Ah, there’s nothing like talking curriculum in July. It’s my favorite month to talk about the technical side of homeschooling because it is all so exciting.

• We got two packages in the mail last week which set my children to begging for “Just one lesson mom? Please?”
• I just spent two hours punching apart little cards with my daughter as she asked questions and sounded genuinely interested. In spelling!
• We have a stack of school supplies divided amongst four crates, our new organizational tool for this year. And the children can’t stop looking at them and through them and wondering what treasures they contain as they beg, “Just one lesson mom? Please?”
• And yet more stuff will continue to trickle in over the next few weeks as we near the magic start date marked on my imaginary calendar: August 23, 2010.

It’s all so exciting, and it’s all so perfect. Because my plans for the year always work on paper. The children always love the fruits of my labors and never quarrel and never storm off in the middle of lessons until we actually begin doing lessons.

And I need all the excitement I can get. Truth be told, I’ve had a little difficulty mustering enthusiasm for the coming school year because it represents a major shift in how we do things, one that sort of feels more like giving up than moving forward. Well, at least until some online friends and I decided to leap into this thing together, but more on that later.

See, up until now, I’ve always written my own curriculum for everything but math. The Internet, library and occasional Amazon purchases have been the staple of our homeschool diet, and I rather enjoyed the creativity, learning and control that gave our family over what we were learning, how and when. But then we moved. To five acres in the country. I have a growing flock of chickens to tend to. And geese. And now ducks even. I have a 3000 square foot garden. And I’m expecting number 6 in November.

Something had to give. And I decided it was planning. One of my favorite parts of homeschooling, to be sure, but also the most time consuming. So now we’re chaining ourselves to someone else’s plans, someone else’s goals, someone else’s ideas of which ideas in history are worth lingering over and just how long we should linger there. This year’s line up:

For Bible: Walking With Jesus. This has actually been sitting on my bookshelf for two years. It looks really good. I just have a lot of stuff that looks really good.

For Spelling: All About Spelling. Mostly because this program looked the most like what I was already trying to do with spelling but never quite got it pulled together as well as I would have liked.

For History, Geography, Literature and Science: TRISMS, History Makers. And the greatest part is that I’m not doing it all by myself which turned my general thoughts about handing over history to some book publisher from resignation to enthusiasm. I also liked the fact that the lesson plans aren’t too detailed so there is a lot of room to modify and adapt. I know you can do that with any curriculum, but you don’t know me. The last time I tried to follow a publisher’s plans, well, it ended badly as I tried to do every single little thing written and got way too overwhelmed. The only real problem I have with it is that it moves frighteningly fast, covering 8,000 years or so of human history in a year. Seriously, how much can you really learn about Ancient Greece in a week? So I’m glad we all agreed to slow it down and take two years.

For Math: Right Start. I’m yet to find a math program I actually like, so we’ll see how it goes with this one.

For a sort of science supplement extra curricular sort of thing: Chickens, chickens and more chickens! My daughter seems to be getting hooked on showmanship this summer as she prepares her little Ameraucana and nine little broilers for the county fair. I can’t believe the amount of time she is investing in those birds and in her spare time she is researching starting her own flock of salmon faverolles for next year. Anyway, she has decided to join the APA/ABA Youth Poultry Club and has a notebook to fill out and levels to test for and poultry shows to prepare for as she plans for and manages her little flock.

I’ll let you know what I think of it all later, once we actually start. But for the moment, my children really like packages in the mail that are then stored in a closet. Who knew you could build so much anticipation just by putting away boxes?

For more curriculum posts and to share your own, check out A Classic Housewife in a Modern World. And don’t forget to let me know how you “do school.” Have you used any of these products? Or have you found something else that just really works for your family? I’m sort of new to this whole curriculum buying thing…

Taking up our German lessons once again, I send the children out with a list of things to find and photograph: a hen, a cockerel, chicks, eggs and chicken feed. They leave excited; I begin to clean. Their picture taking expeditions always take three or four times longer than they should. Sometimes they even remember what it is they were sent out to do amidst all the pictures they take.

