Category: Who’s the mom here?

Posted in Believe it or not!, Good ol' days, Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

The Last of the Unsupported Homeschoolers

Posted on by Katharine

Growing old in home school!We were homeschoolers when homeschool wasn’t cool.

We had no support because there was no such thing as a homeschool support group.

We started about the same time as Home School Legal Defense Association started, but they and we did not know about each other, so we also had no legal support.

Internet was only a child, then, and had not maximized its potential to help homeschoolers. Computers had no practical applications in home schools.

All, all the curriculum available to us was published for collective schools and some publishers refused to sell to home educators.

Back in these very good, old days, only the driven, committed, principled, loyal, persevering, stubborn, maverick, determined, motivated, obsessed, dedicated, devoted, steadfast, unswerving, faithful, home educating parents survived. We had somewhat of a reputation for being a pain, especially among status-quo legislators.

Many of us could relate to the Washington/Jefferson/Adams triumvirate, always questioned by those around us and always questioning ourselves, testing ourselves, proving ourselves.

Always hunted and attacked by the government that claimed to protect us.

Always in semi-hiding.

Always ready with an escape plan.

Always losing money on this project.

Always making do with do-by-self.

We faced obstacles, penalties, hindrances, impediments, barriers, hurdles, deterrents, limitations, and interference.

We were hated.

We were arrested.

I guess it’s the American way.

Now that home educating is the bright star that it has become, and we have retired after a quarter century of it, people want our opinions.

  • What curriculum do I think is best? Pick one you like and get busy.
  • What is my child’s learning style? Lazy and stubborn. What about yours?
  • Do I homeschool during summer? All parents homeschool at all times.
  • Do I think you’re harming your child? Probably, but better you, than someone who doesn’t care.
  • What do I do about socialization? I talk to my child; I teach my child; I read to my child.
  • What about computers? Teach your children to read, spell, write legibly, and type, and to love English, first, in that order. No computers allowed until high school and no Internet until the last half of the senior year.

Does all that sound harsh to you?

Does it sound grumpy?

You will not get a marshmallow answer from a homeschool-callused person.

We did not plant our homeschool garden with a tractor, but with a shovel and a hoe.

We did not have curriculum choice unless we wrote the curriculum, so we did.

I beg you, for your own and your children’s sakes, pick one you like and get busy.

Posted in Believe it or not!, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom, Wives, Womanhood

The Boundary Around My Pond

Posted on by Katharine
Another view of the pond
Another view of the icy pond

Boundaries are wonderful. Without them we could not have ponds. No ponds, no fish. Yes, we like boundaries. I think the fish do, too.

One boundary we think we don’t welcome is the womb. Wombs are wonderful. Without them we could not have babies. I think the babies like them, too.

But we ignore what we know is true and we violate that quiet, safe place for our growing babies, every day. Over 3000 times per day. It is impossible to violate our own bodies and our children’s lives the way we do, and still feel human.

Look at this:

In Pennsylvania, they’ve found a physician/abortionist who has made a profession and a large fortune from violating the boundaries of our wombs. How did he do it? By accepting payment in cash, not reporting his earnings, storing his money at home instead of in a bank, not disposing of bio-hazards, not sterilizing equipment, not providing gowns for patients, and barely paying staff.

Oh, and he sold drugs on the side. Cash, only, please.

More than half the people who went into his “clinic” died. You know, all the babies died, and several of the moms, too. It was just like the good ol’ days, minus the coat hanger. “Safe and rare”, my foot.

The only good thing about it, if it can be called good, is the wording the Philadelphia reporter, Stephanie Farr, used as she wrote her detailed report about Dr. Gosnell’s goings on:

“How many severed baby spines does it take to pay for a $984,000 shore house? How many severed infant feet is a boat worth?”

I am glad she said it that way. I don’t know how she had the nerve to write this truth in such big newspaper, nor how she got by with it, but there it was, on the Internet, for all to see. For all to think about. For all to try to grasp.

Not only does abortion mistreat women; it mistreats babies, violates wombs, ignores boundaries.

And it can turn us into monsters.

