Empowering Women, Not So Much

When people ask me what I "do", they are obviously curious as to what my career is.  By our society's definition, because I homeschool my children and don't dump them in daycare or public schools, I don't "do" anything.  I find that funny, considering that what I do now is often more tiring and requires more mental effort than any job I have held in my life.  I have a college degree and have worked in the mental health field as a counselor.

If I had a career as a childcare worker or a school teacher, people would consider me part of the working world, a person who is contributing to society.  People were always interested when I explained my previous jobs.  When I point out that my job now is raising and educating my children, people say with an undeniable lack of respect, "Oh, so you're a stay-at-home mom."

Of course, there is the other side of the coin; some women think they are better than everyone else because they stay at home, dubbing themselves "domestic engineers".  I find this highly abrasive, as does my husband, who is an actual engineer.  My issue with the term "domestic engineer" has a lot more to do with the fact that people find it necessary to somehow artificially increase the perceived importance of a mother who chooses to parent her child(ren) instead of having someone else do it.  For the record, here's the definition of an engineer from Wikipedia:

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety, and cost.

Why is it more respectable to leave my children in a school or daycare center to go care for or teach someone else's children than it is to be present in my own children's lives and care for and teach them?  There has been a huge movement for a long time to empower women and push for equality, and yet, even women look down upon mothers who choose to raise their children instead of letting someone else do it.  There are endless reasons in the media and the world on a daily basis for mothers to be the ones who are their children's caregivers, including but not limited to the daycare worker who posted pictures of children on Instagram with humiliating comments and comparison photos.  Fortunately, both women were fired, but it doesn't change the fact that things like this are happening far more than we care to think about.

The pendulum always swings.  It took a while for women to be accepted in the workforce, and they're still fighting for equal salaries.  At the same time, women who choose to raise their own children instead of having someone else do it are fighting for respect.  Women who contribute to society outside of the workforce have pretty much never been given any respect, and we like to think this is some sort of move toward equality and the empowerment of women?  For anyone who believes that, I have some beachfront property in the desert to sell you.

Recommended reading
Cruel Daycare Workers Posy Pictures Mocking Children Online:
http://thestir.cafemom.com/toddler/159914/cruel_daycare_workers_post_online

In Which I Get Depressing

My kiddos have been using some of their free time to watch older television shows on Netflix.  I love this option, even if it's Spongebob, because they're not being mentally flooded with a bunch of lies and deceit (i.e. "Whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference!" - The Corn Refiners Assoc.) or McDonald's telling them that joy if a gift you can find in a Happy Meal box.  But it turns out they may be getting something unintended from their viewing indulgences.

Reezle commented the other day about how someone learned a lesson of some kind in each episode of Dinosaurs.  "Earl learned that his family was more important than TV," she said.  And while this should be common sense, it is far from the message kids are receiving today - to the point it really stood out for my daughter.  The lesson learned in earlier family television shows were part of the feel-good aspect of those that I grew up with.  Sure, real problems don't work themselves out in 30 minutes and conclude with the entire family collectively vomiting glitter and sunshine (a common criticism of family sitcoms back in the day), but somehow it did provide a sense that hope was not misplaced and eventually things would work out.

These days we have a bit too much "reality" on television.  I realize people tune in largely for the shock value and out of morbid curiosity; after all, it's often like watching a train wreck in slow motion.  But it seems this is not a sideshow or a fleeting glimpse into the lives we all should be glad we're not living; it has become acceptable, even admirable, to live for oneself and flaunt abuses of excess and material possessions as if these things could somehow ever compensate for what these individuals lack in substance and character.  From the Bachelor to Housewives, I wonder endlessly why anyone cares about the smallest details of a person's dating life or how spoiled, entitled women spend their husbands' fortunes to the point of bankruptcy.  I'd like there to be a reality show about the benefits of making good financial decisions, saving money, and preparing to put your kids through college.

Children's shows have eroded into nothing more than screaming, whining stupidity, completely devoid of any value whatsoever.  What happened to shows that had a moral to their stories?  Where are the shows emphasizing the importance of family and friends, regardless of what form those come in?  They're relics of the past, apparently, replaced by a world that is obsessed to the point of isolation with creating virtual existences behind the screens of laptops, cell phones, game consoles, and other electronic devices.  Even when we do interact with others, it's through some device much more often than not.

