educational neglect – Page 3 – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Homeschooling and Mental Illness: By Sara Tinous

October 14, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team5 Comments

Homeschooling and Mental Illness: By Sara Tinous

HA note: Sara Tinous blogs at Sementifera. She “was a child of fundamentalist parents who home-schooled her and my sibilings.” The theme of her blog, Sementifera, is taken “from the fire pines that respond to forest fires by releasing their seeds… They are sementifera – they are carrying seeds that will grow in spite of their destructive environment.” This post was originally published on October 12, 2013 and is reprinted with her permission.

Isolation was the constant experience of my ten years of homeschooling. A lot of this had to do with the fact that the adult presence in my daily life, my mom, was unpredictably angry, sad, or completely unavailable, and as time went on she increasingly avoided social situations.

It didn’t help that no one was good enough to be our friends.

After being pulled out of the fourth grade for a job change and move, my dad decided that my mom should homeschool us against her will. We suddenly spent most of our time at home and basically left the house once a week to go to church. A little non-denominational church that confirmed my parents in their belief that people outside of their own flavor of church weren’t really christians, including anyone who used the public school.

My dad’s growing attention to the writings of Douglas Wilson and my mom’s anxiety lead my parents to also isolate us from dangerous influences like the kids who went to our own church’s youth group, awana, and my own cousins. Repeatedly they would try to make friends with other families, but then essentially discard them as unworthy.

My mom couldn’t handle suddenly having us home with her all the time, and began to spend her time in other rooms away from us.

When she was feeling ok, she left us alone while she cleaned and talked on the phone. When she was not feeling ok, she left us alone while she cried, filled notebooks with cryptic spiritualized laments modeled on the Psalms, or pounded on the piano without acknowledging us if we tried to talk to her. She would throw a fit if we wanted to leave the house. My sister and I stopped asking to go anywhere, my brother started sneaking out at night.

I spent a lot of my time alone in my room trying to avoid anything that might set her off. We all felt guiltily relieved when another sibling was attracting the negative attention.

Homeschooling went mostly unsupervised, enforced only by our lack of freedom to do anything else. We were given screened books to read, many of them inappropriately difficult, but went for weeks without having a real conversation with anyone. I completely lost myself in books and gained a huge vocabulary, but could barely follow the rhythm of a basic conversation.

My little brother went for years without direct instruction, and then my parents straight up told him he was stupid because he didn’t spontaneously educate himself. That still just kills me.

As things got worse, we stopped going to even the occasional homeschool gym days and coop classes. Anything could trigger angry words that only stopped when we were in tears. The constant message we got from her was that we were in the way, we were a burden, we should do everything we could to avoid having feelings and needs.

When I was the first kid to hit puberty, the very existence of my body became a personal affront. My mother’s illness crescendoed around this time, her personal body image issues projected onto us daily. Our medical care was neglected, only the most egregious oversights like broken bones and dental emergencies were noticed by other church families and taken care of. I punished my blemished skin compulsively. Food was an area of contention, just like everything else.

My sister started making herself throw up in secret.

Growing up in this environment was a catalyst for my own anxiety and depression. I went from being an incessantly chatty queen bee elementary school kid who knew everyone at my school to someone who only ocassionaly saw one of three or four girls my age and who was afraid to use a telephone to talk to a librarian. I started to zone out so completely while reading that I didn’t hear people talking to me, and began sleeping as a safe pastime.

My voice shrank to something nearly inaudible. I started talking to myself to keep myself company and replaying my few conversations with others in my head over and over. I embarrassed the whole family, including my siblings, by constantly crying “without reason,” sometimes at church.

They didn’t know the half of it. For years, every night I wept alone in my bed at night, silently.

Mom explicitly said that “sadness” was a sign of spiritual disorder, a “heart issue.” That phrase was her favorite way to threaten and punish me (and herself) for feelings that tarnished the family’s public image.

When I was 12 or 13, I remember steeling myself to leave my room and interact with my mom, and having an epiphany. I suddenly knew at that moment that I had not done anything wrong to cause her to be angry, even that her mood existed without being caused by any immediate person or event. I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe mental illness, but I knew it wasn’t my fault. Remembering this moment makes me sad for all the time lost before that realization, for the child who felt that I was to blame for what was happening to me.

As an adult I see now the pressures that my mom was under, how trapped she must have felt. She lost all her friends and freedom in one move, and must have felt powerless to actually change her situation. She religiously believed that my dad had the right to make unilateral decisions, that what should change about her situation was her own feelings, so she waged battle with her feelings every day. Intellectually, I understand and want to forgive….

But for now this is all I can do:

Say that these things really happened to me, and it was not ok.

Say that these things are still happening to other kids, and it is not ok.

“Diplomas Play No Role For Us”: The Case of the Wunderlichs

September 26, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

“Diplomas Play No Role For Us”: The Case of the Wunderlichs, by Jennifer Stahl

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Jennifer Stahl’s blog Yeshua, Hineni. It was originally published on September 16, 2013 with the title, “German Homeschooling Case – The Wunderlichs.”

I’ve just finished getting myself caught up with the issue of sects in Germany who try to home-school and have had run ins with the law. Generally, but not always, the HSLDA has has been meddling in Germany with these issues rather than let people hash out the Constitutional law within the courts and appealing to the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.

For what it is worth, I was home-schooled from the sixth grade forward under the Home School Legal Defense Association umbrella. (1993-1999)

I do not believe in breaking the law to do whatever you want. You have to lobby to have the laws changed.

You have to argue, within the court system that Constitutional law is antiquated and argue that the law must be changed so that you can work within it; if that is what you truly believe.

However, in the last decade or so, many sects of Christian home-schoolers who have been pressing the issue have been doing many things to place their children in danger; giving sub-par education, little or no medical attention; living the life of isolationists — which has caused the government to be well within rights to be breathing down their necks or taking their children into foster care.

The problem here is, Germany looks at issues like this as if it were a family matter. It’s more than looking at it as a purely domestic matter that any German allies can weigh in on. This doesn’t concern other court systems in the EU, and the European Court of Human Rights has already weighed in on German Homeschooling cases. It doesn’t concern allies, such as the United States.

You also have to remember that while Germany’s treatment of groups with cultish or extremist sectarian beliefs sometimes amount to “discrimination” in many of our allies eyes, its laws must be seen the context of its history and the fear of political as well as religious extremism. We are finding more and more, that people who do separate themselves out of society do tend to trend towards both religious and political extremism.

This does not at all exclude or include the cases that the HSLDA has been weighing in on.

With this in mind, you have to know that there are around 400 Homeschooling families in Germany if the HSLDA is to be believed. Schuzh says it is closer to 500 families. This also counts the Romeike Family, The Wunderlichs and the families of the Zwölf Stämme, which I have discussed before.

This blog, however, states the numbers are rather questionable:

How many Germans ignore German laws on compulsory education, can not be measured as most parents simply [home-school in secret] or emigrate in secret. Stefanie Mohsennia knows about 200 free-learning German families and speculates that there are currently over 1,000 families in Germany who do not send their children to school. “There are always more.” says Stefanie Mohsennia…Leben im Untergrund – Homeschooling-Familien in Deutschland [Living underground – Home-schooling families in Germany]

As far as what the European Human Rights Court has to say:

[The German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe] refused to admit the applicant’s constitutional complaint because it had already dealt with the decisive constitutional issues in its settled case-law.

…[The EU Human Rights Court] notes that there exists a difference of treatment between the applicant’s children and… children [who] were physically unfit …or… [whose] parents move around the country…
… the Court finds that the above distinctions justifies a difference of treatment.
Konrad and Others v. Germany

Konrad v. Germany also makes it clear that Germany’s “Basic Law” guarantees “the right to establish private schools.” The state does therefore not have a monopoly on education, only the right to regulate it.
Locus Standi: International Human Rights and Home schooling

Yet, when the news did break in American papers about the Wunderlich family last year, and this year – everything became sensationalized, and suddenly there is a lot of fear-mongering and lies being spread about how the compulsory schooling laws came into place, and why they came into place in Germany. [To clarify: It has been repeated quite often that these laws came into place when the NSDAP was in power and we’re very “Nazi” for not repealing them.] It’s made me physically ill that this is being said over and over through right-leaning news, and therefore disseminated to other Christians.

I literally have relatives that are terrified that I am suddenly surrounded by an up and coming Fourth Reich.

Why don’t we have a look and see why?

“The education administration in future will also not recognize so-called homeschooling and act in proportionate measure considering the individual case and circumstances.””
WND: Government declares war on homeschooling parents (2006)

“A copy of the report justifying immediate seizure of the children was obtained by HSLDA. The reasons given for the seizure were that the children were ‘socially isolated,’ not in school and that there was a ‘flight risk,’ – none of which appear to be true,” the report said.

The family fled Germany because of a series of fines imposed for homeschooling and the concern that German authorities inside Germany would take custody of the children.
WND: French police grab 4 kids on German orders (2009)

Wunderlich said the Jugendamt “told me that the children must go to school.”
“We are very saddened by the way our country treats us,” he said. “Our nerves are black and short, and we are very tired by the pressure.
“I don’t understand my own country. What are we doing wrong? We are just doing what should be allowed to anyone.”
WND: State takes custody of children over socialization (2012)

Within days of the family registering their presence in Darmstadt, authorities initiated a criminal truancy case, and just months later city’s ‘Youth Welfare Office’ was granted legal custody of the children.
The Daily Mail UK: Armed Police turn up at family home wiht a battering ram to sieze their children after they defy Germany’s ban on homeschooling

After the children were taken, authorities “invited” the parents to a meeting with social workers. They were told they were not even being allowed an immediate court hearing on the status of the children.
WND: Police storm homeschool class, take children by force

Petra Wunderlich said her heart was shattered. “We are empty,” she said. “We need help. We are fighting but we need help.”
Life Site News: ‘We are empty’: Police storm German homeschooling family’s house, seize children

In an interview in Berlin last year, Dirk Wunderlich said he was prepared to go to jail rather than send his children to school. “But I’m not afraid of this,” he said. “I’m only sad for my family. I will go (to jail) laughing. You can do what you want, but my children will not go to school.”
CBN: German Officials Abduct Homeschooled Kids from Parents

…Failing to find employment, Mr. Wunderlich last year had to bring the family back to their home country of Germany. Within days the “Youth Welfare Office” was granted legal custody of their children on the grounds of criminal truancy.
…The Wunderlich family’s experience foreshadows an ominous future for other German homeschooling families… and … raise concerns about the freedom of families in all free nations…
CrossMap: Government Seizes German Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s Homeschooling Children—Whose Kids Are They?

