Yeah, I think the area you're in probably make a huge difference. Around here in a low income community homeschooling is not normal at all, and a lot of people probably don't know what it is and don't trust it. And as to Tibbie's comment, I wonder how many people out there are at or near poverty and homeschooling. It would be nice to meet people who are in a similar situation to us. I feel pretty isolated when I see every other homeschooler seems to live on a huge piece of property with a nice big house while we rent in a cramped low-income neighborhood. We are very much the weirdos here but thankfully no one bothers us.

Personally I don't care how un-hip I am at this point. I will wear mom-jean rise jeans. To the belly-button rise. No one in the world needs to see my squishy mid section. I get Faded Glory dark rinse or black jeans at Walmart ($15). They are nice looking and no one would think "Walmart" looking at me.

For me in particular it probably also adds to my self-consciousness that my kids are on medicaid (which they can see at doctor's offices) and I already feel like people are drawing conclusions about my life choices and parenting. That's why I try to look put-together and dress business casual when we go out. I guess it also doesn't help that my dad, for example, tries to demand that I put my kids in public school. He's not supportive at all. So we are definitely feeling against the grain a lot.

I guess most of my question involves scenarios like doctor's office visits. I have been known to err on the side of paranoia but it feels like I get awkward silences, side eyes and uncomfortable subject changing etc when the staff ask me if my child needs a doctor's note, or ask if they have to go back to school after the appointment and I say "we homeschool". Same kinda thing seems to happen with people we meet at the grocery store during the day when all the "normal" kids are at school. I'm just wondering if anyone else feels this way. I guess my worst case anxiety scenario is that someone is going to try to call CPS on me just for being not normal.

I just want to say I think it's not one or the other. I wish it were that simple. Sometimes poor people's diets are true victims of circumstance and sometimes it's bad decisions and sometimes one more than the other and sometimes a mix of both. It varies a lot from person to person, family to family. It's a hard, complicated thing. Growing up I experienced the "bad choices" kind of poor a lot. My (single) mom bought department store makeup and we often had no food. No policies would have helped in a situation where the supposedly responsible adult would not make good choices even if they were assisted to make them. So I don't know what the answer is.

LOL that's another thing for sure. The times I've made homemade beans especially, it's like explosions in my digestive area.

My experience with dried beans is that they require skill to soak/ cook properly and even more skill to make them taste good. I've tried it a few times and they are always so much worse than canned beans or fast food beans. I don't know why. Maybe others have had that experience too.

Whenever poverty and obesity come up (anywhere, not just here) there's always the mention of beans and incredulity about why the poor don't use them more. I'm not saying it's a bad idea. It just never seems to happen in real life (in the US).

I eat what I tell myself is a "ghetto low carb" (lol) diet. There's a lot of cheap bunless hot dogs involved. But still it costs more than a bread, pasta and dollar chicken pot pie filled diet that would better match my "socioeconomic status". It allows me to maintain a normal weight. It's something I have a little sense of guilt about since I'm wasting our precious dollars to eat like this but it's one of the ways that I feel I have some control when having to face doors closed in life because of lack of money.

Regarding my WIC comment it's what the lady at the WIC office told me. They lowered the age of children who could qualify for whole milk to be listed on their WIC checks because of changes on a federal level to deal with obesity (I had a 2 year old at the time and they could only receive an allowance for low fat milk). I always try to give my kids whole milk despite if they are "too old" to need it. It's a healthy fat IMO and more filling. None of my kids are even close to overweight. ETA: Looks like it varies from state to state though. That's just my experience with the state we lived in at the time.

I feel the first Lady's obesity crusade has had some misguided aspects to it as well. When I was on WIC we could not got whole milk as a direct result of her actions. No child ever became obese from drinking whole milk.

I didn't really know homeschooling was a thing until adulthood. But then I picked up on the negative stereotypes. I met a homeschooling family in real life and saw some things I admired which helped me cut through the stereotypes and make up my own mind. Then we met Gregg Harris (he wrote the influential book The Christian Homeschool in the 1980's) because we used to live near the church he pastored. We met him a few months after his wife Sono died and we love the guy. Big influence on us.

Like someone said upthread, there are actually laws these days that prevent families from living in the same small size of home as they did in generations past even when it's a desired thing. Most landlords/ property managers have a maximum number of people per room. So that is one real life example of how different it was and possibly easier to save money in the 1950's etc. And who hasn't heard about being so poor that the baby slept in a laundry basket etc? These days people would fear the wrath of CPS doing something like that. So it's not always that people are so greedy for space and large homes and fancy things. Modern life literally demands it even when you don't want it and can't afford it.

That movie used to be on Netflix and we watched it. I cried. I watched the Ben Carson story too and cried.

I'm not sure who Mike Rowe is, but he's been mentioned a couple times here. I can look into it.

Thanks, ladies. I'm probably going to stop responding because it's a lot to take in, to open myself up to hundreds of people who have assorted ideas about what we should do. I'm having some anxiety about everything coming at me. Trying to think of a plan to change our situation always gives me anxiety too anyway. I feel overwhelmed and confused, and I already feel overwhelmed and confused with my daily responsibilities. FYI I have been on different antidepressants over the years (Wellbutrin was actually the last one I was on) and they all have some messed up side effect with questionable benefit. That's just where I'm at with that. The idea of standing up heroicly with a cape on and plowing through the difficulties and saying "I won't stand for this!" sounds really great in theory. And yes, maybe I am self defeating in some ways but I don't want to be. I ask God to change me. I am tired and overwhelmed though. And for the record, I don't see ourselves as choosing to make things harder by not living near family. I don't want to go into it but DH and I both come from small, fractured families with difficult relationships (it's a big part of why we hit it off in the first place with those things in common). Believe me, I wish we had the kind of situation where we could live with family and get on our feet. Again, I don't want to go into details and be even more exposed in public. But if I told you all about it you would understand the level of difficulty. But yeah, I'd love to make a plan TODAY and take off somewhere in our minivan determined to make a better life somewhere (sounds like a fun adventure actually). I'm not saying we can't or won't do it, it's just risky and hard to know exactly how to go about it with small children in tow, and expecting to get hired after quitting a job just because we don't like it, you know?

