist came up. I just want to tell you that I saw that. I'm like, yes, that's what I want. Come to us because we're not the enemy. We're on the same team here. And when you see something. Come to us and talk about it, and you're gonna go out in the world someday and we're gonna launch you out, and you're gonna go out and make an impact and make a difference. So I'm not gonna protect you forever, but while you're growing in the greenhouse, that's an analogy my dad used. We protect the small plants in the greenhouse, then you move them outside for a day, bring them back in at night, go again and so they become an adapt. And then they go out in the world and hopefully they thrive because they've got that strong foundation. When they need it.

Timmy Eaton:

That's a great analogy. I really like that the idea of the greenhouse, like I've had so many conversations with people about it's just, there's tons of common things about sheltering your kids or, hiding them or isolating and I think most people are over it. They just go, they go are you gonna make a case that, that the schools are producing, not to demean schools, but who's gonna make a case that they're producing the character that we're trying to have happen. And so the idea of we, we have, feel like we have to back away from I'm sheltering my kids. And I don't even see it as sheltering. I see it as preparing, like you said, or equipping or empowering to, to successfully navigate the world that they're like you said, launching into. So that's really good. What were

Jason Weening:

the word you said? Advocate, protector. I was trying to write now, participant, you said couple other ones.

Timmy Eaton:

The six identities or roles are and I do'em in this order. And I, in my course I explain why, but be a learner, be a companion, which you and I talked about. And then the third one's be a listener. Be an advocate, be a participant, and be a protector. And they're probably the most obvious ones are. Be a listener, be a participant. The advocate one is more that one I feel like I learned and I earned it. What I'm trying to teach about it is. Because when you start homeschooling, you feel somewhat self-conscious. And so especially those of us who only did public school is, which was my wife and I, and our families and everybody, and so you rip on it a little bit. You're like, yeah, we're weird homeschoolers now and da, and you. And you talk like that. And then after a while it gets old and it's do I own this or not? And it's and I'm not saying be a evangelist about it, but I'm saying be a part, be an advocate for it. Like I, I totally support what we're doing and I'm on board with it. And sometimes my kids would hear me be humorous about it or demean it in a sense just to kind of, uh, put the other person at ease. But the reality is if I'm choosing that lifestyle, then should I not back it up? Or it's just such a weak stance to be like, oh I'm the weird homeschool guy. And just always talk about it that way, when in fact I love it. So like, why don't I tell the truth about it?

Jason Weening:

That's an interesting perspective and it reminds me of on the same vein, is, going out in public and being like, oh, I don't want my kids to be the weird homeschool kids and like trying to be. As a dad, self-conscious is my kid gonna do something awkward or weird or something like that? It just, it's in the back of your head. Instead of just being like, Hey, we're gonna go out there. We are who we are. Yeah, we're doing our best. We're, and we're doing it because we believe it is the best way and the better way, and that's why we're doing it. Exactly. Deal with it, deal with the weight of it. If you don't like what we're doing, then that's your problem.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. I talk about, being an advocate in word deed and then really, doing things to help your spouse specifically. One thing I talk about is helping her fill her bucket and, it can be the cho the choice to live a homeschool lifestyle and a way to learn can be very overwhelming. And so if. If the principal homeschool parent, which is typically the mom, doesn't have time for self care, then it is it, you do risk burnout and, and everybody's different on that, but I think the universal principle is that as dads we can really help create that space for our spouses so that it's so that it's beneficial. And so it's an enjoyable experience. What would you say to new dads? Like, Somebody uh, guys like, okay, my, my wife and I are deciding to homeschool. We're clueless about it. We've never done it. What's your counsel specifically to the dad?

Jason Weening:

Yeah I would encourage you, you don't know what you don't know, so you, we have access to so much information. Now you wanna find a podcast, a niche podcast for what you wanna know about, this golden hour all about homeschool. Find it. You wanna find a podcast about, how they did, created Yoda the Puppet? You can probably find that, a special effects podcast. Totally. Whatever you want. So not knowing isn't really an excuse anymore. You want to go on YouTube and it's the second most used search engine in the world. How many of us are looking out to fix our toilets or our washing machines or our tars? Because you go on YouTube and find it. So I've just encourage you like get educated and don't be intimidated by it. And if you think that this is the right way to go, jump in. Like you just said to me don't feel like you need to. Half-hearted be like, oh no, if you feel it's the direction of goho and that, that is right for your family. Yeah. Then get, then go in there and do it and try it. Give it a try. If you give it a shot, if you don't like it, you can change. Like, Don't be afraid to fail and figure it out along the way. Give it a shot.