On their return, German authorities began a criminal truancy case against them and the children were placed in the custody of the Darmstadt Youth Welfare Office. Authorities found the children to be well treated… but seized the children’s passports to prevent the family from leaving the country.
CNA: German raid on home-schooling family draws condemnation

The court order allowed the police the use of force against both parents and children; it stated that the children had “adopted the parent’s opinions” regarding homeschooling, and that “no cooperation could be expected” from either the parents or the children.
Gatestone Institute: Europe: Treating Homeschoolers Like Terrorists

The Wunderlich’s lawyers will argue their case on the basis that the current education law is too vague. They are also arguing on the basis of the international treaties Germany has signed, since they appear to be violating those treaty obligations. HSLDA is helping support the Wunderlich’s lawyers… Although the Wunderlichs are hoping for a court date in September, they are still waiting.
The American Conservative: German Children Seized From Parents for Crime of Homeschooling

HSLDA lawyer Michael Donnelly said that when child protective systems in countries such as a Germany– which “claims to be a ‘liberal democracy’ committed to pluralism and human rights – allows for police raids to take children from otherwise good families who are providing a home education, liberty is at risk everywhere.”
WND: Homeschool case focal point for hate mail

What do the Wunderlichs think about this, themselves? Well, let’s hear it in their own words:

In 2005, our first child Machsejah reached the age of compulsory school attendance. We started home schooling from then on. At that time, war with the education agency began… A civil fine was levied. Then we were sued. We were found guilty of violating the compulsory school attendance statute and a monetary penalty was imposed. That was in 2008.
Interview with Dirk Wunderlich through the HEDUA Part 1

Our complete and no-holds-barred rejection of the institution of the school is reflected by exactly this argument. Even if public schools would align themselves with our beliefs and other educational ideas at the 100% level (without compromise whatsoever), we still would not send our children to school. The reason is that we are convinced that God’s intentions and plans for us cannot be realized within the artificial setting of school.
Interview with Dirk Wunderlich through the HEDUA Part 2

HEDUA also has articles here, here, here, here, here and here that explain how the Wunderlich family sees their situation.

I do agree that there are issues with how certain sects of Christianity (and even Scientology) that homeschool are handled in Germany. We’ve seen how this plays out with the court cases involving the Zwölf Stämme. There are sometimes gaps in information between the courts, or the Jugendamt is sometimes slow to enforce the Schulpflicht or fines for not sending your children to school.

As far as the Wunderlich family goes, things are clearly not on the up and up. They were told by the state and each city seat that they’ve lived in that they can not continue to homeschool. They continued irregardless.

They’ve come out openly laughing in the face of the government. They’ve said that they’re happy to go to jail and lose custody of their children so that they can create a separatist faith movement and parallel society from their own home.

They’ve moved from city to city, and when that wasn’t working; they left the country. This raises questions. I don’t know what all questions this raises, but it certainly leaves holes in information that can lead one to many conclusions, of which, I am not ready to make any.

All the news articles I’ve read in English (from Fox, The Blaze, World Net Daily, CBN, World Mag and others) so far show very clearly that the authors know next to nothing about Germany, German law, German society at large, or the German educational system and its history. Instead, they’re happy to perpetuate myths and simply assume the police is this evil entity, because surely the HSLDA would not lie.

The information that I can find says that the court has found “The welfare of children is at risk. The children have not been receiving the education that would have been age-expected.” This is enough to create concern in a nation full of over-acheivers who look for everyone to at least meet age-expected educational goals.

This sets a whole lot of questions flying. I do not know what to make of that. Does this mean that the children are now learning above their age grade, or that they are falling behind? I do not know.

Let’s see how the German news is handling this:

… the parents refuse any school system: “There is, however, compulsory education, the parents can not escape.” It does not mean just education, but also about social interaction and involvement that allows other world views to be heard. The children have been placed in a juvenile facility after a confirmed judicial decision by the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main. All attempts at discussion to reach an amicable agreement with the parents, during the summer holidays have been unsuccessful.
Idea: Jugendamt nimmt Christen die Kinder weg [Child Protective Services take Christian children away]

…“Diplomas play no role for us. Our goal is heaven.” “Our family belongs to no specific Christian denomination, we are simply believers.” Dirk [Wunderlich] attended the Kreis Bergstraße’s Odenwald school, and he emphasizes the importance of Jesus Christ for himself and his family…
Echo: Schulpflicht: Jugendamt verteidigt Trennung von ElternSorgerecht – Vier Kinder aus Wembach werden schrittweise auf Schulbesuch vorbereitet [Compulsory education: Youth Office defends separation of parents from children. Custody – Four children from Wembach to be gradually prepared for school]

Side note here: The Odenwaldschule [where Dirk Wunderlich attended] was known for a huge scandal that went down where the children were being sexually abused by some of the teachers. There was also mentioned of physical discipline being carried out. (It’s mentioned here in German, but not in the English Wikipedia article. You can find more here, here and here.)

This is not insinuating anything about the family, but giving additional information that is not readily knowable to people who do not live in this area.

I know others who went to this school and nothing ever happened to them, and they are just as shocked as the rest of us that anything happened there. As far as the education at the school goes, it was one of the best in the area.

…Parents are of the Christian faith and have hermetically sealed off their children from the outside world. They will have also refused to let the children be taught at a state-recognized private Christian school, reports the “Hessischer Rundfunk”…

…Evangelical Christians fight especially hard for the right to homeschool. They want their children to be kept away from worldly influences and try to educate them in their strict faith-driven world view…
Spiegel: Schulverweigerer in Hessen: Polizei holt Kinder aus streng religiöser Familie [Truants in Hessen: Police bring children from a strictly religious family]

“If and when the children return to their parents, it is still unclear,” says Frank Horneff. In fact, the family will have to wait a while until a decision on their possible reunification. The District Court of Darmstadt intends to have the parents in for a hearing at the end of September.
Die Welt: Behandelt, “als wäre ich ein Terrorist” [Treated “as if I were a terrorist”]

For the time being, this is the only news coming out, other than from Der Blaue Brief which is linked to the HSLDA and other homeschool groups in Germany.

However, I do want to point out some very integral things that are not much discussed when it concerns Christian sects that wish to homeschool here in Germany. There are passages in Scripture that suggest that Christians are to take an unassuming, blameless lifestyle wherever we find ourselves; unless that government is causing them to break commandments in the Bible. Especially concerning our witness to those who do not believe as we do.

It is my full belief that breaking the law to do something you are convicted to do — especially something that is not commanded by G-d explicitly in the Bible — is a terribly bad idea.

Frequently moving around to escape the law, leaving the country when the court catches up to you, and hiding your children from the world is terribly suspicious, and not something the Bible commands.

Meddling in another country’s affairs to subvert the government (speaking of the HSLDA here, which is an American Homeschool Legal Defense Association), is also not a really good idea.

Especially when the Human Rights Courts of the EU have already twice made a ruling on similar cases, and the Constitutional Court of said country you are meddling in said “No, this is not happening and here is why.”

On the heels of the Wunderlich case, we have issues with abuses that have been uncovered by the Zwölf Stämme. My question here is: what kind of parenting methods are going on in the Wunderlich home that we might maybe need know about? (Remember, Corporal Punishment is illegal in Germany and has been for over a decade.) Also, why is the HSLDA so very invested in Germany, and constantly sending funds back and forth to keep the courts here spinning?

Why are Americans being called upon to support these families, and why is the HSLDA lying about what is happening?

What exactly are they helping to hide, besides these families squirreling away their children and teaching them that the government is out to steal and destroy their souls? Why are these families so afraid of the readily available Christian education?

There are so many questions here, many, which I feel will not be further answered until we hear more from the different court cases as they go forward.

I’m sorry that the families have been separated, but I can see where this is something that had to take place considering how blatantly the Wunderlichs are in their defiance of German law, and how happy they are to make themselves out as martyrs. I hope that the children can see their parents, but I pray that we do not find out that there has been any physical or psychological abuse going on as we’ve heard from a few other homeschool groups. (As mentioned in the documentary above, and in the case with the Zwölf Stämmen)

There don’t seem to be very many answers to this issue at the moment.

Bill Gothard on Education: Jeri Lofland’s Thoughts

September 10, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team8 Comments

Jeri’s post was originally published on her blog Heresy in the Heartland on September 8, 2013. It is reprinted with her permission. Also by Jeri on HA: “Generational Observations”, “Of Isolation and Community”, “His Quiver Full of Them”, “David Noebel, Summit Ministries, and the Evil of Rock”, and “The Political Reach of Bill Gothard”.

My parents began homeschooling me in third grade, and enrolled in Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute, a curriculum exclusively for alumni of his Advanced Seminar, before I started seventh grade. Our family was part of ATI until I reached my mid-twenties.

The following statements are the main points from a session of Bill Gothard’s Advanced Seminar. They can be found on pages 88-91 of the accompanying workbook and on his website. Looking back, these “principles” explain so much of my educational experience.

Advanced Seminar Session 16: Successful Education

(Bill Gothard)

The ultimate goal of education is not to produce a degree, but to produce many godly generations.

God charges parents and grandparents, not teachers, with the responsibility to train their sons and daughters.

God established the home, not the school, as the primary learning center; the school and church must be recognized as extensions of it.

The most destructive force in school is peer dependence, and parents must constantly work to protect their children from it.

God wants the priorities of every family to be built around daily engrafting of Scripture, rather than accumulating man’s knowledge.

The ability of sons and daughters to stand alone is the result not of rules, but of principles that assure a superior way of life.

When knowledge is learned before godly character, it produces pride and arrogance.

Parents who teach sons and daughters at home must be accountable to a local church (Christian school and the government).

Sons and daughters thrive with appropriate responsibility, and it is God’s goal that they be mature in their youth.

God gave boys and girls differing aptitudes; when children are taught together, boys are programmed for failure.

When schools group children by ages, older examples are cut off and rebels usually rise to leadership.

When the Bible is separated from courses, the contents come under the control of human reasoning.

True socializing takes place not in the arbitrary groupings of school, but in the real world of children-to-adult relationships.