Moments later, they return.

“The camera doesn’t work, mom.”

“What’s wrong?” I ask, as I take it. I’ve been having problems with it, but up until now turning it off and on a few times cleared it.

“It just keeps telling us it has a focusing error.”

I turn the camera off and on. Again and again. Nothing. The camera is dead. Normally, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to go a month or two without a camera. I don’t take that many pictures. I sort of go in spurts, and most of the time when I do think about it, it is only because I have something in mind for my blog.

But this is different. It was messing with my plans, and I never take too kindly to that. These plans went far beyond this one assignment. It was part of an intentional act on my part to make our lessons more involved. To focus less on “getting done” and more on the process. It is an adjustment I have to frequently make for no matter how hard I try, in the hectic mess of the day to day, I frequently resort to streamlining lessons down to the “essentials.” But mom and child do not always agree on the “essentials” and I tend to remove the most engaging portions in the interest of time.

As I sat with the children to choose pictures from Picasa and the internet, I found myself becoming rather distraught. I went from the mild annoyance of having to change my plans to real disappointment at losing this part of our summer adventure. My daughter and I had been planning a short video series, and while I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the courage to actually post any of them, I was looking forward to the shared project. And then there are all the things we’re planning.

Our chicks are growing, along with those mop tops. Our geese should be arriving in a couple weeks. There’s the oil change on the tractor my son was going to help his father with. Our garden. Our bees. Our year of plans.

Now of course, a camera isn’t that expensive. But moving is and most of our extra money is spoken for. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the heat pump hadn’t gone out. Then the car. Then the tires. Which means that for the moment, simply replacing it isn’t so simple.

It means choosing. Would I prefer to replace the camera or rent the tiller? Replace the camera, or finish the fencing to protect the garden from the deer? Replace the camera or purchase our hive? In short, which is more important: the projects or the ability to record them?

Back to the assignment at hand, the children cut their pictures and carefully glue them in place. Each is labeled carefully in German, a task even my writing-averse son takes seriously. Their books turn out nicely, and all week we practice. First, they find the pictures while mom says the German. Then I begin to form simple sentences, using the pictures as clues. They translate and when they have it, they repeat. We do the same sentences every day, turning pages to reinforce the vocabulary for the week.

And it only takes two days for my three year old to stop shouting indignantly,

“That is not an eye! That’s an egg!”

when I get to “das Ei.”

I can’t wait to add to this simple book this week, and get back into regular German lessons.

I only wish we had a camera.

_________________

To make a simple pictorial dictionary, all you need is a sheet of paper and pictures of your vocabulary words. We did a simple eight page mini-book. Glue a picture to each page and label accordingly. Make sure each word is conceptually related and it will help your children learn the words in context, more like how they learn words in English. These can be collected together in a folder, glued together in a lapbook or even bound together. However you choose to store them, be sure they are accessible and to use them frequently in your mini-lessons.

homeschooling home education homeschool German foreign language

There’s been a bit of discussion in my Twitter stream recently about summer homeschool plans. Do you take the summer off? Do you plow ahead at full steam? Continue but in a different gear?  We have always, always, homeschooled through the summer, but that doesn’t exactly mean we’re groaning under the weight of textbooks and worksheets in the house while the birds are singing outside.

In the summer, I’m completely free from that and any nagging sense of “well, if I wrote it on that stupid form, I really should try my best to get to it.” Instead, we are free to make lilac jelly. We didn’t make a lapbook or track anything in a notebook. We didn’t fill out a single worksheet or even jot down a single note. We did, however, make jelly. We learned what pectin is and why you have to put so much sugar in the jelly. We found a whole list of edible flowers and looked up when the more interesting ones bloom. We’re thinking of planting a significant amount of violets and roses for the express purpose of making jelly from their petals.

That, you may say, isn’t exactly homeschooling. It’s life with children. Intentional life, I would stress, noting that this is what homeschooling is all about.

The only real difference is that I free us from record keeping. So our plans for this summer?

