In Which My Religious Beliefs Take a Turn, And Natural Family Life Takes Precedence

There's a quiz called the Belief'O'Matic that you can take to sort out what religion or non religion seems to fit you best. I first took it a few years ago and my highest score was actually for Baha'i. I was about 50-60% Mormon. Now, not so much.

1.	Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.	Liberal Quakers (96%)
3.	Reform Judaism (89%)
4.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
5.	Neo-Pagan (79%)
6.	New Age (75%)
7.	Mahayana Buddhism (71%)
8.	Baha'i Faith (68%)
9.	New Thought (66%)
10.	Secular Humanism (64%)
11.	Jainism (64%)
12.	Orthodox Judaism (61%)
13.	Theravada Buddhism (61%)
14.	Sikhism (59%)
15.	Scientology (57%)
16.	Islam (55%)
17.	Orthodox Quaker (53%)
18.	Hinduism (51%)
19.	Taoism (47%)
20.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (45%)
21.	Nontheist (40%)
22.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (36%)
23.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (35%)
24.	Seventh Day Adventist (31%)
25.	Eastern Orthodox (27%)
26.	Roman Catholic (27%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (23%)

How did I get here, you might ask?

Well, first I'd like to let my in-laws know that I am not responsible for dragging Bryan into hopeless apostasy. He stopped going to church two years before I did. Don't turn around and blame him for me, though. Our religious paths have been very individual lately. We don't really talk about it much.

Secondly, it happened when I became a mother. Lots of things changed when I became a mother. Some people become more conservative when  they have children. I did not. I found myself suddenly saddened and sometimes horrified by things I used to believe in very deeply. I found myself crying when I tried to tell the story about Noah's Ark. I winced every time someone told my children we have to marry in the temple or else we can't be together in heaven. I found myself wondering why God's true church was only recognizable by about 0.05% of the world's population. Why is it so hard to feel God? Why is it so hard to know the difference between truth and non-truth?

But the thing that had the greatest impact on my faith was an experience that shattered it. Only a few of you know the main details and I really don't want to get into it publicly, but essentially we took a scary leap of faith because all the signs were pointing in one direction and even other people began telling us that a certain thing was something they felt like they should tell us to do, and we did it, and it blew up in our faces. And then suddenly I stopped feeling good when I prayed. I stopped feeling ANYTHING. For months. I don't feel like I was tested, I feel like I was tricked. The test was the leap of faith we took. We did it. Things got worse and went to hell. I felt abandoned.

Being "good" has never come easy to me. I've tried, though. I remember when I first started coming back to the LDS Church back in 1995. I had given up cigarettes, alcohol, drug experimentation, and sex. I was friends with a Returned Missionary whose company I really enjoyed. He brought me to dinner at his Bishop's house. They were not impressed with me. The Bishop's wife later told him that it was obvious that my priorities were backwards and that he should stop seeing me. For some reason he felt like telling me this. I was crushed. It already felt like everyone's eyes were on me whenever I walked into a chapel, like everyone could see every sinful thing I had ever done. Apparently I was right.

But I still tried.

I resisted all temptations for a year and became worthy to enter the LDS temple and receive my endowments. I became a stake missionary and went out with the sister missionaries every week almost without fail. I decided to go on a mission because I thought, that will undo all the things I've done in my life that made God unhappy with me. I had people tell me to my face and in letters that they thought I was going on an LDS mission to escape my responsibilities and that I wouldn't be able to do it. They were right. I developed a depression so deep that I've had it ever since. I now know it is chemical, but it came to me there, in France, under the Mediterranean sunshine. A leader came and told us that if we weren't having baptisms, it was our fault. I had one. Nothing I did changed that. I stopped sleeping and became so exhausting I could barely move. The truth had been confirmed to me - I was permanently lacking. I was officially not good enough.

I came home and became friends with a guy unofficially engaged to someone else. He became my best friend. We just got along in all ways. He broke up with his long-distance girlfriend and then started hinting that he wanted us to be more than friends. I was done with men, though. I was done with using my body to get affection. I was done with not using my body to secure approval. I told him every bad thing I had ever done. His answer was "so?"

Our first kiss was totally awkward because I still saw him as just a friend. Our second one was better. Our third one was freakin' awesome.

I married my virgin husband in a Mormon temple on December 4, 1999. It was like a giant slumber party every night, only with less clothes. Bryan and I have had PLENTY of problems and struggles. But we have always been buddies. We just get along for some reason. We're a laughing couple. We're a super giggly family.

