Has anyone heard that hsing can be detrimental to a child's emotional dev?

[lionfamily1999]

Interesting, nonetheless.

 

Lakota

As far as leaving you goes... sure, if you absolutely forced her to go and her Sunday school teachers could be as calm as school teachers are, you could 'break' her of that habit. Basically, she needs to know she has no choice.

 

Sounds pretty cold, doesn't it.

 

I'm not big on forcing separation. I've thought about it, and it is, imo, pretty darn cold. I know they need to know that you will come back (that might be something to talk about), but forced separation... I can't see the good of it, except that it makes it easier to drop your kids off somewhere.

 

I don't know, it's a :grouphug: thing. Younger ds is like that, older ds still likes to be able to test the water before diving in (socially) and he spent three and a half years in ps. Dd still does that and she isn't hs :lol: They'll go when they absolutely have to, or they'll give it a minute, standing with me and when they're ready wander on in on their own.

[babysparkler]

 

She said that some of the developmental goals for children or tasks they need to learn are...

 

I would be inclined to ask her what exactly her source for this information is.

[Rosy]

I think she was trying to say that homeschooling comes with a unique set of potential problems that a parent must be intentional in order to avoid.

I don't have much to add to the discussion...but this stood out to me. It seems to me that *for the most part* there isn't much that is intentional about sending one's children to public school. Some parents put a lot of thought into the decision to send their kids and are involved with homework, help in the classroom, get to know the other kids' families, etc. But not many.

 

On the other hand, the act of homeschooling is intentional by definition. You choose curricula based on your educational objectives. You choose activities based on the needs/abilities/strengths of your child. Even if you're just ordering a prepackaged curriculum, you're still the one (usually) teaching it. Again, a generalization...but my sense is that homeschoolers are very intentional in their approach to education and child development...they just might have different priorities than the average PSing parent.

[myfunnybunch]

I do have my own personal concerns in this department, though. my almost 5 year old is aggravatingly shy and often will not go to or stay in her Sunday School classroom.

 

:) I know this doesn't quite address the topic of the thread in general, but thought I'd offer some words of encouragement. This was a huge issue for one of my guys, my middle guy.

 

At age 5 he would not stay in a Sunday school classroom or at a friend's house without me. (Except with our magical next door neighbor mom, who knows why?) At almost 7 he's now very comfortable separating from me. Although he's still quite shy and needs time to warm up to new people and situations, he plays well with other children, responds appropriately to other adults and enjoys group situations even if I'm not right by his side.

 

I never pushed him. I stayed when he asked. If he wanted to leave when i left, I took him with me. When he felt ready, separations happened so gradually and so naturally that we barely noticed until I started thinking, "Gee, it's been a long time since...."

 

Which, now that I think of it, loops right around to school-specific "developmental" goals. Age 5 is the age children in our culture typically attend kindergarten, so the ability to separate easily by age 5 has become a developmental expectation. Homeschooling allows us to honor a child's individual development over cultural expectations.

 

Cat

[creekland]

 

It wasn't until much later that I made a huge realization- the only kids I was seeing as a ps teacher that had been homeschooled were the failures. I was only seeing the worst part of homeschooling. We joined a church with many families who homeschooled and I discovered that the reason I never knew that there were so many more successful families is because the successful ones don't always return to school.

 

For the college professors who see problems with homeschoolers and the counselor who sees problems with homeschooling - or sees it as more negative than not- my guess is that they have seen more negatives than the positive. The successful kids that happen to have been homeschooled will blend in, or be achievers, or something. They don't wear signs. My guess is that the profs and this RN see just as many, and most likely more, kids with the same issues that were not homeschooled but haven't made the mental connection that they are only seeing the failures and that is skewing their hypothesis.

 

This brought an interesting comparison to mind. With this being my 11th year in public high school, I've seen many new teachers and student teachers come in. I've also been with a couple of the high school students who have worked as aides (generally because they think they want to go into teaching). Several of them mention that they never realized how the behavior/life of some kids could be UNTIL they got into certain classrooms. I know it was an eye-opener for me as well. In some schools, "elite" kids are placed all together - and it's no surprise that there tend to be less behavior issues in those classes - and hardly any failures. Sure they "know" there are failures - from hearsay or general talk, but they don't truly KNOW what makes a failure since they haven't directly experienced life with that student - how they behave, etc.

 

College graduates may never get to know the high school dropouts or those that barely skim through - many times by grade inflation to assist them.

 

If this author has never been in a real, public high school, she likely has very tinted glasses she's looking through. The majority of students are not in the elite classes - a significant portion fail or skim by. A significant portion are on drugs, or, for other reasons, like to act up in class. A significant portion bully others. The trouble is likely that she hasn't seen this portion of life.