• Mouse is working on reclaiming several old flower gardens and planning a bird and butterfly garden to fill out where the grass took over.
• Inspired by the natural playground at Pioneers Park, the children are planning a natural play space as an extension of their forts.
• We’re learning the names of all the farm equipment that now surrounds us.
• We’ll be getting to know our “neighborhood” with numerous day trips to the various attractions here in southeast Nebraska.
• We’ll be learning about our own small tractor, its history, and its maintenance.
• Hopefully, if we can swing it, we’ll be starting our own beehive yet this spring.
• Soon we shall have our geese. They’ve been delayed twice already, so I’m a little nervous this might not work out, but I’m still holding out hope for this May 25th date.
• And of course, there are our chickens, a daily source of entertainment, protein and education. Especially was we move rapidly toward our first slaughter date. We’ll see how well one can process a chicken using primarily tutorials found on the Internet!

So yes, we’re homeschooling straight through the summer. But there won’t be any groaning, or longing stares out the window. If all goes as well as it has in the past, the children will not whine about their assignments again until August when they think our homeschooling starts back up.

When I do summer school right, they very rarely notice that’s what they’re doing.

So what are your plans for this summer? Please feel free to link to posts you have already written! You can also click to get the code for your entry so that all links will appear on all participating blogs. A sort of summer school blog hop! The linky will be open until the end of May!

homeschooling home education homeschool summer school

When I first heard the John Williamson song, The Shed, I thought it an odd subject for a folk song. After all, when he sings “Every Australian boy needs a shed…” I couldn’t help but think about a woodshed and we all know what happens when you take a boy out to the woodshed. And it’s not a subject for folk songs. But it isn’t at all what the song is about. It’s about needing a place to get away, be yourself and pursue your own projects even if the roof leaks and the whole thing sways on windy days.

A joint to learn to read an’ write, to work on his bike at night
To grow up as he likes, to grow anything under lights
A place to keep his tools, nuts and bolts and drills
To hang a hide, to hide the dry or hang to pay the bills

I think it is why children are drawn to building forts and clubhouses and tree houses. For as much as they like being underfoot, they also have a need to carve out their own space. Their own private space. It may be in the attic, under a stairwell or even under a blanket thrown over some chairs, but it is a place to get out from under the immediate influence of parents and be themselves.

My children have been busy claiming a closed off section of the hen house, a small room with the door boarded shut and a loft area that can only be accessed through a small window. The younger ones require a boost up and help down from the older ones and there is something so very touching watching the four of them work together to slip through. I don’t really know what goes on in there aside from a bit of hammering and occasional requests for scrap lumber, but it is their small space and they seem to get along much better when they escape there.

The next project is to clear a space for them in the barn to keep all their treasures. Snail shells, antler sheds, mouse skulls…all those delightful things children come across and cannot bear to part with despite the limited room for such things in the house.

So yeah, every boy (and girl) does need a shed. Or at least a small space they can carve out as their own if only for a little while.

Come to think of it, I think mom does, too.

Where do your children escape to? And how actively do you encourage that time to themselves?

Yeah, I know. I really should have put this up Friday because you really should have started this yesterday if you want to be on top of celebrating Holy Week according to, you know, the traditional week. Beginning Palm Sunday. Which I totally spaced until about ten last night and I wasn’t about to pull all my sleeping children out of bed just to keep on track.

After all, we have our own traditions to keep and one of the ones we keep best is “Oh yeah. Yesterday was a holiday.”

I hope you enjoy Walking With Jesus His Final Days. Feel free to share the study but please leave my links in tact. Should you be so kind as to share this link, please link to this entry rather than directly to the document.

Anyway, we did this last year and the children really enjoyed using the toys to tell and retell the readings for each day. It is sort of like an Easter version of the Jesse Tree with objects to go along with each day’s reading, except instead of decorating a tree, we filled a container garden with toys that the children then got to play with all day.

And as for me and my house, well, it is Palm Sunday our time. Until lunch. Then I think I’ll let it be Monday and our little project will be on track until we skip a day again.