Since my brain was broken and no medications or alternative therapies or counseling sessions were helping, I couldn't hold down a job and lost every church calling within two months. Every time I got a calling, I would tell them I was broken, and they would all say the same thing. "We prayed about it and we really feel strongly that this will work out." Weeks, occasionally months later I would get the inevitable "we'd like to release you." How could every bishop in every ward be so wrong? Why would God tell them I was going to be okay, over and over, just to have it verified to me a few weeks later that I was in fact inferior and insufficient? Even after I found the right medication, I was still woefully incapable of really doing a good job.

I thought I hit the jackpot when I worked for MyFamily.com because I was doing data entry part-time for a genealogy website. They need that to be accurate, right? I was two times slower than their slowest person. It didn't matter that I made next to zero mistakes. I was slow and I received bad review after bad review. I cried whenever I had to do a tombstone for a baby or young child. They got mad at me for being online all the time, even though it was a live video cam of guinea pigs I would keep up in the corner when I grew weary from entering too many dead babies. I was finally aware that they preferred that I quit.

Then my babies came.

I'm surprisingly well fit for babies and children.

We all need 11-12 hours of sleep each night. We're all afraid of the dark. We're all easily over stimulated and need lots of calm times and breaks in between spurts of fun throughout the day. We all get cranky if we don't get some outdoor time every day. None of us like to sit still for very long. We all prefer lots of small meals throughout the day instead of 3 large meals. We all like puppies and gardening. We hate schedules but love routines. We don't like people testing us or telling us what to do or putting more demands on us than we can handle. We have temper tantrums when we're tired.

So where does that leave me spiritually?

I am done feeling inadequate. I am done feeling rejected by God. But I still believe in God. I have felt His presence enough times in my life to know He is there. But I no longer accept a strict view of God with specific requirements for salvation.

I can't believe for one moment that I'm actually a better parent than God is. I would never kick all my kids out of the house and only relent after one of my kids decided to suffer and die. I would never tell my good kid to go kill my bad kid and his wife and children and livestock. I would never make my children talk to me through someone else on the phone. I would never drown my children for not obeying me. I would never create a cut off point for when it was no longer possible for my children to be forgiven and come home to me. None of this fills me with hope. It fills me with fear and a certain level of resentment.

So that's where I am right now. I thought I'd finally put that out there. Another LDS mama friend of mine who finally left the Church told me she felt like she had been deceived. I told her I didn't think so. I told her it was what she needed at the time. I love the Dalai Lama's teaching that the right church is the one that helps you become a compassionate person. If the church makes her angry now, it's not helping her anymore.

My LDS friends are not going to like that I said that. It's pretty damning to encourage apostasy. That's probably why I've waited so long to write this.

But, the unifying factor I have seen in the happiest families is not religion. Mormons are not more unified as couples or gentle with their children. Some are, some aren't.

The happiest couples and parents and children that I know across the board are the ones committed to natural family living. No joke. I've seen it all around me for years. The ones who see babies as whole beings with needs worth meeting. The ones who see mothering and fathering as fulfilling. The ones committed to social justice, treading softly on the earth, disciplining without coercion, they seem so much more peaceful to me.

Are they always? No. There's always exceptions. Look at us. Now that we have three kids and we're outnumbered, we're pretty crappy parents. We find ourselves pitting our wills against our children because we're outnumbered and its difficult to balance the needs of each child. But the overwhelming evidence is that the families we know that have the friendliest homes, whether Christian, Atheist, Jewish, Hindu, Unitarian, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Socialist, Gay, Straight, or Polygamist (yep - I know some polygamous/polyandrous partnerships), are the ones who embrace certain relationship ideas between their partners and their children.

I didn't intend for this to turn into an attachment parenting lecture. It didn't start out that way. I just really want my children to have a different upbringing than mine - one where they don't hate being home. That's my whole theme, my goal, my mission statement. I want my children to like "home." I want home to be a place of love and safety and serenity and creativity. I don't want a home of unquestioned authority, stress, or fear. That is how I have felt for many years in the LDS church. I want God and religion to be a blessing and source of hope for my children. I want them to feel relieved that God loves them, not afraid that He won't.

And now to take a deep breath and click on "Publish Post."

Homeschool, Fly Lady Style: I Shined My Sink Like a Mother &%$#%$! Champion

Yesterday at playgroup, the host mama with her disgustingly clean house said she does Flylady. I used to do Flylady. Before kids. I have not done Flylady since having kids. Does Flylady work when you have kids? The host mama said it does.

