I think this graphic is ever so slightly off. I actually know a lot of very relaxed child led homeschoolers who would claim to have the unicorn. But if you changed "educationally enriching" to "providing an adequate and complete education that will provide the children with the baseline they need to be competent adults and doesn't close doors like college to them" those families would not have unicorns anymore. It's easy to be enriching, it's a lot harder to get everything covered that needs to be without decent curriculum. It's going to cost money or require prep.

I've had several jobs that put me around kids and the only place I have seen this kind of behavior from kids that young was when I lifeguarded at a pool with an entirely at-risk population. None of the other ones, just that one, where the parents were watching hardcore porn as children wandered in and out, among other things. It's not innocent tween exploring behavior. I do not know of any 11 year olds who have asked a boy if he wanted to see her breasts who were not troubled kids, or who were watching porn under their veil at church. Nor any that have posted pictures of their privates on social media. Nor any who attempted to seduce grown men to get out of trouble. And by seduce I mean unzipping clothing and gyrating, not flirting. You and I have met very, very different sets of 11 year olds.

To be fair, they were 12-14. That's bad enough. 😬

Like I said, the dancing was not the really bad part, even though it was hypersexual and based directly off porn. It was the conversations the girls were having, having the young teen watching what was either porn or an NC-17 music video, and another where they're all either watching or listening to it in a bathroom - not sure, having girls that young attempt to sexually entice men to get what they want even though they have no idea what they're doing, etc. I don't think it was horrific, but a bad parenting decision. I feel more strongly negative about their child "experts." Honestly the floating between family and friends doesn't come through as the main thing because it is SO dark and there is so much inappropriate stuff coming at you. Like I said, I think the idea was there, but the filmmaker lost the thread by going for so much shock value. It could have been really good. It definitely is not going to drive trafficking. That's looney. It's just a bad-decision avalanche.

I know the leader of the dance troupe was 12 in real life, and that at the time of the film release, the main actress was 14.

I just watched this because of this thread. I don't feel like our talk here about dance competitions has anything to do with the movie. These are young girls participating in a competition that anyone can enter - completely uncoached and making up the dance moves on their own, based largely on what they see online. I think the takeaway is going to the be sexualization of "kids these days" and not anything about competition dance. I do believe the filmmaker could have made the same points without crossing over into exploiting the kids, but chose shock value instead. I would not be comfortable with any child expert who decided that this stuff was ok for adults to tell 12 year olds to say and do. I'm very comfortable passing judgement on said expert and the parents of the children. It's not pedophilia, and I wouldn't cancel netflix, but I also do not believe the best interests of the child actresses were considered at all. (I actually think the dancing is not the most problematic part. It's gross but not a whole lot worse than what's been posted on this thread or been on Dance Moms. But It's the rest of it. I would feel differently if it were older teens portraying young teens (like they do in every other teen drama anyway. Why couldn't they do it here?) I think this could have been a great movie, and could have caused conversations in society and within families, but it goes so far that instead all we're going to talk about is whether this is child porn or exploitation. It becomes about the filmmaker instead of the message.

Pageants and Dance are SO EXPENSIVE, this is not a "way out" situation. I was floored when I found out how much each individual dance competition and costume cost.

That is very true. Without the internet. Hooboy. Yes, I can see why books would have been valuable. We are starting to find it harder to fit in all the school as she gets older, especially since her sport takes up a tremendous amount of her time. This has resulted in doing the remaining odds and ends on the weekend more and more often and I am so happy that I made that a thing that happened sometimes, from the beginning. She doesn't like having to sit down and plow through a ton of school. She's much happier with more, shorter stretches.

Am I weird for having never read and never felt the need to read a book about homeschooling? I might pick one up if we ever have issues I need to figure out, but things are going swimmingly. I was however on this forum from the time I got pregnant (I think even a little before, so...)

I'll also sing the praises of Singapore. We did BA as a supplement for a while and IMO it in no way provided enough review or practice for concepts to stick and become second nature, and failed to teach the algorithms after the concepts were understood. I also have a kid who would like to have the tools to solve a problem before being asked to solve that problem, so using BA on grade level was an exercise in frustration. The comics were awesome though. There are some children it obviously works great for, but I think it's going to be a very particular type of kid. She's very mathy, takes quickly to concepts and really understands them, and loves math. BA was a recipe for my particular kid start hating math and thinking she was bad at it. My friend uses the online version though and says it is a more complete program.

Am I the only one who doesn't think "deschooling" needs to be the thing it is? Like I see the need in certain situations, usually when a child is suddenly pulled from a bad or traumatic school situation, and their parent needs to figure things out, and the child needs to decompress. But I feel like it gets recommended every time a child gives their parents pushback about wanting to do schoolwork. Like if you wait long enough your magical snowflake will be ready and eager to learn. My daughter has never been in B&M school, but if you left her alone until she was happily ready to learn with no pushback, she'd be playing Sims and watching TikTok for the rest of her life... This is a peeve of mine of Facebook groups period. It is worse there than anywhere else. You ask for something VERY specific. I need something like THIS, but not THIS. And in a second you have 100 recommendations, all "We love XYZ", no mention of how it applies to your situation and most of them very obviously exactly what you said you didn't want. Super obvious and obnoxious when you're asking about something for someone with dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, autism, etc. and the responder has no clue. You don't have to chime in on topics you know nothing about!

