I once read an Australian report, from VIC which I think is your state? that said something like 'one third of all homeschoolers are abusive'. The ACTUAL statistic was that one third of all homeschoolers reported to child services for suspected abuse were abusive. Completely, hugely different statistics there! I couldn't believe the obvious and deliberate misquote. Certain groups in the media have a lot to answer for for creating that perception here, not so much anymore but certainly 10-20 years ago. Because of the higher amount of regulation in Australia, yes, it has a real, serious effect on us right now, which is ridiculous because the groups HA come from are almost exclusively American! We had branches in australia, in fact we have an IBLP branch in QLD and there are ATI families around here, hidden about, but it's nothing like it was in the US in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, the regulators see what happened there and apply it here, when in actual fact the Australian homeschooling community has always been very, very different to the US one.

All this times, like, one million DH came from one of these families. Had he not met me he could very well have become a HA poster himself. I did not grow up in it personally (I got to grow up in a totally different bad situation, woo!) but I knew many families who fell into these groups, including one which is currently travelling around the country waiting for the apocolypse, never getting married because there's no point, the end of the world is soon so why form relationships? Yeah.... they were always a little wacky. In my own interest I spent a LOT of time researching these groups in depth, going on sites like no longer quivering and homeschoolers anonymous and other connected groups. I read all the stories, hours upon hours of reading for months, years in the case of NLQ, lots of researching their resources and links and whatever else they referenced as well. I wanted to understand this and know what went wrong so I could be sure to never do it. And I realized the issue in these families weren't homeschooling, and they weren't even patriarchy in it's traditional and properly biblical sense. It was abuse. It was abusive natures who were drawn into that lifestyle, or people who lacked the ability to think critically who were spoon fed by abusive people. Homeschooling enabled the abuse in these cases, but, plenty of public school kids get abused too. Patriarchy gave a framework for the abuse in these situations, but, plenty of people who never followed any form of patriarchy are abused, and sometimes women are abusers too. They had a common theme because of what they were being fed and the way it protected and justified their actions, but homeschooling didn't ruin those kids lives, abuse did. Patriarchy didn't ruin those womens lives, abuse did. I believe in both homeschooling and patriarchy, but the events that happened in their lives are inconceivable in mine, absolutely inconceivable. However, blaming the homeschooling and blaming the patriarchy and blaming everything else avoids them having to blame themselves or their parents. It is our natural instinct to blame anything except ourselves and the people we love. Even when they hate their parents as well, blaming homeschooling is still a way to deflect. Those kids went through horrible things, I know, my husband and his 7 siblings are amongst their numbers, my childhood friends are amongst them, I know these people up close and personally. But homeschooling didn't fail them. Abusive leaders, and their parents abuse or their parents lack of critical and independent thought failed them. Despite his experiences, my husband has come to believe that homeschooling is the best thing for our kids, and I agree. But we speak regularly about our pasts and the families we knew because we know our homeschool must look completely different to the way we were 'educated', not just in textbooks (in fact many of those are the same!) but in methods, attitudes and relationships. This rather upsets my mother in law. I don't care. But we can both see past the abuse and the abusive leaders to recognize homeschooling is probably what gave us the intelligence to recognize what was happening, and the skills to adjust in adulthood. I see lots of public schooled kids who were abused and have gotten nowhere in adulthood. But I haven't seen... well, any homeschooled adults who haven't been able to adjust even from awful situations into a good life. Homeschooling taught them to learn, independence, observation, motivation, work ethic, and lots of other things that they have absolutely relied on in the years since leaving their families and doing the hard work of recovering. If only all the public schooled abused kids I know had those skills. My husband has a story that could rival many on HA, but he doesn't blame homeschooling, he is thankful for it, and credits it with being what gave him the skills he has needed in adulthood. We don't all view the same experiences the same way, HA is a small minority even among those raised in these kinds of homes (and Ms Ivy is quite right, they're often the ones who went off to college and got the idea that middle class society was normal life and felt deprived of things that, in actuality, many children from all types of education are deprived of every day. Many come to maturity later on.)

