Thursday Thirteen: 13 Signs You're A Yuppie Mom

Thirteen Signs You're a Yuppie Mom All of the following are true occurrences from the past couple of weeks: 1. Your 4 1/2 year old DD is playing with her tea set and you overhear her offering her teddy bear a "latte". 2. You see a blog title called "If You Give My Toddler a Blackberry" and you think it's referring to an electronic device rather than a fruit. 3. Your 19 month old DS actually knows which button on Daddy's Blackberry to push in order to get a dial tone. 4. Your DD recognizes a Mozart tune but has no idea what Grandpa is referring to when he says "wascally wabbit". 5. You have a long discussion with some fellow moms about raw milk vs. organic milk vs. goat's milk and the best places to purchase the aforementioned. 6. You seriously consider driving two hours each way to attend a chicken pox party. 7. You overhear the kids at park day playgroup pretending to be ancient Romans fleeing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. 8. The kids in the playgroup have names like Soleil, Finn, Lydia, Ivy, Graham, Clark, Catriona, Coco, Leilani, Gianna, Leon, Tobias, Veronique, Jasper, Bram, and Atticus. 9. Your mom asks your DD "what does Daddy do at his job?" and when she answers "he makes money for [name of his employer]" you realize you have no clue how to explain his job function in a way that will make sense to her any more than that. 10. Your DD talks about getting a dog "after I finish graduate school". 11. You volunteer your DS as a guinea pig for the Learning Lab at Stanford and you use the opportunity to explain the scientific method to his big sister. 12. Your DS makes the American Sign Language sign for "milk" when presented with a cup as part of the experiment. 13. Your old babysitter growing up is now a post-doctorate fellow in neuroscience at Stanford and just got married at a Buddhist retreat in a ceremony that started with the "marriage is what brings us together today" speech from The Princess Bride. Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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More Thoughts on the "9 Reasons to Homeschool" Article

I've been busy the past couple of weeks with my parents coming from Massachusetts to visit us and also just spending lots of time outdoors with the kids enjoying summer, so I did not get a chance until now to read Christina's post over at Closer to Fine with her thoughts on Michael Pakaluk's article about the 9 reasons to homeschool. She put her own twist on the original 9 reasons to make them applicable to a broader audience. Pakaluk's Pilot article was written from a Catholic point of view, with certain beliefs about the importance of religion, family structure, and the desirability of protecting children from various elements of society that not all homeschoolers share. In rewriting the 9 reasons from a different POV, Christina makes some very good points IMHO.

Pakaluk's original #4 stated: "Homeschooled children more easily become friends with their parents." Christina felt that this focused too narrowly on the parent-child relationship to the exclusion of other important family relationships such as those between siblings and the extended family. I definitely agree with her as traditional schools typically separate siblings out into different classes, often even twins. The homeschooled children I know generally are extremely close to their siblings, particularly the ones from larger families. Freedom from the school's calendar also allows families to spend more time with grandparents and other relatives. I have the flexibility to pack up the kids and go spend a month visiting my parents and in-laws a couple times per year without disrupting their education or incurring a fine.

Pakaluk's original #5 stated: "Homeschooling requires that the father play the role that he really should play in his children’s education." Christina felt that mothers are also isolated from their children's education by traditional schools. Also, of course, not every homeschooling family is a traditional nuclear one.

Pakaluk's original #6 dealt with the unity of studying and religion. This is a "hot button" issue in the homeschooling community, as people tend to have very strong opinions one way or the other. However, Christina makes an excellent point about homeschooling allowing parents to raise their kids with their own family's values (religious or secular).

Pakaluk's original #7 was about fostering "a lively patriotism". Christina took issue with the political POV behind this and replaced "a lively patriotism" with "good citizenship". I would personally argue that patriotism is an vital part of being a good citizen, but Christina is correct in that it is important to be an active and informed citizen at all levels from one's local community up through the global one. This goes back to the discussion of "communitarianism" that I blogged about the other day.

Pakaluk's original #8 stated: "Homeschooled children can enjoy the innocence of childhood longer." He was referring specifically to protecting children from premature knowledge about sex. This is another "hot button" topic in the homeschooling community, often (but not always) stemming from religious beliefs. Christina rewrote this as "Homeschooling protects the well-paced development of the child." I agree that this is very important, particularly these days with all the "hurried child" syndrome to use Dr. David Elkind's terminology. Children are not mini-adults and the modern push to have them grow up fast has a very negative impact on their mental health. Christina is correct that the problem goes beyond just sex.

Christina also makes some excellent points about how homeschooling better integrates education with life, provides respite from the high-pressure tempo found in many of today's schools, and allows flexibility in the event of a family crisis.

It's always good to take a look at things from a different perspective. I suspect I share more of Pakaluk's POV than Christina does. However, she did a great job at expanding upon Pakaluk's ideas to make them more inclusive and therefore palatable to a wider audience.

Helping Our Children to Love & Serve Their Neighbors

The theme of this week's Crazy Hip Blog Mamas Carnival #34 is "the charitable cause dearest to my heart".

