Our Six-Year-Old Has Now Spent More of Her Life Abroad Than in America

Harper turned 6 last June at an elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai. We did the cake, she fed an elephant called Lulu, and Lily and Cora taught her how to say happy birthday in Thai. It was a great day. What we didn't realize at the time, because we don't sit around with calculators on birthdays, is that Harper was about six months away from a milestone none of us were tracking.

Sometime in early 2026, our youngest daughter quietly crossed the 50% line. She has now officially spent more of her life outside the United States than inside it.

We only noticed because we were updating a spreadsheet for a sponsor and the math jumped off the page.

The Numbers as of April 25, 2026

We sold our house in Indianapolis and started traveling full-time in May 2022. That means everyone in this family currently has 43 months on the road behind them. The kids and parents have been on essentially the same trips since day one because we travel together (the alternative being some kind of Home Alone scenario nobody is volunteering for).

What changes the math, of course, is how long each of us had lived before May 2022. Adam and Lindsay had decades of stateside life banked. The kids did not.

Harper is the headline. Half her life and a small change.

But honestly, the more interesting story is what happens when you read the percentages from oldest to youngest. Adam: 8%. Lindsay: 9%. Lily: 33%. Cora: 39%. Harper: 51%. Each of our daughters has spent a meaningfully larger share of her life abroad than the sister who came before her, simply because of when she was born relative to the day we left. The youngest you are in this family, the more international your childhood is, by default.

What "Home" Means to a Six-Year-Old Who Hasn't Lived in One

Lily has clear memories of our old house in Indianapolis. She had a bedroom there. She had a school. She had friends she still messages on her tablet. When she says "home," she sometimes means the country, sometimes means us, sometimes means a specific kitchen we sold the contents of in 2022.

Cora's memory of Indiana is fuzzier and mostly built from photos and Lily's stories. She'll occasionally claim she remembers something none of us think she could possibly remember, and we'll just nod, because what are we going to do, gaslight a 9-year-old about her own childhood.

Harper has nothing. She was 2 years and 10 months old when we got on the Queen Mary 2 in New York and crossed the Atlantic. She doesn't remember the house. She doesn't remember Indianapolis. The earliest concrete memory she's described to us, unprompted, is the apartment in Lucca, Italy, where we spent her third birthday and she was given a hand-sewn doll by our Airbnb host. That's her zero point. That's her version of "where I'm from."

Where Those 42 Months Have Actually Been

People sometimes assume "full-time travel" means we change countries every few weeks. We don't, mostly. We move slow. We spent three months in Playa del Carmen, four months in Chiang Mai, six months in Da Nang. Long, lived-in stretches in places, with shorter trips bolted on either side.

Here is roughly where Harper has accumulated her 42 months:

• Japan: more than seven months total across multiple trips. Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Yokohama, Hakone, Nara. This is also our favorite country, so the math is not an accident.
• Vietnam: about nine months, almost all of it in Da Nang and the surrounding area.
• Thailand: roughly six months, mostly Chiang Mai, with stops in Bangkok.
• Mexico: three months in Playa del Carmen.
• Europe: a long, twisting ten months across the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Albania.
• Other: Korea, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, plus a Saudi Arabian airport and one transatlantic ocean crossing.

What This Actually Looks Like in Practice

The percentages tell a clean story. The day-to-day is messier and more interesting.

Harper is the kid who confidently orders her own food in Japanese, says itadakimasu before she eats, and uses chopsticks better than her American grandparents. She also doesn't really know how a school cafeteria works. She has been in a school building for a tour and that's about it. Her concept of "school" is that mom or dad sits down with her at a kitchen table somewhere and they do worksheets, and then on Tuesday a kid named Otis joins on a video call from Lisbon and they do science together.

She thinks every neighborhood has a 7-Eleven that sells excellent custard buns, because that has been true in roughly half the places she has lived. She is genuinely confused when there isn't one. Indianapolis, in particular, was a disappointment.

She thinks long-haul flights are normal. The 13-hour to Tokyo doesn't faze her in the slightest. She thinks ten different currencies in a wallet is normal. She thinks it's normal to be the only blonde kid on a beach.

