Our goal is to raise great adults, not hip teens...

[Debbie in OR]

This thought came to me this week as I was struggling with the ever-annoying homeschooling fear that my kids do/will not fit in (wherever "fitting in" is likely to be an issue).

 

I haven't given it much thought up until this point, but as the kids are getting older, it seems to come up more. They are actually great kids and fun to be around and there is not any *actual* issue that has transpired to make me think they don't fit in. They seem to have a good combination of innocence and "coolness" but I am tired of getting sucked into my mind's battle of "do they look like their peers (public school or homeschool). In my head (and on most days), I know it doesn't matter...but there are days....

 

We have a few friends who have very "hip" kids and very popular in ps and Christian school. And being around them is usually when these fears creep in.

 

But I have been noticing lately that maintaining that "coolness" seems to be important to all of them, parents included. I have also started to notice that there are character issues that appear to be overlooked because of it. I realize those two don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they can be.

 

So, a few days ago, as I was contemplating this and praying about it, this thought came to me. Being concerned about whether or not they fit in now is extremely short-sighted. I am not raising them to be comfortable in their skin for these years that will be gone so quickly. We are raising them to be grounded for the long stretch that comes after these short years. They are going to be great *adults*.

 

Maybe I am the only person who is just now getting this. :blush: I hope this doesn't come across as prideful: it is coming from a mother's heart that wants to know I am doing the right thing by my kids. This realization was hugely relieving to me and on the outside chance that this would be encouraging to someone else, I thought I'd share.

 

(I've included it in my sig just to remind myself. :001_smile:)

[BakersDozen]

Awesome post! I totally agree!

[laughing lioness]

I have a friend who says this regularly, "I'm raising adults, not kids." As a Christian I like to take it up a notch; we're raising eternal beings. Either way, it keeps it in perspective, doesn't it? :001_smile:

[OnTheBrink]

:iagree::iagree:

[Haiku]

I completely agree with you. I have a 15 year old dd, and she does not have all the toys, cool clothes, or privileges that many kids her age have. We have regularly told her that our job is to parent her well so that she is successful in life, not to make her cool or be liked by her.

 

She attends public school, and she appears to be well-liked by her peers. She is described as "nice." For a while she was trying to buy into teen culture, but we pretty much didn't allow it and talked with her about our experiences as teens and what we want for her, and she has (somewhat grudgingly) accepted that we know what we are talking about. For example: she bought a cell phone with her Christmas money and was certain that it would be the ticket to a better life. I talked with her about how I didn't think this phone was going to do for her what she thought it would but that she could buy it anyway. She blew all her Christmas money on and has had every cent of allowance tied up in it for four months. She came to dh and me yesterday and said she wanted to "downgrade" her cell phone plan so it didn't cost as much and she wanted to tell her friends to quit texting her so much! She said to me, "I didn't think you would be right about my phone, but you were."

 

I think the key for us is the family culture we maintain. We have always let our kids know that we don't give a rat's @$$ (as my dad would say) what everyone else is doing; we make our decisions based on our values and what we believe will help our kids grow up well, not on what we think will make them temporarily happy/popular now. If the two coincide, great! If not, oh well.

 

Tara

[TXMary2]

I hear you and have ocassionally struggled with some of those feelings. My oldest didn't start homeschooling until his Freshmen year so he was already cemented in that "coolness" school of thought. I for sure gave him a better academic foundation than the local high school would have. Other than that I had to work double time trying to keep him on track with a christian worldview.

 

He is fully in to material posessions, how he looks etc. He has stopped going to church with us.....mostly because of his work schedule, but honestly I don't think that desire is there right now. I am fully relying on God and the word that says if you train up a child as he should go he will not depart and if he does he will come back to it. I don't think he is "lost" but he is definitely taking advantage of his adult freedom and trying to be part of the crowd. I will just keep praying for him.

 

More to the point you are making, a lady at our old church once commented to me, "You should be so proud mama, ______ is not like other homeschoolers....he is so cool." UGGGH!!! I was :tongue_smilie:"Errrr, thanks.....I think." I know she thought she was complimenting me, but I was pretty discouraged for a while after that.

[MamaSheep]

I'm with you too. When we initially talked with ds's IEP team about our plans to homeschool him for fourth grade one of the team members commented that one of his "issues" is that in many ways he acts too much like an adult, he needs to learn how to function among fourth graders in a fourth grade classroom. I said, "Why? Fourth grade only lasts for a year. Then he'll never have to sit all day in a fourth grade classroom again in his life. This is definitely NOT a child who is going to voluntarily choose to be a fourth grade teacher, and that is the only adult profession that requires a person to sit in a fourth grade classroom all day." Everyone laughed rather heartily because the notion of my son voluntarily subjecting himself to a room full of obnoxious kids all day is just so incredibly implausible it's ludicrous. So then the lady said, "Well, you'd want him to go back to school for high school, right? If he doesn't learn to function in a fourth grade classroom and a fifth grade classroom and so forth, how will he fit in in high school?" I pointed out that high school isn't a career either. It doesn't really even resemble "real life". I want my son to be prepared for "real life", not the artificial social environment of school. Many kids can get there BY going to school, but that was clearly not working out so well for my son, so we thought we'd try taking another road to the same end. He's never going to socialize "normally", so maybe we'd better find an abnormal way that gets good results instead of continuing to pound him with the normal way when it's giving us increasingly disastrous results, eh?

 

So yeah, now he's a lot more mentally healthy and stable because he's allowed to be himself, even if that means he has odd "overly adult" behaviors in some areas and doesn't really know how to be a kid. (And at the same time, he's very immmature in other ways.) Nobody's trying to remodel him into a seventh grader this year, only to turn around and tell him next year that all that seventh grade behavior they smashed into him is no longer appropriate because now he's in eighth grade and has to learn a new set of unnatural (to him) ways of doing things. And he's happy this way.