I don't vary breakfast or lunch. Breakfast is a healthy cereal with lots of greek yogurt, honey on top and some fresh or frozen fruit, whatever we have this week. The cereal and fruit change, offering some variety, but it's the same, simple, 4 ingredients every morning. Lunch is cut fruit, cut vegetables and a cold protein. One day it might be carrot sticks, bell pepper sticks, grapes and ham, another day it might be lettuce, cherry tomatoes, peaches, plums and beef jerky. Whatever it is, I just fill a plate with whatever I have in the house, and each week when I grocery shop I buy a lunch protein for the week, 4 or 5 types of fruits, and a bunch of vegetables (usually just extra of whatever I need for dinner that week, plus a couple of salad items like cherry tomatoes and sprouts). Not having to think about what I am making, and being able to just grab some things out, cut them, and go, saves me lots of time and energy. I don't clean. The kids take on as many chores as they are able to do, DH does the minimum needed for daily maintenance beyond what the kids do each evening, and DH does a proper clean on the weekend while I'm working. The trade off is that I'm solely responsible for school planning and food planning/meals. I am trying not to go on the computer before lunchtime. This is at varying levels of success.

I haven't done SOTW personally, but in my country we cover modern history almost exclusively in primary (elementary) school. I don't think there's anything wrong with a young kid discussing the holocaust or other historical events. I remember hearing about some of the more violent acts and atrocities committed against the native people of my country when I was.... about 6? That included children being taken from their parents and sent to white families, and lots of killing. I don't remember specifically when I learned about the holocaust but I knew a fair bit about it by 3rd or 4th grade, because I remember a teacher when I was about 8 who discussed it, I'd even seen a documentary or two. Oh and I remember my 3rd grade teacher was very racist against the japanese and told us about some of their war crimes once. That was interesting given the age of the class.... Again, I can't comment to the specific nature of SOTW, but I'd have no hesitation reading historical books about those sorts of events with my Ker. They would, however, be restricted to ONLY when the child is with me and we can actively discuss the topics, which it sounds like you're already doing by making it a car activity.

The parents in both cases were abusive, both cases along with the assault of a 12yo sister which wasn't revealed until much later went unreported and uncounselled. Unfortunately not all parents are as concerned or caring as those around here. These incidents were 10 years ago now and the victims have no interest in digging up the past and going down that road legally anymore, but in the case of the 14yo and 12yo sister, their parents were abusive/neglectful in other ways, and the 14yo victim is trying to come to terms with acknowledging and accepting that. She makes excuses for their actions and tries to justify their inaction, so trying to determine things like whether their actions were morally or legally wrong is helpful to her processing this. It's harder to make excuses if they broke the law by not taking action. As for the 13yo, we later learned that one of her parents was raping her, so even now in adulthood she sees nothing wrong with the 19yo who took (unprotected!!!!) advantage of her, she didn't consider herself a minor and any willing encounter was a good thing in her mind. That would be why the 19yo suddenly lost interest in the 14yo, the 13yo was a much easier target. Anyway, I digress... It was a very sad, messed up situation these girls were stuck in. Looks like it may be worth making a call to my state-specific group to ask about the responsibility of a parent to report a crime against a minor. I didn't realize the laws would vary so much on this topic. Thanks for your feedback ladies, much appreciated!

Disclaimer: this is a past event, and not my child. This is retrospective, not an action to be taken now. Two parents learn that a 19yo has sexually touched their 14yo child. Are they LEGALLY obliged to report/press charges on behalf of their underage child? Are they still legally required to do so if the 14yo refuses to co-operate with any legal action despite not consenting to the touching? Are they criminally negligent if they do not report the sexual assault. Is the situation any different if the (different) parents of a 13yo tells them she had penetrative sex with (the same) 19yo, or is sex different to sexual contact? If the 13yo did it willingly (though, of course, it's still statutory rape) does that change anything? Are they criminally negligent for not reporting/pressing charges? What if pressing charges were completely against the childs will? Of course morally the parents had a responsibility to do something about these things, but talking strictly legally, I'm trying to determine the legal ramifications of some past events. I'm assuming Australian and American law are the same in this area, but if any Aussie/NZ posters can chime in otherwise that'd be great.

We've just started our school year here. My Ker is slightly accelerated. Reading: 100 Easy Lessons and Explode the Code (I See Sam books intermittently for practice/confidence) Writing: D'Nealian 1st Grade Workbook and Practice Book. Doodles ABC and 123 Motor Skills: Some Kumon books and some drawing books Math: Mathematical Reasoning B, Two Plus Two Is Not Five, Life of Fred Logic: Lollipop Logic, CTC Half'n'half animals and Thinker doodles Electives this year (one at a time in 'units'): Simple Machines (lego and goldie blox), MindUP mindfulness curriculum, A mummy-made geographical-awareness unit using books like Children Just Like Me, Hungry Planet and Material World. Also maybe piano lessons, if I can get DHs butt into gear to start them.