Valuable learning time is lost in school; two hours of home teaching is equivalent to six hours of school teaching.

The key to effective education is not just a trained teacher and a professional curriculum, but a concerned parent and a motivated child.

God has set a limitation on learning; thus, academic freedom is no justification for studying the details of evil.

Inge Cannon (pictured here with her husband) helped Gothard develop the ATI curriculum in the early 1980's. She later directed HSLDA's National Center for Home Education. — Inge Cannon (pictured here with her husband) helped Gothard develop the ATI curriculum in the early 1980’s. She later directed HSLDA’s National Center for Home Education.

As an ATI student, I attended numerous conferences that became pep rallies for volunteerism with the Institute or urged us to study our favorite topics from the safety of our homes. (I even spent eighteen months enrolled in IBLP’s unaccredited correspondence law school!)

Inge Cannon was one familiar conference speaker. Cannon holds a master’s degree in education and helped Gothard develop the ATI curriculum in the early 1980’s. She later directed the National Center for Home Education, a division of HSLDA.

At an opening session of the 1990 ATI training conference held at the University of Tennesee in Knoxville, Inge Cannon warned us against the dangerous “High Places” of education. As she talked, I took careful and enthusiastic notes. I was just fourteen, and excited about this chance to sit with the adults.

In the Bible, God repeatedly told the ancient Israelites to tear down the idolatrous “high places”. Cannon thus defined a high place as:

“any goal or objective so commonly accepted that it is validated and esteemed as good, even though it violates the will and word of God”.

According to Cannon, the following “high places” are educational myths for home-educating parents to avoid.

The High Places of Education

(Inge Cannon–June 23, 1990)

Comparison–i.e., SAT tests and bell-shaped curves, parents should not base their curriculum on these; also pluralism that pressures those with strong beliefs to “give in to those who believe nothing”

Grading–earning a teacher’s certificate, for example, merely means one has passed the right courses, not that one is “qualified to produce results”

Completion–filling in all the blanks or answering all the questions or taking the final exam does not mean the educational task is complete; the object is to “know” the material, not merely to “cover” it

Equivalency–“believing that a curriculum is proper and right when it matches the academic sequence and requirements of traditional, formal education”

Tangibility–“believing only what I can see or touch is real, thereby de-emphasizing those elements that require faith or minister to the spirit of my child”

Self-expression–“believing that the arts are too personal to be governed by absolute standards”; the arts can never be amoral

Methodology–“believing there is only one right way to teach a lesson”

Socialization–“Children don’t learn anything good from one another!”

Exposure–exposing children to all kinds of knowledge is unnecessary for a well-rounded education; children should be ignorant of evil, they shouldn’t understand dirty jokes, they shouldn’t study false religions; “There are some things God doesn’t want us to know.”
Statistical Verification–believing [the Bible] “needs to be verified by scientific measurements before choosing to obey its instructions”

During my time in ATI, I was just one of thousands of young people who were told that we didn’t need college credits, that college would corrupt our minds with “vain philosophies” and threaten our faith, that there are some things “God doesn’t want us to know”, and that employers would come looking for us because of our diligence, obedience, and virtue. So, many of us dutifully eschewed degrees in favor of home-based study.

Gothard, incidentally, later changed his mind and now even touts the Ph.D. degree Lousiana Baptist University conferred on him in 2004, much to the chagrin of those of us for whom the new dispensation came too late. Hundreds of former ATI students live today with the socioeconomic consequences of what we were taught, even as we struggle to catch up to our college-educated peers.

Voices of Sister-Moms: Part Four, Electra’s Story

August 22, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team6 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s guest series on her blog, Becoming Worldly. Part Four was originally published on July 5, 2013. “Electra” is a pseudonym chosen by the author. If you have a Quiverfull “sister-Mom” story you would like to share, email Heather at becomingworldly (at) gmail (dot) com.

*****

*****

Part Four, Electra’s Story

(HA note: Yesterday, we shared the story of Maia, Electra’s older sister.)

My life started out just as my parents’ belief in the quiverfull/patriarchal system began.

I had two older brothers and an older sister, and my parents had just started homeschooling them when I was born. By the time I was 6, I had two younger sisters and another brother. Another younger sister and brother were born by the time I reached 8 years old.

I, being the second oldest daughter, didn’t have quite as many responsibilities as my older sister Maia.

However, I was very aware of her important servant role in our home. She was responsible for meals, taking care of the children, and all the cleaning, as well as getting us to do our endless chores. She was supposed to home school us, as my parents, both unemployed, were either out “somewhere” during the day, or in their bedroom fighting over authority.

She also was in charge of the discipline, and expected to submit to the authority of my older brothers. She would give some of this authority to us younger kids, to delegate some of the responsibility. I had some duties too, I was responsible for making my younger siblings beds, doing all the dishes, sweeping the floor, among other cleaning duties, and being full time baby sitter for my youngest brother, who had medical issues. If he got out of line, I was the one punished.

Our home school, like many others, cannot really be defined as education.

It was more a cover so that my parents could do as they pleased. When my older sister went to high school when I was 12, I was expected to take on her servant role wholeheartedly, and enjoy it. I tried for a while, but I became very ill, with pneumonia.

I have long term respiratory issues because my parents chose not to vaccinate for whooping cough.

I had it when I was five and was ill for months with little to no medical care and as a result have had pneumonia many times, only receiving medical care one time. I was sick in bed for over two months, during which time my parents’ marriage continued to fall apart.

My role as a sister-mom completely failed.

There was a lot of physical abuse in the home, and when my older sister moved out the physical abuse loosened up a bit. The emotional abuse and blame game however, was intensified. It was flavour of the week, and my parents blamed whoever they were most annoyed with for the changes happening to our family.

I rarely talked to my parents at this point, and most of our interactions were them rebuking me for not respecting my role in the house, by having friends they didn’t approve of and hanging out with them behind their backs, and me trying to reason with them. It grew to the point that by the time I got better, I was rarely speaking to my parents, simply doing my duties as a daughter and then disappearing to my room.

Luckily for me, I was enrolled into high school later that year, unknown to my father. My illness and inability to properly mother my siblings was one of the many determining factors in their eventual separation.

Soon after my parents were separated the power struggle at home with my mother trying to maintain control ended with me moving out to a friend’s house. Over the next four years, I worked at getting my high school diploma while moving from couch to couch, living with my mother off and on. Eventually I cut her off altogether along with my father, and am now able to live a life free of power struggles, control, and cloistering.

With a stable job and income, heading to university while living independently I can definitely say, it was difficult to find a life for myself in the normal world after being a sister mom. I worry about my five younger siblings. They are still with my mother, and her rules and problems with neglect have gotten much better, as she is now under close supervision by CPS.

But I sincerely hope they somehow get out of there, and are able to make a life for themselves like I did.

*****

To be continued.

Where Is Your Sense of Compassion, HSDLA?

July 31, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team13 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on July 31, 2013.

*****

Josh Powell wanted to go to school so badly that he pleaded with local officials to let him enroll. He didn’t know exactly what students were learning at Buckingham County High School, in rural central Virginia, but he had the sense that he was missing something fundamental.

By the time he was 16, he had never written an essay. He didn’t know South Africa was a country. He couldn’t solve basic algebra problems.

So starts a recent Washington Post article about Virginia’s religious exemption.

Powell was taught at home, his parents using a religious exemption that allows families to entirely opt out of public education, a Virginia law that is unlike any other in the country. That means that not only are their children excused from attending school — as those educated under the state’s home-school statute are — but they also are exempt from all government oversight.

School officials don’t ever ask them for transcripts, test scores or proof of education of any kind: Parents have total control.

. . .

Josh Powell eventually found a way to get several years of remedial classes and other courses at a community college.

Now he’s studying at Georgetown University.

. . .

Josh Powell, now 21, wonders how much more he could have accomplished if he hadn’t spent so much time and effort catching up.

“I think people should definitely have the freedom to home-school as long as it’s being done well and observed,” he said. “I don’t see any reason for there not to be accountability.”

Most of all, he worries about his siblings: There are 11. One, old enough to be well into middle school, can’t read, Josh Powell said.

Now he’s trying to get his brothers and sisters into school, to ensure that they don’t have to work as hard as he did to catch up — or get left behind.

Go read the whole thing—the article is excellent. The long and short of it is that Josh’s parents used Virginia’s religious exemption clause to get out of any requirement to teach him anything, and then proceeded to give him what he knew was a substandard education, despite his desire to learn more than they were teaching him. In the end, Josh overcame all of that and managed to obtain remedial classes at a community college (without his parents’ help, I should add) and then gain admission to Georgetown. And now, he wants to see the law changed so that other children will not find themselves in his situation.

What I want to turn to now is HSLDA’s response. Before I do that, I should mention that the article includes a quote from Michael Farris. It’s not long:

The law is completely clear, said Michael Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, who has claimed the exemption for his family. It doesn’t make sense to have the public school system regulate home schools, he said, because he thinks home schools are far more successful.

As to whether there could be children getting an inadequate education, he said: “Well sure, it’s possible. But there are whole public school districts that are slipping through the cracks.”

Dear Mr. Farris: What you said is called “tu quoque.” It is a logical fallacy. You are a lawyer, you should know that.

Now with that out of the way, what I really want to look at is the official response HSLDA issued the day after the Washington Post article came out.

“Oh, my God, I have a chance to learn!” The Washington Post’s recent article about Virginia’s religious exemption statute includes this fascinating quote from Josh Powell, the young man who never attended public school because his parents obtained an exemption on religious grounds.

The article criticizes the law that allows the exemption and lobbies for its change. But let’s slow down and think this through.

How many public school teachers ever hear their students say, “Oh, my God, I have a chance to learn”? Very few. Because sadly, public schools crush many kids’ desire to ever learn again. And this has been documented.

The largest study comparing homeschool students to others (by Dr. Lawrence M. Rudner, University of Maryland) amazingly revealed that homeschool 8th grade students score the same as 12th grade public school students!

Why do homeschool students score an almost unbelievable four grade levels ahead of others by 8th grade? It’s very simple. It’s not that homeschool kids or their parents have higher IQs—I suspect they don’t. It’s simply that homeschools don’t crush a kid’s inborn desire to learn.

What is HSLDA’s evidence that public schools crush children’s “inborn desire to learn” while homeschooling doesn’t? The Rudner study.