Our whole existence is fake.  Our lives are on a screen, our images are filtered and Photoshopped, our language is abbreviated, we eat food-like substances instead of actual food, and kids today want to grow up and get their own reality TV show instead of being a doctor, firefighter, or astronaut.  How can we stress the importance of not engaging in stupid behavior when talentless celebrities are made famous for doing exactly what we're warning against?  What happened to wanting a good future, an interesting career, and a family?  When I was growing up, having money meant you wanted financial security.  Now it means you feel entitled to more in that paycheck because your husband's salary, which should be sufficient for a family of 6 to live comfortably in a reasonably-sized home with a couple of reasonable family cars, isn't enough to pay for the Escalade and a $500,000 house you feel you damn well deserve because, hey, everyone else is doing it and being harassed by these creditors isn't any fun!

What has happened to our society?  It's like human beings are no longer evolving; we reached a point where our technology far surpasses our intellect and ability to use it appropriately, and now we're circling the drain.

Scouts

I don't know how I feel about Girl Scouts. I've been debating getting my daughter involved in Scouts for a couple of years now, a consideration which has been more at the forefront of my mind since we began homeschooling last year. I want my children to have as many opportunities to socialize in a healthy environment as they can/want.

I emphasize healthy social opportunities. With this in mind, my feelings on Boy Scouts are much more clear; I don't want my son being part of an organization that openly discriminates against the LGBT community and bans people from leadership positions within the organization based on their orientation. I find it extremely sad that if same-gender couple had a son in Boy Scouts, neither of them could contribute in a leadership role for their son's troop. This goes against the values we are teaching our children (love, acceptance), so I'm not comfortable with his participation in such an organization.

Boy Scouts also takes a firm position on requiring that its participants to follow a religion:

"The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God. In the first part of the Scout Oath or Promise the member declares, ‘On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law.’ The recognition of God as the ruling and leading power in the universe and the grateful acknowledgment of His favors and blessings are necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome precepts in the education of the growing members."

This bothers me as well. We are not religious people in the traditional sense. I consider myself an Agnostic with Buddhist leanings, but this is more a way of life than a "religion", so to speak. The Boy Scouts of America statement is really offensive to me, because it implies that my children, my husband, and I are not capable of being among the best citizens no matter who we are outside of our beliefs. I have no problem at all with what anyone else believes, but I have a very big problem with others telling me what I or my children must believe, or making judgements about my character based on whether or not I share their faith - or one they approve of.

Girl Scouts does appear to be far more inclusive with their policies. They even allowed transgender member Bobby Montoya to participate. Girl Scouts of Colorado spoke out through GLAAD and released the following statement on transgender youth participating in Girl Scouts:

"If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout."

I was super impressed with this. It made me want to run out and buy a box of Girl Scout cookies. If only the Boy Scouts of America could step out of the stone ages and follow suit. It's 2012, folks.

I'm still on the fence as to whether I want my daughter to participate in Girl Scouts. I've heard there are troops with very religious leanings, and those which tend to be very secular. I'm not sure about the local troop, though I do know that they hold meetings in a church and plaster photos of the girls all over a very public Facebook page. I'm not so comfortable with that, so it seems unlikely. Fortunately, K12 offers opportunities for social interaction. We also have soccer, classes through our community arts centers, and various other ways to stay connected. My kids burn out on socializing fairly quickly anyhow, being on the spectrum, so our needs are less than average to begin with.

The Aurora Shooting: Why?

In the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, CO, people around the country are up in arms, debating the reasons why something like this would happen. The first wave came from the anti-gun folks who believe that banning guns would prevent mass murders. I disagree; people who are bent on destruction and large-scale acts of violence and terrorism will not be deterred by the absence of one form of weapon. After all, 9/11 claimed 3,000 lives, and no guns were required. People can be very creative, and unfortunately, that creativity can be used for awful things as well as positive things.

The second wave came from people who believe that violence in movies and video games is to blame for our violence-prone culture. I don't believe this, either.



Canada has the same video games, movies, and music we do, and they also have one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world; yet, the rates of homicide are significantly lower there than in the United States (above image from Wikipedia). What, then, could the difference be between our country and other developed countries? Why are Americans so violent?

One statistic that is higher in the U.S. than in any other country in the world is the rate of children and adolescents on psychotropic medication.

While mental disorders can be associated with higher rates of crime, examining the issue further reveals that the drugs used to treat certain psychiatric conditions can actually cause brain damage in children and adolescents, and can increase suicidal and violent behavior. Over-medicating children could very well be causing some of the issues leading to violent acts. In fact, many of the school shooters are known to have been taking antidepressant medications at the time they committed their violent acts.

The other issue is the entitlement factor Americans have. We are a country built on consumption and excess. We are inundated with advertisements on television, on the internet, in our e-mail inboxes, on billboards, on the radio, and even over our phones telling us to buy. We replace things out of desire, not due to need. In an unrelenting stream of messages that imply, and sometimes state outright that we can buy happiness, it is no wonder that Americans spend themselves into ridiculous amounts of debt in a futile effort to finally reach the point where they have "enough".