Holy Week Easter Passover homeschool homeschooling home education

Sitting down to dinner, my daughter suddenly asks,

Did you know that the cotton patch goose was important to people during the Great Depression?

No, honey, I didn’t. Why is that?

Her eyes light up and, closing her eyes to remember her reading she ticks off their uses.

The backyard flock was an important source of eggs, meat and grease.  And it was called the cotton patch goose because it was used to weed cotton patches!

I am glad to see her enjoying her research project so much. She is even finally talking about adding to her website again because she has gotten excited about the project.

See, we want geese and she has been given the important task of determining which breed would be best for us. I gave her a list of questions to help guide her, focusing on heritage breeds, which has spawned many interesting conversations about our relationship to the food we eat.

She finds it somewhat disconcerting that chickens and turkeys have been so selectively bred that they can no longer survive outside their climate controlled sheds, couldn’t find food if they had to, and cannot reproduce without someone’s help. She looked at our chickens wandering the property, scratching back the dead grass from last year searching out sprouts and insects and thought that was just how chickens should be raised.

Returning to her research, she discovers the Sebastopol. Delighted with their long, curly feathers, she announces that she has found her favorite goose and is pretty sure she knows what we should get. I encourage her to finish, to examine all the breeds but otherwise bite my tongue.

Because you see, I’ve already done all this research. Not intentionally, really. Just that once we decided to get geese, I couldn’t help but read everything I came across about them. I fell in love with the Pilgrim goose after reading an article in Backyard Poultry, and everything I cam across after that just served to confirm this docile little creature as a perfect fit for our family and experience level.

This is where it gets difficult. At least for me. I already know what I want, but I’ve given Mouse the responsibility of researching the best breed because I want this to be educational. I didn’t want her to pull up a chair and have me show her why we were getting Pilgrim geese. I wanted her to come up with the characteristics we desired most, research breeds and come to a decision she would then defend with her presentation.

Was I really willing to let go of my preferences for the sake of my daughter’s education?

“Oh, mom,” she whines. “The Sebastopol needs to have water to swim in all the time.”

She thinks about our old bathtub and how we could fill it and clean it. But she seems to have some sense of how much work that would be, several times a day, in order to keep her favorite goose. Disappointed, she fills out her check list and moves to the next breed.

In the end, she does a pretty nice job on her presentation. She argues nicely for heritage breeds, though they are a bit more expensive. She notes that many of these breeds are considered endangered and that we can help make sure they survive as a breed by raising them and breeding them ourselves. And she compares the geese on the main traits she has decided suit us best: lack of aggression, ability to forage, ease of differentiating the sexes and quality of meat.

She decides on the Pilgrim goose.

And I’m happy. Not because of her choice in goose, but because she was able to come up with several criteria and judge the suitability of the different breeds for our family. There were several geese which would have worked well for us, but she was able to set aside her personal preference based on looks in favor of characteristics she had already determined were more important. That isn’t the easiest skill to teach, but she seems to have learned it well.

If you have Power Point, you can take a peek at her work: Why Geese?

How do you incorporate your family decisions into homeschooling?

homeschool homeschooling home education geese

“Today, I’m declaring a half day,” I announce,” but it will be a work day.”

The children eye me suspiciously over breakfast.

“Education is about building the mind and the body, and today we’re building the body.”

Their eyes brighten. They like the sound of that. It sounds so like something that must happen outside. Out there where Spring is driving back the winter and calling for my children to join.

“We need a compost pile,” I inform them, “and we’re going to get it started.”

They actually cheer. Cheer because they can respond to the call which has already drawn most of their attention out of doors.

We collect materials while daddy collects fence posts. We measure and level and draw lines with string while daddy digs post holes. We…wait. Where did they go?

Off exploring.

Checking on the baby chicks.

Examining the vole tunnels.

Looking at the outline of the old lagoon.

Discovering the remnants of an old garden.

I ponder for a moment the notebook pages I could assign them to encourage their curiosity and help them find the answers to their many questions.