Flylady is a mama who started a free housekeeping/life organizing program after some police officers thought her house looked like it had been ransacked and robbed. It hadn't. It was just really, really messy. She calls it C.H.A.O.S.: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.

Flylady will send you emails every single &%$#%$! day and tell you what to do to clean your house. For some women, this totally sucks. For women like me who stand it a room, can't decide where to begin, and end up crying in a corner with a breastfeeding baby while eating peanut butter straight from the jar and listening to Tori Amos so loud you can't hear the phone ring, Flylady can be a lifesaver.

When you are first starting out, you do one simple thing, and then add another little thing each day. The first day is Shine Your Sink day.

Here's my sink, b&%$#es.

I keep putting off homeschool because I keep telling myself I need an organized house in order to do it. I keep cleaning one room and then that room gets messed up while I clean up another, so I go in circles like a dog trying to enter into the sleep vortex before finally lying down. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson as he pushes his dog down, There, you found the floor!!!

My kids spend their days telling me how bored they are and I spend my days telling them if they'd stop sneaking food onto the couch and smearing it onto the cushions I could spend more time helping them have fun.

So, now that I've shined the living hell out of my sink, I've decided to get back into enriching my children's lives, one baby step at a time.

We have a wall hanging called "All About Today." I've posted about it before. Here's an old pic.

It does the day, month, year, season, weather, daily activities that we've modified (we've changed some school related cards into cards like "Park Time" and "Cooking."

I've decided that this will be my daily equivalent of shining my sink. At the very least, we will talk about the day.

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to wake up, get out of my pajamas, put on clothes and wear shoes. That's not going to happen. I hate shoes. But the whole getting dressed thing has a certain appeal.

For Those of You Who Like Books, Horror Movies, Bryan, or all 3...

Bryan has restarted his book blog and started a new blog on horror films.

http://schlockwatch.blogspot.com/
"... welcome to Schlock Watch Sit down, turn out the lights, have a seat and let's venture into the darker corners of the theater to talk about horror films."

http://bryansbookblog.blogspot.com/
"and so after a nine month hiatus, I am coming back to Bryan’s Book Blog, dusting off the shelves, shooing the spiders back outside, rinsing the servers, and sweeping the corners and jumping back into the online world of book reviews."


Meanwhile, This:

Babies Can Recall Emotional Events

"Investigating the impact of relationship disruptions on stress regulation in infants, researchers asked parents to briefly ignore their six-month-old infants during an experiment, which caused an elevation in infant stress hormones, said Dr. David Haley, a psychologist at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the lead investigator of the study.

To see whether infants would remember this episode of parental unresponsiveness, infants were re-exposed to the same context after 24 hours. Although parents did not ignore their infants on this second day of the experiment, the infants demonstrated an anticipatory stress response, as evidenced by an elevation in cortisol, a stress hormone. Overall levels of stress hormones were lower on the second day compared with the first day, however, suggesting that infants can anticipate the stressful event based on expectations about how their parents will treat them, but are able to adapt to the stressor.

“The capacity to adapt to changes in parenting may be an evolutionary advantage that contributes to the reciprocal nature of the parent-infant relationship in humans,” said Haley.

The results of the study are published on Aug. 25 in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters."

Read The Rest of the Article Here

"Am I Pretty Now?"

My 3 year old broke my heart this evening when she spoke those words to me.

She had just purchased a Tinker Bell make up garden thing with her allowance. I admit it's quite adorable. There's different colors of glittery makeup shaped like flowers on the ends of sticks that look like flower stems. There's sparkly nail polish that looks like tulips. There are little plastic rings probably made by children her age in china. It is truly a garden of girlish delights. It was also the SHINY that we used to talk her out of spending her money on a Barbie purse. (We're trying to be less controlling of the children's choices these days, but dude, I draw the line at Barbie)

She took her little applicator brush, squished it into the pink blush flower, and then smeared the gooey color all over her cheeks. She painted her eyes with the shimmery yellow eye shadow. She took some of my tinted lip balm and globbed it on and around her lips. Then she traipsed off to the bathroom mirror to give herself a one over, and came traipsing back to me with her shiny grin.

"Do I look pretty?"

I gave her the standard parent answer, except I actually meant it.

"You ALWAYS look pretty Deirdre."

"But am I pretty now?"

"You look pretty when you don't have make up on and you look pretty when you do have make up on."

Shiny, goopy grin.

"So I look pretty."

HOLY !$%!  She is only three years old! I don't even wear makeup. Where is this coming from? I have a small drawer with brown eyeshadow, face powder and a few tubes of tinted chap sticks. I only open that drawer to look at it, remember when it used to take me more than 2 minutes to get ready, and then close it again.