Let’s review, shall we?

Somehow I feel like we’ve been over this before. (Also, if you haven’t, you should read this excellent article as well.) What did Rudner’s study say and how does he feel about the way HSLDA uses it?

Rudner’s study was funded and sponsored by the Home School Legal Defense Assocation. It analyzed the test results of more than 20,000 home schooled students using the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and it was interpreted by many to find that the average home schooled student outperformed his or her public school peer. But Rudner’s study reaches no such conclusion, and Rudner himself issued multiple cautionary notes in the report, including the following: “Because this was not a controlled experiment, the study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools and the results must be interpreted with caution.” Rudner used a select and unrepresentative sample, culling all of his participants from families who had purchased curricular and assessment materials from Bob Jones University. Because Bob Jones University is an evangelical Christian university (a university which gained a national reputation in the 1980s for its policy of forbidding interracial dating), the sample of participating families in Rudner’s study is highly skewed toward Christian home schoolers. Extrapolations from this data to the entire population of home schoolers are consequently highly unreliable. Moreover, all the participants in Rudner’s study had volunteered their participation. According to Rudner, more than 39,000 contracted to take the Iowa Basic Skills Test through Bob Jones, but only 20,760 agreed to participate in his study. This further biases Rudner’s sample, for parents who doubt the capacity of their child to do well on the test are precisely the parents we might expect not to volunteer their participation. A careful social scientific comparison of test score data would also try to take account of the problem that public school students take the Iowa Basic Skills Test in a controlled environment; many in Rudner’s study tested their own children.

Rudner himself has been frustrated by the misrepresentation of his work. In an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal, which published a pioneering week-long investigative series of articles on home schooling in 2004, Rudner claimed that his only conclusion was that if a home schooling parent “is willing to put the time and energy and effort into it – and you have to be a rare person who is willing to do this – then in all likelihood you’re going to have enormous success.” Rudner also said, “I made the case in the paper that if you took the same kids and the same parents and put them in the public schools, these kids would probably do exceptionally well.”

In other words, the Rudner study doesn’t say what HSLDA says it says, and Rudner himself is frustrated about how HSLDA is misusing and misinterpreting his study. In other words, HSLDA’s supposed “proof” that public school stifles a child’s “inborn desire to learn” while homeschooling does not is proof of no such thing.

Back to HSLDA’s response to the Washington Post article:

When he hit community college, Josh attended remedial classes designed to serve public high school graduates, then zoomed ahead. Now he attends one of the nation’s top 25 universities, earning good grades while working part time and carrying a heavy academic load. Not too bad for a kid who thought he had a bad secondary education!

If Josh had attended public schools, he would have statistically had a 1-in-5 chance of growing into an illiterate adult. The National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that 21.7% of adults in Josh’s native Buckingham County are illiterate. This is the wreckage of thousands of young people whose desire to learn has been crushed in the public schools.

I wonder if any of the other kids in Josh’s remedial classes went on to attend one of the nation’s top 25 universities. I doubt it.

Maybe Josh didn’t learn that South Africa was a country while he was being homeschooled. But he arrived at the gates of young adulthood with his inborn desire to learn fully intact, and that has served him very well indeed. The Virginia religious exemption statute deserves its place of respect.

The HSLDA response is, in essence, “your bad homeschool experience is nothing to complain about, because you could have a fate worse than receiving an incompetent homeschool education while begging to learn—you could go to public school!” Is HSLDA completely incapable of saying “we’re sorry your situation was so bad, we feel that it is a terrible thing for any child to slip through the cracks”? Are they incapable of hearing “that hurt me” and responding with “we’re sorry”?

All I have to say is this: Where is your sense of compassion, HSLDA?

Why I Am Proud of Myself: Philosophical Perspective’s Thoughts

July 24, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team10 Comments

Why I Am Proud of Myself: Philosophical Perspective’s Thoughts

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Philosophical Perspectives” is the author’s chosen pseudonym.

This is why I’m proud of myself.

This is not an article with arguments or nuanced thoughts, this is a declaration, for those of us who have survived.

I’m 27 years old, and I am so proud of myself.

My mom taught me to read when I was 5, and after that, I was mostly on my own. Yes, she sought out volunteer experiences and free homeschool clubs for academic enrichment, but I had no formal education until college.

I grew up in a home where neglect was the norm. My dad left for work in the morning, and my mom didn’t get out of bed until noon. As the oldest of three, it was my job to cook and clean, and make sure my siblings were “doing their school.” What ability an eight year old has to make a 2 and 5 year old sit down and plow through math textbooks, I’ll never know.

My youngest sibling’s only memory of learning anything in his childhood was me, age 10, teaching him to read.

So, I’m proud of myself, because I was a voracious reader with a huge imagination and an incredible thirst for knowledge. I taught myself history, language arts, math, and science by sitting down and reading text books.

I was my own guidance counselor. As high school loomed, I knew I wanted to go to a “good college”. So I read all of the rankings, and I figured out what I needed to learn to get where I wanted to go. I mapped out my four years of high school, asking my parents to enroll me in extension programs, community college, and co-ops. I figured out how homework worked, how to take tests, and how to build relationships with teachers so they would write me letters of recommendation. I made sure I took math and science, because I couldn’t get those at home or through debate. I wrote tons of essays, so that I could write good applications for college. I worked 10 hours a week running a piano studio, so I could have my own spending money. I competed in the NCFCA, and won. A lot.

I’m proud of myself, because I worked my ass off in high school, doing so much more than any of my peers. I had to figure out the system on my own, with no guidance or advice.

I’m proud of myself, because I had the drive and forethought and organization at seventeen, to call every university I wanted to apply to and ask their admissions counselors what extra information they would want, because I was homeschooled (and remember, this was 10 years ago, before homeschoolers in college was commonplace). I put together compelling and interesting application essays. I figured out how to communicate the value of my education, by writing my own transcript and calculating my own GPA. I had something like 10,000 volunteer hours by the time I graduated (for which I give my mom much credit). I applied for a won extremely prestigious scholarships, landing me in the top .01% of graduating high school seniors in the country, and beating out peers from prep schools who had parents, teachers, principals, and advisors prepping and nurturing them. I only had myself.

I got into a top five university, from which I earned a BA and MA in four years, and graduated with honors. I paid my way through college with no financial support from my parents. I now work for a nationally recognized organization, and am leading in their cross-cultural outreach.

I am so damn proud of myself.

Because, despite what the news articles would have you believe, I have not been successful because of my (lack of) education. I am thriving despite my homeschool experience. I have been successful because I have overcome every obstacle thrown in my path. I been smarter and worked harder than the vast majority of my non-homeschooled peers. I am tough, I am resilient, and I have already accomplished so much.

So yes, as I read and write and recall all of the bullshit I’ve lived through and coped with, I need to remember every once in awhile that I am overcoming it, and that is amazing.

I am not a homeschool success story. I’m my own success story.

*****

Also by Philosophical Perspectives on HA:

How NCFCA Taught Me to Fight Sexism

Of Love and Office Supplies

A Tool In Someone Else’s Culture War

We Need Advocates

A Life With No Future: Rebecca’s Story

July 11, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

A Life With No Future: Rebecca’s Story

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Rebecca” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warnings: abuse and mentions of suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

My homeschooling story has similar themes to many of the others on Homeschoolers Anonymous: religious indoctrination, abusive dynamics, and educational neglect. Overall I feel like homeschooling inadequately prepared me for adulthood.

I was fourth in a family of six kids and I was homeschooled for every grade except kindergarten. We used the Christian Liberty Academy Satellite Schools curriculum for most of my education but had changed to Switched-On Schoolhouse (Alpha and Omega) for the later grades. I had a couple of friends and acquaintances in the local homeschool group, I attended church, and sometimes took community classes such as gymnastics and swimming. Still, my primary friends were my siblings.

Educational Neglect

Our family was not impoverished but we were lower class. Having enough money was a continual concern and a source of household stress. My parents spent a lot of time working to make ends meet and maybe it was because of this that they didn’t really interact with me much or supervise my education closely. The usual routine was that I would wake up, do the assignments in my workbooks by myself, and spend the rest of the day left to my own devices. Most days I only needed help for spelling tests. Despite the religious slant to the books, I did learn a lot from them and I’m glad that at least I had the basics of spelling, math, history, and so on drilled into me.

The teen years were when I started running into educational problems. I had done all right in math so far–I needed help sometimes, but I could do the workbooks more or less on my own– until I hit Algebra 1 and I could no longer make sense of it without help. I had Saxon Math, which had been working for me until that point, but it was just not clicking anymore. Unfortunately my mom was burnt out by all the working and homeschooling and she didn’t prioritize my education very highly.

By that point I was perhaps several grades behind in assorted other subjects. I wasn’t doing that badly at most of them but I had been lazy about finishing the work on a schedule, my parents never put the heat on me to learn, and gradually I stopped bothering with the schoolwork.

My formal learning ended with a whimper. There was no graduation or diploma, we just gave up. As far as I can remember, I never got past the equivalent of Junior year. I am not sure though, since I was often clueless as to what grade I was supposed to be in.

Household Dynamics

My parents were converted to Christianity at the time of the hippie-led Jesus Movement, and they brought their relatively relaxed approach to life to our upbringing. Unlike many Christian homeschool families, we were not an authoritarian household. Since we were fundamentalist/evangelical Christians, there were definitely lots of little red flags you had to look out for (Harry Potter? Bad. Secular music? Bad. Spaghetti strap tank tops? Bad), but for the most part our parents let us have freedom. I was allowed to dress in punk clothing. We could listen to any style of music as long as it was Christian. We could be friends with whoever we wanted. Our parents tended to trust our judgment in these things even during the dreaded teen years. I’m glad that we were allowed to be individuals, and that the homeschooling gave us lots of free time to play and read.

The problem was that this undisciplined parenting approach was at times neglectful, not only for my education but also my physical and mental health. I think I was undernourished as a little girl. I had chronic stomach pains that went unaddressed, and my parents were aware of my continual depression but didn’t do anything about it. My older siblings were the ones who most often paid attention to me, comforted me when my stomach hurt, and tried to help me cheer up. When they got jobs, they were the ones buying half my meals and I finally caught up to a normal weight level.

There was a pressing problem with my mother.

