parenting

Ninja Training: Chloe Anderson’s Story

HA Editorial Team5 Comments

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Ninja Training: Chloe Anderson’s Story

My best memories from high school involve dressing up in suits, sorting through philosophy books and shopping for office supplies for the next speech tournament.  It was a dignified, serious existence.

This will be explained later.
This will be explained later.

And then there’s this photo — which I will get to.

A lot of this post may seem like it focuses on my parents more than homeschooling per se.  However, from what I have seen the homeschooling experience is made or broken by the parents doing the homeschooling.  Homeschooling was a lifestyle for our family.  Everything — every experience, every family friend, every activity we did and book we read was all centered around my parents work homeschooling us.   And they did that work with passion and care.

A Little Bit of Backstory

My homeschooling experience had its ups and downs.  I loved the ups: Choir tours (all by my-middle school-self!) with my co-op friends; Highschool trips to Europe to visit the historical sights I’d studied for years;  Family weekends at the Scottish Festival; Learning beekeeping… The ups were largely thanks to an amazing peer group that I adored and a good relationship with my parents and siblings.

The downs were mostly usual issues; teen angst, and the occasional tousle with my parents.  I never felt like I really fit in with the more conservative majority of our social/church circle.  My parents were alright with that.  They never really fit in with them either.  My parents were reformed, but they rejected heavy handed theology that sidelined women or centralized church authority to squash dissent and learning.  Because of this we found ourselves moving often from church to church, even though my parents desire was to be active, participating members of a stable church community.

My family wasn’t perfect.  A couple members of my extended family vehemently, sometimes explosively, disagreed with my father’s relatively liberal interpretation of “biblical patriarchy”.  My mother, an educator and a passionate advocate of higher education for girls, was sidelined more than once from homeschool conventions for that perspective.  My relationship with my father was sometimes rocky, but he has been more than willing to invest time in working through those issues with me.

Today, I value our relationship more than ever. 

When my parents’ marriage ended three years ago, I was confronted with a mountain of baggage that was compounded last summer when my mother suddenly passed away to cancer.  Now I’m left picking up pieces while building a life for myself in California, and I’m struck by the rich silver lining to all my drama.

My family wasn’t perfect.

But for all its imperfections I think that they got a lot of things right.

My parents home schooled me K-12, not because they thought they had discovered the perfect formula for parenting, but because they loved me and my brother and sister, and wanted to give us the very best of everything.  And in the process they gave me, a lot of tools I treasure now that I’m on my own.

And that brings me to explaining the picture at the beginning.

I was a speaker/debater for all of highschool and I loved it.  My biggest challenges, and best friends growing up were found there.  One of the debate camps I helped coach had a ninja debater theme.  Needless to say it was awesome.  I believe that this is a carefully staged photo illustrating the mesmerizing power of effective criteria.  Through homeschooling my parents inadvertently passed along a plethora of moments like this filled with possibility, wonder and hope, which I have only just begun to mine.

They have helped me sort the other wounds that I have received in the normal course of life.

School in your PJ’s?

Similar to many of you reading this, my education was largely custom built.  Both of my parents were college educated, lifetime scholars with a passion for knowledge.  My mother worked to bring education to life for us on a daily basis early on so we’d catch the passion too.  History lessons about Egypt tied into real-life biology lessons as we dissected and mummified a frog – which we then placed for display in the handmade sarcophagi we’d done in the art lesson that day.

What kid wouldn’t like that?

Or in highschool we volunteered at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for their new space exhibit, getting cutting edge lectures from NASA/NOAA scientists and then running cool experiments on a daily basis for the museum patrons.  School was a wonderful time for me and my parents did a good job of teaching me not only tons of information, but how to find it and how to love the search for knowledge.

My mother was the primary teacher, but as we got into highschool years my dad took over languages and History.  A Russian linguist for many years, he taught me Russian for high school language studies.  Now I have a degree in Russian and endless cocktail conversation about my semester abroad in Russia to accompany it.

We also were not limited to classes taught by my parents. 

From very early on me and my siblings were involved in classes taught by outside tutors whether it was in a co-op setting early on, or a community college setting later in our schooling career.  All three of us graduated highschool with at least a full year worth of credits from the local community college. Those classes were especially helpful for areas that my parent’s weren’t so prepared to teach like upper level math or chemistry.

 Silver Screen Dreams

While many of my peers were limited in their consumption of media, my parents encouraged an active dialogue on just about any topic.  I remember the awe in my friend’s eyes (and the horror in her mother’s) as 12-year-old me happily announced at lunch one day that I had seen The Matrix the other night.

Granted, my parents watched it with us and they had remote-edited a couple of scenes they didn’t think were totally appropriate.

But the fact remained that I was raised in a really rich creative environment.  Movies were a part of my life from early on (I literally can’t remember I time I didn’t have all of the original Star Wars movies memorized).  Natural next steps for me were interests in living out these movies somehow.

What started as imagination and play acting turned into a real passion for acting, writing and producing for both film and theater.  My parents were delighted with my creative talents and encouraged my theatrical tendencies wherever they could, even though I know my mother in particular was a little worried about what might happen to me were I ever to pursue them professionally. As I grew however, she was willing to work through those concerns as I demonstrated that I was thoughtfully investing in my God given talents.