We have made every effort to raise a boy who is free to play with purses and dolls and a girl who is free to play with cars and mud. We have gone out of our way to make things as gender neutral as possible. We don't own Disney Princess movies. Our doll house is natural wood instead of purple plastic. When mommy busts out the nail polish, EVERY toe gets polished, including Daddy's.

Yet, when I decided to show the kids how to use the Amazon universal wish list button, their choices could not have been more gender specific. Deirdre went through the Toys R Us website and pretty much tagged everything that looked pink, including a hair dryer.

We've started giving them an allowance each month to help with math (that's $3.00 so you can still buy one more thing, that's $5.99 so you don't have enough). Tonight we decided to combine the two biweekly allowances so they could buy something bigger. Connor came home with a Green Lantern action figure. Deirdre came home with a complex.

I want to stop telling my children who to be, and that includes not projecting my Princess Phobia onto my daughter, but I fear that liberating them has also meant that the void has been filled by their peers, instead, and we have not been happy with the messages. Since the weather has warmed up, the apartment complex kids have started getting together in the afternoons and playing in the grassy area right outside our balcony. Connor and Deirdre can't wait to go out to play. Sometimes there are 10 kids besides them out there, running around with their plastic light sabers and pool noodles.

Since they have started playing with these kids, I have started hearing those dreaded words: "That's a boy toy." "That's a baby thing and I'm not a baby." "Girls play with these, not boys." Deirdre has started hitting Connor and the baby. Connor called me a name for the first time ("Stupid Mommy!"). Deirdre has stopped bringing her light saber outside when the boys start playing Star Wars. Connor has started to tell Deirdre he doesn't want to play with her and wants to play with big kids.

On one hand, I don't want them to have to sit on the balcony and watch all the other kids play without them. On the other hand, I don't ever want them to play with any of those kids again, because they're spoiling my previously empathic, inclusive, non-violent children. The other day, I decided I'd better bring the baby outside so I could supervise more closely, and I found one boy refusing to give a younger boy's toy back to him. When I insisted he needed to return the toy, he glared at me, said he didn't want to play anymore, and went home.

I've come to the conclusion that mommy needs to regain some of her control over her children's environment.

I want them to be who they want to be - I liked pink growing up and by golly if she wants pink I'm going to grin and bear it. They pick out their own clothes and their own toys. They choose what to eat for dinner - if they don't like what I'm making, they have options from a shelf in the fridge that include fruit, veggies, cheese, yogurt, and other things they don't need my help preparing and eating. I don't force them to take a bath unless they're particularly dirty or stinky (though really, they like taking their baths. They're not huge fans of actually using soap). We don't say "no" very often unless it's a major safety issue. We let them decide when they want to go to bed and when they wake up, and if one of them wants to read a book when everyone else is going to bed, we have a reading spot in the bedroom with a pillow and reading lamp (dude, I can't force myself to go to bed when I have insomnia, why would I want to battle a child with the same problem? I generally wake up an hour later to find that kid either asleep on the reading pillow or back in bed).

My problem, however, is that I don't belong to a strong playgroup like I did back in Utah. We have friends we meet with often, but that's not our main influencing community. Our main influencing community is right here in our apartment complex, and only one parent has values similar to mine regarding gentle discipline, conflict resolution and inclusiveness. I can't rely on this village to help me instill the values in my children that I think are most important.

Exactly how I'll go about reclaiming my children, so to speak, I'm not certain.

For starters, I now go outside with them when they want to play. I know they're only right outside my window and being watched by other parents (we generally take turns being the ones to take them to the jungle gym since kids under 8 aren't supposed to be there unsupervised) but when things come up, like the older kids telling the "babies" to go play somewhere else, I like to speak up about how a different game that everyone could play might be more fun, and when a fight breaks out over a toy, I suggest everyone gets 5 minutes with it so everyone has a chance, and when someone decides it's fun to start hitting people with a pool noodle, I like to let them know that pool noodles seem soft but they actually hurt so  if we want to hit something, we should hit the ground or a tree, and when someone says blue is for boys, I say no way, Aayla Secura has blue skin and a blue light saber.

And from now on, when I brush Deirdre's hair, I'll be sure to stop myself before I say "That looks pretty," and say "All the tangles are gone!" instead.

Meanwhile, In Australia...

Actor Russell Crowe tweeted a few Circumcision-related comments on Twitter after a fan asked him if she should circ her newborn son or not. His comments were to the point (pun intended).

