Category: Uncategorized

Low Standards and Mediocrity Among Homeschoolers

I talk to homeschoolers every chance I get to learn about their process, their curricula, their activities, and structure. I join homeschool groups. I’m already researching different methodologies and philosophies in homeschooling. I am deciding between homeschool and private school, and I want to be prepared to homeschool.

But for every homeschooling family that rigorously teaches all subjects and have children at or above grade level, there’s two more with children below grade level…..AND THEY DON’T CARE AND THEY JUSTIFY IT!

So often I hear people say that their children technically read two grade levels behind or are 7 and can’t count yet, but why do public school standards matter and their kids are still getting an education.

Yeah, right.

Today a woman posted in a homeschooling group that she started her son in private school, pulled him out to homeschool, and after homeschooling for a year plus, he is now not only not making progress, he is behind. She says she thinks the problem is she has twin two year old boys and she gets so distracted and has to watch them so much that she can’t focus on her older son’s education. She wanted to know what she should do. I said to put him back in private school, wait til her twins are older and ready to do school themselves, then start over again with homeschooling and pull her older son back out of school. Many moms of many children were saying that you can easily homeschool with many children. I said that although some moms of many succeed in providing a good home school education, many do not. Their older kids spend more time helping mom wrangle the younger ones and helping her with laundry and lunch than they do studying. If she feels overwhelmed by her twins, she shouldn’t feel bad about delaying homeschooling til they are older. Even many moms of one and two find homeschooling difficult. With twin two year olds it would be extremely hard.

Then this woman starts in on me talking about how she has five kids and she does a great job homeschooling them. At first, as I start to read what she has written, I am impressed. To successfully homeschool five kids is an accomplishment that not everyone can pull off. It is easier for her if all her kids are school age now, as they seem to be, but it is difficult nonetheless.

Then I read the rest of what she says. She says how sure, her kids are not at grade level for public school, but that it doesn’t matter and they are getting a great education.

If your kid is not at or above grade level for public school, your homeschooling is not successful. Your child is not getting adequate instruction. Public school is not difficult. It does not set the bar high. Even though there are as many kids in public schools that aren’t academically inclined as there are kids who are gifted in that area, most kids who flunk in public school do so because they aren’t interested and didn’t try (or have some really off the wall, bad home situation) – not because it is difficult. The majority of even the least scholastically gifted kids pass. They are at grade level.

If your kid is not at public school grade level or above it, you are failing. What is the point in taking your kids out of public school supposedly for a better environment and education if you are going to let your fourth grade read like a first grader? If they spend more time watching their siblings than they do hitting the books? Public school grade level is not some unattainable goal. It is basic, the minimum knowledge and aptitude a child of a certain age should have. I’m not saying you have to follow the curriculum of the public schools. You can teach American history when they teach world history, and world history when they teach American. You can add subjects like botany and geography. But with reading, writing, and math there are standards that should be met. The basics should be the minimum of what is covered, sufficiently taught, and practiced.

It is disturbing that many homeschoolers do not seem to care much about…well…school. I am a firm believer that the state needs to stay out of a parent’s right to educate their children as they see fit. Parenting shouldn’t be in the realm of the state. I don’t want any regulations. Most of these homeschoolers feel the same way. But then they turn around and give their children a substandard education and low standards. It puts their children at a disadvantage, and hurts the cause of homeschooling. What better argument is there for state interference in homeschooling than homeschool parents leaving their kids 1,2,3, or even 4 years behind on skills and knowledge?

For people who have children of special needs, homeschooling might look very different. A child with special needs may not be able to stay up to grade level, and successfully homeschooling a child with learning disabilities might look very different and a lot slower paced than teaching a kid without them. But if your child isn’t learning disabled, they should be at or above grade level.

If this woman was the only one I came across who took this attitude I would just think she was a random flake. But I hear this all the time. Of  course it isn’t all homeschoolers. My babysitter is a homeschool student and she is starting nursing school at 15 years old. Some of them are hardworking, dedicated families who emphasize knowledge, success, and achievement. But many more talk about the importance of being “relaxed,” of not having any competition, of “letting kids be kids.” How it is okay if your third grader can’t subtract? Will these children’s bosses be relaxed? Will their babies just relax and decide not to need care and feeding around the clock because these kids have grown up thinking they can just relax? And how is keeping kids away from competition a good thing? Life is competition. It is filled with competing for jobs, honors, accolades, wealth, and a mate. Not everyone gets a trophy. These kids aren’t going to get to live in some utopia. And kids being kids? The time for that is after school, on the playground. As much as kids need to be kids, they also need to be taught to grow up. Education is necessary and there is no excuse for keeping your kids home and then allowing them not to be educated.