She had major personal/mental health problems that did not get treated adequately. Sometimes she would go into fits of rage and terrorize me and my siblings, or threaten to kill herself or my dad. When she was at her best, she was a laughing, curious person who loved to explore the world with her kids. When she was at her worst, I thought of ways to run away from home or kill myself to escape from her. Sometimes I did run away from home and self-harm. Rarely, the abuse was physical, but she only needed to sigh rudely for my heart to start pounding. I wish she had gotten help for her problems, and I wish she had not taken them out on us.

It has taken me a long time to realize how fucked up it was.

No Future

My major issue with my homeschooling experience is the fact that it didn’t seem to be progressing towards anything. My parents didn’t seem to realize that they were supposed to raise us to become adults, not just Christians. Instead my life seemed to exist in a warped kind of Never-Never Land in which I was rocketing towards adulthood equipped with only a child’s skill set.

I knew little or nothing about household maintenance, how to hold onto a job, how to work hard or make myself useful, fix a car or drive one, how to handle a romantic relationship, take public transport, talk to adults, or how to get a scholarship or apply to a college or even exactly what college was. It’s tough to raise kids on a shoestring budget, but there was no reason my parents shouldn’t have taught me this kind of stuff or helped me see a life beyond the four walls of our house. I was told on one occasion by my parents that they didn’t care what my future ended up looking like as long as I was Christian. That was the only time they gave me any guidance about my future. (I am now an atheist, incidentally.)

When I was a little girl I would talk about all the things I would grow up to be, but that stopped before long. There was a misogynist stigma in our family that women who had careers were evil (a job to make ends meet was one thing, but being a Career Woman was another). I did not have a good experience with the food-service job I briefly held when I was 14 and I have not been able to handle even entry-level jobs since. I get severe anxiety. In my teenaged years, I was aware of no way out of my parents’ house except to get married to someone with a job.

College was not on the table, since there was just no way for 6 kids from a low-class family to make it unless we paid for it ourselves (which only one of my siblings has managed to accomplish so far). There was also a sort of contempt for higher learning that I picked up on. Part of me wonders if this I-don’t-need-no-fancy-education attitude was based on a sense of inadequacy, like if it was out of our reach, we would pretend we were too good for it. When my friends graduated they all went on to college to broaden their horizons, leaving me in a small town with nobody to hang out with. I deeply resented and envied them because I was acutely aware that my life was going nowhere. I feel like if I had been public schooled, there is a chance that a teacher or counselor might have been able to help me see a bigger picture of my life. Instead the only option I thought I had was getting married. At 20, that’s what I did, and I moved out.

Catching Up

To this day, I still feel as if I’m 10 years behind my peers.

I’m 27 and only now exploring college options and figuring out how to get a diploma equivalent, which is something most other people are starting to look at when they’re still teenagers. I think this experience is familiar to some homeschoolers as well as some people who grew up disadvantaged, and I was both. My future is in my own hands now, and my success or failure depends on me, but I don’t believe I was given the best possible shot at life. I feel inadequate when people ask where I went to college, or what my career is.

The truth is, I don’t know how to explain that I was set up to have no future.

If you set out to educate 6 kids at home, you have to follow through all the way to adulthood with each and every one of them. You have to admit when you’re in over your head and put the kids first and not your ideology. I wish my parents had done that.

Now it’s up to me to pick up the pieces and make my life into something worthwhile.

A Disconnected Father’s Day

June 20, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team11 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Heather Doney’s blog Becoming Worldly. It was originally published on June 16, 2013.

Today lots of people are celebrating “Dad time” but I am not.

Most of the time I just let this holiday go by without too much attention but today I figured I had something to share, even if it’s a bit heavy. I know that a lot of people have less than stellar relationships with their fathers, so my situation is not by any means unique, but sometimes I do feel a little left out of the father-daughter festivities. Fact is I don’t buy anybody neckties or cards for Father’s Day although I do make sure to call Grandpa. This Father’s Day I’m still doing the usual but it seems a little different, a little bit sadder, a little bit more abnormal. I always feel like I’m missing out on something I never had but this year there is another layer to it. This is because just the other day I formally ended the non-relationship I had with my father.

On Wednesday I told my Dad not to contact me again. It wasn’t a decision I came to easily or without cause and it wasn’t a sweeping pronouncement either. It has an escape clause. He can reach out to me if he apologizes for the abuse and the lies. This means that it’s now quite likely that I may never talk to my father, who is not in good health, again. I am sad about it but I reached a point where it felt like I just needed to shut a steel door and leave him on the outside of my life. It’s not a feeling or a decision I wish on anyone and I know its something that too many other Quiverfull daughters have had to do in the interest of their own wellbeing.

This came about, ironically enough, because he had called me out of the blue to try and reconcile, likely in time for Father’s Day. The problem was that his attempts at patching things up involved trying to glibly rewrite the circumstances of our estrangement, retelling and sanitizing the past. I felt myself getting annoyed, feeling triggered. Every lie he told brought up vivid examples of things I didn’t want to think about, particularly while on the phone with him. “I helped you a lot when you were younger, you came to me for advice and assistance with college and all kinds of things and I gave it,” he said. Yeah, in his world not actually homeschooling me as a child, telling me I could drop out when he knew I was struggling in public high school, telling me ‘you don’t need college’ and that he’d be ok with it if I got married instead, telling me the only college he’d help me apply to was the one he went to (so that’s where I went even though I wanted to go to a different one), telling me right before the deadline that he wasn’t going to fill out the FAFSA paperwork (needed in order to be eligible for financial aid) and then watching me squirm and having to tearfully beg my Mom before relenting were “help” and “advice” meaning that today he can totally take some sort of due parental credit for my education, including the fact that I now have a masters degree! I said nothing but he seemed to sense it was time to move on to other topics.

I was grateful for a change of subject and listened to him talk about politics, education, and social justice, and it was almost soothing (I hadn’t heard his voice in some time) except I knew this choice of subject matter meant he was now trying to compete, co-opt, be the expert on the things he knows that I’m working on and interested in. He does this often, finding someone’s area of expertise or interest and then “informing” them about it using a tone and style my sister once labeled as “out-lawyering the lawyer” and certain feminists have termed “mansplaining.” Other family members mostly brush it off but somehow I can’t. It drives me nuts, feels incredibly invasive and disrespectful. It doesn’t help that I am also the fighter, the war child of my family. Growing up I pushed back and challenged him so that the others didn’t have to and the habit stuck, became part of me. As an adult I have had to learn what “pick your battles” means. As a girl I was inclined to pick all of them, square up to any conflict and charge it like a bull.

My Dad and I’s conversation dragged on. I waited for the point. He seemed unsatisfied, trying different angles, looking for something. I thought about all the other times he’s disowned me and then sought me out again, beat me and then offered me ice cream, tried to reattach the puppet strings and then got disappointed and retaliatory when I pulled a hidden pair of scissors out of my pocket, snipped them and walked away. I felt a knot in my stomach, the beginnings of a tension headache. As usual, he was to once again trying to establish dominance, control, and superiority, not to meaningfully interact. He was barking up the wrong tree though. I’m not a girl he can do that to anymore and I haven’t been for a long time.

“Well,” he said, “I just wanted to say I don’t know where this talk of abuse is coming from Heather. I mean, you’re really exaggerating. I only spanked you maybe four times as a child.” I told him I had to go, that I’d think about what he had to say and call him tomorrow, and then I realized I was feeling a little hypnotized and kind of depleted of energy. That drained feeling where you dizzy-headedly wonder if maybe you were wrong, if maybe you were exaggerating, if maybe you were only spanked four times and just misremembered how bad it was. I’ve since learned that that’s just kinda how it goes when speaking with people who are emotional vampires. In fact, getting some version of “who are you gonna believe – me or your lying eyes?” is a good clue that you’re talking to one.

I sat and thought for a moment about my Dad and I, some of the good things he’d done for me. He’d taught me how to write an essay once (“you hook ‘em, tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you told ‘em”). He showed me how to catch, clean, gut, and fry up fish. He also told me “a sign of maturity is when you own up to your mistakes.” I really learned a lot from my Dad growing up, despite the fact that I tiptoed around on eggshells and never knew what I was going to get with him, and the fact that he most definitely belonged to the “do as I say, not as I do” school of instruction. I always wanted a good relationship with him but the truth is that for most of my formative years, in between the threats, bullying, and beatings that I simply described in my diary as “Dad got mad,” I thought that being treated like a pawn, or a slave, or some other owned and bossed creature was just what being a daughter and having a Dad was like. Now I know that it is not and that many people experience something quite different, something much better.

My Mom used to say living with my Dad was like living with Jekyll and Hyde, but I’ve since realized that what it is is that when he has his human mask on, when his inner scaly lizard-narcissist skin isn’t showing, he can seem pretty amazingly Dad-like. That isn’t me trying to be mean either, rather just trying to describe what I really see. My Mom had found him so handsome and intelligent when they first met as young people that she quickly fell head over heels and could hardly believe her good fortune at snagging such a good catch. I don’t know if nature or nurture made him into what he was, but 25 years later, post-divorce, stressed over his successful recent bullying of her in family court, creases lining her worn face, my Mom told me “I never even knew men like your father existed.”

My Dad is a former part-time pastor and missionary. Someone who cares for trees and birds and insects, knows their Latin names. He’s also a man who teaches GED classes to prisoners. You’d like him if you met him, think he was a pretty nice guy. The painful thing is that the “nice guy” he comes off as is also exactly the kind of Dad I’d want. I’d be so proud to have a Dad like that. And that’s how people like him work and walk among us, doing what they do. They know how to say the right things, appear like they feel the right things, mirror your emotions, put you at ease, make you feel good, that is until their hooks are in and they decide they’re bored with making you happy, facilitating your every whim, and now they want to see (and feed off of) your other emotions. Screams and tears? Check. Wide eyed shivering fear? Check. Confusion and bewilderment? Check. Self-loathing and a clinging cloying hope? Check.

As it is, back in the day I often felt like I was secretly trying to bake a mud pie into a real cake, thinking that if I added enough cinnamon, vanilla, or cooked it just right that it wouldn’t be wet dirt anymore. I am 30 years old now and have long since abandoned those amateur attempts at alchemy, resigned to the fact that a lead balloon will not become gold. Fact is, people who cannot appreciate you for who you are are not worth your time and you cannot change another person. I recognize that 1.) this man is my father and 2.) if he was a Harry Potter character he’d be a dementor.

