Five bad things about confining your kids to a sailboat, by Liss

1. If they've grown up on land, they’ll miss their friends. Facetime, phonecalls and skype just won’t cut it. On our boat there’s a direct correlation: the older the child, the more they miss their mates. Nothing like the sight of a grieving child for ramming a big dose of parentguilt down your throat.
2. Their fights will seem very loud and there won’t be anywhere for you to run away to. The furthest I can get from my kids on Pandion is 12.8m.
3. They’ll always fight loudest when you’ve just arrived in a new anchorage, usually one jammed full of boats and with high surrounding hills for maximum amplification. They’ll scream something bad enough to warrant an inspection by family services, like, “Untie me, Mummy! Please untie me!!” and leave you smiling weakly at the childless couple on the cat 50 metres off your stern and trying to mime that your child has deliberately tied himself up and now needs a hand to unpick those three hundred half-hitches, hehehe, funny little tyke...
4. They’ll never want to go back to school, ever again. We anticipate trouble ahead.
5. They’ll see their parents, warts and all. Ours have front row seats to all our arguments, they see us (me) cry, they see our (my) fear, they see all the unlovely sides of our personalities that are easier to hide in a house with, you know, doors. Of course this means they also see our best sides: our courage, cheerfulness, capability, and a bunch of other c words, but there are times I’d like to be a complete c word without feeling three sets of eyes on me.