 

Therefore, in her very limited experience, public school is ideal and homeschooling can have issues.

[Nan in Mass]

I met a therapist who worked with children with this attitude, once. She said that homeschooled children always showed up in her office with problems. I don't think she realized that only the homeschoolers with problems showed up in her office.

-Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Thank you. I tend to look at things from an anthropological framework, so the difference between physical and cultural milestones is something I spotted right away. The author is coming from a US school culture and that is why homeschooling looks strange to her, and she isn't educated enough to recognize her cultural bias.

 

I asked about #9 and #10 because this list looks very like the one my husband and I made when we were first considering homeschooling. Unlike our fathers, who their whole lives worked as engineers for one large company, my husband has been an engineer in many small start-up companies, so we were trying to list a set of skills which would help our children survive in this "new" working environment. By the time I got to #9 and #10, I was fairly sure everything on this list was on our list, but I wasn't sure I knew what the words heuristic and dialectic meant. My question was had nothing whatever to do with the topic of this thread and I probably shouldn't have asked it here. Thank you for explaining.

 

-Nan

[cathmom]

:)

 

 

Homeschooling allows us to honor a child's individual development over cultural expectations.

 

Cat

 

You said that beautifully!

 

In some schools, "elite" kids are placed all together - and it's no surprise that there tend to be less behavior issues in those classes - and hardly any failures. Sure they "know" there are failures - from hearsay or general talk, but they don't truly KNOW what makes a failure since they haven't directly experienced life with that student - how they behave, etc.

 

College graduates may never get to know the high school dropouts or those that barely skim through - many times by grade inflation to assist them.

 

.

 

This is one of the things that bothered me when I was in school. In elementary school I often helped other children understand things because I finished my work so quickly. I enjoyed that. Then, in junior high, we were tracked into separate classes, which continued through high school. I hardly ever saw my best friend because she was not in my classes. I was stuck with a group of about 20 kids because we all were in the same classes, even though there were about 1600 students in my school. I remember once having to make up something in English and being in my English teacher's room while she had one of the lowest level classes. I could see that these students were savvy, but that no one had ever shown them the connection between life and what they were learning in school, and they felt that they were just dumb. I mean, after all, they had been placed in the "dumb classes." I wanted to stay in the class and help, but I knew I would not be allowed so I didn't ask.

[Nan in Mass]

The most valuable thing I learned in school is how to endure and suffer in silence through bad situations when I wasn't free to leave, ones in which I was obviously just an anonymous entity in the grip of a badly designed set of inflexible rules. As an adult, I have been stuck in many such situations and grateful for the strength that dealing with the public school system has given me. I think it is ironic that my biggest hesitation in choosing to homeschool my own children is that they would then miss having to learn to endure this type of badness.

-Nan

[lionfamily1999]

The most valuable thing I learned in school is how to endure and suffer in silence through bad situations when I wasn't free to leave, ones in which I was obviously just an anonymous entity in the grip of a badly designed set of inflexible rules. As an adult, I have been stuck in many such situations and grateful for the strength that dealing with the public school system has given me. I think it is ironic that my biggest hesitation in choosing to homeschool my own children is that they would then miss having to learn to endure this type of badness.

-Nan

Don't you find, though, as an adult you have the freedom to leave? I mean, it took me so long to figure out that if someone was nasty/rude, I could simply turn around and walk away. There wasn't going to be an authority figure making me go back in, I was not going to have detention or iss. No one was grading me.

 

Sure, there are situations where you have to put up and shut up, but I find them few and far between and I learned to deal with those by dealing with my parents growing up, because in those situations I have to listen, whereas in school I could just block it all out.

[Renee in NC]

The most valuable thing I learned in school is how to endure and suffer in silence through bad situations when I wasn't free to leave, ones in which I was obviously just an anonymous entity in the grip of a badly designed set of inflexible rules. As an adult, I have been stuck in many such situations and grateful for the strength that dealing with the public school system has given me. I think it is ironic that my biggest hesitation in choosing to homeschool my own children is that they would then miss having to learn to endure this type of badness.

-Nan

 

Can you give a specific example? I don't understand what you mean.

[cathmom]

The most valuable thing I learned in school is how to endure and suffer in silence through bad situations when I wasn't free to leave, ones in which I was obviously just an anonymous entity in the grip of a badly designed set of inflexible rules. As an adult, I have been stuck in many such situations and grateful for the strength that dealing with the public school system has given me. I think it is ironic that my biggest hesitation in choosing to homeschool my own children is that they would then miss having to learn to endure this type of badness.

-Nan

 

Wow, Nan. :grouphug:

 

This post strikes me as very sad.