At home-from-home in Edinburgh, Scotland: Joram, August, Baron, and Maria.
© Maria Surma Manka

When Mom and Dad Are Digital Nomads

Not all who wander as digital nomads are twentysomething, unmarried, and mortgage-free.  Some digital nomads live in rural Minnesota with lively kids and full-time jobs.

Just ask author and public-relations strategist Maria Surma Manka. She teaches parents across the U.S. how to live and work abroad as digital nomads while enriching—not uprooting—family life. No selling the house, homeschooling the kids, or ditching their day jobs.

It’s about expanding cultural awareness and creating wonderful family experiences while meeting everyday responsibilities.

The key to this family-style cultural immersion?  “Workations”—work + vacations.

London-bound: Maria’s book has numerous resources on how to talk with
your employer about working remotely.
© Maria Surma Manka

The idea, explains Maria, is to combine a love of travel with the stability of work. For Maria and husband Joram, the home-from-home travel began when sons August and Baron were two and five years old. That was five years and several countries ago.

At the time, Maria couldn’t find good resources to help guide a typical family on such an adventure. So, she developed the resources herself. The result is the highly practical book, Next-Level Digital Nomad: A guide to traveling and working from anywhere (even with kids and a day job).

Known to her followers as Workation Woman, Maria Surma Manka teaches parents how to
live abroad for several weeks or months without quitting their regular jobs.
© Maria Surma Manka

As insightful as it is delightful, Next-Level Digital Nomad covers such topics as getting schools and bosses on board, finding (and funding) where to live, securing safe childcare, and much more.

It’s also a cracking good read, an enlightening portrait of one family’s day-to-day life in Minnesota, Spain, New Zealand, Scotland, and England.

Small pleasures amid big adventures: Skipping stones at Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand.
© Maria Surma Manka

Have Kids, Will Travel

I recently spoke with Maria about the experience of immersing one’s family in the daily life of another culture. As someone who grew up traveling with seven siblings, I was particularly keen to know one thing: How does she respond to folks who postpone travel because they’re waiting for the kids to grow up?

Maria laughs warmly. Challenging assumptions is second nature to her.

“I would say, ‘Well then why do you read to your baby?  Why do you talk to your kid or bring them to the pumpkin patch? Why do anything if they’re not going to remember it? It’s to instill a norm in them when they don’t even realize it.  Even if they don’t remember it, there are going to be things that they pick up on.”

“It’s the feeling of being in a totally foreign place and watching to see how your parents react, being in a situation where things [may] go wrong or the adults in your life don’t know what’s going to happen next, and seeing that Oh, it’s calm, things are fine, they’re going figure it out.”

The rewards of working remotely: Exploring the world more closely.
Baron and August hike to the Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye.
© Maria Surma Manka

For their part, August and Baron have made friends in many cultures as they share local playgrounds and routines. Maria recalls a bus ride in London when “a little boy was asking our boys where we were staying. He thought we were staying in a hotel room and the boys said, “We have a yard and a kitchen,” and they just began exchanging stories.”

One of the first steps in each new city, says Maria, is to find the nearest playground.
© Maria Surma Manka

The Universal Language

On one extended visit to Spain, the family stayed with a longtime friend whose son, Dante, was then two years old. “The same age as our youngest,” says Maria. She loved seeing how her English-speaking children and the friend’s Spanish-speaking son quickly established rapport.

“You know, at two years old you barely speak your native language. So it was really fascinating to see them realizing they were able to play cars together or race around with each other and that they didn’t always have to understand what each other was saying.”

“They did learn the Spanish word for Mine, mine, mine!” She laughs. “That translated very quickly.”

The ultimate “playlist”: Maria created a bilingual phrase list for a recent reunion
of Dante, August, and Baron in Minnesota.
© Maria Surma Manka

Growing up culturally aware has also prompted important discussions. Back in the U.S., one of Maria’s sons was troubled to see a bumper sticker that said, “You’re in America. Speak English.” Maria recalls “trying to explain stuff like that to the kids, [the fact] that some people are scared of people who don’t have the same color skin as them or speak the same language as them.”

“And my youngest son, August, said, ‘But we know Dante. He doesn’t speak English and he’s not scary.’ They have a personal reference of someone who comes from a different culture who doesn’t speak their language, but who is a great person, someone with whom they’ve had tons of fun and tons in common.”

It Takes a (Global) Village

Maria appreciates the enthusiastic support of school principals and teachers. Like Mrs. Petron, who taught a lesson on London so Baron’s first-grade class would have the context to learn from his extended visit there.  When the family arrived in London, Baron casually pointed out a local landmark to his parents. “He was teaching us.”

On days when Maria and Joram needed to work from local offices, the boys explored London with their nanny, Sophie Hitchcock. They loved regaling their parents with all they had learned about the city.

Learning in London: The boys test their backpacks to discover
how much they can realistically carry.
© Maria Surma Manka

U.S. Workations

Maria points out that a workation “doesn’t necessarily mean something big and sexy overseas.”  At one of her talks, a woman in the audience shared, “My husband has to go work in Omaha for three weeks, and I can do my job from anywhere.  He’s been trying to get me to bring the kids and work from there.”

It was an oh-I-see moment: Instead of missing out on precious family time, the family could stay connected while getting to know another part of their own country. Instead of forming stereotypes about a city they didn’t know, they could meet the locals as neighbors and develop a broader sense of home.

A morning’s routine in Edinburgh. “A workation is a feeling of normalcy and novelty
at the same time,” observes Maria.
© Maria Surma Manka

Growing Up Without Stereotypes

Stereotype busting is a constant theme of Maria’s own family workations. Because the boys’ home base is 85 rural acres, it’s important to her that they also have the experience of living in urban areas. Learning the etiquette of sharing public transportation has instilled in August and Baron respect for the idea of sharing one world.

Maria recalls how after one London Underground ride she had been prepared to offer cultural context about their fellow passengers, figuring that her children might have questions about, say, the guy with the studs and mohawk or the woman in full burqa.

Only it took the boys a full minute to even recall who she was talking about. It soon emerged that yes, her boys had noticed the many people around them. But these young global citizens simply took it for granted that we may dress, speak, and look differently from each other. No big deal.

Says their mom, “They’re growing up with a very broad personal view of the world.”

To learn more about workations, get Maria’s book here. Follow her family’s adventures here and here.

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