Homeschooling parents do not care about the community...

Oh my! It’s been a while since I last wrote on here – life has just been too busy! :-) Just a very quick recap on what has kept us so busy: We are in the middle of baseball season, and between both boys we are at the fields MANY days each week. Abriella is getting ready for her very first dance recital – she is soooo excited! The boys and I have started the “Couch to 5K” running program – we LOVE it! We can’t wait for our first 5k at the end of July. And then there is the karate tournament coming up next weekend! Whew, no wonder I feel like we are ALWAYS on the go – and that’s just our sports, LOL. 

Earlier today I was joking around with a few people, and made a joke about homeschooling (something along the lines of, “If everyone homeschooled, we’d all have more time to let our kids play sports.”). One guy turned to me and said, “I couldn’t do that because I support our local schools.” Before I could make a (probably equally as rude) comment back to him, someone else quieted down the conversation, preventing it from taking a very bad turn (thankfully, because we were actually in a meeting – not the place to argue about homeschooling, LOL). 

It got me thinking, though – why is it assumed that homeschoolers do not care about the community/local schools/children in those schools? That couldn’t be further from the truth – most homeschoolers I know want to see improvements in their local schools because they know that it could provide better opportunities for the children in their neighborhood – kids who probably play with their own kids, you know? Homeschoolers do care about what happens to those kids, but they also know that they can’t sacrifice their own children “for the greater good.” They have to make the right decisions for their own children.

I think it is rather presumptuous to assume that you know best for someone else’s kids or the community as a whole – I fully support a parents’ right to choose the best education for their child. This could be public, private, charter, or homeschool. Homeschooling is not right for everyone (though, I do FIRMLY believe that EVERY parent who WANTS to homeschool CAN homeschool successfully), but neither is public school. The reasons for choosing homeschooling are greatly varied – off the top of my head I can think of local friends who homeschool for religious reasons, some who homeschool because the school couldn’t meet the academic needs of their child, others who want more time with their children, some whose children who were bullied in public school, and so on… there are as many different reasons for homeschooling as there are families who homeschool.

Homeschooling parents still pay taxes to the public school, they buy the fundraisers that kids go door to door selling (to raise money for class trips or anything else), they tutor kids in the public school, they invite them to church, they try to set a positive example for these kids whenever they get a chance – in short, they act like every other member of the community. They simply chose a different educational route for their own children. 

What has been your experience with this type of situation? Do you find that most public school parents/teachers/etc feel hostile towards homeschoolers, believing that they are taking away from the kids in public school? Or do most understand that it is nothing personal against the kids and teachers in the school – that the school just wasn’t the right fit for their child?

Ranting and raving...

Ok, not really, LOL, but I do need to respond to a few things. Someone involved in the vaccine debate went on her blog and misconstrued some of the things I said, and her blog will not allow me to post my response, so I am posting it here - simply because I cannot stand untruths. This will be the last post I write on this subject, because I do not want an ongoing debate. I have my reasons for not vaccinating, and they are all perfectly okay, and others have their reasons for vaccinating, and they are okay too.

Here is what she posted (if this screen shot is hard to read, you can read her full blogpost at http://craftykta.blogspot.com/2011/03/making-exception.html)

And here is my reply to her:

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I should reply to you or not, but I think I will since I am being erroneously misrepresented on your blog. After my first blog post, in which I was not very clear in who I was calling irresponsible (people who make decisions as parents without knowing the risks – on either side of any argument), you wrote me a very “strongly worded” comment. I immediately wrote you an apology for me not being very clear. I wasn’t “name-calling” all people who vaccinate. I then explained that I included MYSELF in that “irresponsible” category because I did not know much of anything with my first child and I let the doctors pretty much dictate what would happen – and he was possibly harmed because of it.  

I have read all of the links you provided – I read them years ago when making my decision. I spoke to my pediatrician, read her pamphlets, and made the best decision that I can for my kids. There are many things to consider – including the known risks that come from vaccines. Kids can be harmed by them, and we cannot be naïve enough to think that vaccines are 100% safe.  

We don’t know if autism is caused by vaccines – in science, you cannot prove a negative. That’s like saying something can NEVER be done, because it hasn’t been done yet – but in time, it might. For me, for my children, there are too many chemicals in vaccines and I won’t risk it – let me be clear, it is the chemicals that are my biggest concern with vaccinations, not autism. Autism gave me a reason to pause and think about what was being injected into my children, but the chemicals themselves are what caused me to stop allowing my children to be vaccinated.

 I think, genetically, some people can be more susceptible to certain things (including autism) and our environmental factors can push them over the edge. I am not sure why you say that I cannot accept that your kids are vaccinated – I stated several times that it is a difficult decision, and that there are positives and negatives on both sides. We each have risks to weigh in deciding what is best for our kids, and your risks have you leaning to vaccines, while mine have me leaning away from them. There’s not a problem with that on my end – again, I said I have issues with people who do something without thinking about the why’s of what they are doing. It seems to me that you actually take the bigger issue with the fact that my kids don’t receive vaccines.

As far as the Juice Plus, I am confused by you saying that I wanted you to appease me? I never tried pushing JP on you – I simply stated (mom-to-mom) that it has worked wonders for my kids – same as I would have done with anyone who might have cause to be concerned over health issues. If I had been trying to push you to use it, I would have pointed to studies (my own kids are involved in one), or other personal experiences, and I would have pointed out that they come in chewables, since your son can’t swallow pills. I simply said, “To each his own when it comes to supplements.”

Tone can be very hard to read in writing – there is much to be said about face-to-face conversations – and so I understood where you might have thought that I was being too harsh in my first post – hence the apology from me. I do wish that you wouldn’t be so harsh in all of your replies – we all have our rights as parents to do what we feel is best. We should be able to have rational, mature conversations without resorting to sarcasm and snarky words. I have to wonder, with the tone you have taken with me, what would have happened if my son was still in the same class as your daughter? Would you have made problems for him?