Timmy Eaton:

That's really good. What if that same person that dad said, he's that sounds awesome. He is and we have done that, but the, there's so much information. How do you sift through it all to go, this is where we're gonna start, at least

Jason Weening:

I think you go to who do you know that is doing it well? And ask them what resources are they using? My wife talks a lot about going like back, there's a bible verse that says something like, go to the ancient paths, or go back to the old ways. Like just because some new idea comes out. Just because it's new doesn't mean that it's better, and often it's worse. Yeah. But go back. So I, the point of that is, if there's people in your life, I think I already said, what one man can do, another man can do. If there's a family that you see that is crushing it, that you're like, Hey, go ask them. What are you guys using? What curriculum are you using? What resources do you follow? What podcasts do you listen to ask people that are in your world? What's out there? And you're gonna get. Recommendations and maybe you won't like it and you find something that, that, that suits your needs. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton:

That's really good. I appreciate that. Yeah. There's, there is so much out there and I like the idea of, and one thing I like to do is just disarm people and say, you can't go wrong. You honestly can't go wrong because there's you're not gonna do nothing and you're gonna look out you love. Nobody loves your kids like you do. And, you just do the best. And it does, it works out. And I can say that now having three kids who graduated without a diploma that are doing well in university and are, and I know that not everybody takes the same route, but I'm just saying it works. Sure. It definitely works. And so those are meaningful case studies. I'll give you the last word and then and then we'll wrap up. But I just wanted you to maybe tell us. What's on the, what's on the horizon for you? What do you, I know you're working on books. Tell us like what else? You're other events you're gonna be doing, anything like that. And then just any other thing you wanna say in closing?

Jason Weening:

Sure. I just wanna encourage the moms and dads that are listening to this. First of all, that. You've got what it takes to your previous question, Timmy. If you're scared, if you're intimidated, hey, that's okay. Ha. Have courage. Feel the fear and do it anyways. And just know that your kid, you're probably not gonna screw up your kids so bad that they're gonna go to. Prison or something that like your 5-year-old who you're trying to start figuring out school with. You've got what it takes to figure out. You can show them colors, absolutely numbers, math, reading. You can read a book to your child, so

Timmy Eaton:

let'em play outside.

Jason Weening:

Go play outside, talk about leaves, talk about why the leaves are green and see don't be intimidated by it and you've got what it takes. And I come at it from a faith perspective, like God has given you the children that you have. He didn't give them to me, he didn't give them to Timmy. He gave them to you. And I believe he's equipped you with what you need to teach and train and love and grow those children and to who they're going to be. And you're gonna make mistakes. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. No, there's only one perfect man ever in history. And it wasn't me and it wasn't Timmy. The rest of us are all gonna make mistakes, so don't be afraid to fail and make mistakes on the horizon. I got two more books in the work, a sequel to the Yes. Dear book. Yeah. It's more stories of injury and adventure. They come about very often the sequel to Writers of the Lost Reptile. So this is a series of books about two teenage boys that ride dinosaurs. They're like cowboys, but they ride dinosaurs. So it's jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Hardy Boys. This is what I was trying to create with these books, but they don't just do it alone. They do it with their dads or with older men who are walking through the jungle with them and helping them along the way. Because I think that's what's missing in a lot of our kids fiction this day, is there are these orphan young single kids that are figuring it out on their own, and that's not how it works. We need. Men and women that are older than us to teach and mentor and train us. So I tried to really be intentional about building that into my books. I'm always looking for more speaking opportunities. I'm also trying to develop a course and some coaching stuff. I'm working at it on the side as I can and just trying to do what I can. But if you're looking for a speaker at your church or conference or men's group or whatever, would love to come and encourage the parents uh, in your. Thanks Tim so much for giving me the chance to kind of us on stuff. Oh, definitely.

Timmy Eaton:

No, and thank you for taking time to be on here. I really appreciate it. That was a fun conversation. Thank you very much, Jason.

Jason Weening:

Thanks, Tim.

Timmy Eaton:

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 on Apple Podcast 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.