Warning: Do Not Try to Network or Connect With Other Homeschoolers in Your Neighborhood.
Forget about trying to form community in your homeschooling neighborhood. The history of homeschooling will be forged with Mother at the kitchen table, cleared of breakfast, dishes and swabbed clean so the books don't stick. Father looking at the children's work after a hard day at the job earning the money for curriculum and admiring and discussing the children's work. A Loving family that homeschools for whatever reason bonded like steel to one another, to church and to a select few like-minded mothers for that dreaded socialization word. Don't reveal your home address, don't give your phone number, don't share. Keep your relationships cold. Open up yourself and reveal nothing. No last names.
In that spirit, I will admit that we aren't an ordinary family. Our neighbors worry that we're a disease they might catch. "I could never teach my own child" Or, "I don't want to be around my child all day." Others may choose to put their child in school. Respect that. There has to be a compelling reason for the decision to homeschool. In the best interest of the child or the children, we made the decision to homeschool. It works for us. We, as a family commit to it. we have prospered from our decision.
Now, in the best interest of the child, I choose not to be in association with other mothers who homeschool, anymore.
Protect your family from other homeschoolers. Quite often they have baggage. Secrets about abuse, secrets that will color relationships. The horror stories of hit and run attacks, rumor, gossip, stab in the back, never tell it to your face. Respect the out in the open attack. Because you and your family and your decisions can't withstand attack.
We are not normal parents. We homeschool. We are not politically correct. Our kids are out of the box thinkers. Be prepared to keep yourself hidden in your home, and don't share information. Don't meet at the playground unless you keep quiet about yourself and your children.
In the Mount Vernon homeschooler newsletter, my ideas hit the spot and added to the group. We as a group have taken hits for being Unwelcoming. In the group, we seemed to have dissension. People were touchy. They splintered with hostile words, drove people away in droves. By this year, the Founding Mothers were down to two. Then, at the Not Back to School picnic, I inappropriately disciplined my son. Two days later, a mother called and said,"Clean your house. Someone is going to report you to Children Protective Services." I watched as things happened and buried my head in the sand. Some mothers didn't like other mothers.
My ideas have merit only for a select few. If you feel like you can stand community built it. If you can share with other mothers without fear, do it. Homeschooler's mothers are already been told by mother-in-laws that they are horrible, abusive, put my son on the phone and let me tell him to send those kids to school where they can get an education in the American Way. The mother's only homeschool they can be verbally and physically abusive to their children. They yell behind closed doors, they have to hit, lash out or spank those children to get them to be model children. And, in my case there is a mother who is going to watch me and if I cross over her personal line in discipline, she wants to report me and protect my children from me.
Let's go back to the loss of rights for smokers. Even if smoke does kill me. The loss of prayer in the schools. The easy morals of the 60's, 70's, and the 80's. And, maybe the loss of values in the 90's. Is there a decline here? Or, is it the ugly third graders like me that never got any good offers and now we are angry adults.
Someone is out there in my neighborhood. I'm going to the park. They are watching me. A line is drawn in the sand, and knowing me I will cross it. The yeller Mom. And, that someone has a cell phone with the dialer on Child Protection Services. These people will come to your house.
And, it had better be clean.
Don't happen to know of more than one house that is spotless. I've been in countless houses and you won't catch me telling that the bed may not be made. The books are scattered all over the place in an attractive way so the children fall over them. My kitchen always looks like a tornado just hit it.
That someone will give me one more chance. Can my family afford the trauma, the suggestion, the stink of inspection? Why we should be proud to watch me defend allegations. There is no basis in the other persons disapproval of my inappropriate discipline.
We have had problems in our group for three years. We have left tire tracks on the backs of the mothers who have led us. Lay down, be trampled. This has been the community we built in the ill-fated group.
I shun myself from this community.
Face the scorn of being a home schooling mother.
Didn't speak publicly when it happened to M. Didn't speak out when it happened to C. Didn't help the Mother with the younger children who wanted to learn how to homeschool. Let C go her own way.
There is a history lesson in this. Nazi Germany. The Jews. Didn't speak out when they came for the list of people, then they came for me. Nobody left to speak.
