Stupid complaint

Littlejen22 · August 2013

I am making my comment here because I cannot say it to anyone else. But there is someone on a forum that has nothing to do with schooling and if I read this one person say she homeschools one more time I am going to lose it on her. I always thought it was weird she said they homeschool because her only kid just turned five. I understand if she said she was going to homeschool and is homeschooling preschool. So she just made a comment that her kid is starting school. Um if your kid is starting public school then why where you always making it sound like you were a homeschooler and she did not say she changed her mind and is going to try school. I just find it weird and just think that she choose not to send her kid to preschool.

Stupid vent over. And yes, I am not a homeschooler but am intrigued.

wifeofadam · August 2013

I think that as preschool is becoming more and more popular and almost necessary in order to assimilate into full-day public school kindergarten (I've even heard mention on forums of creating mandatory public school preschools), parents are starting to view preschool as something they have to homeschool - TOT school. The irony of it is that raising a toddler, by its very nature, is homeschooling without even having to try, because you are always teaching and they are always learning. It's just that the learning is usually informal and more about how to live - how to share, how to take care of yourself, how the world works, etc. But since preschools are now teaching the alphabet and numbers and foreign languages and music and everything else at younger ages, parents who choose not to put their children in a preschool feel pressure to do formal work in order to keep up. Therefore, they call themselves homeschoolers.

Technically, these parents are homeschoolers, because they are doing the teaching that the majority of parents are outsourcing all on their own. I really don't have a problem with them calling it homeschooling. It's not like all of a sudden when your child is kindergarten age you have the right to use the term. And in fact, all parents are homeschoolers in a way, or at least they should be. Even parents who send their children to public school are teachers when their children are at home and hopefully are supplementing where they find the public schools are lacking.

wifeofadam · August 2013

Since this is a complaint thread, I'll share mine, as it sort of relates to the topic. I have several friends whose babies are in daycare and they call it school. They drop their five month off at "school" and the daycare even takes yearly "school pictures". It's so silly to me.

I really don't care what anyone calls their childcare options, however, my only beef with the idea that we're sending babies to school is that I feel like it's just another way we are robbing children of true childhoods. I don't like a heavy emphasis on formal learning in preschool, because I think it takes the emphasis off of what is really important for children - imaginative play. And I feel like when we start saying that we're sending our babies off to school we're creating a bigger false need for small children to be involved in some type of structured learning.

Years ago most people didn't send their kids to preschool. Kids did half-day kindergarten and it was just fine. Then people started calling daycares preschools and it became more popular and now even homes in which there is a stay-at-home parent feel like they HAVE to send their child to preschool in order for their child to be competitive academically and socially. And now, as we call baby daycare real "school", I feel like the same thing will happen. Mothers will feel more pressure to send their babies away, even if they stay home, because the fear will be that their child won't have the same academic or social advantages when they reach school age. I've even heard it from healthcare professionals, who have advised stay-at-home mom friends to put their toddler in daycare so they learn proper socialization, as if the only way a baby or toddler will turn out normal is if they are outside of the care of their mother for a period of time.

I don't really have a point, I guess. It's just something that annoys me.

/rant

wifeofadam · August 2013

DC - I've heard it from people too. Well, now people just say negative things because we are homeschooling for "real school", but when all of my kids were under compulsory school-age I would get people saying that they couldn't believe my kids weren't in preschool.

"How will they learn how to share?" Ummmmm.........from me, my husband, and their siblings.

"How will they learn how to sit still and raise their hand when asked a question? They need to know this for school." I didn't realize it was necessary to train a two year old to do this.

"How will they learn how to stand in a line?" Perhaps they'll figure it out when they watch Mommy do it at the grocery store or bank.

I was always lucky to have the food allergy excuse. When people learned my oldest had anaphylactic food allergies it was like I got a Get Out of Jail Free Card and they left me alone. lol

ObLaDi · August 2013

DS is only 7 months and I consider us to be homeschoolers now.

Given that we are unschooling, what we are doing with him now is exactly what we will continue to do indefinitely; nothing will magically change when he hits "school age."

To be fair, I understand that this doesn't apply to a more traditionally homeschooling family.

Ritzy19 · September 2013

And this is why I love this board. Totally agree with everyone's comments.

Littlejen22 · September 2013

Hey, I just popped back over here so I wanted to add that I totally understand that you can homeschool preschool. My beef with this person was that they went on and on that they were a homeschooler and then a week or less later said they were enrolling their child in preschool Plans change so she might have wanted to homeschool and then a perfect school situation dropped in her lap but I find it weird for someone to say they homschool in one post and then that their child is starting public school in the next.

I will admit someone unrelated to my complaint though that until a child is of elementary school are I do not really think of someone as homeschooling just because like Fredalina said above, preschool is not required so if you do it or not and choose to teach them at home it is still PRE-school. I understand the argument that we are all homeschoolers in a sense because we teach our kids but still.

Gwyneddlesliegrace · September 2013

My issue is when bmb totally attack homeschooling with out doing any research on it. They base their opinion off of that one family that everyone knows... Yet statistically wise homeschooling continues to outrank public schooling.

wifeofadam · September 2013

Gwyneddlesliegrace said:

My issue is when bmb totally attack homeschooling with out doing any research on it. They base their opinion off of that one family that everyone knows... Yet statistically wise homeschooling continues to outrank public schooling.

Yeah. You just can't argue with those people. Everyone knows someone who was the socially awkward homeschool kid that must be how all of them are going to turn out. Or everyone knows the lazy homeschool parent that lets their kid run around in the yard all day and can't read at age 10, so all homeschool parents must be lazy. I hate the generalizations.

Listen, I know some pretty socially awkward public-schooled kids, some really unintelligent public school teachers, and some extremely lazy and uninvolved public school parents. I realize they don't represent everyone involved in public school. Why can't people see that the same is true for homeschoolers?

samiaf · September 2013

I had a friend who had her children enrolled in a private school, but told people she was a homeschooler. Her reasoning was she wanted to homeschool and provided her children with educational toys so she was homeschooling. She no longer wanted to be friends when I wouldn't lie for her to people she had told this lie.

wifeofadam · September 2013

samiaf said:

I had a friend who had her children enrolled in a private school, but told people she was a homeschooler. Her reasoning was she wanted to homeschool and provided her children with educational toys so she was homeschooling. She no longer wanted to be friends when I wouldn't lie for her to people she had told this lie.

Was it a non-chartered school? We have several around here that many homeschoolers enroll their kids in for part of the day and then homeschool for the other subjects. They are mostly schools affiliated with churches.

If not, I don't understand why she would want to say she's a homeschooler? Does she feel like it puts her in some club? IME telling people only causes controversy, which is why I rarely even bring it up with people IRL. I don't have the energy for the socialization debate.

Ritzy19 · September 2013

+adamwife+ said:

IME telling people only causes controversy, which is why I rarely even bring it up with people IRL. I don't have the energy for the socialization debate.

Same here. If strangers ask about schooling while we're out in public, I usually just make quick conversation and avoid discussing it. It's not worth getting into it with perfect strangers in the grocery store.

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