As a result, people are struggling to pay for homes they cannot afford, eating themselves to obesity and disease, dying of completely preventable diseases directly tied to over-consumption, and finding themselves wondering why "having it all" doesn't equate to good feelings. I am firmly convinced that a lot of our supposed mental illness is often a direct result of this.

We're "supposed to be" happy, financially stable, healthy, and free to have fun as often as we like. We believe things should be handed to us. We take so much for granted, and experience suffering and feelings of slight when we go without things that people in some countries have never been able to experience. We have celebrities living in homes costing millions of dollars with more space than any human being could ever possibly need while children starve in the streets of the same cities, and society lifts these selfish, shallow creatures up to god-like status. When reality happens and this fairytale does not, most people handle it - if disappointedly. Others, unable to cope with the disparity between what we're told should happen and what actually does happen, lose it. What 'losing it' means will vary by person, but the results can be pretty awful. Can't we change this?

While evolution has brought us more in sync with our humanity and fellow souls on this planet, our technology and obsession with having stuff is removing us from it. Our competitive culture, the growing disparity between rich and poor, and a lesser degree of obvious interdependence are a destructive combination. Improving the situation in our country isn't going to happen by way of gun control, restricting movie content, or having the condition of childhood medicated out of every kid so they're "perfect" little robots. Nothing improves by taking away rights and crippling free speech. We need to start respecting one another more, especially our children. We need to stop talking and start listening. We need to open our wallets less and open our hearts and minds more. We need to focus on really teaching our children things that are worthwhile instead of cramming information into their heads like containers so they can make schools look good on paper; such practices are meaningless and destructive to the spirit and our society, because no one will care about test scores 100 years from now.

The greatest, most respected people in history were not the kind of people who fit neatly into predetermined little packages of what society wanted of them. They also didn't go shooting up schools and theaters. Einstein, Galileo, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Nicola Tesla, Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ghandi; none of these people were/are traditional, sit down and obey, go with the flow followers. Encouraging conformity, submission, fear, and obedience is not the answer, for it will stifle potential and cripple society further. Restoring our humanity is the answer, and shifting our focus away from this plastic, money-worshipping culture of greed and selfishness that can only foster envy and bring out the worst in people, that is what we need to do.

I wish to extend my sincerest condolences to those affected by the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. Peace be with you all.

Karen Klein

I can't watch the following video without crying. I managed to get through the entire 10-minute version of middle school students verbally abusing bus monitor Karen Klein as it circulated around Facebook the other night. I'm just so saddened and disgusted at how children behave in schools, on school buses, playgrounds, and at other school-related functions. It sickens me how abuse like this can go on. I blame parents for not teaching better values. I blame schools for not cracking down harder on child perpetrators of abuse. I blame society's view of "bullying" as a rite of passage instead of calling it what it is - child-perpetrated harassment and abuse.

This case of child-perpetrated elder abuse went viral, partly because it was so heinous and partly because many of us are still from a generation when children were taught to respect their elders. While I am not of the mind that people automatically deserve respect simply because of their age or position (because I know that argument will be raised), I absolutely believe that no one deserves to be humiliated, berated, abused, harassed, mocked, and hurt like this woman was. Ever.

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This is why my children will never be in public school again. And I am relieved to hear an adult admit that ignoring the bullies does NOT make them stop. It doesn't - ask any kid who has been bullied. Once you're selected as a target, you either beat them at their own game or you're going to suffer as long as they decide you're going to suffer. Of course, if you retaliate, then you get in trouble. THIS sort of thing is the result of kids being taught that bullying is a rite of passage. THIS sort of thing happens to children (and apparently bus monitors and drivers as well) on buses and in schools every day.

How long are we going to accept this?

Homeschool Humor

A Disturbing Trend

Back in April, an Ohio mother made headlines when she publicly humiliated her daughter on Facebook, supposedly because the girl had been disrespectful. More recently, another mom decided to humiliate her own daughter in a similar manner. I fear a trend is starting here.

With suicide being a leading cause of death among young people and at least half of those being attributed to bullying, I don't think parents need to give bullies any fodder by participating in the public humiliation of their own children. There are better ways to parent. I also think that children should be talked to in depth about what it means to participate in social media, with the mantra "don't put anything online that you are not okay with everyone in the entire world seeing", before children are ever allowed to create an online account. My children are only 6 and 8, but this is a conversation we've already been having for a while. I want to make sure that they are very aware of the huge responsibility that comes with participating in social media.

Children make mistakes. This is a very normal part of growing up. These mistakes should be teachable moments when they happen, not opportunities to break a child's spirit. Humiliation might seem like a great deterrent, but the only thing this teaches is shame and fear. Any apparent positive results from this are based in fear, not self-respect or a true desire to make good choices. Humiliation is not loving parenting, and it is not necessary.