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Same Song, Second Verse; It’s Worse.

Posted on by Katharine

Continued from the 18th.

The last time hopeless ideas about homeschool hit the legislature, anyone trained in logic could see: it was not logic. In fact, Arkansas lawyer, Dee Black, of Home School Legal Defense Association, dubbed it, “one of the most blatant  . . . ever seen.” This new piece, hoping to take its place and succeed where it failed, is just as bad. It is “Big Brother” by definition, regardless of the home-school facet of it. It looks—and is—very much like the worst of Hitler or Marx. If he were alive today, you could just ask Einstein. He knew when it was time to leave the German schools and had to flee Germany to do it.

This proposal does not affect only bad schools or bad homes. Any school, however good or bad, can become a target for danger, these days, as Columbine and Nickel Mines proved. Any parent, however good or bad, could desperately need to override the notification date for removing children. The facts are: YOU, Dear Taxpayer, wherever and whoever YOU are, could find YOURSELF desperately and immediately needing to remove YOUR child from school on some date that does not correspond with the August or December deadlines.

When we do insert the home-school element, though, we realize a truth proposed by world-famous author, George Orwell: it seems some of us are more equal than others, aren’t we! Look: if you have the funds to access a private school situation for your child, you may withdraw your child at any time. You retain your freedoms. If you are short on discretionary funds—who isn’t these days?—then you will lose your freedom. And that fact, the fact that only the wealthy Arkansan may have permission to protect his children in Arkansas, is unconscionable.

It makes sense that as an Arkansas taxpayer and American citizen, I should demand equal protection for my school-aged children. It makes sense that a parent should demand the freedom to remove his child from a dangerous situation. It makes sense that the law should trust a parent’s word—how much more that of a psychiatrist, pediatrician, lawyer, or other neutral professional practicing in his own profession!

No decision regarding the safety of a child should depend upon the financial situation of the parent.

No decision regarding the safety of a child should depend upon the financial situation of the state school.

You know, it also makes a sort of perverted sense that a hireling, teacher-lobbyist group, would ask us not to trust the child’s medical, psychological, or legal professionals, but only the teachers.

It does NOT make sense for us to trust the word of a member of a tax-funded near-monopoly. Of course, they think their situation better than yours! Of course, they want more power over your home! Of course, they-and-only-they can know or care about what is best for your child.

But you pay their salaries.

The end.

Pleae forward the contents of this post to everyone you know living in Arkansas. Thanks.

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?

We Told Them so Many Times!

Posted on by Katharine

Continued from yesterday:

They think you and I do not know when our children should come home. That’s what it’s about. Yes, Arkansas legislators are wasting time and money arguing with parents about whether or not we know anything, where we want our children to be all day, whether or not the idea of being at home is harmful to children.

A new piece of legislation, rebounding off a similar piece instigated in the past by David Cook, manages to insinuate that if the child wants to exit the school during a time of illness, stress, or danger, then the home must be bad, antagonistic, even hazardous. How insulting to all homeschoolers! How insulting to all parent, to all homes!

And if it should happen that the home is truly bad, they say, then we need more new laws to enlist the help of the public schools to protect the child from the home situation.

That is a lie.

Arkansas law already provides protection for such children, in that it provides the Department of Human Services (DHS). And the law, by providing mandated reporters, even provides that educators play a part in this protection.

Educators argue that the DHS never does anything, so, they do not want to call on them.

No, they do not want to call DHS. They want to be DHS. They want to be judge, jury, and jailer for any child who, in their opinion comes from an inappropriate home, regardless of—and by that I mean: completely disregarding—the inappropriateness of conditions inside the jail.

The teachers’ opinion, their judgment that the home is invalid, they tell us, finds its basis in innuendo and gossip from in-laws, only, and not in any type of home case study. Oh, and in the desire to homeschool.

Think for a moment! Forget homeschooling. Would YOU want your child’s future based on what your in-laws say about you? ME NEITHER!