She knew she had to let her girl fly and she was willing to make that sacrifice even if it meant that she was a little uncomfortable.

That willingness on her part, to let me try things that scared her, was key in building a relationship that allowed me to actually grow up — not just get older under her watch.  T

hanks to her encouragement early on I’ve had the tools and the courage to step out on my own now and go beyond just being a productive member of society.  I’m chasing dreams out here in California and hopefully you’ll be reading my name in the credits of your favorite summer flick someday soon.

Learning to Speak My Mind

My parents also encouraged debate.  But long before the competitive bug bit me, I remember my parents hosting “Soirees” at our house after church; potluck food, and a grab bag of topics to discuss ranging from literature to politics to science.   I loved them and felt so grown up when I was included at 11 years old in the adult discussions.  We’d invite the most interesting people we could find.  My Dad often would actually seek out people with odd views just to have them over so we could have an interesting discussion. “All opinions are welcome here.  If you have a problem with that, you can leave.”  That was his rule.

Looking back, the group was mostly varying shades of conservative and the occasional communist friend of Daddy’s from the Tattered Cover Bookstore where he worked.  (They liked us because we were all a little bit different.  He liked them because they knew about Russia — his deepest passion in life.)

But while the opinions weren’t that diverse, those afternoons ingrained in me early on that everyone deserves a voice.  Even if you think you don’t agree with them.

That attitude served me well as I emerged from the homeschooling community into a liberal college where I encountered people with actual differences in opinion.  They weren’t scary to me.  They were just different people – with opinions of their own.  And since I knew how to listen, it didn’t take me long to figure out that “the world,” as many christian worldview apologists like to call it, is just made up of people like me;  People who have passions, who have loved ones, who have been hurt, who have dreams.

And when the debate is over and the ideas are put to bed, you should still be able to sit down with them over a lovely meal and ask them how their kids are doing.

One of the Boys

Boys.

Oh, boys! 

I was kind of odd in our circle of girls, because I never got the romantic fascination with marriage and boys and Mr. Darcy.  Frankly, if you ask me even now he’d have made a really boring husband.

But, that meant that after about 9 years old, a giant chunk of my good friends growing up were boys.  Even in college they were often the most interesting (drama-free) people around.  I’m sure that there were mothers who thought that was odd or inappropriate, but my parents were fine with it. They were great guys and I’m proud to say that I’m still good friends with many of them even after almost a decade in some cases and marriage in others.

I love them like brothers — totally inappropriate brothers who would let me rough house with them, who would play stupid games with me, who would match my banter word for word, who would take me swing dancing and who would talk theology, politics, video games and movies with me till dawn. I am deeply grateful for those guys in my life because I truly believe that without them I might not have been able to process the Daddy issues which are inevitable for any girl whose parents divorce.

In those friendships my parents gave me a piece of the external security net that has kept me grounded as I begin to live life as an independent adult.

Learning to Say, “No”

My parents’ marriage was far from perfect.

But, with all their issues, they were a rock of help for several families struggling with abuse.  They worked so hard to provide a harbor in the storm.  My dad partnered with other men to help mentor a few of the fathers who were struggling.  My mother hosted bible studies and invited single moms over to learn how to make jams or study child development.  They even included us kids in a limited fashion, asking us (never forcing us) to watch the young toddlers while my parents had coffee or dinner with one or both parents.

I was never really privy to details and for that I am grateful.

But in light of the little I did know, my mother made sure that my sister and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we never had to stand for abuse whether it was verbal, physical or emotional.  It was an especially important lesson to her because of the systematic abuse we observed all around us which was justified under the label of “biblical patriarchal theology.”  When seeking help from many churches for their own marriage issues the constant refrain aimed at my mother seemed to be, “If you would just submit better to your husband, your marriage would be fixed.”

With this useless advice ringing in her ears, within our conservative circle there was no one able to help until it was too late.

When my brother was a senior in high school, my sister was finishing her last year of college and I was doing my first year of internships post-college, my parents finally ended their marriage.  They had sacrificed much to try to make a home that was healthy for me and my siblings.  And when they finally ended their marriage I was witness to another step they were taking, at least in part, for us kids; they had the courage — even in the face of the social stigma in the church against divorces — to walk away from the marriage so that they themselves could heal.  Many people would see this result as a total failure.  But as I watched both of my parents wrestle through that time, I saw two people emerge with an even greater capacity for grace and forgiveness than ever before.

The divorce was not a failure.

It was the first step towards healing and restoration. 

 Hindsight, Always 20/20

The area that I look back on with the most pause is just how much I held my parents up as perfect — especially my mother. They were responsible for introducing me to the most fascinating ideas, the most wonderful people and for sheltering me from as much of the junk theology as they could.  So their opinion of me, their blessing, their respect was something that I not only wanted, but it was something that I needed on a deep and very unhealthy level.

This was something I didn’t fully register until recent years.