My mum was never satisfied, she jumped to new programs (or schools) at LEAST yearly. This leaves me extremely hesitant to jump around and I spend excessive amounts of time researching things before I commit to them. I am also not the 'different currics for different kids' type, I definitely fall into the 'adjust the program to make it work' camp, and select the best curriculum for our family goals and general learning styles rather than per-child, so I am quite happy to adjust and tweak a program to suit us and to slog through for a bit. I would change a program if it was obvious that it was a BAD fit for an explainable reason Otherwise I'm more likely to modify, adjust, delay, slow down, speed up, drop altogether, or otherwise make it work either long term or until the following year when I would reassess.

It sounds like you have older kids? The internet has opened up a whole new world to isolated homeschoolers. I actually met my husband on a website where people posted stories and poems they wrote! (storywrite.com and allpoetry.com). Not an online relationship, we met and chatted and eventually discovered we lived 15 minutes from each other and had met as children! lol. I made a couple of good friends who I met irl among kids I did online classes with, since the online classes always had general chat forums, a few were in driving distance of me. I made other friends through forums suited to my interests, like video games, or online games (I met my ex-fiancé through the text-based MMORPG game Utopia). I was involved in an online Internet radio network where I met a few people including my best friend. Some of these people, like my husband, turned out to be local or semi-local, I used to catch up with a few of them a couple of times a year. Others were purely online but those friendships were deep and have lasted. My best friend and I have never met but we've been speaking daily for 10 years now. Also, same-age peers and structured activity are nowhere near as important as simple human contact. Does your community have any sort of free activities at all? I attended a poetry club as a teen, everyone else there was 60+ but it was a great experience. Do you have a church community? I ran the church creche for years as a teen. Can the kids get jobs? I know people who met as coworkers who became great friends. I had one girl I became friends with when I was 11, I homeschooled while she went on to high school, but she invited me to a couple of get-togethers she hosted along with her other friends, and I got to know them. That little group of 8 kids who were 13-16 at the time began doing everything together. Some of them were there during the worst moments of my life, and I was there for theirs, and now we are now all grown up, having kids of our own, and our kids are becoming friends with each other. It all stemmed from one girl I met when I was 11, who, as an afterthought, invited me to her 13th birthday party even though I didn't know anyone else going. If you come across a person who you might be friends with or another homeschooling family in the area make an effort, a big effort, to do something social with them when you can. Keep reaching out. You don't need a huge group of friends, just one or two true friends is enough. Homeschooled kids tend to go through an awkward phase, between 10 and 15, where they are too old for a lot of their old activities, but too young to go 'hang out' with friends, can't drive or work or do anything with older teens, don't have the independence to just spend the day somewhere alone, etc. It's a very hard age. It does get better, or at least it did for all the kids in my family and my husbands family.

Ouch... I'm trying so very hard not to be snarky here.... There are many, many families who fit your description who homeschooled successfully and happily. Many of them were the families who began the homeschooling movement and made it legal for you to homeschool in the first place! I didn't see many comfy, city kids with activities every afternoon and clubs every week homeschooling when I was a child. You're speaking out of privilege. There was no 'homeschooling community' in the 80s, and many homeschoolers back then were not 'loved' by 'strong' communities either, they were shut out. I know your country's laws were very much founded by religious homeschoolers but my countries laws were founded in large part by the rural families, who had been doing it for decades before it became a 'movement' in the US. Without poor, rural families with no support there would be no homeschooling in my country, and I suspect they had a lot more to do with the laws in your country than you acknowledge. Let's not criticize the people who made the choice possible in the first place, while you're benefiting from the struggles they went through. As one of those children from a poor, rural family with no loving strong community, homeschooling was better than the alternative we faced, and could have been great if my mother wasn't mentally ill.