Parenting and raising children is not about scaring, beating, shaming, and humiliating children into submission - or at least it shouldn't be. Compassion, respect, and keeping an open dialogue going about issues which are important will yield results that everyone can appreciate. Children of parents who have humiliated and shamed them about any issue are unlikely to come to their parents when other issues arise, whether related or not, particularly if they already feel any embarrassment about the new topic. Building their self-esteem in health ways, not tearing it down because they've made a mistake, is a way to ensure that the good choices children make will be more as a result of their own self-respect and a healthy (not fearful) desire to please their family.

Parental bullying is emotional abuse. We do not get adults to do what we want by terrifying them into submission, so why should we do this to our children who depend on us for their validation, love, security, comfort, and the building blocks of their self-esteem? An honest, ongoing dialogue about important issues between parents and their children are the best way to deal with these issues before they become issues. Being a parent isn't easy. Being a dictator is, because it requires no effort to bully someone over whom you have complete physical and legal control. But hammering a child into submission by way of shame and fear is not parenting.

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln

7 Lies About Homeschoolers

This is so great, I had to blog it.

Kentucky City Arrests Children In Attempt to Prevent School Financial Losses

In Convington, Kentucky, new legislation makes skipping school a misdemeanor. Yes, that's right; kids who skip school can now be arrested for a crime.

On the surface, this might seem reasonable; actions have consequences and failure to meet responsibilities, by choice, certainly falls into that category. But, where are the statistics on why children are not meeting school attendance requirements?

Before I address that topic, I would like to briefly discuss the path of a child who is charged with a misdemeanor crime for skipping school. Chances are likely that a judge and perhaps a juvenile detention facility may be involved in such a case. And, if the child is ditching school to go steal, obtain drugs, or engage in other illegal activity, this is clearly a criminal issue. Such a child might benefit from rehabilitative youth programs. However, what about the child who is so overcome with anxiety about dealing with school-related anxiety that they are worrying themselves sick each morning? Do they deserve to be charged with a crime, to stand before a judge, or to land in a juvenile detention facility? Can you "scare straight" a child who is already frightened to face their classmates, or it it just psychological torture at that point? Personally, I believe the latter. And few schools consider the bullying epidemic as part of the truancy problem; they prefer instead to treat them as separate issues.

In Belen, New Mexico, where a similar law goes into effect this year, truancy expert (seriously?) Rochard Romero said, "The safest place for kids is at school..." Assertions like this really fry my grits, because I can unequivocally tell you that my child was not safest at school. In fact, school and the bus she rode to get there were two of the most dangerous places she went. I watched a bright, confident, smiling little girl, full of self-esteem and thinking she could conquer the world, morph into a quieter, less confident, almost fearful little girl who started getting tummy aches at the end of the weekend before returning to school. She was clawed, spat on, pushed, hit with her own lunch box, and pelted in the face with a rock snowball on the playground - and that's not all. In the 6 months she has been away from that environment, her confidence is growing, she is smiling all the time like she used to, and I can't get her to stop talking (and dude, sometimes I really wish I could).

Not all children who skip school do so because they're defiant youngsters with poor discipline. There are many reasons for truancy, and many of them are related to how schools handle problems that arise for students. Attendance problems should first be addressed by school counseling staff who are adequately trained in the effects of peer abuse and bullying. Sadly, far too many people consider bullying a harmless rite of passage.

Children receive so many mixed messages about abuse. Schools tell children to report abuse they are subjected to at home or by caregivers, sending the very clear message that it is not okay. And I agree, it is not okay. Children who are abused absolutely should report it and feel safe doing so. But at the very same time children are receiving the message that it is not okay for adults to harm them, they are being abused by their peers - sometimes to the point of suicide and often to the point of serious psychological detriment - on a regular basis. Schools are doing very little, beyond giving the bullying epidemic a lot of lip service and putting on a very thin facade of anti-bullying propaganda designed to make parents believe they're making an effort. It is my firm belief that school attendance could be dramatically improved if there was more walk and less talk where bullying is concerned.

There are, of course, other reasons a child may be skipping school. Autism spectrum disorders and sensory processing disorders, for example, are two reasons a child may be having an extremely difficult time in school, though they may not be able to explain or define what their trouble is. They may not even think to share some of the sensory issues they struggle with, assuming that everyone has the same issues and they just deal with them poorly. Many children with sensory processing difficulties have been told things like, "Everyone else can deal with it, why can't you?" Though there is a very legitimate issue, they internalize this and come to believe that they are the source of their own problems and are simply not good enough to compensate like they believe everyone else does. With the very high rate of these diagnoses among children this past decade, schools should have specialists on hand who are familiar with sensory disorders and autism. Would that not be better than labeling children as criminals and slapping them with a record?