"Circumcision is barbaric and stupid. Who are you to correct nature? Is it real that GOD requires a donation of foreskin? Babies are perfect."

"many jewish friends, I love my Jewish friends, I love the apples and the honey and the funny little hats but stop cutting yr babies"


"last of it, if u feel it is yr right 2 cut things off yr babies please unfollow and f**k off,I'll take attentive parenting over barbarism"


BRILLIANT.

The War Over Homeschool: Who Is Taking Choices Away From Whom??

There's something irritating about the homeschool community, and it's the same issue that irritates me about the homebirth community; many of those who decry government regulation of our choices are usually the first to turn around and try to regulate (or at least openly criticize) our choices.


In the homebirth community, it happens when those who birth with a midwife, or the midwives themselves, criticize and ridicule Unassisted Childbirth, which is homebirth without a midwife or other birth professional in attendance.On the other side of the coin, it also happens when homebirthers scorn women who choose to birth in a hospital.


In homeschool, it happens when unschoolers bash homeschoolers who use a curriculum, and homeschoolers with a curriculum bash homeschoolers who partner with public schools for online classes or part-time participation, such as when homeschooled kids join a school band or sports team. 


The homeschool squabble has been irritating me for a few years now. Whenever I pick up a copy of a homeschool magazine, there is almost always a long-winded argument about how charter schools, online schools, and parent partnership programs threaten homeschooling everywhere. The fear is that these programs are after homeschoolers and eventually homeschooling rights; charter schools entice us away from our homeschools so the district can get money for our students; parent partnership programs give homeschoolers public funds for supplies but also put them under public school regulation which may lead to regulation for homeschooling in general; blah blah blah the government never does anything good homeschool my way blah blah blah.


Here, the Washington Homeschool Organization declares that parent partnership programs threaten homeschools, and that only homeschoolers who go without any public funding or public oversight should be able to call themselves homeschoolers. This reads a lot like how giving gay couples the same rights as married couples is alright as long as you don't call it marriage.


"While styles may vary, major Washington State homeschool organizations agree that maintaining the strength and understanding of our Home-Based Instruction Law is vital to the health of independent homeschooling in Washington State. The term “homeschooling” must remain identified, at its core, with families who have chosen to take upon themselves the responsibility for their child’s education and not identified with a state government-operated program."  - SOURCE LINK


Here, the Home School Legal Defense Association not only warns against charter schools, they say they will not even count you as a homeschool if you enroll your children in one and will not represent you.


"Some new homeschoolers may lack the confidence to educate their children without professional supervision or government money, and the virtual charter school programs seem like a dream come true. However, children who are enrolled in virtual charter schools must follow all of the program’s policies and procedures, which include restrictions such as exclusion of religious educational materials as part of the formal curriculum. Parents who choose these programs must realize that in accepting virtual public schools into their homes, they are also accepting the bureaucracy and government supervision that is linked to accepting tax dollars.

What is HSLDA’s Position on Charter Schools?

HSLDA believes that a distinction between virtual charter schools and homeschooling is vital. While charter schools provide parents with another choice, we emphasize that they are still public schools in every sense of the word.

HSLDA also strongly cautions homeschoolers against enrolling in virtual charter schools. Many homeschoolers are seduced by attractive marketing and forget that virtual charter schools are actually controlled by the public school system. HSLDA does not represent students enrolled in full-time charter school programs"  - SOURCE LINK 

This article from Home Education Magazine goes back to 2002 but is typical of the anti-charter school and e-school articles that are VERY FREQUENTLY printed in their magazine ad nauseam. I do like that magazine and pick it up often, but I started skipping over certain sections once I got sick of the bias.


"Bennett and the K12 Inc. organization have argued that parents need a range of choices, and public e-schools are just another choice. However, choice for public e-schoolers is limited to deciding where their children will receive their public school education, while choice for homeschoolers means deciding what our children will be taught and taking direct responsibility for their education. Because many people think public e-schools are homeschools, there will be enormous pressure for the regulations that public e-schools are under (because they are public schools) to be applied to homeschools. Then we will all lose the choice to homeschool independently of public schools and will only be able to decide where our children will receive their public school education...."   SOURCE LINK 
(Alisa's Note: They then bring up one random case in Canada where e-school regulation somehow led to homeschool regulation. They don't mention whether or not the homeschool regulation came before or with instead of after the e-school regulation and at least as of 2002 this was their only example, in a totally different country)

And another more recent article from Home Ed Mag (I do not like the articles written by this couple and this one is particularly preachy and downright rude. My notes are in italics):

"Of course, children enrolled in virtual schools also learn from the real world when they're not doing school work. However, they have less time and energy for such learning. Says who? Where is your evidence that virtual schools rob children of time and energy?