Thank you again for the input everyone. I am processing. I just wanted to say that as far as this being a low COL area, I think that's misleading. The biggish city that DH works in and that we live in a small suburb of, has rated as one of the worst in the entire US for income inequality, meaning the poor are very poor (with high crime) and the rich are very rich... and strangly the very poor and very rich neighborhoods are in relatively close proximity to each other. So I think it averages out to a "low cost of living" when the reality is that there are basically no good in-between, medium income type areas. Plus cost of living has gone up like a rocket here the past few years. In some suburbs I think it is still a good place for medium income people, but we are not even that, and it would make DH's commute very long. I looked online at apartments anywhere near DH's work, anywhere near our budget, and there are lots of what are known as "prison flats" type apartments that cost even more than what we pay now. The type where the online reviews say "my cousin was murdered at this apartment complex" etc. Then you have nice, clean, decent looking apartments that rent for $2000/ month for a 2 bedroom. Who can afford that?! Is that normal?

I have thought about relocating. How do people do that though when they have no job waiting for them, and no knowledge of when or if a job will come up? The one time we relocated to our current state (TX), it was because of a sort of once in a lifetime situation where a family let us live with them rent free until a job and home to rent could be found. Even then it was hard and I don't think I would do it again that way.

We are slowly working through some of the ideas and suggestions. DH contacted a co-worker recommended temp agency, he applied for a job on our county website that is similar to what he does except with possibly slightly better pay and hours, and I am thinking again about continuing the online coding class. It's going to be hard, with the kids and DH's long hours, trying to find a decent block (even one hour) of uninterrupted time each day (toddler currently hanging on me) or a few times a week for me to make any good progress on it but I can try. I feel like one of the biggest obstacles to getting out of a situation like this is just how exhausting and discouraging everything is. I know there are a lot of people out there who have no sympathy and just think you get what you work for in life... or you have people who seem to think things just "work themselves out" when they are blind to their privilege because they've never known different, but it's not the whole story. Sometimes you are working with circumstances and background particulars that are like a magnet towards difficulty. And in some ways it's easier to just be able to take whatever rest you can get even if life is far from what you want it to be, and you can't seem to come up with ways to make things better that actually work in real life. But I'm trying. That's why I'm hassling all of you for ideas, lol.

The trouble is finding a decent, safe, clean, well-located apartment at a reasonable price. Rents have gone nuts where we are. The reasonable apartments I see are renting for double our current rent and that's not realistic for us. My thought is to find an old, maybe even 1950's etc apartment that is decently kept and in a decent area. I don't know.

LOL at "sax offenders". I'd rather live near one of those than a sex offender.

Lady M, that's kinda what I would hope to find if we looked for an apartment. I do not need brand new everything/ granite countertops etc. Just relatively clean, safe and in a better location. Oh we got sex offenders too! 2 houses down, matter of fact.

Does anyone do this (or have you done it in the past)? If you have read my other posts, this goes along with life things I'm trying figure out with DH. We have been in a small rental house for the past 3 years. It is not in the best area, nor is it close to DH's work. It's not very nice in any way other than that it's an actual house, which has obvious advantages with young children. Before this house we did live in apartments with a baby and toddler. The things that were hard for me were neighbors noises (loud violent video games, "adult" movies, weed/ cigarette smoke and not having an outdoor space). They didn't complain about our noise so I guess that's good but I am only asking about this for lack of other good options. I'm concerned about trying apartment living now because my kids are older and there's more of them, they're not quiet and we homeschool so they're just here all the time unlike some kids who live in apartments and aren't actually there most of the time or are sleeping most of the time they're there. I did grow up in apartments, I just feel like there's different variables to my current life and it wouldn't be the same, so I'm wondering if anyone who currently does this can tell me about it.

Someone mentioned learning to code earlier upthread, and actually DH and I did sign up for a $50 web developer/ coding class online last summer. I was starting to do it but we decided he should complete it first. He has gotten through some of it but hasn't had any time to work through it because of all the overtime :banghead: I actually think that is the kind of thing that might really be getting him somewhere. This is why I am so frustrated. His current job is so awful, but so time consuming that he has no way to actually plan and seek out something else.

This is basically what I was thinking. If I were to tell someone that I feel competent to do a great job of caring for their child I would be lying. Plus our home is not exactly spacious (under 1000 sq ft) and of course the big reason is that I do not feel like I have margin in my current parenting endeavors with my own 3 kids. Plus I just do not like other people's kids :leaving: I know some people out there probably think beggars can't be choosers etc, and that I should do anything I can but I think it's important to know your limits. As for the public school suggestions, I live in a district where the public schools get a 2 out of 10 Great Schools rating. I would feel absolutely sick sending my kids to the local public schools. It is something I would do almost anything to avoid. If we lived in a different area maybe it would be different, but this is the reality where we live.