Didn't say a word about Christian homeschoolers. Because I was associating with them. Secular, Baptist, godless Unitarians, Pagans. Never met a witch I didn't like. The mentality of exclusion is persistent in our homeschooling communities. How about paraphrase from Will Rogers, "I never met a homeschooler I didn't like." At least in hugging the trees, you learn the names of the trees and since you are close you see the leaf and admire the insect on the underneath. I dally with the metaphor and must return to diatribe.
My family doesn't all support homeschooling. I get clippings with yellow highlighter pinpointing how abusive it is to keep our children at home. Dear, God, they deserve an education. Your in the finest school system in the nation. Let my grand children go. How can they find jobs? What college will take them? What will the children do if they aren't educated in American Schools with the ability to learn what it is like to be picked last or picked on or not learn and be taunted into misery. We have failed our children if they don't have the education that is available to every other child. The homeschooled child won't be able to stand alongside the crop of schooled children. The answer is they will get higher scores on tests. They will be offered colleges. They will become life long learners.
No, they won't. They will be heads taller because they have adequate sleep. My children sleep from nine at night until nine in the morning. The older teens read half the night and sleep half the day. Except when I say we are going to the beach and they get up at 6 A.M. and get their breakfast, pack their lunch, put everything in the van and make my coffee. They will talk with knowledge about real life or fantasy life or beg to read a book all the way through in a day because they can't wait to finish it. They will play with all ages of children including complete strangers, invite them into play and care for their hurt feelings of share their water at the playground with tenderness. I love the way that homeschoolers play. Imagination engaged, a band waving weeds marching up and down a muddy field. Sharing a found bug. Asking, do you want to hold it. Respecting the feelings of others, and respecting life. Good kids, who might be ignored or rejected in the school.
My daughter reminds me that she was terrorized by a boy in kindergarten who kept threatening to kill her. She kept this to herself and only told me when she was removed from school after first grade.
She also reminds me that there is a terrorist in the homeschooling community. After what we have seen in Oklahoma at the Murrah building, and seen at the Pentagon, we face additional terror in the sanctity of home. We need the comfort of home and to feel safety. We lower our blinds and feel like we need to get some sense of peace and joy in our lives .We remember our friends who are far away and with all the other troubles, the people who love us beg us to come where there is safety.
Be wary of admitting you homeschool.
Anybody who knows me knows that my brain is firing those synapses. The family is juiced. They have the schedules, they are doing math, art and language arts.Mom is spilling and they are willing to get it done. Unschool. Now, that takes trusting your guts. Do, you the homeschooling mother think the prepared curriculum in anything is enough or will your child learn for himself. If they can read, the door is open and they can study for themselves. Do you think your child will learn if you aren't guiding it. I taught in public schools. Fifteen minutes your child might have had my interest and help. Thirty to Fifty-four children in art class my first year. One of my children loves video and PBS and nature shows. Okay, it rubbed off on more than one. Three of them are looking at a college level biology tape for the second time. It's three hour tape. Mandatory bedtime may slip tonight. What if I said out loud that last year, we had our best year yet because I let the children tell me what they were interested in and we channeled our learning to those topics. I gave them real work in a real world, gave them grown-up tools and let them test their wings. We had the best year we ever had. The older ones shared information and played school and taught what they knew. We had dialog and if there was a difference of opinion we discussed and debated alternative solutions and the children gained insight.The answer to my question is one mother thinks her children did better and learned more when she decided to further her education.
And, when I lost it over sibling rivalry. Gave the "I am the mother goddess who dictates what is might and who is right." They thought about it and said they thought Dad was boss and he was so even tempered and always took them places and bought them things. And, for them they would risk the wrath of the goddess because when I get really steamed she reads murder mysteries in her room and Janet Evanovich is so funny, they check to see if Mother has laughed herself to death in her room. Come back and my equilibrium is in balance.
I wrote the manifesto and withdrew from the homeschooling groups, e-groups and all association. But, the mothers who are my friends insisted we go on with 4-H and meet every week and they brought me back to reality. It's time to continue for my family. If any of you want to join us, then e-mail. You can use the cautionary message here as a warning of what to expect when you get together in community. My family laughs about it now but, we were devastated. And, nobody ever knocked at the door and hauled the kids off. We also had one of the best school years yet because we stayed home and studied harder. Cracked the books and lightened up.