Also, because the very idea of school has such a powerful hold on almost everyone, families enrolled in virtual schools may assume that what they learn from the virtual school is more important than the less programmatic but essential learning they are doing outside it.  That's insulting.

Another question is how a curriculum someone else has developed would affect our homeschool. A curriculum presents the curriculum developer's ideas about what children should learn, in what order, at what ages. Some parents are reassured by such programs, feeling more confident that their children are learning the basics and have the opportunity to learn material similar to what children in conventional schools are supposed to learn. As homeschoolers, we can choose curriculums designed to help our children develop the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that we want them to have. We are not required to accept content and values chosen by the state. Of course, many homeschoolers choose not to use a purchased curriculum, preferring other approaches... Isn't choosing the state's curriculum the same as choosing your own curriculum? If you buy a curriculum from Sonlight or Oak Meadow, that's a choice even though someone else created it, but if you  "buy" " a curriculum from a virtual school, that's not a choice? Am I missing something here?

Enrolling children in a virtual school has serious consequences. Virtual schools require that children catch on or memorize at least temporarily and feed back on tests the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that the developers of the program chose. Parents have the right to have their children opt out of standardized testing, in public schools and otherwise.

Parents who enroll children in any school are surrendering much of their control over their children's educations....  or exactly controlling it by reviewing the virtual school and deciding it's a good fit for their kid.

But such stark efficiency or, some would say, robotic conditioning, raises additional questions: As parents, do we really want someone else to have that much control over what goes into our children's brains? Do we want our children to learn in this way, instead of figuring things out themselves and experiencing the thrill of discovery? Do children find joy in this kind of learning or at best do they only feel relieved that they might not be punished or humiliated when they don't know the right answer?...  You know not all learners are kinesthetic learners, right? I'm not, for instance. You show me how to do something and then ask me to do it and I will go cry in a corner. You let me read about it first, maybe more than once, then talk me through it, THEN have me try it, and you're on to something. My Connor LOVES doing things online and learns a lot that way. Whose to say a virtual school might not be a good fit for him, depending on how it is run?

It is important to establish and maintain the distinction between homeschools and virtual schools. Virtual public school students who happen to study in their homes (rather than using computers at their local public school or elsewhere) are not homeschoolers. THIS I disagree with.

Homeschoolers take direct responsibility for their children's educations and make choices consistent with their principles and beliefs, not those of the state. Who are you to define what it means to homeschool?

The point is not WHAT we homeschoolers choose but THAT we choose, that we as parents make the choice. By contrast, families who choose public virtual schools are letting legislators, public officials, school boards, teachers, and others dictate their children's education."- SOURCE LINK

 Incidentally, those two sources, the Home School Legal Defense Association and Home Education Magazine, are also at complete philosophical odds against each other. The HSLDA fights for laws that protect homeschooling rights. Home Ed Mag says that homeschooling is already a right and that creating laws implies the state has a right to interfere with or regulate homeschooling. Home Ed Mag is always ripping on the HSLDA, without actually naming them. It's amusing.

Homeschooling is not defined by whether or not you use a curriculum, have your kids attend part-time in a public school band instead of taking private music classes, or use a publicly-funded e-school to teach your kids. It's not about how many field trips you take, how many times you personally teach a lesson, or whether you radically unschool, leaving everything entirely up to your child.

Homeschooling is about HOME. Your home. My home. It's about family love. 

Studies of homeschool family demographics have repeatedly shown that even parents with less than a college degree successfully homeschool their children. It must be irritating for public school teachers to know that parents all over the U.S., without teaching degrees, are churning out better performing students than they are, with homeschooler test scores averaging higher than public school students. In fact I'm quite enraged that Bryan is not allowed to get a teaching certificate, even though he has an MA in English and several years of teaching experience. Apparently he needs to study "Education" to be a teacher. I've had ample bad teachers to know that's crap. That's another post for another day, tough. Also, I should point out that if homeschoolers don't take standardized tests, we won't have awesome comparisons like the one I link to above. In fact I wonder what would happen to the numbers if homeschooled children who normally opted out of testing decided to take them.

What I'm getting at here is that unschooled children are largely successful and those homeschooled with a curriculum are largely successful and those homeschooled with their parents literally standing over them while they do worksheets and imitate school at home are largely successful. It's not the curriculum or lack thereof. It's not unschool versus virtual school. It's THE PARENTS. Not their education level or teaching style or homeschooling philosophy, but their COMMITMENT to their children, their LOVE of family, their TOGETHERNESS.