As I hit the later years of high school and throughout my college years I found my opinions shifting as I experienced the world without parental filters.  I knew the filters they had applied had been applied in love, but they were filters never the less.  My experiences began to show me that perhaps my parents aren’t infallible after all.  Especially spending as much time as I did with the theater department at my school my perspective on LGBT issues, sex, drugs, alcohol, democrats, republicans, “world view”…. all of it was shifting in light of my new experiences —

And the thing that tore me up was that I felt I had no tools for telling anyone from my family. 

At school I was one person, and at home I became expert at active listening, passive questions, sidestepping issues, or sometimes just lying to avoid telling my parents I’d come to a different conclusion than they had.

The internal dissonance didn’t really come to a head until I met the love of my life.  His name is Dylan.  We met in Stage Combat learning to sword fight.  It was awesome.  And really quickly we became fast friends.  He was the adventure I’d always hoped for in the moments when I dropped my usual “one-of-the-guys” act.  He was kind and smart, better read than anyone I knew, a professional athlete, on a full ride scholarship for acting and passionate about making a positive impact through politics.

But he was also a Democrat, a former player with the ladies, and I had no idea where he really stood on the spectrum of religion but I knew it wasn’t nearly “christian” enough.

I was terrified to bring him home. 

I didn’t even tell my family I was dating him for about a month.  I knew in my heart that our relationship was healthy, that I was growing and that I trusted him with my life even with our differences.  The fact that our friendship was based on a choice to be invested in each other rather than a checklist of intellectual compatibility was freeing.  But my parents didn’t know how to handle him. They were shocked by my choice because for about 7 years I’d been hiding behind my silent nods.

They didn’t know me anymore because I had stopped letting them in for fear of losing them. 

I had to learn to speak again.

And this is the juncture at which I find myself today.  My mother passed away last summer, so I never got to finish letting her back in. But my father and I are watching our relationship slowly heal.  I still have the need for approval of people I respect — but I think that’s more me than any homeschooling-bred need for perfection.  And I’ve finally been able to be honest about my choices — choices that I make on a daily basis using so many of the tools that my homeschooling experience gave me.  I would never give back that experience.  The glue that held it all together and kept my parents from being dysfunctional task masters, or chronic busy bodies with a messiah complex was that they loved us kids and wanted the world for us.  And they sought every day to live out a faith that convicted them to serve, love and empower.

That is perhaps the greatest example that they left me. 

And while I now no longer really identify as a conservative as they did, I carry that passion of theirs with me.  And I carry a faith that I have inherited but have also grown to own as mine.  In many ways I’m still the crazy kid in the photograph: Obviously not totally put together, but self possessed enough to fake it till I make it — and wise enough to love the journey along the way.

For that, I have my parents and my time homeschooling to thank.

Becoming A Person I Can Be Proud Of: Sean-Allen Parfitt

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Becoming A Person I Can Be Proud Of: Sean-Allen Parfitt

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Sean-Allen Parfitt’s blog Of Pen and Heart. It was originally published on August 23, 2013. This is the third part of Sean-Allen’s three-part series for HA. Read Part One here, and Part Two here.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the way my parents controlled the things we learned when homeschooling us. The picture I painted was not pretty, showing the negative consequences of being taught at home. Last week I shared a different view, sharing the academic advantages I received through my home education,

This week I am again focusing on the positives of homeschooling.

For my family, school time was based on academics. We learned grammar, mathematics, science, and geography, among other subjects. But there was much more than the 3Rs to our education. I learned many life skills that have continued to be relevant beyond scholarly pursuits.

One particular bit of education that’s been useful is how to take care of a home. I was taught from an early age how to do the house chores. I know how to properly wash clothes, clean dishes, sweep, mop, dust, clean the bathroom, and more. Mom was a stickler for detail, and she taught me the precise methods that would result in crisp whites and sparkling glassware. And believe me, there was no room for error. So when I sweep, I move all the furniture.

When I clean the bathroom, I get the dust behind the toilet.

When I was 10 years old, Mom was pregnant with my 4th brother, and she put me in charge of dinners. Thus I became the family cook for 8 years. I learned how to shop for the cheapest, and healthiest, food items. I became expert at crafting meals that were not only nourishing and delicious, but also tastefully presented. I can follow recipes as well as create my own dishes on the fly. I find pleasure in the craft of delighting people’s palates and satiating their appetites.

I also learned how to take care of and fix cars. Dad usually chose to fix our vehicles when he could rather than spend money to have others do it for him. I remember helping my dad change tires, replace a radiator, and bleed brakes. I myself have replaced breaks, replace the exhaust system, and changed my oil. Just this past week one of my tires got a hole in it, so I took off the wheel and put on the new one, using the skills my father taught me. (I have to admit that I prefer taking my car to the garage and spending the money rather than fix the brakes myself. Grease, anyone? Gross.)

Another area in which I was instructed was construction. Again, my father did most of the house renovations and construction throughout my time at home. Form tearing out plaster and lath when I was 6, to installing the lighting in my bedroom at age 24, I learned framing, plumbing, electrical, drywalling, and painting.

I am certain that if the need arose, I could build a house from start to finish.