For younger it's Reading Writing Math Logic Electives and for older it's Language Arts Math/Logic Electives Reading Much simplified since we do less subjects and older has everything divided into four 'blocks', but yes, I colourcode too

My tip is a little different to most and many here wont agree, but for MY family it is absolutely vital Limit the number of subjects you do per day. Whether it's loop schedules, block schedules or combining subjects into a "Subject", limit them! Transitions are distracting, jumping from one subject to another is inefficient, and spending time chasing books and teacher guides and finding pages and orienting yourself into the material is all time and overwhelming, and when we feel overwhelmed we stall, do things slowly and generally feel unmotivated and uncomfortable. Now, I personally take this to an extreme (as a homeschooled high schooler I generally only did two subjects per day, but I'd spend 2-4 hours on each at a time) but it can be balanced too. I see some homeschoolers trying to do variations on the below Math - 30min Reading - 30min Spelling - 10min Grammar - 10min Writing - 30min Latin/Foreign Language - 30min Science - 30min History - 30min Art - 30min Composer Study Poetry Memorization Read-Alouds OTHER STUFF Whereas my schedule, if I was doing all these subjects (which I'm not) would look more like Morning Basket (read aloud and memorization plus ONE OF composer, poetry, and other stuff, each day. All done in one sitting, at once, as a single "Subject") Math - 30 Mins Reading - 30 Mins Spelling OR Grammar - 15 Mins, alternated every 6 or 9 weeks, 'double' workload. Latin/Foreign Language - 30 Mins Science OR History OR Art OR Writing - 2 hours focused time, loop or block schedule Done this way, a child is only doing 6 subjects per day, for more focused time on each. Some of these could be combined even further but that takes a certain type of student/family to be able to, most students need to do math, language, and spelling/grammar daily. For the record, for my family our schedule is Math/Logic, Language Arts, Elective, and Reading. That's 4 blocks, and that's it. Math is daily except one day a week it is swapped entirely for logic. Language arts includes daily spelling, but then is writing (we plan to do analytical grammar in the future), so there's a couple of books happening here but it's done all at once as a single 'subject' which helps with transition. The elective includes subjects like art. composer study, poetry, specific science/history topics etc along with subjects like engineering/robotics or psychology or cooking but condensed from a year long subject into a 6 week 'unit', upon which an hour or more is spent per day (some, like art and engineering, are done once or twice a week for a full afternoon instead of daily). Reading is all assigned by me (they can read their own books outside of school time) and is all classic literature or living books, and is the entire basis for our science/history right now, so that's a large chunk of our day and learning. But, my kids have always had good attention spans and take after my husband and I, preferring to focus deeply on a single topic than chop and change all day. This definitely would not work for every family! Still, even a family that likes variety can benefit from limiting the number of subjects done per day to allow better focus and be less overwhelming than a list of lessons from 20 different books. See, this is why the CM style of reading would never work for me lol, I couldn't read 4 pages from 6 books every day!

People think back to their childhoods and remember the fond memories. They then see something different and realize those kids wont have the same memories. So they see a hole, a gap, where that memory would have been if they'd had the same experiences. What they often forget to see is that those 'gaps' will be filled with different, fond memories. I was homeschooled through high school and I can assure you I have many wonderful, fond memories that never could have been created if I had been in a public school. I had opportunites I couldn't have had in a PS just like PS kids have opportunities I didn't. One is not better than the other for memories, they are just different. You know why people have fond memories of high school/college? It's not because of the highschool/college they attend, it's because those are deeply impressionable years where you have the freedom of an almost-adult with the responsibility of a child. Those are the years we discover ourselves and form an identity, become who we are today. Those years will hold vivid, special, meaningful memories for everyone, no matter what place they happen to be in at the time, because they are some of the most crucial, forming years of our lives and very precious to us. I don't remember a homecomming or school clubs, but I do remember my first part time job and the people there, and the big camping trips me and my homeschooled friends took each year, and late nights staying up with friends pretending to study. and the poetry competition I entered. I don't have a yearbook to show, but I do have a scrapbook I made in my free time, and handwritten letters from some very special people. I mightn't have silly memories like school lunch or that crazy math teacher, but I have silly memories like the ridiculous history book we tried to use that failed miserably, and the crazy moderator on a website for creative writing that I had multiple run-ins with. The gaps aren't left empty and meaningless, they're just filled with different, equally special, memories.