"More than half, 52 percent, of all home-schooled students live in two-parent homes where only one parent works, compared with only 19 percent of those in school. Eighty percent of homeschoolers live in two-parent homes, compared with 66 percent of those in school. Many homeschoolers are reared in strong, stable families where the parents have made a nearly Herculean commitment to their children’s education. Nevertheless, home-schooling families are by no means wealthy; they are largely middle class, with incomes slightly below the national average for all other families." - SOURCE LINK


Funny thing about family involvement - it also improves a public schooled child's chance of success in school. Here's a Harvard Study About That


So where does that leave us? 


I've been contemplating a parent partnership program for Connor next year. The program would allow over $800 during the school year to be used either one homeschool supplies/curriculum or classes, including music lessons and gym class. We would also have access to online learning websites for which the program has an account, such as Enchanted Learning, which is one of the greatest educational websites ever created, IMO, and a fun math learning site I bet Connor would enjoy. The catch is that any non-consumable items (crayons are consumable, a book is not consumable) would have to be returned when we were done participating in the program, and that we would be subject to scrutiny. I would have to submit my learning plan for Connor and meet with them in person every 6 weeks. There would be oversight, for certain. 


I have a natural mama friend who homeschools her autistic son through this program. She did lament about the horrible experience her son had trying to take an online test, because some of the questions did not have a right answer, and M did not want to just make a best guess or close guess. That is the only complaint I have heard from her. The rest has been a blessing. As a single mom who recently married a man who lives in Canada (and getting citizenship there is a long and expensive process), she raises her two boys alone on a very limited income. She is directly involved with teaching M. She has used her PPP money to buy amazing materials that she would not have been able to buy otherwise, especially good quality art supplies and models. She checks into the program once a week for about ten minutes. When she got M's test results back, he was several grade levels above his grade in both math and reading.


The HSLDA doesn not consider her a homeschooler and would not come to her defense if her rights were violated.

Home Education Magazine would say she "succumbed" to "temptation."


The Washington State Homeschool Organization does not consider her a homeschooler. Another group, the Whatcom Homeschool Association, apparently actively deleted posts and conversations about parent partnership programs from their forum. She cannot use them to ask questions or find support.


The State of Washington itself does not consider her a homeschooler - our state's parent partnership programs make you sign a document stating that you understand that your student becomes a public school student and is thus subject to regulations to which "homeschoolers" are not subjected.


My dear friend is in sort of a homeschool limbo, if she actually cared what other homeschoolers thought. She doesn't - that's one of the things I like about her. She's sassy. She is a fierce defender of her children. She has many creative talents. Her kids like my kids and vice versa.


It is not "homeschool" that makes her kids awesome. It is HER. SHE is connected, supportive, involved. She devotes her days and nights to her children. She deserves the title of HOMESCHOOLER. For nitpicky and paranoid organizations to take that title from her is to devalue her contributions to her children's education.


Further, this quote from a now defunct blog makes an excellent point:
" Inviting parents to be active participants in the child's education and working as a team to customize learning is only bettering our children's future learning opportunities in the public schooling environment." SOURCE LINK


What they see as a threat to homeschool, I see as an improvement on public school. How much better learning would have been for me if I could do it from the safety of my own bedroom instead of at school surrounded by bullies and sexist teachers! So what if it was a virtual school withgv the exact same curriculum? I could take it slow with chemistry and whiz through algebra. I could finish an entire year of English class in a few months and a few months of history class in a year. I could do more learning at night instead of morning, which is when I do my best thinking. It would be only partially customized, but that partial customization would have made all the difference in the world to me.


What could a virtual school at home do for a child stuck by geographic location in an underperforming school system? What about a teenaged mother who needed to do school work around her baby's sleep schedule? Oak Meadow has a Waldorf-inspired curriculum that you can either do at home or with the help of online teachers. Are they better because they aren't run by the state? Are the worse because they involve teachers and a curriculum? Instead of blocking charter schools and parent partnership programs, wouldn't it be better to support them as an alternative to regular public school instead of an alternative to traditional homeschool? 

Saying alternative learning programs lead to diminished homeschooling rights is a lot like Bill O'Reilly saying gay marriage would lead to people marrying animals. The term "slippery slope" is overused as an excuse to never compromise, and sometimes to avoid using common sense. There are people who are going to go after homeschooling rights no matter what, the same way there are always people going after homebirths with midwives.