I was raised to be polite and address folks with respect. Though some people prefer to not be addressed with “yes ma’am” and “yes sir”, I have found that holding doors for others, picking up items they have dropped, saying “please” and “thank you”, and looking into their eyes while firmly shaking their hands goes a long way in building people’s positive impressions.

As the oldest of 8 children, I certainly have a lot of experience with children. I find it natural to “get down on their level” and play with them. I have learned, through teaching my own siblings as a sort of “teacher’s aide”, how to explain complex systems to others in a manner they can understand. Though I do not yet have children of my own, I look forward to the opportunities to share the wisdom and lessons I myself have learned.

I may have faced negative consequences from a tightly-controlled childhood and education, but I have still been successful in my adult life, thanks to the academics and life-skills my parents’ instruction provided.

I am grateful that they cared for me and gave me the tools I needed to become a person I can be proud of.

Reading Voraciously in a Land of Books: DoaHF

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Reading Voraciously in a Land of Books: DoaHF

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

As far as the best parts of my homeschooling: I had a very solid education.  My mother had a college degree and she took pride in her work.   Once my father convinced her to homeschool she threw herself in whole-heartedly.  Even in a foreign country she bought or shipped over textbooks and taught us daily with dedication and passion.

I learned to learn and to love learning.

Her approach to certain subjects was different from traditional education, but she required us to complete everything with excellence and had us correct and re-correct our work until we fully understood issues.  She usually helped me with problems on lower grades until she had so many different grades that she couldn’t find the time.

I thrived under her verbal approach to history. Once I learned to read, I began voraciously devour the large stock of tame classics and children’s books that she collected and continued to expand as we got older (she hid some of the other classics like The Good Earth and Dr. Zhivago from me, as well as Rilla of Ingleside, but not Les Miserables or A Tale of Two Cities).

She even included my habit as school credit, giving me special allowance to read more when I wanted to further engross myself in an imaginary book land.

She kept detailed records of our work and made sure that we were competent before moving on.  She gave me a break inbetween Saxon pre-algebra and Algebra 1 to do Abeka Consumer Math because I was struggling with the concepts. She made sure I completed my work and made sure I did not just cheat or guess.  I remember loving school as a pre-teen.  Science was covered by Wyle and while she could not help me much, she spent time with me looking over the answer key and the module in order to find out how they arrived at their answer.

While we never had a positive personal relationship, she encouraged my love for herbs and baking by letting me have seeds and do extensive research into uses and cures and teas.  She also encouraged me to bake bread, pizzas, biscuits and desserts for my 8 siblings and friends and guests.  She coached me past my stages of not-hair-brushing, wearing dirty and/or stained clothing all the time, bed-wetting, and I think she really understood my struggle to be accepted

My father and I were very similar.  He always stood against the tide that shut women up and encouraged us to speak our minds and to think boldly.  He did not believe in women preachers, but he taught us theology and koine and told us not to be intimidated by any hot-shot divinity student who thought they knew the Bible.  He refused us independence and further education like college, but he modeled hard work and dedication every day for us and he truly wanted us to be intelligent and capable of being progeny he could be proud of.

I learned my fierce independence and tenacity from him, as well as my money habits which have stood me well on my own.

My grandparents insisted on being part of our family’s lives no matter how many thousands of miles away we lived.  They made an effort to spend quality time with each of us and I still remember their lessons and examples to this day.

My favorite part of homeschooling in the US was my last three years at home where, even though I had graduated school, I was involved in a homeschooled Square Dance program.  A local caller realized the potential and lack of time constraints that we kids as a group had and he organized us in practice for a local talent competition which we entered each year.

The social scene and the physical activity made a huge difference to my mental health, and I made two very close friends whose friendship I cherished and miss.

For Science in grade school my mother put together elaborate unit studies.  We spent a whole summer learning about the seas in Oceanography.  We then went on to memorize the Animal Kingdom as we studied Horses.  Finally, after learning everything we could about Volcanoes, our whole family went on a week-long trip to see, climb, and learn about one volcano in specific, even speaking with someone who lived through a volcanic eruption.

I am, and always have been the gregarious, outgoing, bubbly one in our family. Even though I went through abuse and trauma, I loved being homeschooled. My brain thrived on the literature-based approach that my mother took.

If I could afford to not work and stay at home, I might homeschool my future children if they wanted me to.  

Even so, I want to teach my children to read voraciously and to love information more than a method of learning. That is a positive one can gain anywhere.

Homeschooling, The Tool My Parents Used Well: Shaney Lee

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Homeschooling, The Tool My Parents Used Well

By Shaney Lee, HARO Board Member

I see homeschooling as a tool.

Like a gardening hoe, when used correctly it can help bring life and vitality to living things. Homeschooling is not an end in and of itself; rather, the end is for parents to raise healthy, well-rounded human beings. But used incorrectly, a tool can harm the very things or people it’s meant to help thrive.

My parents were two individuals that I believe used the tool of homeschooling well.