I really hate it when homeschoolers treat the school part like it borders on the unnecessary.

Vindicated

I have been on Depakote, with very few small breaks, for 8 years. The day I was put on it it made me tired. And on the rare occasion I was off Depakote I was often on something else have at least moderately sedating. But Depakote was always the worst. I have been sleeping in till 10 or 11 almost constantly for years. I would miss half the weekend with my family and miss out on going to church because I could not wake up. I would set all kinds of alarms. I would ask my husband to help me whenever he could. Everyone kept telling me that I needed to change my body clock, that I needed to get up early whether I was ready or not, that it was lazy not to be awake by 8, that I needed to start going to bed earlier, and all sorts of other advice or criticisms. But the thing is I tried to change my body clock. I went to bed between 8 and 9. When my husband would force me to get up while I was still that tired (usually at my request the night before) I would end up too exhausted to move all day and I would have a mood swing. And no matter how many days I did that my body still wanted to sleep and sleep.

Past a certain point I privately began to wonder if people were right. Maybe I was just lazy. I didn’t know anybody who laid in bed as much as I did. Everyone else got up in the morning. Not at noon. Some people get up for their jobs, some people to do activities with their kids which I was missing out on, and even the people who periodically sleep in as late as I was sleeping in were capable of getting up earlier and being functional people, especially when they needed to do something. For me it didn’t matter what I needed to do it was a nightmare to get up in the morning. But I seriously wondered if maybe I was lazy. I wondered if it was a character flaw.

Over the past week I have been vindicated. The doctors pulled me off Depakote. Initially that wasn’t good because I went manic, but since then the other drugs they have put me on have kicked in and they are much less sedating while still keeping me stable. I’ve been getting up naturally between 4:50 and 7 every morning without setting any kind of alarm. I get up and I spend time with my family or I do work around the house or I get ready for church. I spend a full busy day doing stuff and enjoying my life. I am not laying around in bed, and I feel great. I really hope this continues and that these drugs work as long as possible. But even if these burn out, as almost everything I have ever taken has, I have learned that I will refuse to go on Depakote again. I will never ever take that drug again. It’s heavy stabilizer and it prevents Mania, but that’s not worth what it does to you. You miss half your life sleeping.

I am just enjoying being awake so much! And it feels so good to know that it really was the medication and not something morally wrong with me. I felt so bad. I think a lot of people don’t realize just how strong some of these medications are and how many different bad side effects they can have. And sleeping all day is not even the worst thing that can happen to you. But long-term it’s a pretty serious consequence of the medication because sleeping 12 to 15 hours a day is no way to live. I will never go back to that again.

Mental Hospital Outpatient Program

After a couple of days of suicidal ideation and overdosing on anxiety drugs, I ended up in a psychiatric outpatient program which I still need to go to next week.

So as I wrote about last time I wasn’t feeling well on Easter and it continued to get worse. I went into the psychiatric nurse practitioner on Tuesday to ask her to please put me on some new medication because what I was on wasn’t working. Instead she told me that she would not write me any prescriptions, that she did not feel comfortable dealing with my case basically, and that I had to go to a psychiatric outpatient program. She didn’t even send me off with any meds to tie me over. I didn’t even have a babysitter to go to the program because my regular babysitter isn’t available early in the morning most days because she is a student. Needless to say I will not be going back to this nurse.

I then overdosed on anxiety drugs to calm down, and when Craig came home he took me over to the mental hospital to do the admissions process for the outpatient program. I started Wednesday morning and the doctor is changing my drugs to two drugs I have been on before. But they might still work because sometimes when drugs burn out and quit working for me if I wait awhile and give it some time they work again. One is a stabilizer and one is an anti-psychotic. There’s a lot of group therapy. I only go to the half day program so I only have to stay until noon. But in that time there’s two hours of group therapy. The first day I didn’t talk.

Then something happened the night before the second day. Instead of being depressed I swung the other way and went manic. It was not my most severe manic attack but I only got one hour of sleep, was hearing and perceiving things incorrectly, and I had poor impulse control. And the afternoon after the second day of therapy I ended up spending about $400 on crystal.

On Friday I was only hypomanic but I actually talked during the group therapy. Both sessions. It was useful. I am glad I got to go that day. The only reason I got to go on Friday was because my next door neighbor was kind enough to watch Angelica for me. Otherwise I would not have been able to go. My regular babysitter Grace has class all day Fridays and the other lady that I had hired as an emergency hire quit on me.

I am supposed to be in the outpatient program every day this coming week. I am not sure when they will discharge me. I have mixed feelings. On one hand sometimes it can get really stifling just sitting there and I get Restless or agitated and have to get up and walk around. And it also leaves me tired because I have to get up earlier than I normally do, although that’s probably a good thing. At the same time once I get out of the program my days are kind of empty. I used to spend most of my free days, both on days I had Angelica and on days I had the babysitter, hanging out with my mom and visiting with my dad. Now I’m too far away and the days are just a blank canvas. At least the day program gets me around people and gets me out of the house.