Don't decrease other people's choices in a blind attempt to preserve your own.

Simplifying My Stuffs

So, I'm trying to carry a heavy back of trash out to the bins, and I decide to carry it on my head. I feel a bit like one of my sisters on the other side of the world, going to the market. I contemplated how she probably wishes she could live more like me, and here I am throwing out stuff and giving stuff away, going through everything room by room, trying to live a little more like her.

I have a salad spinner that spins the water off of my lettuce for me, for Pete's sake.

I have so many possessions that I feel like I'm drowning. What I can't sell, give away or recycle, I am throwing in the trash.


What a stupid way to measure my standard of living!

Every time I take a box to Goodwill, shred old letters into a paper bag for recycling, sell a toy on Craigslist, I turn around and still see nothing but clutter and mayhem. It pulls down on me. I clean one room, and the room I just left becomes the new place for toys, snacks and trash. I go back to clean that one, and it all moves to the room I just cleaned. 


We sold over half of everything we owned before we moved here from Utah. Why did we keep what we did? Why didn't we sell more? Why didn't we keep the couch and throw out the congratulatory wedding cards? We did this all wrong.


I bought a used set of drawers from a friend and moved the kids' clothes from the hangers in their closet to drawers they can reach. Now they pick out their own clothes. More importantly, now I know what they prefer to wear when the choice is 100% theirs. It makes me sad to give away the skull and crossbones sweater, but the boy has outgrown it and the girl never picks it. 

I can be sentimental or I can clear out the uselessness. I can't do both.


Home is supposed to be the place we run to, not away from. It's supposed to be a sanctuary. We're supposed to feel emotionally safe, physically safe, spiritually nourished, physically nourished. 


I'm not creating a home. I'm deconstructing a home. I'm making a peaceful space by tearing the space down and removing parts. I'm not molding an art piece, I'm chiseling one. I'm excavating to find a hidden treasure. I'm ASSUMING there's treasure under all of this. If there isn't, then we start with a clean slate.

25 Ways to Simplify Your Life with Kids

 Simplify Your Kids 

Reducing Waste: Simplify Your Home

 "It’s possible to be happy living in one room with few possessions… or in a mansion filled with the finest of everything. It’s also possible to be miserable in both situations. Lasting happiness comes from relationships and spiritual and emotional fulfillment… it isn’t determined by how much stuff you have, or the process of acquiring it or purging it. The person who has simplified his life isn’t happy because he has less stuff… he is happy because he has achieved inner peace.

There are some very good reasons for purging and decluttering, but compulsive purgers who purge for the purge itself are just as excessively focused on stuff as compulsive shoppers are.

And that is not the path to achieving true and lasting simplicity."

- Choosingvoluntarysimplicity.com

Clutterbusters Before and After Photos
 (I'm afraid to say that bedroom number 2 "before" looks a lot like mine right now)

 craftynest.com Repurposing category

Herbal First Aid Balm For Sale On Etsy

I made these as an experiment and they are awesome. The balm really helps my kids' eczema. I carry one around everywhere I go.

I'll be posting how I made them soon. In the meantime, here's the link. Tell your friends!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/75343807/herbal-first-aid-balm-stick

The Goddess of "Never Not Broken"

I posted a link to this on Facebook and had enough women like it, comment on it, and reshare it that I felt it was important to share it here.

Why Lying Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea. ~ Julie (JC) Peters 

"The Goddess of never not broken.

You know that feeling when you have just gone through a breakup, or lost your job, and everything is terrible and terrifying and you don’t know what to do, and you find yourself crying in a pile on your bedroom floor, barely able to remember how to use the phone, desperately looking for some sign of God in old letters, or your Facebook newsfeed or on Glee, finding nothing there to comfort you?

Come on, yes you do. We all do.

And there is a goddess from Hindu mythology that teaches us that, in this moment, in this pile on the floor, you are more powerful than you’ve ever been.

This past week, I have been deeply inspired by a talk I heard on the Yoga Teacher Telesummit by Eric Stoneberg on this relatively unknown Goddess from Hindu mythology: Akhilandeshvari.

This figure has snuck up inside me and settled into my bones. She keeps coming out of my mouth every time I teach, and she’s given me so much strength and possibility during a time of change and uncertainty in my own life. I wanted to unpack a little bit about who she is for those that might be, like me, struggling a little bit in that pile on the floor and wondering how the hell to get up again.

The answer, it turns out, is this: in pieces, warrior-style, on the back of a crocodile. Yee ha."

Read the rest here.