Thanks to their efforts, I was given a solid education that enabled me to get into a well-known university on a full-tuition scholarship and graduate from that same university four years later with honors. I had a wide variety of experiences while homeschooled that I believe contributed to the well-rounded person I am today. And I grew up learning to be comfortable with being the “odd one out” when there were no other homeschoolers around, which I think at least partially contributes to my willingness to risk how others may view me in order to do the right thing.

I also have many memories of things I may not have been able to do had I not been homeschooled: volunteer projects I did during school hours, exploring subjects not typically offered in school, getting to set my own pace.

Would I have received these same benefits had I gone to public or private school, instead of being homeschooled? I’m not sure. I think I probably would have, because I believe that my parents would have taught me many of the exact same things regardless of where I went to school. Even those things I wouldn’t have been able to pursue in school probably would have been pursued in a different way outside of school.

But that’s not really the point I’m trying to make. I don’t feel any need to prove that it was “homeschooling” specifically that contributed to the many positives in my childhood that made me who I am today. The point is that, in the hands of my parents, homeschooling was a tool that they used well (even if they did occasionally make a mistake here or there). Homeschooling wasn’t the only positive experience I could have had. But, it is the positive experience I did have.

And my positive experience with homeschooling is exactly why I chose to become a founding member of Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out (HARO).

I know that many people see my decision as a sort of betrayal against homeschooling. They assume I must think homeschooling is deeply flawed and dangerous.

But that’s not it at all. It’s precisely because of my positive experience with homeschooling that I believe every child has a right to an equally positive experience. And just like any educational method, homeschooling is a tool that can be used for good or for bad. In the hands of abusive parents, homeschooling can be downright torture. In the hands of good-hearted, well-equipped, healthy parents, homeschooling can provide a child with an excellent education, and potentially open doors that wouldn’t be opened otherwise.

So I am excited for this week of positives.

I think it will show that neither Homeschoolers Anonymous nor HARO are anti-homeschooling. Rather, we are a group of individuals who have a wide range of experiences with homeschooling, but strongly believe that all children have the right to a positive educational experience.

Learning To Leave My Son With Others

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Latebloomer’s blog Past Tense Present Progressive. It was originally published on August 15, 2013.

I am a chronic worrier, a bit of a pessimist, an over-preparer, and prone to occasional panic attacks.  And since becoming a mother a few years ago, all of these tendencies are now focused on my son and his soon-to-be baby brother.

Growing up, I heard so many times, in so many ways, how unsafe the world was.

As an adult, reflection has made me realize how the “safe” isolated homeschooling world my parents confined me in was actually incredibly damaging to me and many of my peers, while my adult experiences in the “dangerous” outside world have been very positive and affirming.  I have been able to overcome my deeply ingrained childhood perceptions for myself, and feel like a functioning and happy member of the big outside world.

However, I am unexpectedly having to go through the same process again, now that I am in the role of a mother.

All the progress I made for myself, I am having to do again, this time for my son.

Hours, days, weeks, and months of continuously caring for his little infant needs really affected me.  I had never felt so needed and so intensely protective before–my entire life was about him, his happiness, his well-being, and I couldn’t spare any attention for myself or my marriage.  After all, no one could take care of my little baby boy as well as my husband me–we knew him better than anyone and loved him more than anyone!

It didn’t help that I had a huge falling-out with my mom and my mother-in-law at around the same time that my son was born.  And it also didn’t help that we were living in a relatively new area with no long-term friends around.  No local family, no close established local friendships, plus drama with both of my son’s grandmas–that situation made it easy for me to continue for a long time in my hangup without ever acknowledging to myself that I was deathly afraid to leave my baby with another person besides my husband.

As my son got older, I saw other parents that I respected leave their babies with babysitters, or in daycare, or with family and friends, and I thought nothing of it.  It seemed like the right choice for them, and once they got through the initial adjustment, it seemed like their choice really benefited the whole family.  But when I tried to imagine myself in the same situation, I would be flooded by panic attacks and vivid imaginations of what might go wrong.

My old fears were coming back to haunt me–not for myself but for my son.

With a lot of encouragement from my husband and my friends, and a realization that I was going to either fade from existence or crack under the pressure, I left my son with someone I trust and went out on a quick lunch date with my husband.  I sobbed, I thought about my son constantly, and I was in a rush to get back to him.  It really wasn’t much of a date, more of a milestone, because for the first time I saw that my son could be fine without my husband and me–he didn’t cry at all when we left or while we were gone!

Since then, I’ve gotten more and more comfortable leaving my son with a small group of people I know and trust.  And he has helped a lot by never crying when we leave, not even once!  However, I’m now stuck on the next step–finding and using a babysitter.  Once my second little one arrives, it will be a far bigger imposition to ask for babysitting favors, and much harder to return the favors as well.

The time has come to find and learn to trust a babysitter.  

The thought absolutely terrifies me.  But I will eventually push through this fear as well, and enjoy the benefits it will offer to me (sanity!), my marriage (better communication and more affection!), and my kids (more social confidence and self-reliance!).

I want to always be there for my little boy and his soon-to-be baby brother; I don’t think that will never change.  But I can balance that desire with my other desire, to see my sons learn to navigate the world when I’m not around and gain confidence in themselves.