For my earliest years my Dad’s meathooks were sunk deep into me, even more so because there was a genetic link, an easy portal for greater control. Not only did I belong to him, his child, his human property, but I seem to have won the veritable genetic lottery. I was near to him on a biological level, a “spitten image” sort of child. He gave me my hair color and eye color and the same freckles that he has. Our similar lips and noses, our bottom teeth crooked in exactly the same spot. We even have almost identical feet, mine the smaller girly version. If we stood in a room together you’d immediately know he was my Dad. I couldn’t be anyone else’s daughter. Our brains even work much the same way, with similar interests and similar skill sets, except (and this is what I have learned is a big exception) I can cry at sad movies and mean it while his empathy switch is broken. He can easily discern others’ emotions and mirror them but his real feelings appear to be quite shallow, stunted, immature, and selfish. This “feelings” issue is the main big difference between us, and it is a chasm leaving us worlds apart.

“So, what’ve you been up to?” my Dad asks, sounding like any other father who wants to be part of his children’s lives. My Dad sure does come across as friendly, smart, a little shy but happy to chat, an ordinary sort of handsome, and enthused to get to know you though. It’s easy to fall for but I can’t. It’s unsafe. He often does these cute bumbling Dad things while trying to be cool, like using slang words wrong or discovering emoticons and then unabashedly peppering his texts with them. It’d be nice to be able to appreciate and lightheartedly laugh over stuff like this but because his interactions are designed for infiltration, not discovery and connection, I don’t really feel like it most of the time. I dodge the question.

I get off the phone and decide that instead of calling my Dad I’ll send him an email instead, just lay out what I have to say in written words. There’s no reason to go easy. There’s no reason to be harsh. Maybe there’s no reason to even try, but I am. It’s my final attempt and is straightforward, unadorned. He responds much like I expected he would and essentially makes the difficult choice for me. Reading what he says takes me on a bit of a trip down memory lane as well. There’s so many ways to say “you’re defective and nobody loves you” and there’s so many variations of it that I’ve heard many times over from him. In his email back to me I clearly see the outline of the monster of my childhood, mask off, skillfully looking for soft fleshy places to dig in his claws.

Here’s my letter with his responses (slightly redacted for privacy) so you can see what I’m talking about:

“Hi Dad,

After I got off the phone with you yesterday I felt drained and a little sad. That’s often how I feel when talking with you.

Drained?? Why? The conversation didn’t seem tough or stressful to me. Maybe you have some underlying guilt?

After our conversation yesterday I though about the idea of giving you another chance to be my Dad. I want to give you another chance because you are my Dad. But I don’t think you want another chance as in a chance to be a better person and show the love you really feel to those you previously mistreated and neglected. Instead, you want to be able to come in and rewrite the story, particularly the story of the past, because that’s what you were trying to do on the phone. While you can certainly go rewrite the story for anyone who wasn’t there (you will likely succeed as you are a first-rate spin-master, better than Bill Clinton) you can’t rewrite the past for me or Mom or the other kids, because we were there and we know the truth.

Hmmm…The truth is what it is. I talked with [your sister] yesterday, and she certainly doesn’t see it the same way that you do and not the way that you described to me. I’m not looking for a “rewrite” as you call it or even another chance. I chance at what? I would be lying to myself if I agreed with you reconstruction of events. Anyway, I am interested a simple father-daughter relationship. That’s all. If that is too difficult for you, then let’s just move on about our lives. There are too many other people in my life who love me and are worthy of my time. You can be one of them, or you can sequester yourself. You decide.

And, no, I don’t see past events the way that you do. You are a very volatile, violent, and negative person. You rudely talk over people and get upset when people do not share your perspective. When you lived at home, many times I had to intervene between you and your siblings. You would resort to violence if your siblings did not do what you wanted them to do. I would often have to tell you, “Keep your hands off of my kids!,” but you had a knee-jerk reaction and continued to bully and abuse them.

When you were kicked out of the house, it was because you were once again hitting on my children. When I verbally confronted you, you physically attacked me. I could have been brutal with you, but I was gentle. I gently let you know that you were not capable of physically confronting me and being successful in doing so. After that altercation, you were told to leave the home, and your mother supported that decision.

The truth is what I wrote you in the letter I sent you last year, the one you responded to by saying you were done with me. At the time I received it I decided it was for the best. The truth is when you are not in my life things are calmer and better. You mostly bring drama, negativity, and discord in addition to constantly triggering memories of the abusive things you actually did in the past with your perpetual attempts at rewrites.

I learned a long time ago that it is very difficult to convince a mentally-ill person that that person is indeed mentally ill. However, for the record, you have a serious mental illness, the same one I see in your Aunts… They too always want to exaggerate the truth and point blame at others. You rewrite events just as they do, and then after awhile, you believe your own lies. Your siblings have discussed this with me. Again, they don’t see events of the past as you do. I am at peace with all of my children except for you. If your life is so much calmer without me in it, then so be it. I’m not begging to have a relationship with you. If you want to have a pity party and blame me for every negative thing that every happened in your life, that’s your perogative. I’m sure that it wouldn’t be hard to find a sympathetic psychologist who will listen to your single side of the story, agree with you, and take your money. BTW, you’re the one who has brought in the drama, not me.

That’s the thing. You can’t have a rewrite. You can’t have a do-over. You can’t have you not be an abusive Dad. You were an abusive Dad. You were such an abusive Dad that I developed delayed-onset PTSD and was in counseling for two years. That’s right. It’s what soldiers have. Living with you growing up was like living in a war zone. I used to be so terrified of you. I have a pinched nerve in my back and a “bum knee” because of all the times you grabbed me by the hair or face and slammed me into things as a teen. My diaries from when I was a girl have numerous instances of things like you throwing a drink at me and telling me you were done with me, wanted me out. I was 13.

Again, I’m not looking for a rewrite. I’m at peace with myself, and I vehemently disagree with your recollection of events. I NEVER abused you in any way, and if you have PTSD or some other mental ailment, you need to look elsewhere for the source. Also, for some time, I’ve known about your counseling… I know about it because your siblings brought it up to me…some of them are concerned about you. Let’s just go down the list, so that you can be enlightened. [Your sister] told me that you cursed at her and hung the phone up on her the last time you both talked. She tells me that you do that all the time, especially when she does not agree with you POV. [Your brother] doesn’t want to go to the beach trip [that your Mom has planned] next month because you’re going to be there. He finds you to be opinionated and bossy, and thus, not pleasant to be around. Don’t believe me? Ask him! [Your brother] also finds you opinionated and condescending. He can’t stand talking to you either. Don’t believe me? Ask him!

You see Heather, you’re the problem, not everyone else, and not me. You’re obnoxiously rude and loud, and even your own siblings don’t find you a very pleasant or positive person to be around. Don’t believe me? Ask them!

I find your story about having a pinched nerve from abuse from me absolutely ridiculous. You remind me of [my sister]. You hyperbole is soaring above the clouds. You are only kidding yourself and perhaps your psychologist. Those who know you and who grew up in our house know better.

Despite this, I am sad to have to confront you with this stuff. I know it is painful for you. Still, as much as I’d want to have a decent father-daughter relationship, to know what one’s like, I don’t and its because of this. I understand that you might not be in a position where you can admit the level of abuse you caused in our family, the level of selfishness you exhibited over the years, but what I can’t tolerate is someone trying to rewrite what happened. What happened happened and you can’t rewrite it. It is there. It is there if we never speak of it again and it is there if we have some official meeting or go to family counseling and talk about it. But you try to erase it. When I told you a little over a year ago why I wasn’t inviting you to my graduation, this is how you responded. [By saying ‘I’ve had enough of your half-truths, lies, and disrespectful attitude. Let’s not waste each other’s time. I promise not to bother you again. If I see you in person, I will be cordial, but I’m done with you, Heather. Goodbye’].

No, what you share is NOT painful for me at all because none of it is true. There is not even a modicum of truth in it. You were treated well as a child. You just don’t appreciate your parents. You rant against your mother and I with your friends because you like playing the pathetic victim. That is your identity. That is why you did not want me at your graduation. My presence would have been an awkward juxtaposition to the sob story you have told your peers at Brandeis. Keeping me away was your solution. It’s more your loss than mine, and perhaps you will see this one day.

Now your friends have moved on, and where are you at? You’re still in the Boston area with no solid job prospects… It’s always someone else’s fault and never yours? Right, Heather? And, you say things are calmer with me out of the picture? You have my sympathy.

And, just to let you know, I have been there for you… I was there for you when you were debating between going to either Brandeis or Texas A&M. I was there for you when you were registering as a freshman at UNO. Anyway, somehow you always comeback to this supposed ogre when you have a need, and like a good father, I am there for you.

Therefore, YOU decide what you want out of this relationship, if anything. If you don’t want a relationship with me, fine. Your choice. I will respect it. If you do want a relationship, you’re going to have to work a bit harder at being honest, You’re going to have to make an effort. Again, it’s your choice. I have nine other children, and they all appreciate me much more than you do…

When my children come to visit or when I visit them, we all have a good time, and we all get along. Why can’t you be that way? Why are you always at odds with someone, and especially me? You need to do some serious soul searching.

…You talk poorly about me and your mother, yet now you want me to believe that your mother sides with you. She’s a fool if she does, but that’s her perogative. However, I’m not going to let you slide. You’re an adult, so please start acting responsibly by HONESTLY confronting your past. Right now you’re delusional, and everyone in the family see it.

One last thing, your advocacy against homeschooling is akin to Don Quiote [sic] chasing windmills. The paradigm for homeschooling has changed from when you were a child. There are many resources now available for parents and children that were not available when you were school-age. Furthermore, empirical data from the litereature supports the efficacy of homeschooling, so you’re fighting a losing battle. Here’s a bit of advice: Find something worthwhile to advocate. Anti-homeschooling ain’t it.

To read what my Dad had to say, all written down like that, felt as if some deep poison was being drawn out of me, that a painful infection had come to a head. While human beings are thankfully very resilient creatures and wounds often heal in ways that can seem downright miraculous, the emotional marks from child abuse definitely do cut much deeper, last much longer, and leave more hidden shrapnel than the physical ones. It’s hard to explain but emotional abuse often functions rather like a cold sore I think. Once you’re exposed to the virus you’ll always have the latent infection but symptoms likely won’t appear unless you are weakened from stress. In difficult times I still have his voice floating around in the back of my head telling me vicious things, leaving me secretly wondering if nobody really likes me, thinking that I may actually be as substandard as he says I am, deserving of the revulsion, beatings, and shunning he has given me and swears I deserve.