 

He could never be a "normal" eighth grader. But I think he's going to make a fabulous adult some day.

[Brilliant]

Thanks for posting this; I totally agree.

 

One thing we have noticed about kids who are on the cool spectrum, is that they tend to be very fickle friends. They want to hang out with my kids whenever nobody else "cool" is around.

 

Needless to say, we don't make an effort to hang out with any of those kids. I'm kind of sad for them in a way. The mom of one of my daughter's (formerly) very good friends even told me about 4 years ago that it was her goal for her dd to be popular. That girl is self-centered, back-stabbing, and disrespectful to adults. We hardly ever talk to the family anymore, so I don't know how the "popularity" thing is going, but I do know she lost some very sweet friends along the way.

[dirty ethel rackham]

Debbie,

 

Thanks so much for posting this. I really needed this reminder today. I have to keep remembering that it is a marathon, not a sprint. I have a teen that I worry about, not just about the fitting in, but about the life skills. I have to remember that he will not be the same person in 2 years when I send him out into the world (at least the world of college.)

[Carol in Cal.]

Both are short stories. One is "Paul's Case" and the other is "The 80 Yard Run."

 

A novel, "So Big," kind of illustrates this, a bit, too, although not as clearly.

[Sputterduck]

I have a friend who says this regularly, "I'm raising adults, not kids." As a Christian I like to take it up a notch; we're raising eternal beings. Either way, it keeps it in perspective, doesn't it? :001_smile:

 

Eternal beings! I love that! I'm going to adopt that!

[elegantlion]

I'm with you too. When we initially talked with ds's IEP team about our plans to homeschool him for fourth grade one of the team members commented that one of his "issues" is that in many ways he acts too much like an adult, he needs to learn how to function among fourth graders in a fourth grade classroom. I said, "Why? Fourth grade only lasts for a year. Then he'll never have to sit all day in a fourth grade classroom again in his life. This is definitely NOT a child who is going to voluntarily choose to be a fourth grade teacher, and that is the only adult profession that requires a person to sit in a fourth grade classroom all day." Everyone laughed rather heartily because the notion of my son voluntarily subjecting himself to a room full of obnoxious kids all day is just so incredibly implausible it's ludicrous. So then the lady said, "Well, you'd want him to go back to school for high school, right? If he doesn't learn to function in a fourth grade classroom and a fifth grade classroom and so forth, how will he fit in in high school?" I pointed out that high school isn't a career either. It doesn't really even resemble "real life". I want my son to be prepared for "real life", not the artificial social environment of school. Many kids can get there BY going to school, but that was clearly not working out so well for my son, so we thought we'd try taking another road to the same end. He's never going to socialize "normally", so maybe we'd better find an abnormal way that gets good results instead of continuing to pound him with the normal way when it's giving us increasingly disastrous results, eh?

 

So yeah, now he's a lot more mentally healthy and stable because he's allowed to be himself, even if that means he has odd "overly adult" behaviors in some areas and doesn't really know how to be a kid. (And at the same time, he's very immmature in other ways.) Nobody's trying to remodel him into a seventh grader this year, only to turn around and tell him next year that all that seventh grade behavior they smashed into him is no longer appropriate because now he's in eighth grade and has to learn a new set of unnatural (to him) ways of doing things. And he's happy this way.

 

He could never be a "normal" eighth grader. But I think he's going to make a fabulous adult some day.

 

Amen! My ds is way more confident than I was at his age because he feels validated at being himself.

 

I'm raising an individual and darn proud of it.

[novagirl]

I think the key for us is the family culture we maintain. We have always let our kids know that we don't give a rat's @$$ (as my dad would say) what everyone else is doing; we make our decisions based on our values and what we believe will help our kids grow up well, not on what we think will make them temporarily happy/popular now. If the two coincide, great! If not, oh well.

 

Tara

 

I needed this today, thanks Tara!

[Debbie in OR]

Very comforting to read all your posts...it *does* keep it in perspective!

 

Fifiruth, very good point about this continuing on into adulthood. So glad we get to walk alongside during the training period...:001_smile:

[novagirl]

This is a great thread! I agree wholeheartedly with the OP.

 

We've had one other conversation with our dss about peer pressure, and the desire to have what everyone else has (and to be esteemed in others' eyes: the cool factor.) It doesn't stop when one enters adulthood! It never ends. The *things* just get bigger and more expensive: houses, cars (a minivan??? Ugh! How dorky) vacations, the clown at my child's party vs. the jumpy toy at your daughter's party, cool clothes (heaven forbid that you ever wear that, and grey hair??? Are you kidding????? You don't want to look old, do you?)

 

I mean, the child has to have the tools within his mind and character to deal with this sort of cool factor, because it's never going to end.

 

I was at a garage sale some years ago when the Ford Excursions just came out. A lady drove up in one, and I asked her how she liked it. She gushed about it, and then said, "All my friends want one. They're all trading in their Ford Explorers for one!" The woman looked like she was in her 30s. :tongue_smilie:

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[Supertechmom]

Amen! My ds is way more confident than I was at his age because he feels validated at being himself.

 

I'm raising an individual and darn proud of it.

 

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree:

[MSNative]

Another book that speaks to this (though I confess I never really enjoyed it)- Death of a Salesman. For some reason whenever someone mentions the dreaded "S" word, in my head I remind myself that I'm not trying to turn out any Willy Lomans

[Ginevra]

I've been known to reply, "...but I hope my kids do stand out. It's the only way to be outstanding."