But not today. Today is a workday. And while they may not quite grasp it, this is exactly the kind of work I had hoped for.

homeschool homeschooling home education

“Missy” left a comment on my entry The Pearls, abuse and a false gospel, which was apparently copied from No Greater Joy’s Facebook page where it was copied from a squidoo lens.  I’m unclear whether permission to copy this was granted in either case, but have chosen to replace the comment with a link.  It is lengthy, but worth addressing.  Take some time to read the entire thing. All block quotes, unless otherwise marked, are from the squidoo lens authored by Regina Normanson.

There is an old joke about the student that excuses his lack of homework by saying the dog ate his completed assignment. The joke was that no one believed him, and he would still get a poor mark because the homework was his responsibility.

Of course it is his responsibility and I am not aware of a single blogger who is suggesting that Kevin and Lydia Schatz are not responsible for the abuse their children endured.  The analogy doesn’t work.  The ensuing paragraphs regarding our society’s lack of ability to take responsibility are irrelevant to the case and to the argument.  But let’s think about this for a moment.  Say the dog did eat your homework.  While it is still entirely your responsibility, will you not in future either restrain the dog or place your homework in a more secure location?

Let’s suppose that a family DID closely follow the teachings on the Pearls’ web site www.nogreaterjoy.org. If that’s the case, the parents would have read this excerpt from an article written by Michael Pearl – IN DEFENSE OF BIBLICAL CHASTISEMENT?

When is it abuse?
You are abusing the child when it starts doing harm to the child. Listen to your friends-especially to those friends that share your philosophy. Ask the opinion of people you respect. If they think you are abusive, get counsel in a hurry. Ask the opinion of your older children. If your child is broken in spirit, cowed and subdued, you have a problem. Children should be happy and cheerful, full of enthusiasm and creativity. If your children are fearful or anxious, you should get some counsel.

Yes, let’s go to that very article, where the Pearls give a warning about abuse.

There is an excellent paragraph near the top under the heading “Enjoy your children.”  It gives excellent advice I would like every parent to internalize and to practice.  You see that kind of thing in their work here and there, but it really doesn’t seem to be the focus.  One paragraph in a 44 paragraph essay?  At least it is near the top, though not referred to again.

The paragraph Normanson quotes is near the end, paragraph 41.  Up until this we have learned:

• That Christians who use the rod moderately are “meek.”  (Apparently a bad quality).
• That if you reject the Pearl’s teaching and question their concepts, you are not fit to be a parent.  He pities your children, even.
• That the proper tools for whipping your child come cheaper by the dozen, and their conspicuous location about the house and around your neck will keep them in line.
• That church friends have noses longer than the pews they sit upon (and can’t be trusted to witness how you discipline your children.)
• That you cannot put an upper limit on the number of “licks” a child receives.
• That you continue the whipping until the child exhibits “total submission.”  If you ever stop before this point, you have lost his heart forever.
• That if he hides, you should pursue him slowly, laughing at his “frail attempts.”

Ironically, according to those who knew the Schatz family personally, the children were “happy and cheerful, full of enthusiasm and creativity.” They did not cower, nor were they subdued, nor did they exhibit any of the outward signs we connect with abuse.

Now to the book.

This book is not about discipline, nor problem children. The emphasis is on the training of a child before the need to discipline arises…

This was one of the first issues I had with the book. Their definition of “training.” It is such a positive word, one that should be embraced as part of normal parenthood. Everything we do is training. Everything we do is discipline. But they equate discipline with a severe spanking and training with manufacturing an opportunity to “switch” your child so that he can learn the force of your word.  Never forget that when you read “training” in their materials, it refers to a switch (however light) with the rod.

With proper training, discipline can be reduced to 5% of what many now practice…

Really? This is just me, but I’m not a fan of statistics pulled out of the air. It always makes me suspicious of other claims in a text.

If parents are frustrated to the point of anger, page 25 says:
When children see you motivated by anger and frustration, they assume that your “discipline” is just a personal matter, a competition of interest….