I considered my Dad’s lies, twisted together artfully with bits of arsenic-laden truth, formed into the kind of masterpiece of lashing out and low blows that he is so good at creating. Some of them struck a nerve but all of it was still just disturbingly, blatantly the work of someone with narcissistic tendencies and it made me feel ill. Growing up, I knew of no other way of exercising authority over children in your care than by wielding violence and authoritarianism. I had never seen another method modeled. I did beat up on my siblings and I still feel shame about that today (and have since asked them for forgiveness), but the idea that I was just naturally violent, some “bad seed,” is so incredibly offensive.

There’s this southern saying – “don’t wrestle with pigs because you’ll both get dirty and the pig won’t mind” that I figure explains pretty clearly how I feel about things. As a girl I was stuck in a pigsty so I grew up with pig-wrestling being normal. My Dad taught me well in this department and when I got to a certain age I put those same skills to use in breaking free from him. I didn’t know what caused his empathy problem but I knew what burned him up and so I wielded it like a weapon, fought fire with fire. Hurting him was the best way to cultivate his avoidance, make him withdraw. He might have had the meathooks and the power, but I adapted his skill of finding and exploiting people’s vulnerable areas and I used it against him. There are plenty times our dialogue went something like this:

Dad – “You’re a fat disgusting slob and no man will ever want you.”
Me – “Fuck you Dad, why don’t you go get a job.”

Back then I’d often get beaten but today my Dad’s vitriol is accompanied only by impotent rage rather than patriarchal power. I guess nobody ever taught him that that’s where this stuff would bring him. He thought he owned us. Patriarchy was a lie for him too, after all, selling him on a version of life incompatible with human nature, setting him up for a loss. Even the bible said “provoke not your children to anger.” There’s a reason for that.

Quiverfull parents are constantly talking about “training up your children in a way that is right,” but what about when you train them up in a way that is wrong? It’s not that they will never depart from it. It’s that it’s a heck of a lot of work to do so. My violent tendencies and skills with “verbal artillery” are a bit of an embarrassment today (I was prone to being quite foulmouthed and vicious to anyone who crossed me for a number of years) but I know they are also the way I started to win battles growing up, ultimately escaping my Dad’s clutches as a girl, and helping bust my family out of his little cult of personality. For years I was angry about it though, feeling that in forcing me to fight a fight that no child should have to, that he’d given me a “dark side” that I’d otherwise not have had, compelled me to grow a clunky set of armor that’s since been hard to shed. Still, I’ve found that being a different person today, playing a different role, and learning to navigate the needs of peacetime, while sometimes difficult, is in so many ways such a joy and a relief. I am also so thankful that despite my Dad’s attempts to keep me under his control, reliant on him for everything, education and life experiences bottlenecked in his ham fist, that I managed to get out and the situation has long since changed. Today I’m living my life, working on things that I’m passionate about. I have my education and my siblings are all doing well, engaged in their own versions of the same. I may have hated having to fight for it, but at least I won that war and can move on.

One bible verse I always liked was the one about forging swords into ploughshares. The verbal artillery is that sword, a set of fighting tools, a bag of bombs that I no longer need. So while I could easily have reengaged, gone back and said “actually asshole, Don Quixote is spelled with an “X” and he ’tilted’ at windmills,” knowing it would burn him up and I could say “point for me,” I didn’t. There was no purpose in it. It was a lose/lose sort of conflict from the getgo, a call for more pig wrestling, and because it could never be more than that I chose to cut my losses and quit playing a losing game.

Considering the circumstances, I don’t really know if I had any other viable option than the one I went with, or if I should have seen another way, might have best decided to do something else. It is always a deeply personal choice about what kind of role to give your parents in your adult life, even if you make a decision to cut one out, but too often people don’t see it that way. You get a lot of advice.

I’ve had many people over the years tell me that I should try to “make it right” with my Dad, but the thing is if I’d been able to I would have done so years ago. Today I can’t really tell you whether or not I did the right thing by telling my Dad not to contact me anymore or if there was even a “right thing” to do in such a wrong situation. What I do know is that different people handle abusive parents different ways. For me this was a last-ditch thing and not exactly voluntary, but as I am a grown woman now, it was thankfully an option that I was able to exercise, one that had not been available when I was a vulnerable child, and one that would not be available to me if a Christian Reconstructionist worldview, like my Dad used to dream of, was implemented on a large scale. So I took a deep breath, closed the steel door, and shut him out of my life. The monster is gone. I feel a bit sad and rather relieved. He cannot hurt me anymore but I still have an unspecified “loss of family” feeling, an unfulfilled wish for the Dad I always wanted to have. Sometimes mourning something you never had but still felt a deep need for is the saddest, weirdest kind of loss I guess.

I wrote my Dad a goodbye letter, more for my own closure than for his and now I am moving on, still healing, still learning, still working on the homeschool issues, still speaking out about child abuse and educational neglect, still addressing the toxicity (to men, women, and children) of an extreme patriarchal worldview that some people are still disingenuously or mistakenly pushing as bringing family happiness.

So if you have a Dad that you are estranged from or who is not fully participating in your life today because of being indoctrinated with these sorts of ideas, know that you are not alone and it is also not your fault. We can’t choose our parents and we can’t fix them. You just carry on as best you can.

If you do have a father who loves you for who you are and treats you with care, by all means go give him an ugly necktie, a card, or at least a hug, a phone call, something today.

If I had one I imagine that that’s what I’d be doing.

I Was An Abusive Homeschooling Mother: Jane Doe’s Story

June 4, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team2 Comments

Trigger warning: this story contains a detailed description of physical abuse.

I was an abusive homeschooling mother.

I can’t change that fact by writing about it.

I’m hoping to raise awareness about the higher potential for abuse in a family that homeschooling makes possible and the dangers of the Pearl child raising methods by speaking out about it, as one who has first hand experience. And partly I’m speaking up because I am still trying to recover a sense of myself in the aftermath, which is still unfolding in our lives like a years-long train wreck from which we can’t escape.

My husband and I were fervent Pearl followers, which is strange considering that he was a non-believer. However he used other arguments to come to the same conclusions. After a devoutly religious friend sent us some No Greater Joy newsletters we ended up buying and reading, and re-reading, almost all of Michael Pearl’s books concerning child raising. We also bought his book To Train Up a Child by the box load and gave it away to people at every opportunity.

I was a young and uncertain college student when I met my husband to be. He was 16 years older and had been living alone for many years. He was set in his ways and could be described, by a generous description, as eccentric. At first it seemed we both wanted the same kind of life: that of being semi-self-sufficient on a small farm. He had the land and skills to make that life possible.

Most pertinent to this story, he has the soul of a lawyer. He loves argument more than anything in the world, and spends much of his time devoted to it’s study and practice. Esoteric disputation, definitions, shades of meaning, debate techniques, and hard-core allegiance to “principles” over relationships is what made it so easy for him to adopt the Pearl techniques, blowing away any objections I, or my mother, might put forth.

I must accept blame however. I must make clear that I chose, in the face of conflict with my husband, to submit myself to his will in all things. I made that choice. No one else made it for me. I felt that it was a good choice at the time, for I could not stand up to him in argument, and I could not stand conflict. I wanted to have a real home for the kids, with a real dad, like I never had as a girl. As time went on I was baptized and accepted that being a submissive wife was my calling from God, as preached by Debi Pearl. I was determined to make it work and keep my husband happy at whatever the cost.

It turned out that the cost was very, very high. Accepting his will in everything meant living without electricity or running water while living in a small decrepit single wide trailer, having a baby every two years, not going to the dentist ever or doctor regularly, wearing dresses, not wearing make up, not cutting my hair, doing all the cooking,gardening, food preservation, never buying anything, not celebrating any holidays or birthdays, not leaving the house without permission, and forbidding my mother to come visit on any occasion whatsoever. I essentially lost contact with the outside world and became completely consumed with the vast number of everyday chores that were my duty.

For the children it meant that they had no birth certificates, no social security number, no vaccinations, and no friends. It meant being spanked regularly, without mercy, until their “wills were broken”, as the Pearls’ say. To do anything less would have been to allow “evil” to flourish in their very souls, and what a bad parent one would be then. When the children got older, it meant they were “homeschooled”, which also became my job.

I loved my children. Being a housewife with kids on a farm had been my ambition since I was a little girl. I was never spanked as a child. I never thought that was a good idea. Our family’s exposure to the Pearls’ child raising ideas came along when our first child was two years old. I was appalled. But my husband, devouring the Pearl’s books, found many arguments to use on me. Eventually I simply came to the point I always came to with him. I gave up and let him have his way.

According to the Pearl philosophy however, I could not choose to be an innocent bystander. No, it would not do to let dad do all the spanking. The children would notice. Mom must also do her part so that the children would know there was in essence, no escape. I too must hit my children with sticks for the slightest disobedience or even tardiness of obedience.

And hit them I did. The change in parenting hit my poor two year old daughter like a brick wall. The first spanking was at least an hour long. She, of course, did not ‘submit’ at all, never having experienced anything like it.

I believe the first command I gave her was over something relatively minor. The second was to stop crying after her first spanking. Of course she wasn’t going to stop. According to the Pearls’, to stop crying was a command I was supposed to be able to give and get obedience. I am here to tell you, it takes a long time to spank a child until they stop crying. Their bottom gets red, welts start appearing. You take breaks and waste your breath on endless explanations between the hitting about how you are not going to stop until they obey. Eventually, they start trying to hold their breath while they sob, making a sort of hiccuping gasp with moans and gurgling in between, while the demanding parent tried to decide what point really constitutes “stopped crying”.

It is a horrendous thing to witness, to perpetrate. It makes my blood boil to think of it now. It was completely mentally and physically and emotionally exhausting at the time. Both myself and my now ex-husband deserve jail time for what we did. We really do. But that really would not take the past back.

The beatings (can I now call them what they really were?) continued almost everyday. The Pearls’ say that you should be able to spank less and less. That the children will come to joy and peace and trust through this method, over time. But this much awaited magic never happened. Our oldest two children as time went on, became angrier and angrier. According to the books, this was because I was not being diligent enough in my applying of discipline. So, we spanked more and more as time went on.