The school years can be tumultuous times even for students who are not dealing with bullying or personal difficulties. There could be academic difficulties, stress at home, or any number of other things or combinations of things that children are dealing with. In our society, there seems to be this belief that children are not really people; they do not deserve basic human rights or the same ability to protect themselves. They are often not seen as individuals and their troubles are easily dismissed. This is laziness on the part of parents, educators, schools, and caregivers. Children are not born into this world with their motivation and personalities fully intact, and they need us to guide them, encourage them, and help them become the people they are. Children are frequently defined by those around them, rather than encouraged in positive ways.

I do not believe that we raise healthy, responsible children by allowing them to be abused by their peers, silencing their voices, terrifying them into obedience, or furnishing them with a criminal record for not falling in line with their compulsory attendance at school. Children need to be taught lessons in life about responsibility. They need hope, guidance, love, compassion, respect, and some measure of freedom to make their own decisions (within reason, of course).

You might say to yourself, if kids are having a legitimate problem which is resulting in repeated absence, the schools would deal with these situations differently. And I'm here to tell you there is a better chance of a unicorn happily dancing through your yard under a rainbow with a leprechaun holding a pot of gold with your name on it. Children are dollar signs to schools, and schools do not like to be parted with their money.

New York Times Targets K12, Online Schools In Severely Biased Article

Since we began learning at home as a family, my daughter has had a couple of rough days. Call it a rough week, even. But compared to having her come home with injuries from bullies, having her self-esteem chipped at on a daily basis, and the fact that she started to develop tummy aches about getting on the bus each day when she used to grin ear to ear every morning anticipating the day she would be old enough to ride that bus to school, I'd call our rough week a mere bump in the road. As for my son, he hasn't had one day of learning at home that I could consider rough. He craves knowledge and literally begs me to continue teaching on weekends, a request I am happy to indulge. I can make choices about the children my children associate with. I'm aware of what they are learning and I can always easily slip curriculum-enriching things into our day. We don't have homework in the traditional sense, so our evenings are family time instead of a mad dash to finish a mountain of homework, take baths, throw down some dinner, and get into bed. And academically, they are excelling. The experience has made us all happier.

Homeschooling has been a wonderful option for us, and I can't say enough good things about K12. But apparently, people feel threatened by school choice (or is it the loss of funds for their districts?) and feel the need to attack online schools. A recent New York Times article was a catalyst for some major misconceptions about K12 and similar schools. I, and many others, took great offense to how K12 and the families enrolled in their school were portrayed.

My daughter attended a bricks and mortar school for two arduous years. While I will quickly admit that her classroom teachers were both excellent - even exceptional, I was profoundly unimpressed by everything else. Perhaps most disturbing was having a school system telling me how - and if - I could parent my own child for the great majority of the day, five days a week, while they failed to do even a mediocre job of protecting her or following their own policies. The lack of predictability, reliability, and safety were major concerns. The only thing predictable about sending my child out that door each day was that, at some point, I was going to get a call about some kid doing some thing to my child. Again.

I'm quite certain that having parents regaining control of their children's lives scares some people in this country to their very cores. Independent thinkers? Oh my. People like that are so much more difficult to control and manipulate, and they tend not to believe everything they're told. They ask questions. That could be bad for those who wish to maintain control over the masses.

The New York Times article, Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools throws out a real golden nugget of revelation with the statement, "Kids mean money." Wow, really? Anyone with a functioning brain above their stem realizes this as fact, but let's examine how this affects people on a personal level. The article attempts to make it sound like this is some kind of proof that K12 has profits over kids in mind, but I challenge any parent in any school district to take a good hard look and tell me if that isn't true for bricks and mortar schools - to a much greater degree. At public school, my child contributed thousands of dollars each year just by existing there. To her personally, that translated into a sub-standard school environment, heavily-used books and materials, and parents contributing a lot of time and money from our own pockets. On the other hand, I enrolled my children in K12, and I had 100 pounds of brand new school supplies delivered to my door. Free. Yes, free. We paid nothing. I had to go buy a bookshelf to dedicate to just the books, CDs, and DVDs alone, and I had to clear an entire cabinet in the kitchen for all of the science materials, paints, clay, and other materials. And comparatively speaking, my children cost taxpayers much less as homeschoolers than they would if they had continued to attend our local public schools.

The article presents another epic failure of an argument with this little gem: "Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students." Here's a newsflash: any form of education requires strong parental commitment. Whether a child is attending a bricks and mortar school, an online school, a private school, or a traditional homeschool, parental involvement is the number one factor in a child's success. Uninvolved parents who do not participate in their child's education can turn the brightest child with the greatest potential for success into an academic failure with zero motivation, and it happens all the time in public schools.