Page 25.  Of a 150 page book.  We’re 17% through the book, but really, this section isn’t any help.  Unless you assume that the only way to harm a child is in anger. What if poor Lydia’s discipline session went down exactly like the Pearls prescribe?  Ten licks, talk to the child, if the answer doesn’t demonstrate complete submission, repeat.  And repeat.  And repeat.  And you can calmly spank a child to death.  But the Pearls stress that if you “let” the child “win,” you have lost their heart forever.

If a child is angered by the impatience and pride of parents, page 33 says:
Father, if you care for your child’s soul more than your pride, then humble yourself and ask his forgiveness (even if he is just two years old)…

Wonderful!  And if pride had nothing to do with it?  The book isn’t a torture manual.  There are good things here and there, but they aren’t the emphasis.  More like passing thoughts.  And so much emphasis is put on the rod and how you will lose your child if you do not win with it and how you are weak if you do not apply it quickly and unmercifully.

Normanson has a few more quotes demonstrating where in the book the Pearls warn against disciplining in anger, ongoing brutality, intimidating children with threats about God as well as an encouragement to be a good role model.  All excellent points.

But that still does not discount the passages which are more concerning.  The general tendency to isolate you from other Christians who may question these methods.  The focus on “winning” and “total obedience” and “complete submission.”  The refusal to put a maximum number on the amount of “licks” handed out. The stalking of children. The “switching” of infants.

To go back to the opening of Normanson’s piece on responsibility:  No, the Pearls were not physically present as Lydia was beaten to death.  I don’t think they are legally responsible for this death, but the fact that the Schatz’ are fully responsible for their own actions does not negate one very simple fact.

The Pearls would be Christian teachers.  This puts a greater responsibility on them than on most.  Scripture tells us,

Let not many of you become teachers my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. –James 3:1

Some good advice and a few warnings peppered through a text that has such an emphasis on dominating a child does not put this ministry above question.

Schatz Elizabeth Schatz Kevin Schatz Lydia Schatz Pearls Michael Pearl No Greater Joy TTUAC

Each time we go to the doctor’s office, I am run through a predictable line of questioning.

No school today? (We homeschool.)

Oh, that’s right!  How are they doing?  (Pretty well. Insert small talk type comments about what we’re actually doing.)

So, do you want a flu shot today.  (No.)

Not filling out the form and not requesting one must have been an oversight.  Or I must be anti-vaccine because the nurse never fails to ask the next question on the list.

Are your children current on vaccinations.  (Should be.)

Because, you see, there are homeschoolers and then there are those homeschoolers.

What kind of social activities do you have the children involved in?

At this point, a few of the nurses go into their spiel about the importance of organized activities and friendships for social development and emotional well-being.  Most just go on to checking over my child, satisfied with my list of activities.  I know this is not the normal line of questioning for every parent, however, because on the rare occasion I come in with only one younger child, none of it comes up.

Then the doctor comes in and we get to go through it all again.  Except he always pulls their chart to check on their vaccination schedule and displays much more interest in the list of outside activities and encourages me to join a local homeschool group.

Talking with other homeschoolers online and off, this seems to be an occasional source of frustration.  I’ve heard more than a few complaints about the lack of trust the pediatrician displays, the frustration of defending decisions regarding vaccination or limiting outside activities, the “ignorance” regarding “socialization,” and the general annoyance of having your parenting questioned by a physician in front of the children.

Some, apparently, even have questions for the children regarding how safe they feel at home and what kinds of things they feel threatened by.  Few parents I know would be comfortable listening as the doctor broach the topic of child abuse.

I’ve never been annoyed by the questioning, however.  Amused, yes, but never annoyed. Part of it is because I’m just not really a confrontational person.  Not anymore, anyway.  Part of it is because their office really is supportive of homeschooling, and they manage to go through the questioning free of any accusatory or concerned tone.  In fact, their tone is much more like “What did you do over the weekend?” rather than “How can you do that to a child?!”  Part of it is because I expect it.  There is no shock at suddenly being asked what I’m asked at every visit, and with five children we have enough visits to the pediatrician to know what to expect.