More and more beatings.

More and more screaming.

The oldest girl got spanked over school lessons too, the few we had time to fit in. It was especially bad in areas of math and Spanish. Dad would butt into our lessons, and ask her if she understood what he was telling her. If she said yes she did, but then she could not demonstrate understanding, she was spanked for “lying”, for saying she understood when in fact she had not. Of course, she wanted to stay out of trouble and was trying to say what she thought he wanted to hear but became trapped in a no-win situation. She was also spanked for not being able to correctly pronounce Spanish words, he said she was simply “not trying”.

To this day, our girl cannot learn math or Spanish due to her emotional block to those subjects which were the setting for some of her worst tortures.

Our second child, a boy, was not so much under my attention where school was concerned. His dad toted him around with him all the time. This meant that instead of learning to read and write, he was standing around most of the time with nothing to do, no one to talk to, with frequently not enough warm clothes on and nothing to eat or drink. His only task was to stay quiet and out of the way. He had night time sleep walking episodes which involved peeing on the floor, for which he was severely whipped with the belt.

I could go on about the abuses that myself and their dad handed out to them, but it becomes tedious.

Occasionally we would go out as a family. When in public we were always praised for the good behavior of our children. They were very quiet. They did not make scenes. What good children we had. It makes me sick! My ex-husband points to these praises as evidence of how righteous our treatment of the kids was back then. Our friends and neighbors never saw the terror our children were experiencing.

Five years ago I left that whole situation. I moved into a modern house in a town. I put the kids in school. I got them birth certificates, social security numbers and vaccinations. I stopped hitting them.

He fought me on all these things. However, he too was forced to stop hitting his children. He was also forced to put in running water and a septic tank. After significant and extremely drawn out legal machinations, the oldest two children were given the choice to visit him or not. They never want to see him, or talk to him, and now live with me full time. He insists that I am the one who alienated them from him by telling them lies about him. He cannot forgive me for “taking away his authority”. He makes no effort whatsoever to contact the older two and seems to have completely given up an them.

When they first went to school, the oldest girl was put in seventh grade, according to her age, the boy in fifth. Our youngest was two at the time, so she did not go to school. However our other three children also entered school according to their ages: kindergarten, first grade, and third. It was a stressful time for all concerned.

The oldest girl spent her first year in school crying because she did not know what to do. She also got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. She repeated seventh grade the next year. She will probably never be able to do math. She displays PTSD like symptoms, with constant anxiety, rage, and feelings of low self-worth. She threatens to commit suicide and goes to therapy regularly.

Despite not being able to read, write or do math when our oldest son first arrived in fifth grade, he was barely promoted to sixth the next year. Now he has almost caught up to his grade level in his academic subjects, though his hand writing is still horrible and his reading is still slow. He has anger issues on occasion and can be a bit of a bully. He is aware of this and really wants to do better. He spurns his father, yet suffers from a lack of a father. He is in boy scouts.

In contrast, the younger four kids are making straight ‘A’s and winning writing, art and science awards. They excel in everything they try. They do not suffer from low self esteem. They have friends.

Yet their father still wants to homeschool them, and has told them that homeschooling is better than public schooling, based on the results of studies. He has got some of the kids convinced that they want to be homeschooled by him by using his powerful arguments. He and I are going to go to court soon regarding this issue.

He is a member of HSLDA. I was interested to read from the site of Homeschoolers Anonymous the transcripts of speeches given by [former HSLDA attorney] Doug Phillips at the 2009 Men’s Leadership Summit. His vision of having CPS abolished, and homeschooling girls to be housewives instead of considering having a career is truly terrifying, and made me realize that this whole thing is of a scope that goes far beyond my family. I had previously thought we were strange exceptions.

What happened to me and my children could happen to anyone who becomes isolated and vulnerable, and if homeschooling is allowed to occur with such little oversight. Unfortunately abusive parents will exploit that opportunity for everything it is worth.

Abusive parents, like me.

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part Three

May 2, 2013May 13, 2020HA Editorial Team7 Comments

Copy Kids—The Immorality of Individuality: Jessica’s Story, Part Three

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

*****

"I didn't know it yet, but it was the first day of the rest of my life." — “I didn’t know it yet, but it was the first day of the rest of my life.”

I got older and middle school went by and it was time for high school. My freshmen year, I met a new set of friends. They were the goth kids and they were awesome. All fucked up, suicidal, death metal freaks, but they were still christians.

My parents hated these kids.

At one point in time, my mother accused them of turning me into a lesbian because I didn’t have boyfriends. Never mind that I was not allowed to date and every attempt had ended brutally at their hand. It didn’t matter these girls were straight. I was hanging out with these strange girls and they were making me a lesbian.

When that tactic didn’t work, my mother tried to convince me that they were witches. She even had our pastor come visit and lecture me on the “appearance of evil.” They appeared evil. This didn’t work either, I was prepared with verses to counter his. When that failed, my parents decided they were going to put me in a girls’ reform boarding school. They wouldn’t take me. I had bad grades, but I was good kid. I didn’t smoke, I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t drink, I didn’t skip school, I wasn’t having sex. With the exception of my grades, I was a perfect teenager. I never once got in trouble at school.

I did not misbehave until the stress broke me.

The stress of all the pressure and the attempts to separate me from my only friends and still regular beatings with a belt, drove me to self harm. At the age of 15 I started cutting myself. My mother’s tactic for dealing with this was to hypothetically lecture me on how stupid it was to cut yourself, but she never actually acknowledged that I was doing it.

I cut myself for 3 years without anyone ever trying to stop me.

I made a couple more normal friends as well in high school and my senior year, I started attending church with them. It was there, a senior in highschool at the age of 18 that I met my future husband, but I didn’t know it yet. Honestly, the first time I met him, I thought he was giant ass. We had an argument on tithing in youth group. He believed there were legitimate financial reasons for not tithing. I did not

A month later, the church held a camp out. I had to beg and plead at the age of 18 to be allowed to attend a camping trip where boys would be present. Never mind that all of the adults were going too — there would be boys!

On that trip, my mother’s worst nightmare came true. I met a boy. An older boy.

We had our first date, he took me to a movie. I had to be home at 9 pm. She told me that she wouldn’t stop me, but that it was very inappropriate that Brian hadn’t come to ask my father for permission to date me. Before I could see him again, after this date, he would have to come meet my parents. So the next Saturday, I had him over for lunch. I had to show that I could be a good house wife. So I had to top to bottom clean the house and cook the entire meal by myself from scratch.

This wasn’t because of Brian. He didn’t care.

My parents however, thought this was going to be a traditional Christian courtship and if I didn’t show off my womanly skills, he would find someone else. Lunch went fine, and my partly tattooed 20 year old boyfriend showed up. Begrudgingly, my parents gave their consent, mostly because I was 18.

Sunday, after church Brian and his family invited me to go play miniature golf. I called my parents to ask permission and they gave it, even though they didn’t sound like they liked the idea. I stayed all day, had a wonderful time and made sure I was home by 9 pm.

When I got home, all hell broke loose. My parents hadn’t told me, but they had wanted to go grocery shopping that evening, but they would not leave the house while I was gone with my boyfriend. I had a 5 minute screaming match at the front door because I was home on time and they never mentioned I needed to be home sooner.

Sobbing, I walked to my bedroom and opened the door.

My bed had flipped upside down.

All of the clothes from my dresser had been pulled out and thrown on the floor the clothes were ripped from my closet and lying on the floor. My beside table drawers had been ripped out and dumped. My room was in shambles.

I turned around, walked out of my room to the kitchen, got a drink of water and my mother came in. She pointed to a pile of clothes on the floor and said, “You need to put these away and clean that awful mess in your room.”

I snapped and started screaming at her at the top of my lungs. My room had been spotless, I wasn’t putting away a damn thing (it may have been the first time I had ever sworn) and she needed to fix what she had done to my room because she had no right.

Then I heard the door knob.

Dad was home, I didn’t know dad was home.

For some perspective. I was 5 ft tall and weighed maybe 120 lbs. My father had almost a foot and more than 100 lbs on me. My stomach sank and I started running for the front door. He caught me and slammed me into the fridge. I pushed him off me and started running the down the hall to my room. He caught me again. I slapped him to try to get him off me. He swung me around and started choking me.

My mother screamed.

He let me go and I locked myself in my room. He told me through the door that I was no longer allowed to leave the house unless it was for school. No church, no extracurriculars, nothing. Then he hid the phones and went to bed. I couldn’t call the police, I couldn’t leave because they had set the alarm and even if I could get out, we lived almost 8 miles out of town and it was cold. I sat on my bed holding my baseball bat all night waiting for my dad to come after me.

The next morning, after no sleep, I packed the $20 I had to my name and a couple changes of clothes into my backpack and got on the bus. I never went back home. I didn’t know it yet, but it was the first day of the rest of my life. It was only going to get better from here.

After school, my youth pastor picked me up and drove me to a battered woman’s shelter. The next day, the police tried to get my parents to release me the rest of my clothing. They refused and I declined to press charges. Between the church, my boyfriend and the shelter, they replaced everything I owned. I had never had new clothes before. All of my clothes came from goodwill and the dav. They looked awful, they were torn, and I only had two pairs of jeans and a couple shirts anyway. I ended up better off in that respect.

I endured several months of harassment. My parents tried to find the shelter I was staying at. Also had one very failed attempt at family counseling.

I ended up staying at my youth pastor’s house and dropping out of high school. I couldn’t maintain a full time job, school, and my church duties — and, for the first time, a social life. About a year later, Brian and I married. Now, almost 10 years later, my husband and I are happy, non-believing parents to three beautiful children.

Over the years, I have tried a couple times to form a relationship with my parents. However, it never worked out and I eventually ended up cutting them out of my life entirely. I am happy, healthy, and I have the family I never thought I could have.

My children are thriving in public school and the difference between them and myself at their age sometimes hits me like a brick wall. They are happy, they aren’t afraid me or my husband and they love it when daddy is home. They have friends and all three are such different people with distinct personalities. The monster in the closet isn’t a demon coming to possess or kill them. And when they do get scared, they come running to mommy instead of freezing in fear unable to move.

They are loved and can be themselves.

I think that is all any child ever really needs.

End of series.