I would go in and it would be weeks since the last topic, so I considered it pretty dead. Not sure what's happening now. i do remember the kerfuffule with the advertising.

I found it after the secular homeschoolers forum died. Forums are so, so much better for discussion than Facebook. I hate how Facebook has killed them all and am glad this one still exists!

I don't even know. I backed away from that conversation! I still like the group because it serves a purpose for me. It doesn't bother me too terribly because when I want recommendations in a different vein there are so many other places I can ask, including here, but when I want truly secular only, that is the only place I can go.

And the thing is - that in the lens of history, these things are important. If you're presenting these stories at the beginning of a book of US history because they inform everything that is to come, and the belief in them echoes through our consciousness still, then that is totally fine and even good. But in a textbook that is not marked as religious, I would expect it to be presented as, "The Christian belief that Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years" etc. My copy is from 2005, I'd like to check out the 2012 edition some time. I have noticed that issue too and it also bothers me. The one time I had to roll my eyes and walk away was the people who truly refuse to teach or reference any type of religion in any subject ever. Religion is SO IMPORTANT in understanding the world, history, literature, art...if I didn't teach my children about the world religions (and because we live in the US, Christianity in particular) I would feel I had hobbled their education. Mind you, it was NOT a majority opinion by a long shot, and is NOT the view of the page/moderators, but there were enough of them that I was stunned.

It's not new with the influx, it's been bothering me for several years. It's not a huge deal or anything, just a small annoyance, like a mosquito. I also don't believe "interest led" or "naturally evolving" homeschoolers are unschoolers - I'm talking about the ones who do no "on purpose" learning through their children's homeschool careers and do not care that they're years behind. And I don't necessarily care what other people are doing, but it's annoying on a forum where people are supposed to be academic homeschoolers. For K-2 I basically only do formal phonics (then grammar) and math, and for 3-5, everything else was interest led, relaxed and eclectic. But I still wanted my kids to learn and spent a lot of time helping them do so. If my mostly neurotypical kids were not getting an education equitable to (or better than) their peers, I would consider myself to be failing. It isn't always tit for tat, but on the whole is equitable at the very least. (I think it is superior, but that's opinion, of course.) I just started Joy Hakim's History of the US, and the opening of book 2 presents old testament bible stories as fact. It felt like SOTW all over again and now I'm a little concerned. I don't even know if I want to bring it up on SEA. 😆 I did buy used, so I am hoping it's something that was corrected in later issues.

Blasphemy! 😆 I don't know what a meat pie is, but I get coverage for like 2 chicken nuggets and because packets are so inefficient, it takes like 10 for a medium fry.

My kitchen and living room where we spend 90% of our time are the size of postage stamps while my master bedroom that adjoins them is ridiculously huge. Sometimes I dream a tornado will destroy my house so I can rebuild it.

The ketchup packets that whataburger and chickfila give out are everything, especially since fast food is so often eaten in the car. I really don't know how other places have not changed over

I live in Texas and people are freaking terrified of being deported. 🤨 Heck, my husband worked with a professional engineer with a spotless past who was here under DACA and he was very scared because he was told (by the people at immigration) that he would not be renewed and would likely be deported. If there is a Catholic Charities where they are, they could look into them. Where I am, they have volunteer lawyers who help with situations like this.

It just really isn't the place for you then. It's really as simple as that. Some of us are SO, SO exhausted by wading through giant threads full of (mostly Christians) saying it would be easy to "leave out" the Christian content in a resource or the bias "isn't that obvious" or "they don't need to cover that in elementary anyway." I actually find the things that are subtly religious or neutral far more pernicious and harmful than things that are overtly religious, so if SEA were going to be yet another corner of the web where it became my job to figure out just how problematic different curricula are, it would offer nothing, because it would be just like everywhere else. Seriously, you can go on ANY homeschooling page and ask for secular recommendations and get religious curricula recommendations in response. The fact that there are so few secular resources is the WHOLE POINT of the page. They can be impossible to find if you're starting from scratch. Lots of members use curriculum off the "no" list because it suits their needs, but you just can't talk about it on that page because it's for secular homeschooling discussions only. My unpopular opinion on the page is it's supposed to be secular, eclectic, ACADEMIC homeschoolers, yet the unschoolers are slowly taking over.

In NW Houston here I am about 70 miles inland and I can not imagine any situation in which I would evacuate in a hurricane (we have no people with medical issues, and we live in a sturdy house), nor has the city ever asked us to. Is the BIL's parents' home in a low-lying area? I am extremely concerned for Lake Charles. And my social media is FULL of people right on the coast or well within the 30 mile storm surge zone who are planning to ride it out and I hope they survive.

It may be. EVERY curbside worker at my Walmart *looks* (if we're judging books by their covers) like a mom. They are all grown adult women, and with the exception of the first month of lockdown, all my substitutions are very reasonable.

Sorry, I was responding to the post I quoted, where the poster was surprised people had seen campers in swimsuits.

Could it be weather related? It's so hot here all the time and 90% of our campgrounds have swimming, canoeing or kayaking available. Swimsuits are very common in the state parks. So, showing some irrational thought, the underwear would bother me, but the towel wouldn't. Either of them in a towel wouldn't bother me at all unless it was a tiny towel, but either of them in their underwear would. Even if swimsuits cover the same or more, I still cant get over the fact that underwear is supposed to be private.