One of the central tenets of our faith is to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34). Jesus calls on each of us to help those in need and to serve our fellow man: "Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise" (Luke 3:11). In our homeschool, we stress the responsibility we have as Christians to give back to the community.

Because our children are young, I look for opportunities to make charity concrete for them. We bring non-perishables with us on our weekly library trip to donate to the Second Harvest Food Bank collection bin. We have a Rice Bowl on our table during Lent. We donate school supplies to our local Catholic Worker House Backpack giveaway. We purchase Christmas gifts for the Toys for Tots and our parish's "Angel Tree" programs. This fall, we are planning to organize a fundraising drive within our local homeschool support group for Project Night Night. Project Night Night collects tote bags filled with nighttime comfort items (security blanket, stuffed animal, & a book) for homeless children living in local shelters. Donating tangible items to individuals in our community makes it easier for our young children to learn empathy.

Carnival of Homeschooling #75 Is Up!

Gary over at HomeschoolBuzz.com is hosting this week's 75th edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling. As always, there are many intriguing looking posts. Happy reading!

Individualist Communitarianism and Homeschooling

Darryl Cobranchi over at HE&OS (be forewarned about occasional profanity use at this blog) gave a heads-up to a very interesting article in Reason magazine about Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Mr. Wales homeschools his 5 yr old DD Kira out of a concern about the "factory nature" of traditional schools.

There is a very interesting part of the article about Mr. Wales that discusses "individualist communitarianism". At first glance, that sounds like an oxymoron. Individualism holds that the individual is the primary unit of reality. Self-reliance and opposition to external interference with individual choice are basic tenets of individualism. Communitarianism, on the other hand, stresses civil society, local networks, and the commitment to communities. Tradition, reciprocity, and solidarity are the basic tenets of communitarianism. Whereas the individualist gives primary importance to liberties, the communitarian gives primary importance to responsibilities towards others. How then can someone be an "individualist communitarian"?

Mr. Wales talks about how everyone in a Wiki community is there through his/her own choice and how each participant gets a chance to shape the community's rules and expectations.

"People naturally form communities with their own delicate etiquette and expectations, and they jealously guard their own protocols. Each one is different, making Wiki communities fertile ground where thousands of experimental social arrangements can be tried-some with millions of members and some with just two or three. Like the 'framework for utopia' described in the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Wiki maximizes the chance that people can work together to get exactly what they want, while still being part of a meaningful community by maximizing freedom and opportunities for voluntary cooperation."

So an "individualist communitarian" is someone who believes in the individual's free choice to participate in a community and to accept that community's traditions, while helping to shape those traditions. Community therefore evolves from the ground-up rather than being imposed from the top-down. A belief IMHO that the Founding Fathers of this country held dear but which too often is violated by those in power today.

Mark Smith discusses the 10 basic themes that run through the communitarian agenda for education originally listed in James Arthur's Schools and Community: The communitarian agenda in education in an interesting article for "The Encyclopedia of Informal Education":

The family should be the primary moral educator of children

Character education includes the systematic teaching of virtues in schools

The ethos of the community has an educative function in school life

Schools should promote the rights and responsibilities inherent within citizenship

Community service is an important part of a child's education in school

A major purpose of the school curriculum is to teach social and political life-skills

Schools should provide an active understanding of the common good

Religious schools are able to operate a strong version of the communitarian perspective

Many existing community-based education practices reflect the features of the communitarian perspective

Schools should adopt a more democratic structure of operating

Many homeschoolers ascribe to all or most of these themes (though they of course vary on the hot-button issues of religion and also adult-directed vs. child-led learning). They could therefore be seen as communitarians in this sense. The very act of educating one's children at home rather than outsourcing it to a traditional school, however, makes them individualists. Homeschoolers as a group generally reject governmental interference in how they choose to educate their own children (individualism). At the same time, homeschoolers are significantly more likely than the average American to be active in politics, community service, civic organizations, and a church/synagogue/mosque/etc. (communitarianism).

Therefore, it seems accurate to describe the typical homeschooler as an "individualist communitarian".

Why Does Intellectual Giftedness Create Such Resentment?

Jennifer from "Et Tu" wrote an interesting post the other day entitled "Having Smart Kids". She makes some good points about parental obsession with the external markers of achievement, the "fear of failure" that can be a problem for intellectually gifted kids, and how the selection criteria for GATE programs may exclude kids who are gifted in different domains.

I was troubled, however, by the anti-intellectual undertone to Jennifer's post and especially prominent in the comments. There is a resentment in our culture towards kids who are intellectually gifted that we don't show towards kids who are gifted in other domains such as athletics, art, or music. Nobody complains about there being selective sports teams, orchestras, art shows, etc. But have a selective GATE program or honor roll and all of the sudden it gets bashed as "elitist" or worse. Frankly, it strikes me as often a case of "sour grapes"!