She also thinks Lapland in January is just what winter is. Not "winter on a once-in-a-lifetime trip." Just winter. Last January we did five days in Rovaniemi, the Finnish town that markets itself as Santa's official home, and Harper met Santa, fed reindeer, rode a sleigh through the forest at minus eighteen degrees, and then asked, casually, in the car back to the hotel, when we'd be doing the next reindeer sleigh ride.

The Sister Effect

The thing that genuinely surprises us, looking at the numbers, is the gradient between sisters. Lillian had 7 years of Indianapolis before we left. By 10, she's at 33% abroad. Cora had 5 years stateside; she's at 39%. Harper had under 3 years; she's at 51%.

Same trips. Same parents. Same dinner table on most nights for the last three and a half years. And yet they are accumulating, statistically, three pretty different childhoods.

Lillian's center of gravity is still American. Her early friendships, her first school, her concept of "neighborhood" all trace back to one house on one street. Cora's is mixed; she remembers Indianapolis but she also remembers Tokyo and Hoi An with similar resolution and emotional weight. Harper's is global and primarily Asian, because Asia is where the bulk of her actual lived life has happened.

We can already tell this will shape how each of them thinks about identity in their teens and beyond. Lily is more likely to call herself American who travels. Harper, we think, will end up calling herself a kid who lived in Vietnam and Japan and happens to have a US passport.

What We Actually Worry About (And What We Don't)

People ask us about this a lot, so we'll just say it out loud.

We don't worry about culture. The girls have absorbed more about Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, German, Italian, and Filipino daily life through immersion than we ever could have given them through a textbook in Indiana. They eat foods most American kids haven't heard of, navigate transit systems most American adults find intimidating, and know that the way things are done in their country isn't the way things are done. That's a gift.

We don't worry about education. The kids are reading above grade level, doing math at a normal pace, writing well, and learning history by walking through it. We use a mix of Outschool live classes, structured curriculum, and worldschool popup hubs where they meet other traveling kids in person.

What we do think about, occasionally, is rootedness. The thing we want to make sure they have, especially Harper, is a sense that "home" is something you carry rather than something you go back to. That the five of us are the home. That a house is a place we stay for a while, not a place we belong to.

So far, knock wood, that's working. Harper will tell anyone who asks that home is wherever Mom and Dad and Lily and Cora are. She doesn't say this because she's been coached. She says it because it's the only definition of home that has ever applied to her life.

Where We Are Right Now

As of this writing we are based in Da Nang, Vietnam, which Harper considers, at this point, basically a second hometown. We've spent so much time on My Khe Beach that the cafe owners know our usual order and the girls have local friends they've maintained across multiple visits. In a few months we have a transatlantic cruise booked back to the US and a week with Lindsay's family at Disney World. Harper is asking why we have to fly so far for what she calls "the small Disney."

Her version of normal is going to keep diverging from the American version, and we're at peace with that. Last week she asked us if New York was in Japan, and we had to gently explain that no, but only barely, and then we made dinner.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long have you been traveling full-time as a family?

We sold our house in Indianapolis in May 2022 and have been traveling full-time ever since. As of April 25, 2026, that's 43 months on the road and counting.

How many countries has your youngest child been to?

By age 6, Harper has lived in or visited more than 30 countries, including extended stays in Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, and across Europe. She has now spent more than 50% of her life outside the United States.

How do you handle education while traveling full-time with kids?

We worldschool. That means a combination of structured curriculum at home, live online classes through Outschool, in-person worldschool popup hubs where the kids meet other traveling families, and a lot of learning by doing in the place we're actually in.

Do you ever miss having a home base?

Sometimes. We talk about it. But when we picture going back, we don't picture being happier, we picture being bored. Right now the five of us are the home base, and that's working.

Where are you based right now?

Da Nang, Vietnam, with a long Japan stint behind us and a transatlantic cruise back to the US coming up later in the year.

This post does not contain any affiliate links, and that's by design. It's just our family's actual numbers, written down. If you want to see how we make full-time travel work financially, the resources we use, and the brands we recommend, check out our Affiliate Disclosure page for the full list of partners we work with.