Looking back: My kids' perspective

I posed the following question to each of my kids:

Now that you are done homeschooling what do you think of it?

My son, age 20 said, "I love that I was homeschooled, but if I knew then what I know now, I may have requested private school for high school".  He felt that he would have had an easier transition time into college if he was forced to have a more stringent time in high school, both socially and academically.  He added however, "at the time, you couldn't have gotten me to go to any formal school though, so I don't know how that would have worked".  I will add here that elementary school was traumatic and he still hadn't gotten over it by the time he started 9th grade.

My daughter, age 18 said, "I am glad that I was homeschooled, but it is not for everyone.  I believe it was best for me though and what I needed".  She added, "I feel like every homeschooler should have some kind of community though, like a high school program (co-op, hybrid program, arts program) that they stick with the entire time so they have pretty much the same friend group year in and year out.  Otherwise the only friends I would have had would have been my mother, my mother, my mother, my brother, and my mother."  She has a lot of homeschooling friends and feels the ones that are happier were a part of a bigger group.  I will add that she is the child that the schools wanted on Ritalin and we instead chose to homeschool her. She had never had ADHD medication, and has been allowed to mature into and cope with her hyperactivity (she was never had the other symptoms) rather than be drugged out of it.

From my point of view, I would have made a few tweaks here and there knowing now what I know then, but at the end of the day, I am proud and glad we homeschooled, and wouldn't trade the relationship with my kids for anything!

I can use some help promoting my other blog

So, while I was homeschooling, I also worked from home as content writer for numerous websites.  When the economy went bad several things happened:

1st: Web writing became popular and I noticed a glut of new available writers began to lower the amount of money I could make on my articles.

2nd: The writing on the web became bad. All the new writers in the market resulted in quite a lot of poorly written articles.

3rd: The web revolted.  Good in particular thought up PANDA which resulted in "Content Mills" as they were called being being penalized.

This all resulted in a long slow decent of the industry.

It seems the final foot has fallen, and Yahoo has closed Yahoo Content Network and Yahoo Voices.

The good news is that they returned my 1800+ articles to me.  They didn't have to, but they did. (I've been writing for them since 2006.) So here's where I could use some help.  I am creating a blog/website to feature all of my best articles. I am letting the duds die!  (When you write that many articles, you regret a few.) In time I plan to add other writers, ... just a few, don't want to anger Google! But for now, I need readers for my articles to get them back in circulation!  Take a peek, and if you like what you see, please share it.

Thank you.

We Don't Need Feminism?

My daughter goes to a women's college, and I noticed when stalking Pinterest images related to the school, a campaign for feminism.  It looks like this:

and this

and this.

As I matter of fact, I had to work really hard to find some that didn't straight out say "I need feminism because I was raped or molested, or assaulted, and no one cared", but could not. .  If I was to sum up the gist of the majority of the captions, they said: "I need feminism because my rights to my own

If they only had the time... seeking alternate homeschooling ideas

There would be a whole lot more homeschoolers if more parents only had the time.  Based on the messages I receive regularly there are oodles of oodles of single parents who desperately want to homeschool their kids, but there's that little pesky problem called work that keeps getting in the way.

One of my very best friends has managed to homeschool her kids due to perfect timing of ages, and a moderate amount of flexibility in her job.  But most parents can't get together either the smallest amount luck and flexibility and family support to get it done.

That leaves parents asking the question, (the most recent email I've received) asking where to find certified teachers that would take on 4-5 kids.... because they want their kids to be part of that group.  The problem is that they are few and far apart.

Before we started homeschooling, my husband asked the same questions.  He knew we could not afford a private teacher, but felt that surely we could split the cost of a teacher or two among a couple families... but that never happened. I did it solo in the end, and I am happy with our journey.

However, like I said there are many parents who need help because they don't have the time to do the job themselves, or the support people in their family to help them.  At one point, I thought that this is what I wanted to do with my life after homeschooling, but I really don't think I am equipped to be the teacher... I could coordinate, but not teach.

I know there is an answer, but it would take a bit of coordination to figure it out... to find qualified and safe teachers... to provide oversight for safety.... to provide a place where parents could drop off kids while they are at work, and have them taught individually and corporately in as small a group as humanly possible... but in the end, we are doing school again, because once homeschooling leaves the home, it becomes a school again, and so many parents are stuck.

What to do... what to do?