Not Another Homeschool Blog

When kids contact me through social media, it is usually with the intention of getting ammunition to convince their parents to let them homeschool. Clearly, I am pro-homeschooling, but I am not so much for kids leading the charge to homeschool.  I mean, I'm kind of impressed with kids who bring it up, but homeschooling isn't the children's responsibility, it is the parents. The parent must put in hours each week into looking at curriculum, instructing, checking work, and keeping records.  Homeschooling is as much as a chore for the parent as the kid. The is why the parent must lead the charge to homeschooling, and not the child. In celebrity news, Rapper/personality T.I. had an argument with his teenage son about homeschooling.  When asked how school went the child said "school sucks" but homeschooling would not... WRONG!  Homeschooling a child who hated school is darn near impossible.  Once he gets his freedom he will not go back. In the argument, T.I. told...

I am annoyed by reports of a Utah School  doctoring yearbook photos to show less skin. My reasons: 1. The school district admittedly applied the rule unevenly. 2. The original pictures were fine, for the most part. 3. I dare say not one boy's photo was doctored. 4. Cleavage is one thing, but shoulders?  That is taking it too far. I realize my stance my be unpopular, but it often is, and I am ok with that. But I feel like we cross the line in asking our girls to be modest... and push the barriers into shaming girls for just being girls.  While I practiced modesty with my daughter from her pre-teen years through now, adulthood (18th birthday coming up), I don't believe in telling girls that some guy seeing a glimpse of an ankle or a (gasp) arm, is going to cause some guy to stumble in his faith. Meanwhile guys get to run around completely shirtless, and girls are expected to have no reaction?  I am sick of the double standard.  In encouraging (not dema...

 I had a rough childhood for a lot of reasons. The short of it is that being in a combined family Brady-Bunch situation seldom is the thing that children remember fondly. By biggest beef with my childhood is that people just. didn't. listen.  To anything. You were a child. You were to be seen when it was convenient. You were not to be heard. You were not to feel. You were not to complain. Now I dare say that my upbringing was better than that of our parents, who were allowed even less freedom of thought and action. I.e. we were fed and clothed well. We had all the educational opportunities they could provide. So as far as they were concerned, they were doing a bang-up job.  But it did not feel good. At all. My brother, after staying with my family a couple of months proceeded to analyze my parenting style. He said, "I've noticed that you set out to NOT raise your kids the way we were raised... You accomplished that".  His comments were mostly complimentary. ...

Keeping in the theme of raising kids to be confident and secure, I want to talk about my kids' favorite sentence.   It is : You're right, and I'm wrong.   I've always thought it was the good and proper thing to say to a kid when it turned out that they were right, and I was wrong.  ... Because, well, it is the truth and they needed to be validated that they were in fact the correct and informed person in whatever conversation we were having. I guess I am pretty dense, because I thought everyone said these things to their kids (though I can count on two fingers the times my parents said it).  But I had a girl visiting with me, the daughter of someone very visible and quite spiritual, and she nearly fainted when she heard those words come from my mouth.  This child, about 12 at the time, turned to me and said, "what did you say?"  I repeated myself and she looked at me in wide-eyed amazement.  "Parents don't have to say that," she said.  W...