Most of it, however, is because I want the questioning.  I pay my pediatrician for his professional opinion regarding the healthy development of my child, not to encourage my choices, nor to affirm my choices nor to even agree with my choices.  If he has cause for concern, I expect him to educate me.  If we disagree on some aspect of my children’s care, I expect him to do his best to make sure I’m making an informed decision.

And honestly, I expect my children to be cared for and treated differently because they are homeschooled.  Because they are unique individuals in a unique situation.  My pediatrician earned my respect and loyalty a few years ago when I brought our eldest in with some generic, non-specific concerns.  She looked healthy.  I’m not sure anyone else in the world would have looked at her and wondered if something was wrong.  All her vital signs were normal.  But she just wasn’t quite herself, and hadn’t been for some time.  The doctor took my concerns seriously, but what’s more he took into account that my daughter does not complain when she isn’t feeling well.    He did a thorough exam, drew blood and encouraged me to schedule another appointment if it persisted.

I don’t think it was coincidence that she was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis a few months later when some specific symptoms finally began to develop.  But you know…I would be very disappointed if our pediatrician did not take into account my daughter’s ulcerative colitis when treating her.  If he wasn’t concerned about side effects of the medicine, interactions with what he’s prescribing, her bone density, and her general nutrition.

Why should it be any different with homeschooling?  It certainly isn’t any sort of “risk factor,” but it is a decision that comes with a unique set of parenting challenges that a good doctor should be aware of.  I would be very uncomfortable if the state were to come into my home and start asking these sorts of questions simply because I submitted paperwork to homeschool, but the pediatrician isn’t the state.  And I pay him to do it.

How do you deal with your pediatrician’s questions?

_____

Don’t forget to visit this week’s Carnival of Homeschooling, Oddities Edition!

I’ve been reading over several posts regarding the case of little Lydia Schatz being beaten to death by her parents in the middle of the night.  Her loving, cheerful family, full of all the promises Michael and Debi Pearl make throughout their literature.  For Michael Pearl guarantees happy, obedient children in just two days.  (Blockquotes in italics are from Angry Child, posted at No Greater Joy.)

I could break his anger in two days. He would be too scared to get angry.

Too scared.  Beaten too severely.  For there is no upper limit on the number of spankings given a child.  No “three swift swats and sent to his room until supper.”  Instead, he is beaten until he is without breath to complain.  Beaten until he is utterly dominated.  And if he runs?  You walk through the house laughing at his vain attempts at escape.  And just to drive the point home, you place these “rods” conspicuously about the house and wear one ever about your neck so that the little child may always see and remember.

On the third day he would draw into a quiet shell and obey.

I’ve seen children in that shell.  It is a role many children (and adults) fall into when their lives are governed by fear.  And remember, we’re on day three.  Day three!  Two days of beatings?  Stalkings?  Standing emotionless, pushing the child away, denying affection, denying love?  For they emphasize in another essay: When they do something lovely, then you can love them. How heartwarming is the thought of conditional love?

When an abused child is first placed in protective custody, there is a brief period (usually about a month) known as the “honeymoon.”  The foster parent tends to feel like the child believes he is safe.  The child is actually in a state of shock.  The first stage of grief.  And it results in remarkably compliant children who are too scared to do anything but obey.  Sadly, Lydia did not survive long enough to retreat into a quiet shell.  Her sister Zariah almost didn’t, but thankfully has been released from the hospital.

On the fourth day I would treat him with respect and he would respond in kind. On the fifth day the fear would go away and he would relax because he would have judged that as long as he responds correctly there is nothing to fear. On the sixth day he would like himself better and enjoy his new relationship to authority. On the seventh day I would fellowship with him in some activity that he enjoyed. On the eight day he would love me and would make a commitment to always please me because he valued my approval and fellowship. On the ninth day someone would comment that I had the most cheerful and obedient boy that they had ever seen.

And how many times was that said of the Schatz children?  Different to other cases I have read and discussed here, people are coming out and saying they knew this family.  That they were a loving, caring, Christian family.  That their children were happy and well-behaved.