I'm quite tired of parents being painted as morons who are incapable of contributing to their children's academic success. An Agora teacher paints a profoundly biased picture with the statement, "When you have the television and the Xbox and no parental figure at home, sometimes it’s hard to do your schoolwork." First of all, we don't even own a game console. Second, my children have never been left alone in their lives. And finally, K12 kids are assessed regularly. If they are not making it, there is accountability. We are responsible for making sure our children are progressing; there is not the huge disconnect portrayed in the article. Further, they quote a mother, Mrs. Ubiarco, as saying, "I called the teacher the other day to find out what a simple predicate is...She said it’s the verb. I said why don’t they just say that?" To this I say, wow. You needed to call a teacher for that? Try Google. Better yet, that handy little teacher's guide you get with every course might be helpful, too. The New York Times apparently left out all of the many successful examples of K12 students and found a handful of disgruntled teachers, and a few parents who use videogames to babysit their children, don't know how to tell their child to put the iPod away, and manage their time very poorly to represent our online school. Bias much?

Of our attendance requirements, the same Agora teacher who made the Xbox comment said, "Students need simply to log in to be marked present for the day." While it is true that K12 is not sending someone to the door of each and every homeschooled student each day to be sure each child has pencil to paper, the academic progress and assessments speak for themselves. A child who is not "attending" regularly is not going to meet standards, plain and simple.

And then, because you can't have any good, irrational anti-homeschool argument without bringing the topic of "socialization" into it, the deputy superintendent of Memphis City Schools, Irving Hamer, offered the following: “The early development of children requires lots of interaction with other children for purposes of socialization, developing collaboration and teamwork, and self-definition." Fascinating. Children couldn't possibly garner these skills from, say, Scouts, homeschool co-ops, neighborhood children, friends of the family, siblings, K12's field trips and other opportunities for social development, community sports or classes, or anywhere other than public school? I'd like to inquire as to when children are obtaining these wonderful social skills in school; would it be on the playground, the school bus, or in the lunch room? As far as my personal experience tells me, those are basically the only times children are doing any socializing in bricks and mortar schools - and it is largely unsupervised and where most bullying takes place. Ah, but Mr. Hamer's pompous assertions probably shouldn't surprise me, since a quick Google search revealed that he handles people who disagree with his policies by telling them to "go flip burgers". Nice. I think I'll pass on any social advice he proffers, particularly since Mr. Hamer's degree is in education and not child psychology.

The article (yes, it's quite lengthy) goes on to say that schools like K12 have "aggressive recruitment campaigns". I prefer to view them as awareness campaigns, which are rather necessary with anti-homeschool propaganda such as the New York Times article that prompted this blog post. K12 and schools like it do try to provide many informative opportunities for parents who have been brainwashed into believing that they cannot contribute much to their child's education beyond buying school clothes and supplies, and joining the PTA. Parents need to become aware of how much they really mean to their children in terms of learning and education. I cannot begin to count how many times people say to me, upon learning that I homeschool two advanced learners, "I could never do that." My response is always the same, "Yes, you absolutely could." Any parent with the time and desire to teach their child can teach their child. K12 has amazing teacher support. You are never alone. But public schools do everything they can to convince you that homeschooled children will be socially-awkward, poorly educated nitwits who will never go on to college. K12 has students go on to Harvard. But those students were not included in the Times article. I'd laugh at how utterly ridiculous the Times article is, if I didn't know so many people really believe that.

Is K12 perfect? No. But it's lightyears ahead of bricks and mortar schools in every way, in my opinion. Nothing is perfect. This is a relatively new concept and there will be bumps. Overall, I think this is a wonderful thing. There will always be naysayers who don't like change or who are just too uninformed to make any kind of judgment about this type of education. As for the New York Times, I'm not (nor was I ever) sure why people give that rag so much credibility. The reporting is poor and biased, the stories are highly sensationalized, and I wouldn't use that publication to line my cat's litter pan.

Celebrities and Bullying

The new fashionable trend in Hollywood these days is the statement, "I was bullied in school, too." At first, this appeared to be a good thing. When celebrities talk, people listen. But now? Now people are saying to themselves, "Meh, everyone gets bullied. So what?" This celebrity bullying bandwagon has served to take the anti-bullying movement, which had gone from meh, everyone gets bullied to a growing awareness of a serious problem, right back to meh.