And I need to give them space, little by little, for that to happen.

I Am Not A Spartan

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HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. It was originally published on May 18, 2013.

Write the hard thing.

I have not been able to write the hard thing this week because I have not been able to figure out what that hard thing is. As I am writing this, I am listening to a conference call for my Story 101 class and we are talking about writing the hard things.

I feel like there is something that is sitting right under the surface for me.

There is something floating right there about my emotions, something about not blaming my parents but being in deep emotional pain. Something about being made sick with memories that I don’t want to face because they hurt so very much. I don’t want to face those memories because they continue to tear my heart up even though it’s been years since those first happened.

It is overwhelming because I don’t want to blame my parents, I don’t want to blame my mom, but I have pain.

I have excruciating pain that makes me physically sick as I remember being left at the MRI clinic. I have pain when I wanted — no, needed — comfort from my mom, I needed my mom and she wasn’t there. I needed that comfort and the tight hug accompanied with a whisper of “it’s going to be okay, I’m here.” I hate this pain, I hate the depth that is reaches because it kills me every time I face those memories or something triggers them. I hate that I feel pain when I face my mom, I hate that my heart breaks all over again when I look at my dad and remember the pain of finding out what he had done.

I feel shame.

I feel like I am a terrible person, and I feel like this deeply emotional shredding of my heart is something I should feel guilty about, like it is something that is disgusting and makes me worthless.

Facing these feelings of shame, guilt, and worthless and hearing my therapist softly tell me that no, I am not bitter, I am not blaming, I am feeling the pain I should because I have a heart and it deeply feels and that is good.

My heart is soft, my heart is easily broken, my heart beats to help others heal, and it seeks to comfort and protect those from the pain it has felt already. Some of my deepest fears involve fearing a stone cold heart, and fearing the bitterness and blaming that comes with a hard heart. I have always felt frustrated as I feel the pain, I have felt anger when something strikes my heart with resounding accuracy because my heart is easily reached. I used to think that setting up guardrails or those walls to keep the arrows out was okay.

I used to think that that was more important than letting myself feel.

I used to fight the feelings and try to be stoic and unfeeling. I felt like feelings were dirty, shameful, and something we should fight, not allow in, and certainly not allow out.

Friends use to tell me that I was being too emotional whenever I had some sort of emotional response to their words. They would tell me in such a way that it seemed like they looked down on me for emotionally responding, good or bad, to what they were talking with me about. They were the friends who first made me feel like I had to shut my emotions down. They were the ones who first told me, in their own stoic, spartan way, that emotions were not acceptable. Emotions were disgusting and worth very little.

Emotions were a failed sinful part of our human bodies and not to be trusted or allowed a voice.

Those friends were the ones who made me feel ashamed of the glorious, beautiful, redeemed emotions that the Lord of the Universe has created within me.

Hear me say this: I am gloriously emotional and I am a gift.

I am gloriously emotional and I am a gift.

It has taken me a long time to accept the emotions that bubble up within me as a good and beautiful thing. It has taken hearing my therapist’s gentle words of reminding me that I should be feeling this pain to accept the pain. It still totally sucks, and I find myself drained after a wrestling match with those memories. It still is difficult when I feel something so acutely and feel like I have to be a spartan and hide my feelings.

The hard thing is accepting the truth about myself and reveling in the beauty of a torn heart. Yes, there is beauty in a broken heart. There is a certain amount of glorious vulnerability that comes from allowing the broken to be revealed.

There is an astounding amount of release when I acknowledge the pain that has driven me to weep time and time again.

I no longer fight this pain but simply let the tears flow, the pain wrenching my heart. It is my way of healing, it is an act of letting the tears bind up a deep and bleeding wound. Those tears are my heart’s way of telling me yes, I can still feel, I am not a spartan robot, I am a redeemed emotional woman.

I believe that women are created specifically to feel the hard things, the painful things, the gut wrenching things. I believe that I am supposed to feel the pain deeply, I am supposed to and should cry because I have been deeply wounded. To not cry would be killing the specifically designed voice I have deep within me that allows for those feelings to be let out.

I am done killing my “wild voice.” I am done hiding the emotions I once felt ashamed of.

I am ready to stand up and point down to the feelings I once turned my nose up at and called dirty. I am now ready to announce them beautiful and precious.

My hard thing is accepting the emotions that course freely through my heart and soul. My hard thing is allowing for my eyes to be overwhelmed with tears as I feel the pain and am reminded of what I have faced.

Crying, weeping, letting the Holy Spirit decipher the deep groans for which we have no words is a beautiful, glorious, healing thing.

Excerpt: 10 Things I Plan to Tell My Daughter About Sex That Aren’t That Purity Movement Crap

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Note from Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator:

I have often wrestled with what I will tell my children (when my wife and I decide to have children) when they start becoming “sexually aware.” It’s easy for me, as a newly married twenty-five year old to critique the way I was raised.

I feel that this article by “Jef With One F,” recently published by the Houston Press, is one that I would pass on to my daughters when the time came.

It offers succinct, practical advice for sex and sexual relationships in the twenty-first century. The Houston Press gave me permission to provide an excerpt here on Homeschoolers Anonymous.