We’d been to their house a few times for church related functions, and once just Paul and I were there, for dinner. We ate shepherd’s pie, and the children were a delight [emphasis mine]. They showed us how to milk their goats.  The husband also had always taken time to reach out to Paul, who in person is extremely reserved and tends to be overlooked, and so Paul was fond of him as well.  Beauty for Ashes

No one saw it coming.

On the tenth day we would be the best of buddies.

This is what is so insidious about this teaching.  Yes, insidious.  Well meaning, loving parents can be driven to abuse, torture and even murder based on a few anecdotes supported by misapplied and misinterpreted Scripture.  I reflect on the testimony of another Christian woman, one who fortunately did not go quite so far.

And to believe that this doctrine of perfection is practically attainable not only wrung the joy out of this family, extinguishing this Mama’s heart of love and grace for my children, it led to excessive, harsh, unbiblical discipline.  Holy Experience

I do not believe it is insignificant that the child that was murdered and the child that was hospitalized were both adopted, nor that little Sean Paddock was adopted.  Children with a history of abuse will not respond the same to a spanking as a child brought up in an otherwise stable home.  And thinking back on it, working as a family support worker for a foster care agency was when I first encountered the pseudo-Christian sense of “mercy” regarding the orphans of our world.

Most felt called into other ministries, or just couldn’t picture themselves in that role, but the responses of a select few were perhaps more telling than I realized at the time.

We would love to host these children in our home, but cannot until the state will let you discipline them.

Which of course refers to spanking.  Because the state does “let” you discipline a child.  In fact, they require it.  I never saw red flags go off in a caseworker’s eyes so fast as when presented with a family that did not seem to address any misbehavior.  Is the parenting repertoire in these groups really so narrow that discipline is equated with spanking and there is no other acceptable parental response to misbehavior?

Of course, those outside Christianity are quick to pounce on this case.  It is everything they seem to want to believe about Christians.

But I’m going to argue that the continued debating over the line between forcing someone to submit and overt abuse that goes on in this world completely misses the point.  When you define entire classes of people, whether children or women, as existing to submit and suggest that willfulness is an evil brought upon your family by the devil, then abuse is inevitable.  The idea itself is abusive and dehumanizing.  Everything else that follows from it is simply logical.

I’m struck, when reading right wing Christian child-rearing advice, on how much the advice resembles the tactics that wife beaters use against their victims. pandagon.net

But here’s the thing.  This teaching isn’t extremist.  It isn’t fundamentalist.  It isn’t even “right wing.”  All of these terms imply that we are somehow all on the same spectrum, with similar beliefs and a fine little line somewhere that most of us choose not to cross, while others debate about precisely where to draw it.

Michael and Debi Pearl preach a different gospel, one in which sinless perfection is possible in this world.  Without Christ, even, as he shares in the opening chapters of To Train Up a Child where he points out that it is about raising obedient children, not Christian children.  It is from this philosophy, this philosophy of 100% perfection, this perfection that Michael Pearl claims to have been living in for years, that this philosophy is derived.

Not from scripture.

Not from watching Amish men and their mules.

Not from the fact they swatted their children and they presumably turned out alright.

If you apply their perfect teaching to your imperfect children, you will achieve perfection.  No need of redemption.  Only continual conditioning, a methodology I actually find much better placed within the secular behaviorist model.  Read up a little on B.F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism and then read To Train Up a Child.

In effect, the Pearls advocate making the home into an operant conditioning chamber. Not a model of mercy and grace, love and respect.  As Spunky pointed out, they have afforded the rod all the power the Gospel normally gives to Christ:  that of redemption.

More on this case, if you can stomach it:

TulipGirl
Godly Discipline Turned Deadly (Interesting thoughts on the Christian response)
Fundamental Discipline
Tragedy in a Homeschooling Family
When Parenting Kills
Senseless Deception

Schatz Elizabeth Schatz Kevin Schatz Lydia Schatz Pearls Michael Pearl No Greater Joy TTUAC