When I was dealing with some serious bullying issues as a kid, my mother told me a billion times how this celebrity was ridiculed about big lips, and that ones was teased for her height. "But look at them now! They got the last laugh," she would say. Thing was, I had exactly zero interest in celebrities, being a celebrity, or anything celebrities did. I didn't care what they were wearing, what they looked like, how much money they had, or how many people wanted to be like them. I never understood people who fawned over celebrities, and I still don't. So my mother's well-intended sharing this information with me basically accomplished nothing more than convincing me that she had no idea what I was going through and no clue who I was as a person. At all.

While I am probably a statistically significant exception to the rule on my opinion of celebrities, or lack thereof, I realize these idols do have the power to influence parents and young people. I'm glad they are trying to do something, even if it is just to look fashionable. Thing is, if getting teased about my name was my biggest issue, I wouldn't call it bullying. I want to hear from the celebrity who was bullied to the point their life was significantly altered, or they actually attempted suicide over it. Those celebrities exist, but they are few. And the impact of severe bullying tends to be lifelong; the shame of repeated abuse over years and years sticks with a person to the point they may be unwilling to share, even to help someone else. That is the sad, scary reality for many children and teens these days.

I have been thankful beyond words more times than I can count that I didn't have to grow up in the age of the internet, cell phones, texting, cell phone cameras, and so forth. It is the introduction of these technologies that makes it more critical than ever for bullying prevention to be implemented by everyone caring for children at every age and in every part of a child's life. Parents, teachers, school administrators, and individuals working in the school transportation departments all need to come together to make and enforce anti-bullying policies. Bullying is extremely serious, and it goes so far beyond name-calling or taking someone's lunch money. Children can be cruel, and teachers can be bullies, accomplices, or perpetrators as well. Childhood should be a time of innocence and healthy development. Bullying, abuse by one's peers or teachers, can destroy a child's chance at having that innocence or healthy development, and it can ruin their chances of academic success as well.

This topic is easy to turn away from if you are not directly affected. But don't. We shouldn't allow ourselves to become numb to the pain and suffering children are enduring on a daily basis when bullies turn their school days into a terrifying, demoralizing, abusive nightmare. Forget celebrities, because they make it easy to forget the lives ruined by bullying. The suicides. The high school drop outs. The ones who might have found the cure for cancer, who instead gave up and wanted nothing more to do with education because they associated learning with pain and misery and could never trust people again. The ones living with nightmares, even as adults, because of their tormented childhood years. Bullying is no less devastating than any other form of child abuse, and it absolutely must stop now. The only way that happens is if we all come together and stand against bullying. There is no excuse for abuse.

Bullying and Bullicide: A National Epidemic

According to the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, 1 in 10 high school students report at least one suicide attempt, and about 1 in 4 has seriously considered it. Let that resonate for a moment. Think about your typical high school classroom of approximately 20 students. Two of them have actually made an attempt to end their lives. The statistics are even more dismal for LGBT youth, 30% of whom report having attempted suicide at least once in the past year.



Ashlynn Conner, a smart, beautiful 10 year-old honor student who aspired to be a veterinarian when she grew up, made headlines last week. It wasn't for her academic success or achievement, or the type of news clipping she might frame and look back on through the years; after enduring bullying for two years and being told by her mother that she could not be homeschooled, Ashlynn decided to end her own life. While every story of a bullied child turning to suicide as an option is devastating, this one has left me chilled to the core. She was a little girl. Ashlynn was just two years older than my own daughter. I try to wrap my head around the idea of a child so young carrying such a heavy burden on her shoulders that she went as far as to end her life. No child deserves that. Her story has made me more determined than ever to do what I can to stand against bullying and encourage others to do the same.

Another young girl, 14 year-old Cheyanne of Ohio, endured verbal abuse and bullying by her teacher and teacher aid. What makes this even more troubling is that Cheyanne is developmentally disabled and these adults were the ones responsible for her education and safety during the school day.

While my own children are not in a bricks and mortar school, and some might think it would be easy for me to turn my back on the problem happening in public schools, I realize it is up to all of us to come together and turn this epidemic around. The effects of bullying can be lifelong, life-altering, or even life-ending. As the adults in this society, we all have the responsibility of ensuring the safety of our children. Just because bullying is a form of abuse perpetrated by other children, it is no more acceptable to ignore it than it would be to ignore obvious abuse of a child by an adult. Abuse is abuse, and it scars just the same. Too many people choose to turn away from this epidemic until it affects them personally, and saying nothing is essentially a quiet acceptance and granting of permission to the perpetrators of bullying; bullies realize that there are no guaranteed consequences for their actions, because most of it goes unpunished.