God gives each child different strengths and weaknesses and we are all equal in His eyes. We should celebrate everyone's gifts, whatever the domain. Carping about the intellectually gifted in a nasty manner (A) is not Christian and (B) hurts all of us when it contributes to underachievement by those who have the potential to give so much back to society. We need the sharpest minds among us to be out there searching for a cure for cancer!

No one would question that a child who has an IQ of 70 has special educational needs and requires accommodation by the school. Why then is it so controversial for the child with an IQ of 130 to want accommodation for his/her special educational needs? The child who is two standard deviations above the mean is just as far out of the academic mainstream as the child who is two standard deviations below the mean.

This country wastes an enormous amount of potential by not providing adequate educational challenges to our brightest students. Chinese and Indian schools don't sit around worrying that selection by ability will hurt the "self-esteem" of kids who do not qualify for the highest track. These countries are currently kicking America's egalitarian fanny in the world economy!

I hope that homeschooling will help shield my children from the anti-intellectualism so prevalent in American society. I don't want them to have to endure ridicule from their classmates for being bright the way that I did growing up. I pray in particular that my DD will never feel like she has to "play dumb" in order to be attractive to boys.

Of course, I want my kids to avoid the sins of arrogance, vanity, and pride. We focus a lot of energy towards teaching character in our homeschool. Luke 12:48 states that "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required". They have a responsibility to use their God-given talents to help make this world a better place.

"Fortress Mentality" or Reaction to Today's Dual-Income Norm?

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting op-ed called "Suburbia's Fortress Mentality" in which mom Melodee Martin Helms laments the difference between her own unstructured and relatively unsupervised childhood and the organized activities & formal playdates of today's suburban kids. She writes:

Thirty years ago, our mothers didn't chauffeur us around. We "fished" at the
creek, turned cartwheels on the lawn, and stubbed our toes running barefoot
around the bases.....

Today, I walk along desolate suburban streets. That's because children don't play where passersby can see – or snatch – them. They're hidden away in backyards, climbing on pricey, customized play structures, jumping on trampolines, or swimming in pools. They shuffle from soccer to judo to piano lessons. But you don't find them out and about.

I have definitely seen this marked shift in parental attitudes. As a kindergartener, I used to walk about 6 blocks to my school, about half of which was along a busy road. My mom accompanied me the first few times until she was sure I knew the way. After that, I walked alone. I do recall warnings from her not to get into a car with anyone unless that person knew the "secret password" and that if someone grabbed me I should scream, scratch them in the eyes and/or kick them in the groin and then run away. However, she obviously believed that our neighborhood was pretty safe.

We live about the same distance from our local elementary school and in a similar middle-class suburban neighborhood. However, if our DD were going to be attending kindergarten at this school in the fall, I would not allow her to walk there unaccompanied by an adult.

Despite all the media coverage in recent years of high-profile cases like Samantha Runnion, Jessica Lunsford, Danielle Van Dam, Polly Klaas, and Madeline McCann, FBI statistics show that child abductions by strangers that result in murder or the child never being found actually dropped from 300 annually in 1980 down to 93 in 2000. This as the U.S. population aged 0-14 has increased by 17% during the same time period. Statistically, this means the chance a child will NOT being kidnapped and killed by a stranger has increased from 99.99942% in 1980 to 99.99999% in 2000.

Intellectually, I know this yet like Mrs. Helms of the CSM op-ed, I "barricade my family behind an invisible barbed-wire fence". The reason? It's politically incorrect for me to say so, but back when I was growing up, families where both parents worked full-time outside the home were the exception rather than the norm. Sure, my mom held a part-time job as did many of my friends' moms. They were still able to be home after school to keep an eye on us kids. While we might be out of sight of our own mothers, there were enough moms around in the neighborhood for us to be visible to somebody.

My neighborhood, by contrast, looks like a ghost town from 8-5 during the week. The handful of women I encounter during the day are all hired nannies, typically with limited English skills. While I'm sure they are generally nice people, it's not the same thing as having friends you've lived near for years who are fellow moms looking out for each others' kids.

If I want my kids to get a chance to interact with other kids, I have to either set up a formal playdate or bring them to an scheduled activity. I do try to balance structured activities such as soccer and ballet with unstructured ones like our homeschool support group park day and game night. It's sad though that I can't just let my kids have free roam of the neighborhood like my generation had growing up.

Economic realities mean that many families need two incomes just to cover basics like housing, utilities, healthcare, transportation, food, and higher education. In our county, the median cost of a house is around $750k and the median rent for a 2 BR apt is around $2,000/mo. Family health insurance premiums are over $1,000/mo if one is does not receive subsidized coverage through one's employer. Gas is currently running about $3.50/gal and milk is $4.59/gal. Many people we know have six figures' worth of student loan debt, and it is not unusual for couples who both have graduate degrees to have well over $200k worth of debt between them. I'm certainly not trying to bash dual-income families because for many of them it's an economic necessity!

The world has changed in recent decades, and nostalgia for how things used to be isn't going to bring it back for our kids...