*****

10 Things I Plan to Tell My Daughter About Sex That Aren’t That Purity Movement Crap

By Jef With One F

Against my better judgment I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the purity movement. If you’ve never been exposed to it, then I’ll explain. The idea is basically that you, as a father, are supposed to serve as the sole male influence in your daughter’s life until she gets married. You “guard her heart (and vagina)” because only you can be trusted with it…

…Better writers than I, like Libby Anne, have tackled the subject in depth, and you should spend an afternoon reading her work. She went through it as a daughter of movement, though. I’m a dad, and I am perfectly aware that the sexual health of this child is going to be part of my job…

Here are the ten things I know I need to tell a modern girl about sex once she matures enough to roll her eyes throughout the conversation.

10. That sex is beautiful and fun as hell, but so is driving a car and a bunch of other things that come with responsibilities. You need to ask yourself if you can handle those. I knew I couldn’t be trusted with a car at 16, so I didn’t ask for one. Same with sex. I waited until I knew I was with someone that wouldn’t use me wrong and knew what they were doing. You shouldn’t be afraid of it, but you should respect its possible consequences, such a pregnancy, disease, and just the general mess that sometimes come from sleeping with someone you shouldn’t have.

9. That someone that feels the need to lie, trick, or force you into sex is never going to be the slightest bit interested in your enjoyment of it. You might as well be a gym sock as far as they’re concerned. Don’t be a trophy.

8. That you should never do anything that will make you hate yourself to gain another person’s approval. You are not defined by the approval of others, and anyone who says you are wants to control you. You are your own person with your own unique value to yourself.

7. Your body belongs to you. Anyone that doesn’t respect that is an enemy. Run if you can, fight if you can’t, and never let someone convince you asked for or deserved it if all else fails. If a person makes you feel that they can fire you or fail you in a class or something if you don’t return their affections then they are just a rapist that doesn’t like to go out. Leave and tell someone immediately, because if it wasn’t you it will be someone else…

Check out the full article here.

Authoritarian Parenting Is Poison: Faith Beauchemin’s Thoughts

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Authoritarian Parenting Is Poison: Faith Beauchemin’s Thoughts

The following piece was originally published by Faith Beauchemin on her blog Roses and Revolutionaries. It is reprinted with her permission. Also by Faith Beauchemin on HA: “The Importance Of Telling Your Own Story” and “Starship Captains and Dinosaurs.”

My parents wanted to be the best parents they could be.  It’s a pity that I barely even speak to them. It’s not really their fault, and I would forgive them immediately if they ever admitted their parenting had been wrong.  But they defend themselves and make excuses and believe that they were doing it all to the glory of God.  And if something is to God’s glory, of course it’s going to be good for every person involved.

But that’s not true at all. I suffer significant psychological and emotional distress to the point of being developmentally stunted in several ways because of my parents’ “god-centered” parenting techniques.

All the books and sermons available to my parents convinced them that their parenting techniques were correct.  Multiple authors and preachers basically bullied my parents and many others like them to completely dominate and break their childrens’ wills, because total obedience was God’s plan for children and if children could not obey their parents, how would they ever know how to obey God?  My parents were convinced that my eternal salvation rested on their success as parents.  If they did everything right, I would follow the Lord and be happy all my days.  Too bad I only started being truly happy after I left home and left the church.

In the interests of doing everything right, my parents chose to homeschool me and my siblings.  This, along with the very tiny church which was our only social interaction, meant my dad’s ideas and will completely dominated every aspect of my life growing up.  He passed it all off as God’s ideas and God’s will, but there was of course only one correct way to think of everything and that was my dad’s interpretation of Christianity.

As a young child, I was happy, imaginative, precocious, friendly, outgoing, intelligent, excited to explore new ideas, devouring books about dinosaurs, about history, and every story I could lay my hands on.  By the time I went to college, I was quiet, depressed, frightened of everything, unable to speak in public, socially awkward to a painful degree, and self-censoring as to what ideas I was willing to even entertain or think about. I channeled my intelligence into proving the few points that I believed were true, and disproving everything else.  My mind wasn’t just closed, it was completely locked down.  It took four long years at college to return me partially to the outgoing, intellectually curious, adventurous personality I had lost.

My parents broke my will.  They wanted to make me follow a prescribed course of life.  They had a particular bundle of beliefs that they wanted me to adopt and take with me forever.  Any flicker of self-interest, self-will, was seen as rebellion and immediately crushed.  Any personal desire contrary to their wishes was deemed sinful, and spanked out of me.  And, I cannot emphasize this enough, I never got away from my parents.  I was always in their home, always dominated by their influence, their thoughts and desires.  I had one channel of freedom, the books I checked out of the library.  But when every other part of my life was controlled so totally, I tended to closely self-censor on what books I would read or how I would interpret them.