Not every parent can take their child out of public schools, and really, they should not need to. My daughter, a kind, compassionate child who cannot comprehend why all people cannot just be friends, was a victim of bullying during Kindergarten and first grade at our local elementary school. She was verbally harassed, spat on, and pelted in the face with snowballs to the point of injury. Responses appeared to be more to placate than to solve the actual problem. The district loosely followed its own guidelines on handling the bullying, and I suspect that the less than optimal results we got were only as good as they were because of my determined persistence.

I do not entirely blame the schools, however. Bullying has long been viewed as a fact of life for school-age children, and the extremely broad spectrum of types and degrees of bullying behavior allows even more disconnect because people tend to assume most bullying is of the garden variety and much less severe and impactful than it actually is.

So what are we to do? First and foremost, prevention starts at home; after all, parents have the greatest impact on their children. Sadly, even concerned parents too often consider bullying a fact of school life or a "harmless" rite of passage. Statistics on bullicide, suicide resulting from bullying, say otherwise. And there are the parents who believe that their child should become the bully, which will protect him or her by default. There is also the growing threat of technology as a bullying tool, which is like giving bullies super powers. It is more important than ever to take every preventive measure we can. Lives depend on it, as Ashlynn and so many others illustrate.

And yet, in some places right here in the United States, we're going backwards. Michigan's senate recently passed legislation called Matt's Safe School Law, which actually allows bullying for religious or moral reasons. This means that a bully can excuse his or her abuse of another peer as long as it can be justified within the parameters of supposed morality, as defined by the new legislation. In response to this, Michigan Democratic Senate Leader Sen. Gretchen Whitmer said, "This is worse than doing nothing."

If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. There is no middle ground. If we pretend this doesn't exist, if we ignore it because it has not touched our lives personally or we hope our children will outgrow this phase, we are just as guilty as the bullies perpetrating the abuse. We are the example, and we are the solution. Schools are responsible for the children in their halls and classrooms and on their playgrounds for a substantial portion of the day. No child should be terrified to go to school, or end up robbed of a decent education because their school days make them sick with anxiety and fear. Likewise, parents cannot expect the schools to shoulder all of the responsibility for properly "socializing" their children. This is a joint effort, and I cannot stress enough the importance of creating a safe environment for our children to grow and learn. The effects of bullying can last a lifetime.

Talk. Whether you are dealing with a bullying situation already underway, or you are trying to prevent one, talking to your child is key.

Don't judge. Even if you think you aren't judging, you might be. Don't ever tell your child that bullying is "no big deal", or that they should be quick enough to fight back. By doing this, you diminish their experience and fail to fully understand what they are going through. This could burn the bridge of communication between you.

Listen. Once bullying starts, listening is more important than talking. If you are busy telling your child that bullying is a part of life or that "it's not a big deal", you are completely invalidating your child's experience and missing critical details that could potentially save your child's life. Hear them out. Ask them what they would like to change, and how they might like you to help them. Create a dialogue by asking more questions than you try to answer. And make sure you are listening attentively. Listening with your back to your child while you do the dishes is not listening.

Know your school district's bullying policies. Be familiar with them so you know your rights in the event you need to know your rights. Most student policies are listed on district websites and are easily accessible to the parents and students in the district.

Consider joining the PTA/PTO and raising the issue of bullying prevention, or go further and try to get a group of parents together to start a school anti-bullying program.

Encourage your school district to adopt a program where children learn social skills. With autism spectrum disorders being diagnosed at an increasing rate, there are many children who need additional help with social skills even if their diagnosis does not qualify them for special education or other school-based interventions. In fact, all children can benefit from being taught social skills. We can no more expect that putting children together in a group will prepare them to do well socially than we can expect that putting them in a kitchen with unprepared foods will teach them how to cook like a professional chef. Guidance must be provided. If children cannot cope socially, neither can they learn or succeed academically.

Know that bullying starts shockingly young. Don't dismiss a child who says she is being bullied in preschool. It does happen, and it can be a traumatic way to begin one's school years. Having confidence and support during those early years is critical to how your child will view the rest of their school years and education in general.

To learn more about bullying, especially in the age of technology, I encourage you to watch Bullying: Words Can Kill, a CBS News 48 Hours Special

The Cats of Mirikitani

Tonight, thanks to a recommendation by a friend, I watched a documentary film (I love documentaries) called The Cats of Mirikitani. It was beautiful. I shared it with my daughter, who wasn't about to let me watch it without her anyhow.

The story chronicles a Japanese-American man, Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, who spent time in an internment camp here in the United States during WWII. He becomes homeless on the streets of NYC, and in the wake of September 11th, a woman who was following his story as a homeless artist takes him into her home. My comments and thoughts on it don't really do it justice; it's such an incredible story about people and history. Really, I can't put words to it.

Netflix has The Cats of Mirikitani available via their Instant watching option, so if you have a membership you can watch it right now from your computer. You won't regret it.