Becoming a nomad? No, I'd never really thought it would happen, particularly not with a child in tow. But this is how it came about …

Almost three-and-a-half years ago my son Zac – who was nine at the time – and I set off on what was supposed to be a one-year round-the-world trip.

Because you can see the world in a year, right? Provided you leave out the countries that are too big, and the places that are too hard to get to, and you don't spend more than a night or two in one place.

I soon learned that exploring takes time, children need downtime – and travel is more fun when you're having experiences rather than seeing sights. Then, we fell in love with Indonesia. And, as that first year came to an end, I realised three more things.

I could earn a living anywhere in the world. There are many options, but I hoped to make it as a freelance writer – all you really need is a laptop, a camera, internet access and online backup. By combining child-led learning (letting them determine what they learn, and when), local schools and online teachers, I believed Zac would get a better education through world travel than he would in a school. And we could live better, and more cheaply, than we ever would in London, and have more fun. So we agreed to carry on.

Over the past three years, we have experienced temperatures below -30C and nudging 50C, slept at 5,000m above sea level and 300m below it, watched the sun rise over Uluru and alpenglow illuminate Everest, seen killer whales play in the Indian Ocean and baby pandas snuggled in their cots, soared in a hot air balloon over Cappadocia and scrambled inside deserted pyramids. We have covered great swathes of Asia, much of the Middle East and slices of Europe, but still there's so much to see.

It is not a conventional childhood – though I've met adults who travelled long-term as children and none of them report issues with forming relationships. The internet helps keep us connected. Skype is a godsend for keeping up with friends and family: Zac games online with friends around the world, and chats over Skype. We have met up with family and friends all over the world. Zac's father is Australian, and lives there, so we fly Zac there to give them time together.

As we travel, we like to alternate between periods of relative stasis – renting a house or an apartment in a place we like – and periods of big adventures, typically overland. When we have a base, Zac can have more conventional childhood experiences – going to school, having sleepovers, riding a bike with friends, the trip to a favourite local restaurant – and we both have more personal space.

Right now, we are in Harbin, north-eastern China, where we settled so that Zac could improve his Chinese by going to a local school, a project we embarked on with close to zero idea of how difficult it would be. From the 5.30am starts to the homework load, to the realisation that year seven-age students in China tackle the kinds of maths we don't touch until A-level, to the shock that Chinese middle-schoolers do not have a social life outside classes, it has been hard work.

We have been here four months – by far the longest we have stayed anywhere since leaving the UK. But now we're off. To Mongolia, back "home" to the UK for a long-planned family reunion, a bit of Europe, then Egypt for diving with friends and, if I can persuade the boy, to Ethiopia.

We are, both of us, torn. We want to see Mongolia. Zac doesn't want to continue school. But, at the same time, leaving is going to be a wrench.

• Theodora Sutcliffe blogs at EscapeArtistes.com. Zac blogs, rather less frequently, at Kidventurer.com