Hello!
Wow, did life get busy on me! Jeepers.
A week and a half ago, my son's school had one student test positive for COVID. Contact tracing determined that a few kids in the class should quarantine, but other than that everything was fine.
Early this week, one teacher and another student in a different classroom tested positive. This put 58 kids and 7 staff members out on quarantine. I ordered a few books online for my son since I figured homeschooling would start soon.
Right now, substitute teachers can't be gotten for love or money. High income districts that could take their pick of subs can't get a single sub to cover; a rural, fairly high poverty district like my son had no chance at finding 7 subs.
Monday, we found out my son's pre-K - 4th grade school was closing on November 11th until November 30th to try and contain the outbreak. Public opinion was mixed - but a vocal minority wanted the rest of the district closed as well. The majority of people seemed to think the school was overreacting - but then cases appeared at the other schools. Now everyone is virtual only until after Thanksgiving. Mask wearing is still not as widespread in my community as I'd like to see - but I see masks now - which I often did not before.
I've got a bunch of materials from the school - plus a section on "Weather" I've made for my son since he's been our family's weatherman for six months now. He found the "Weather" felt board I made for him and realized that I missed "Thunder" and "Fog" - so I've got to make those up tonight.
So if my posts get less regular, I'm probably taking a walk with my kid talking about clouds....or doing PT on some playground equipment.....or practicing patterning. I hope the school will reopen for a bit before Christmas Break - but our case numbers in Western Michigan have become dangerously high so I'm planning for a few weeks to a few months of classes at home.
In fun news, Spawn will try using forearm crutches next week! He's been showing plenty of strength while walking, but still needs help with balance. He also wants to venture off of paved paths. So far, he's been muscling his walker over uneven ground - but he can only do that on fairly flat ground. Forearm crutches should give him better freedom to explore the world - and I'm very, very excited about it!
I'm excited about my son gaining more freedom of movement so reading "The Battle of Peer Dependency" by Marina Sears feels more crazy every time I open the book. In the next quote, Mrs. Sears - who homeschooled her kids - demonstrates poor understanding of teenage motivations alongside a profound misunderstanding of the use of person in the English language:
How is playing volleyball with friends more selfish and greedy forcing your children to be living examples of God's Providence to widows and orphans? Dumping that burden on your kids is cruel. In the last four years, I've been amazed by the kindness, love, generosity and compassion afforded to me and my son. I'm grateful for those acts of caring. I don't force my kid to be a walking advertisement for God's Love, though! He's almost four - and he's quite happy being a dinosaur, thank you very much. Spawn also likes being a firetruck - so I'm pretty solid that he's doing what God wants a preschooler to do - be a kid.
Teenagers, like preschoolers, are learning how the world works as nearly-adults. Most homeschooling families allow their teenagers to spend time with other teenagers. Teenagers, after all, are going to spend their lives with people of their age cohort as they form families, raise children, and work. Letting teenagers find out how people their own age interact is good parenting.
Forcing teenagers to remain ensconced in their family of origin means that the parent is sacrificing the future of their kids for the wants of the parents.
Counting the number of times a teenager says "I" in a conversation is a poor sign of the greed or selfishness of the kid. It just means the kid is speaking first-person which is normal for native English speakers.
The last quote for this post shows how Mrs. Sears has moved the goal posts of success for her kids beyond God's requirements:
John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved son so that whoever believes in him may not die but have eternal life.
Marina Sears' sons had fulfilled that mandate.
They were saved.
They believed.
God accepted Chris and David - but that is not good enough for their mother.
God gave us ever so many innocent, moral pleasures. Going for walks. Chatting with friends. Playing volleyball. There is, in fact, no section of the Bible that forbids volleyball - even if the people playing volleyball are teenagers.
No, Marina Sears is creating a dictatorship where her whims are justified as making "Mighty Warrior" - but that's not what God asked of parents.
Congrats to Spawn on the move up to forearm crutches! That seems huge. And what a sad thing that Marina Sears spends so much time thinking about how to force her nearly adult children into "loving Jesus more" instead of allowing them the most basic of social interaction. Seems to me they're likely to love Jesus (and their mom) a little less when all's said and done.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine that isolating kids "for their own good" goes well once the kids make it out into the wider world. Heck, we've seen that in smaller doses in the Duggar, Maxwell and Botkin clans. Jill Duggar Dillard has a nose piercing, is using birth control, wears pants, drinks alcohol and is "ok with other people not being ok". Two Maxwells have moved away from the neighborhood compound. Ben Botkin is out of CP/QF and his wife posts about liberal causes like BLM and LGBT+ acceptance.