But let’s back up a bit here. Do teachers actually want to do anything about the home situation, based upon fact, or upon existing laws? No, they are quite happy to leave things alone, quite happy to forget the home situation after 3:00 p.m., as long as they have that child (and I must add, the accompanying tax moneys) for a few hours.

Never mind where the bus takes the child afterward.

People who have qualms about allowing children to be in bad homes should become social workers, not teachers. Social service personnel who have qualms about entering or overseeing bad homes would make better teachers.

Or maybe, what we really need is law-abiding people who would mind—I mean, truly pay attention to—their own business, in both professions.

And, maybe, just maybe, if teachers, as mandated reporters, were upholding their end of the law, their students would not be so prone to breaking it. Now wouldn’t that make a difference!

Arkansas does not need one more law to give anyone any more power over our homes, our children’s homes, or our grandchildren’s homes. What Arkansas needs are effective penalties for dealing with public servants who refuse to obey the already-existing laws.

Any presumed problems this proposal might pretend to address would better find solution in complete reformation of public schools and complete reformation of the Department of Human Services.

Please forward this to everyone you know who lives in Arkansas.

Posted in Believe it or not!, Home School, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Arkansas Freedom

Posted on by Katharine

Homeschool freedom or this?Americans want several things from their government. We expect freedom. We expect protection. We work hard for them.

Although most of the people in the entire world homeschooled at one time, the current, popular, en masse return to homeschooling began in America.

This is the do-by-self country. American parents have always grabbed any challenge that might improve things for their children.

Today’s homeschool is American, transcending all barriers, and the school choice of the parents of one-third of our presidents. It is one big expression of the American way. (Two million strong, now.)

Americans in Arkansas, however, have had to fight harder for this way. In some states, few raise an eyebrow at parents desiring to provide the education. In Arkansas, though, parents struggle to stay one step ahead of their legislators. It seems a case of the government attacking the citizens instead of protecting them.

We’re gearing up for battle again, beating back the legislators again (in spare time we want to spend on our kids.) A new proposal is poised to posture itself before the legislature, wasting yet more time and money on hopes for a bill no one wants. Again.

This proposal aims at curtailing our freedom and undermining the privileges and obligations inherent to parenthood.

Lest you think you should yawn at another homeschool gripe, this proposal, if enacted, would make the state the mom, even if you never plan to homeschool.

Especially if you never plan to homeschool.

The time to wake up is now.

Imagine, if you can, your small daughter blood-spattered and traumatized, from seeing classmates and teachers murdered at school, and forbidden to stay home because someone on the school payroll deemed the home (THE HOME!) an unsafe place.

And never mind the child’s own psychologist has prescribed removal from the school situation.

Our new proposal sets this scenario.

Or perhaps your son has refused to “do” a classmate in the locker room. He has been kicked in the lower back repeatedly with a steel-toed boot, is urinating blood, and forbidden to stay home because someone on the school payroll deemed it just not timely.

Never mind the child’s own pediatrician demands removal from school.

The new proposal sets these parameters.

Or try this idea: Your child tells you the most exciting thing he learned in school today is how to put a condom on a dead bird.

Or your mother is near death and your children want to be beside her as much as possible while they still can.

Or your child has MS and must nap daily and eat five times daily and it’s not happening when he’s at school. Not only that, but because his speech is difficult to understand, he is left to sit at his desk and educate himself by reading a dictionary all day, every day.

Or your daughter is receiving sexual threats and her only instructions from school staff?—to kick the bully between the legs.

These things all have occurred in Arkansas schools. Of course, children everywhere are molested, accosted, assaulted, threatened, harassed, or raped while at school. At almost every school. Even the “good” ones.

But in Arkansas schools we would have no recourse.

Even if the children in the above situations were to be excused from attending, in the future Arkansas that we discuss today, it could be after a three-week waiting period.

How can it be that a child could be forced to remain in such a dangerous and dehumanizing situation for three weeks, while grown-ups deliberate about whether or not to allow his removal?

How can the main questions be whether or not the parents need daytime supervision and what the date is!

How can this be happening to Arkansas’ children!

It simply must not be.

Please forward this post to everyone you know living in Arkansas.

