here we go again...

i would love to homeschool DS.

but, we realized that we simply couldn't appropriately manage it. His social needs are much higher than ours, and so we were getting completely burned out just trying to get to enough group settings for him.

kindy provides us an opportunity for our normal quiet need, while meeting his social need.

if he'd been so quiet a kid as DH and I, then it would have been easy.

but, he's just a kid who loves to be around people. We balance it with plenty of quiet home time, but yeah. . .

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Originally Posted by bae

Hopefully having pointed words with Rush Limbaugh and his ilk some day :-)

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More power to her!
I used to fence when I was her age. Lots of fun and great exercise.

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Originally Posted by bae

Hopefully having pointed words with Rush Limbaugh and his ilk some day :-)


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It sounds like she has quite a bit more to offer the world than Rush does.

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Originally Posted by chanterelle

How many eons was that?!? If it was '74 thru '78 then we must have met!! This spinner/weaver never passed up a sheep barn it it could be helped!

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1982ish... On San Juan Island. The best county fair ever, still!

There are homeschoolers who homeschool to give their children a wider education, and those who homeschool to make sure that no suspect information enters. We have friends who have homeschooled and represent the two extremes......

In the family that homeschooled three to allow them a wider education and exposure to more and to instill a genuine love of learning, one kid works in the Ecuadorian jungle with Achuar Indians, one is a professor of French literature at a university and the third is a master brewer and expert on mushrooms, his two passions that he has managed to make a living from pursuing. The other family homeschooled five, very fundamentalist (the ones in the long calico dresses, etc., who were fed a careful fundamentalist curriculum that emphasized creationism, etc.), and the three oldest girls are now all married in their early twenties, one in a shotgun wedding at 17, the other two, including one boy are still at home. The boy is quite handy, good with livestock, gardening, a chimney cleaning business, etc., but all five have very limited horizons for their lives, which is sad.

So....one size does not fit all.....I think your daughter, bae, sounds like a wonderful young woman, and much enriched from exposure to far more than she would have been likely to have been exposed to had she attended school full time. Much like our first friends' kids.

The ones who are homeschooled to be sure that no "polluting" ideas, or information that would contradict or question religious views, not so sure about that one. The kids are wonderful kids, kind, good, friendly, etc., but not very well prepared to live in any world but the very narrow one of church, home and others who think the same way. Not so sure that is good........

i think it's fine, actually.

i know many families like this -- the amish come to mind. but, they have 'safety valves' such as that rebellion time put right into their culture so that a person can make a free choice. most of them continue to be amish.

i can't fault people for wanting to share those values with their kids and raise them in the way that they think is "right." For them, those narrow options are the right options, the healthiest options -- and it may be true from their POV.

their community, their sense of identity, their simplicity, their kindness -- sounds to me like it's a good life overall.

We debated homeschooling my DSS when we got custody, as she was going into 7th grade, because she was getting out of a bad domestic violence household, and all the middle schools in Seattle with any room in them had metal detectors, police guards & gangs. She was depressed, and we feared for her mental health. Instead of homeschooling, we took a second mortgage & put her into a private girls middle school. It was a fantastic decision under the circumstances.

it's really always about weighing multiple factors. :)

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Originally Posted by Zoebird

i think it's fine, actually.

i know many families like this -- the amish come to mind. but, they have 'safety valves' such as that rebellion time put right into their culture so that a person can make a free choice. most of them continue to be amish.

i can't fault people for wanting to share those values with their kids and raise them in the way that they think is "right." For them, those narrow options are the right options, the healthiest options -- and it may be true from their POV.

their community, their sense of identity, their simplicity, their kindness -- sounds to me like it's a good life overall.

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The Amish choose to remain Amish for the most part because they don't have the education, experience or even the basic skills to function in a modern world. Teenagers turned loose on this 'foreign' world is like asking a 3rd grader to navigate high school successfully. The 3rd grader, or the Amish teens, will be scared, overwhelmed, and after the first rush of excitement, ready to 'go home'. I see the Amish as a curiosity, but a repressive society. They are extremely rigid and very harsh to those who DO choose to reject that life, another pressure point to staying in the flock. These people definitely DON'T want their kids to find themselves or their own way. Rumspringa is a farce as a way for the kids to choose. It's more a calculated way to scare the sh*t out of some impressionable teens to keep them close and in the flock.
I know a lot of people like to romanticize the Amish, but on closer inspection, what we romanticize is the simplicity of life and quaint wood stoves/oil lamps/horse and buggy. That's just the window dressing, and truthfully, something any of us could have. The rigidity of the 'reasons' is not so romantic. Looks good from the outside, but if you are a teen who loves music, or art, or travel, or yoga or just about anything outside of the narrow life focus of this group, well, you're pretty much screwed.

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12 weeks.