DeleteInteresting! I'm curious about the Ben Botkin story... how did that come to be? I've read plenty of stories about daughters leaving CP/QF, but rarely sons.
DeleteI know very little about how Ben made a break. In a lot of ways, I suspect it is easier for sons to get out than daughters. Daughters have a hard time getting out because they are always under the authority of a man and are pretty much educated in a way that makes earning money really hard. Boys, on the other hand, are raised to go out, earn money among unbelievers, and be the leader of their new nuclear family unit. The Maxwells - IMHO - ran a very tight CP/QF ship for their family but two of their sons have made "counter-cultural" home choices including Jesse selling a house to live in an apartment in KC! Meanwhile, the Maxwell daughters are perfect CP/QF stay-at-home daughters who have run out the clock on an early marriage. Since Sarah is nearly 39, her chances of marriage are slim - and her chances of a large biological family are fading daily. By comparison, sons just have to get a job (and manual labor is a more acceptable option with higher pay for men than women) and get a girl to marry him - and he's free to live as he likes.
DeleteI am a teacher and I live in Sweden where we haven’t closed the school due to Covid-19 yet. I am wondering how you manage to juggle home schooling with your work? Also I am happy to hear about crutches for Spawn. It so great to see your children learn new things and be more independent. Spawn seems like a happy and healthy kid with a drive to learn new things and unlike Marina Sears you seem like a good mum who encourages that.
ReplyDeleteMarina Sears seems to be the selfish one in her family not the teenagers. The sentence “I want to achieve children Mighty in God’s spirit” (what does that even mean) definitely has one I too many. Her job a a parent is to give her children a ground to stand on and a safe place to learn but she instead is in an extremely selfish way seeing her children as a part of her self and holding on when she is supposed to let go. And making their decisions when she is supposed to let them learn to make their own. That is the one of the most selfish and misguided thing you can do to your soon to be adult children. Do you know what has become of her children? Have they managed to break free or are they still under their mums control. She does not seem to be some one who lets go when they become adult.
YES. She seems to see her children as a part of herself. Which is damaging and unhealthy for everyone.
DeleteAgree she's the most selfish one in the bunch.
I'm almost leaning toward thinking this woman is deliberately isolating and abusing her children.
I'm reading a great book about addiction right now and it's saying one of the biggest contributors to addiction is a sense of isolation. I'm not saying these kids will struggle with addiction -- at all. I'm just saying isolating a child and keeping him powerless is trauma inducing and nothing good comes from it.
The US is in deep trouble with COVID right now. I live in Michigan where a forward thinking governor managed to get a bad initial outbreak tamped down during the summer and early fall - but our case numbers are rising way too fast. During the summer, we averaged between 4-6 new cases/100,000 people. Right now, we are at ~63 cases/100,000 people.
DeleteA new round of restaurant/bar closures, required work from home if possible, high schools and colleges are required to stop meeting in person, and strong advice to skip Thanksgiving gatherings is starting Wednesday.
Mixing homeschooling and my job is pretty straightforward - but I stopped working as a teacher before Spawn was born - and only work part-time at a hardware store chain. Essentially, I'm at home in the mornings with Spawn when we homeschool and I work in the afternoons, evenings and weekends when Spawn is being watched by grandparents or my husband is off work. Plus, no one even pretends that I'm required to work outside of my shifts (that would be illegal since I'm hourly instead of salaried) - and I'm not even required to pretend I think about work outside of my shifts. That just wouldn't be possible if I was teaching in a traditional school.
There's been a massive exodus of women from the workforce due to the added stress of trying monitor their kids doing school work at home. It's adding to the economic problems of the pandemic that our current administration for 60-odd days under Trump has just been ignoring.
Thank you! I look forward to Spawn's blossoming independence. I know there are some moms who enjoy having small children who are dependent on them for everything - but that's my least favorite time. Every new thing that Spawn can do for himself makes me feel like I've gotten a tiny slice of freedom back for me.
I don't know what happened to Marina Sears or her kids. They've got to all be grown since the book was written around 2000 and the oldest Chris was at least 18. That would make him at least 38, David would be 36, Camile 32, and Jeff Jr. would be 31. As I was writing that out, I realized that Camile literally has no stories about her in the book. Not even a bit.
My two-cents on Marina's motivation is severe anxiety that was present before Jeff's death - remember the "this car ride in mildly bad winter weather is great because if we crash we'll all die and go to heaven" episode - that became horrible after his death. To control her fear, she controlled her kids - and justified it was a mandate from God.
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