 

Easter of Failure, Manitou Cliff Dwellings

Easter did not go well. I struggled to wake up, and then when I did wake for Angelica to do her Easter egg hunt and find her Easter basket, I was low and anxious. I was low last week too and called the psychiatric nurse but she never called back.

Then we tried an Easter Mass and the incense dried out my eyes and the crowds bothered me, and even though it was a gorgeous church with panoramic views of the mountains and prairie, I felt stifled and in pain. We left early and by the time we reached the car I felt like slitting my wrists. I didn’t, though. What I did do was take extra clonopin and just numb my brain out for the rest of the day and into Monday.

I have held out for awhile now being normal (except for rocking back and forth when my anxiety is bad) and doing normal things. We went to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings a few days ago and it was great. I drive. I take trash out. I read. I am living and documenting life and staying out of the hospital. But beneath it all is a flowing stream of depression. I cry at the laundry because I can’t fathom dealing with all the stuff. For every one time I meet up with a neighbor to talk or have a playdate, there are five more times I could have but I didn’t because I couldn’t socialize. I am in this really weird place where half the time I am ok (not great, but fine) and the other half of the time I am dropping so low I need new drugs or even the hospital. Right now I am doubling up on my antidepressant while I wait for the nurse to see me tomorrow. I am cycling too quickly.

I was definitely at my worst on Easter though.   This move has been traumatic. I miss my family. I have no support network in Colorado. Back home I could have called my Mom and she would have come and helped with whatever I needed and kept me company. Dad could have gone to a movie with me. Linda would have come over and I could have talked to her.  Other friends were just a phone call away. Here Craig goes to work and I am on my own. I have a part time babysitter, but she is a kid. I can’t talk to her. I have good neighbors here, but I don’t know them well enough to call or text when I am having a bad day.

The only thing that lifts my spirits is how beautiful it is here. Mountain and prairie both sing hymns to my soul. That and how much I love my house. Craig has made it a very happy little nest for me. Now if I could just balance out and enjoy it.

Sweet Cravings

I am absolutely starving for a new volume of poetry that will blow my soul open. I need some poetic C4. I’ve been asleep lately, and only some fresh imagery and sensuousness can wake me. Alliteration allows me to think in music. Synesthesia strokes my senses.

I have been writing a little bit the past couple of days, but I still feel a tremendous pressure in the back of my head from all the images that are stuck behind my mental block. I’ve been able to birth a few good lines, but mostly I am blocked. It is as though there is a dam in my mind and the poetry is leaking through at a trickle, when what I need is a flood.

Science fiction and horror are starting to call my name, so I think I will read through some of the volumes I bought but haven’t read yet of horror and scifi. I  am renewing my interest in microfiction too.

Today my mom had surgery on her toe. Thankfully it went well and she is out of the hospital and at home resting comfortably. I wasn’t able to go to the surgery because my poor babysitter is sick with the flu, but my thoughts are with her. I  was going to take Angelica with me to visit Mom at her house after the surgery, but Mom was tired (turns out she had to be sedated in addition to her local anesthesia) and needed to sleep undisturbed. I will go over tomorrow to keep her company and see if she needs anything. She can walk on her heel, but she cannot drive so if she needs to go anywhere she has to have help.

Today I have washed dishes, loaded laundry, emptied trash, washed and refilled our Soda Stream bottles, supervised Angelica cleaning her room, and I am feeling utterly uninspired to do anything else. I don’t have to do a major cleaning because the cleaning lady is coming tomorrow, but I should at least sweep. I might read a good homemaking blog to give me that little boost needed to do the boring but Holy work of house cleaning.

Lately my brain has been trying to climb upward toward hypomania. I had to cut back on mood stabilizer because it was making me too tired (one of the reasons I always have low energy) and I think it is causing me to swing a little. But so far instead of feeling super good and creative I just get suddenly irritable and angry at no one in particular and for no good reason. I will suddenly be overwhelmed by a desire to yell (that I don’t give in to) or to be alone.

Rising like this has made me miss my good hypomanias. I don’t miss mania, but hypomania can be fun if you don’t do anything too stupid and get in trouble. I become keenly creative and highly energetic. Colors actually look brighter. All my senses awaken. I can see connections between things that I normally can’t. I really hope if I do swing high into hypomania I get one of the exciting ones, not one of the angry ones. No hypomania is good for you, but at least I get something out of the ones that feel good. It doesn’t get scary until you are thinking so fast you can’t remember your thoughts.