I met some women from my ward this week for lunch. As I was sitting there listening I heard them complain about the school, the friends, how they had to change schools because of the drug problems, how one daughter is getting all "F's" I then looked at them and said, " well, that's why I home school." (this is a high-rated high school, btw)
I am so glad that I cannot join in on that conversation.
I've done public school. I had two of my kids go through all 12 grades. It can work.
But I do get tired of the on-lookers thinking that I'm making some big mistake--that kids need this great socialization that happens at school.
I have friends tell me that I should put my 15-year old in high school. One friend even asked my son, "don't you want to go to school?"
It's hard enough to hang on to your kids, sending them off to school may be easier and parents may think it is good for kids to learn to deal with the real world. But the teenage brain is not that well developed as scientists are beginning to find out. Hold on To Your Kids is not a home-schooling book, it's about parenting.
It's for all of us.
"This books helps support the need to be more involved. It comes at a time when more parents are working outside the home. I think we need to take care and pay attention, it passes all too quickly.
Like countless other parents, Canadian doctors Neufeld and Maté woke up one day to find that their children had become secretive and unreachable. Pining for time with friends, they recoiled or grew hostile around adults. Why? The problem, Neufeld and co-writer Maté suggest, lies in a long-established, though questionable, belief that the earliest possible mastery of the rules of social acceptance leads to success. In a society that values its economy over culture, the book states, the building of strong adult/child attachments gets lost in the shuffle. Multiple play dates, day care, preschool and after school activities groom children to transfer their attachment needs from adults to their peers. They become what the authors call "peer oriented." The result is that they squelch their individuality, curiosity and intelligence to become part of a group whose members attend school less to learn than to socialize. And these same children are bullying, shunning and murdering each other, as well as committing suicide, at increasing rates. The authors' meticulous exploration of the problem can be profoundly troubling. However, their candidness and exposition lead to numerous solutions for reestablishing a caring adult hierarchy. Beautifully written, this terrific, poignant book is already a bestseller in Canada."
The book has ideas for all of us, the home-schooling parents and the parents that send their kids to school. Every one of us has a different hand of cards, and I appreciate that. We just need to look at our hand and make the best choices we can at this time of our lives.
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~Delia