More tomorrow.

Posted in Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Womanhood

Attitude? Awareness? Vision? How Can a Tutor Know?

Posted on by Katharine

Needing glassesI used to tutor.

Once, a young mother came to me for help with her first-grader daughter. The girl had been in a private school and was producing perfect work, daily, but on the following days, she seemingly knew nothing from the day before. Everyone was puzzled. The mom had heard about home schooling, found my phone number on a poster, and thought I’d know something the girl’s teachers did not.

Scary scenario!

However, I’d recently received a copy of a learning styles test a friend had written, and thought that with it, and with private tutoring, perhaps I could discover something an overworked teacher had missed.

The child was sweet, bright, and eager. This was going to be fun. I gave the mom a copy of the test to fill out at home, since she probably knew her daughter better than anyone else. I began carefully disguised check-ups of the girl’s reading and math skills.

She was a puzzling bundle. She could know something one moment, then know nothing the next. We read from an early reader, and she would do very well after I told her almost every word. I wondered—was she guessing? Memorizing?

The learning style test had come back showing her to be a visual learner. She ought to love reading.

I turned to the back of the reader, and showed her vocabulary lists placed there for the teacher. I pointed to a word from our day’s reading, and asked her what it was. That’s when everything became clear.

“Oh, Ms Kathy! I could never read that word; it’s too little for me to see it.”

Dear me. A visual learner who cannot see. Of course. She was, indeed bright enough to memorize each day’s lesson, but had inadvertently missed learning to read.

That day, she and I made huge yarn letters together, one per page of construction paper, and did copy work on the board with letters one foot tall. Immediately she knew what was going on and began making enormous progress.

When her mom came to pick her up that day, I asked her if either she or her husband had vision problems. She said they both had trouble seeing much of anything, that their vision was corrected with contacts of a strong prescription.

I told her, “I think your little girl cannot see. I think that is the basis of the problem, plus missing out on the foundations of reading readiness.”

We both had tears in our eyes that day, and eventually the girl received her first pair of glasses. I lost that tutoring job soon afterward, but the joy of helping such a needy one, so quickly, was compensation enough for me.

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Home School, Homemaking, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Scream Carrot Gardening and How to Stay Alive

Posted on by Katharine

In the summer, we still teach our children. You know we teach them all the time, right?

Really fresh carrots

One summer, we were all out in the garden learning about how hard carrots can be to pull up. It was fun, though, a sort of tug-o-war between children and carrots, with Mom along to man the shovel if the tops broke off.

So many Bible lessons happen in the garden. We constantly show them how well the weeded plants grow, compared to the weedy ones. They know a beet seedling from a pigweed seedling, although they so resemble each other.

And the buckets of rocks!

They have learned to love harvesting their own snacks straight from the garden, like a small, perfectly sun-ripened tomato, rubbed until shiny and popped into the mouth to dribble everywhere while quenching thirst. They know a small packet of seeds can make all those jars of wonderful food in the basement.

The most important lessons the garden teaches, though, is that when Mom says you have to do something, whether you like it or not, you have to do it. This lesson, in a grown child and transferred to other authorities, can protect job security.

In a young child, it can save a life or limb.

Most dangers in life are unexpected. We can teach endlessly and still miss the lesson that will be needed tomorrow. This was the case, one day.

My son, another fearless one, about age twelve, had managed to extract one carrot that housed a curiously beautiful spider in its stems. He brought it to me to see its beauty and I’m sure my eyes widened.

“Drop it!” I ordered.

He looked at me, saw my face matched my tone, and obeyed. Today I still think about it. He was happy with his find, happy in his boldness, and probably happy in anticipation of sharing and of my praise. What a big deal to older brother, to turn loose of this happiness! But he did it.

And that day, the garden yielded up the lessons of the black widow spider. God’s protection, parents’ obligation to protect children, children’s obligation to obey, and the continuing obligation for all to “FEAR NOT!”—all those lessons and more came from our garden that day.

And I am not afraid, but I still shudder. His right hand was two inches from destruction.

But God can fit inside two inches.

Last story in this series here!