Grats!!! So happy for you

Even here we don't. There's very few true unschoolers or radical unschoolers. There's no 'buy the same books the local schools use and do school at desks from 9-3' families since they'd have no real direction here, there's not really any 'buy the religious boxed curriculum and do it like the rest of our church' semi-cult families. I assume we don't have any ATI families here. I've not seen many posts from immigrant families. There isn't really any of the super pushy, tiger mom college at 12 types around (even on the accelerated board, most are delaying college to a normal age and quite un-pushy) There's not many distance learners which is a large demographic in Australia since we are so spread out and have had correspondence and distance courses since, like, forever. There's just nowhere that captures the entirety of homeschooling. If I were a photographer I'd do a photo book like the hungry planet or material world books, but for homeschoolers, encompassing their entire range and scope, not just the stereotypical extremes, but the less heard of ones too.

Here is an interesting blog post I found http://edsnapshots.com/loop-scheduling/ I am a block scheduler myself, loop scheduling would drive me, personally, nutty. But I can see how it would work great for others.

I am using 100EZ and loving it. We do not do the writing portion though. OPGTR I owned but just couldn't get into

Seriously? A zombie spam thread just got resurrected by a spam post. This is too amusing to report.

Hoping to hear an update soon... Still praying

My 4yo baths without me, but I don't really 'get' the comments here about making sure they wash everywhere fully/correctly either. I guess we're less worried about germs or something, I put her in and put bubbles in and give her a washcloth, and she washes and plays, and then gets out by herself. I guess I don't see what's complicated about that. She doesn't do her hair independently though

That's awful, because obviously you may be in less of a position to help the relative yourself after telling But, the child's safety is the number one most important thing, particularly because they're so young. You have to tell.

I wear mine inside out, have done for as long as I can remember, could not STAND that stupid seam!

Wow, I haven't had a boy! Adult dreams sound much more appealing than violent nightmares, I keep telling DH we need a boy :P

Definitely, though no one has mentioned the symptoms I know by! I don't really get tender breasts at all (though I did get let down sensations within a week of two conceptions) Generally I will wake up the next morning with a funny feeling in my nose. My NASAL mucus changes drastically within 24-48 hours, all 5 conceptions, and remains that way until birth. My cervical mucus seems as inconsistent as my cycles so I have never figured out how to check that, but the nasal mucus is a pretty sure bet unless I have a cold I also get exceptionally vivid, and graphic, nightmares sporadically through the first 20 weeks, usually about horrid things happening to my children. This is apparently not unusual, but I usually get the first one within a week of conception. Waiting a week or two to prove it is maddening! And early miscarriages, or the fear of it having happen again, make it worse.

I'm not interested in debating creationism. For what it's worth I intend to do a thorough study of evolution in high school, because I believe when you hold a minority opinion you had better fully understand the majority one to know why you aren't following the majority. But I don't intend to introduce that until at least middle school. So, the kids get to watch a documentary on youtube a couple of times a week. Eldest DD asked to watch a dinosaur documentary today. I went searching for a creationist one. But the ones I found aimed at children, by Ken Ham and Kent Hovind, all had this awful, arrogant attitude! Like 'look what these crazy people believe, how could anyone be so stupid as to believe in evolution' type attitude! And an 'of course this is right, this is definitely exactly what happened' when talking about things like whether dinosaurs were on the ark, a topic debated even among creationists! And the information they presented was all focused on why evolution was wrong and supposedly ridiculous, rather than simply being an introduction to dinosaurs from a creation perspective! I was particularly surprised and disappointed by this from Ken Ham. He's Australian, and we are close friends with two families who worked for the Creation Science organization. While I haven't met Ken myself, I know these friends are friends of his, and so I was quite taken aback by it. I'd always assumed I would use his resources when the time came, but now I'm definitely reconsidering that... Anyway, I digress, just feeling rather sad and let down by it all this evening. It feels a little too personal, seeing as he's the close friend of two close friends, like I've just seen the awful side of someone I kind of trusted, rather than just some person. I have no interest in showing the kids documentaries focused on making fun of everyone else, or portraying evolution as a dumb and crazy theory. I disagree with evolution, but that doesn't mean the people who believe it are stupid, many are highly intelligent and simply reached different conclusions, in part because of a different founding theology/philosophy. So, can anyone suggest YEC documentaries or books which simply present what we know about dinosaurs and things from a creation perspective? Or even discount evolution but in a tolerant and graceful 'this is what we believe' way? Alternatively, can anyone suggest secular resources which simply focus on dinosaurs without ecessive amounts of evolutionary theory being presented?