The adversarial form of parenting, the one which sees the child’s self as automatically opposed to the parent’s authority, is unbelievably harmful to the parent/child relationship.  It took me a very long time to relate to my mom as a person rather than just an authority figure. I still can’t relate to my dad as a person, his whole being is consumed with his religion, and with trying to prioritize God in his life. He has obsessed for a long time over the fact that he’s the authority figure in the family and everyone needs to honor him, which come to think of it makes me a little worried about his mental health.  He hasn’t realized that it’s wrong to put your ideology before your children.  He doesn’t understand why we barely ever speak to him.

Even hearing about homeschooling families or reading materials written by people in the homeschooling or fundamentalist Christian movement can trigger flashbacks.  I am still working, every day, on reclaiming my self.  I wonder, sometimes, what life might have been like if I had been allowed to develop my own path instead of being forced to follow so closely my parents plan for my ideas and my life.  What might I have accomplished if I hadn’t wasted the first 19 years of my life focusing all my time and energy on matching up to this ideal Christian model held up by my parents.  Perfection was the goal and therefore it took all of my time and energy to try to reach that goal.

I have only just now, at age 23, begun with any kind of seriousness to figure out my place in the world.  Once I realized I had spent the vast majority of my life in a tiny insular principality, ruled by my father, which had very little to do with the rest of the world, I felt completely lost.  And who am I supposed to turn to to figure it out?  My parents? They’re the ones who screwed up my life this badly.

I have to rely on myself, the self that was squashed and harangued and abused almost out of existence.  I’ve survived, and I’ll go on to do something important and real and lasting in this world, but I will never know what could have happened in those years that are lost.

Confessions of a Homeschooler: Iris Rosenthal’s Story, Part Two

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Confessions of a Homeschooler: Iris Rosenthal’s Story, Part Two

Iris Rosenthal blogs at The Spiritual Llama. This story is reprinted with her permission.

< Part One

"I remember how hard it was for me to adjust to being outside of the homeschooling bubble and in some ways, eight years later I am still adjusting."
“I remember how hard it was for me to adjust to being outside of the homeschooling bubble and in some ways, eight years later I am still adjusting.”

Since my original post I have come to the realization that I have just scratched the surface on everything that I have to tell about homeschooling. One of the problems I have with home education is that there is hardly any regulation. During the time I was homeschooled, K-12, I never once had to take the SAT or ACT or any other sort of evaluation test.

As long as it looked like I was studying I was pretty much left alone. The only subjects my mother was constantly involved in were; math, spelling and english. Occasionally she would check my work in the other subjects, but for the most part I was left to fend for myself and once I reached the age of 15 any involvement from her pretty much came to a stop.

I often hear the argument that not all parents homeschool are like this and that my mom was doing it wrong. While that may be the case, I don’t think that this should be lightly brushed off. We are talking about the education of children here! It is my belief that whichever route you choose, it’s very important that your children receive the best possible education. Be involved, be a part of their lives, listen, be aware of what they are learning about and learn with them!

With the lax requirements in place for homeschooling it only flings open the door for cases such as mine to happen. So much for homeschooling being better than public school (for those who don’t know me, that was sarcasm)!

I know my story is not the only one, my brother & sister and close friends have also experienced the same lack of education and preparedness to function in the real world because of being homeschooled. However, I’m not here to tell their story for them, I’m here to tell mine.

My first full time job experience happened when I was 21 at a call center. Yes I’d had jobs previously, but they were just odd jobs and the people I worked for I already knew from either homeschool group, church or 4-H. So I was always within that bubble my mother had me living in.

While working at the call center I got to know people who *gasp* went to public school, it was then that I started to realize that there were holes in my education. I didn’t know any math beyond the basic add and subtract. I could barely multiply or divide. Forget fractions and algebra.

I also realized that I was spelling a lot more words wrong than what I originally thought I was. It’s pretty bad (not to mention embarrassing) when your manager brings back your vacation time off request (written in clear handwriting) and asks you to tell what words you meant to put down. I found myself sticking out a lot in all the wrong ways, and my judgmental attitude towards people who were different than me didn’t help with that at all!

I had never been around so many people from so many different backgrounds before, it was quite an eye opener and culture shock for me! I still remember the first time I heard someone swear. If I didn’t agree with something someone said or did I made sure to let them know that it offended me. If I knew someone was a Christian and I heard them say something that I didn’t believe a Christian should say I made sure to let them know how wrong they were.

Looking back, I was quite obnoxious and judgmental towards my coworkers at that job. It is no small wonder that barely any of them talk to me anymore and I can’t say that I blame them!

I am so thankful that I have learned since then and now at my current job I am known among my coworkers for being helpful and a team player. I no longer allow my homeschooling experience to define me, in fact I hardly ever bring it up. I don’t feel as though I should have to defend my education (or lack thereof) to anyone.

It is my desire that people know and define me by who I really am, and not as some “failed product of home education.”

I hope that by sharing my experiences I can somehow prevent them from happening to someone else. I remember how hard it was for me to adjust to being outside of the homeschooling bubble and in some ways, eight years later I am still adjusting.

If anyone is reading this and is going through that rough transition period from the bubble to the real world, just know that you aren’t the only one who has traveled that path. It may be rough now, but in the end you will be stronger and wiser for it!

A Life With No Future: Rebecca’s Story

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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.