Speaking of Joss Whedon and Cats

This exists.

Really, this is a totally natural segue from yesterday’s post.

And the “personality” of my blog still needs to lighten up sometimes.

 

 

 

So Whedon has got this goin’ on:

Just a few more weeks, yo!  And so good to see Amy & Nathan & Reed & Fran & Clark & Alexis – although, can I be honest and say it still feel a little weird hearing Alexis without the fake British accent?  But that’s my problem, not his.

And then there’s this, which is months away, but I’m still excited.

Also, one of my favorite blog friends (who has a very good blog, by the way) has made a request – MORE CAT VIDEOS! – because it turns out that I only ever posted one, despite my claim to the contrary.  Here’s an oldie, but it’s the winner of the Internet Cat Film Festival’s “Golden Kitty” award, so it’s got pedigree.  Even though Joss wasn’t involved.

And with that, let’s just consider the weekend started.  Bee is playing in her first piano recital tonight.  This morning she and Cheesy decided that when they get to heaven they want to meet God, Jesus, the disciples, and the Ingalls family, in that order.  I completely understand:  I have a list, too.

If you’ve come here through a link….please stay! (And why I keep blogging)

Is this shameless enough for ya?

My site views have bounced recently, due to being linked by love, joy, feminism and Karen Campbell of Relationship Homeschooling.  I’ve experienced this before and I know that the bounce is unlikely to last – but I’m asking you, if you’re new here, to give this blog a bit more of your time.

I write for a religion site, I write for a film site, but I started this blog because I wanted a space to write about whatever strikes my fancy.  If you go through the archives you’ll see that’s what I’ve done.  I’ve written about my children, complained about politics, posted silly pictures, even linked to funny cat videos.

The first rule of blogging is that you should find your niche – figure out a target audience and, well, target them.  I intentionally violated that rule, for my own gratification, because writing without boundaries is therapeutic for me.  But it turns out that I do still enjoy the community that comes from people actually reading and responding to my posts.  It’s the reason I started a blog rather than a journal, I suppose.

And while I still write about anything and everything, my blog has taken on a personality over time, and my writing has become more purposeful – beyond simply catching everyone up on how awesome my kids are and how excited I am about the next Joss Whedon project.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately – why I write, why I invest so much time in something that has so little visible return.  I’ve decided that it’s really about who I write for:  that’s what keeps me going.

So here’s  my humble statement of purpose, as of May 2013:

I write for women in the church who have been sold a theology of gender-as-destiny.

I write for Christians who are afraid to air their question, doubts and frustrations for fear of being shamed or shunned.

I write for people who love Jesus but have a complicated relationship with His Church.

I write for homeschoolers who don’t fit the mold (and who would like to see it thrown out for good).

I write for women people who are getting older in a world that fetishizes youth and beauty.

I write for people who are still trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

I write for people who don’t fit bifurcated political stereotypes, but who don’t want to give in to cynicism or apathy.

I write for women who feel strongly enough about arts and popular culture to wade into male-heavy fandom and geekdom.

I write for mothers who are exceedingly imperfect and undomesticated, but who love their children to pieces.

All of that describes me, but I’ve discovered (partly through blogging) that I’m far from alone.  I’ve had friends approach me privately, in tears, about something I wrote.  I’ve had people message me, telling me things they wouldn’t say in front of the whole church or the whole homeschool group.  I’ve heard that my willingness to say what’s on my mind and heart has made it easier for others to admit their own truths…to keep going…to not feel isolated or dysfunctional.

And that makes my heart sing.

I always wanted my life to count.  I wanted to do big, extraordinary things to change the world for the better.  So that hasn’t really happened, and I’m well into middle age now, and I am still trying to figure out what I’m here for.  I don’t know:  check back with me.  But at least part of it, or at least part of what I’m embracing as a perfectly good reason to take up space on the planet, is that I have the chance to make it a tiny bit easier for other people, especially those who are coming after me.  By speaking.  Confessing.  Questioning.  Poking the hornets nest.  Sometimes I’m wrong, and I guess that’s okay, too.  It’s embarrassing to me, but useful to someone else, I hope.

All this to say, I’ve started to feel a certain “missional urgency” toward my blogging.  So for the moment I’m going to ignore how self-seeking this makes me feel and say, please read my blog.  Dig around the archives.  If something moves you, helps you, makes you angry – share it.  If you know of someone who might benefit from something I’ve said, pass it on.  If you disagree with me, tell me.  I’ve been known to change my mind.

I don’t anticipate ever being a  “successful” blogger, statistically speaking.  I’m looking to find the handful of people who will benefit in from what I write.  They matter, and that’s enough.

Of DCFS, HSLDA, and the day the social worker showed up

It was a beautiful spring evening, ten years ago.  We’d just finished eating dinner when an older woman knocked on our door and identified herself as an employee of the Department of Child and Family Services.  “Were you at Target yesterday?” she asked.  “With children?”  Well, yes, I was.  And someone had filed a complaint against me, turning in my license plate number, accusing me of child abuse.

I remember the panic and the humiliation that swept through me.  This very thing – being accused of child abuse, having the official standing on my doorstep questioning me – was one of my parenting nightmares.  Guilt or innocence had very little to do with the fear I was feeling in that moment.  As I listened to the social worker speak I silently prayed one of my most frequent prayers, used in a variety of circumstances:  “Please, Lord, no matter what, help me to tell the truth.”

This turned out to be an easy truth to tell.  This was back in the days when I still spanked, but I wasn’t being asked about that.  Instead I had been accused of having shaken my baby.  I could say with complete conviction that I had never, ever shaken her.  “I do spank the other kids sometimes,” I confessed, even though she hadn’t asked, “but I promise you, I’ve never shaken a baby.”

The DCFS worker was not unkind.  She asked to question my children without me, and I allowed her to do so.  She told me that she would be reporting the case as unfounded, and eventually – after 90 days?  My memory is fuzzy – unless I was accused again the case would be closed with no permanent record of the accusation.  “Spanking isn’t illegal,” she added. “But do it in the privacy of your own home.  Some people are nosy, or they have an axe to grind.”

You know that gooey therapeutic saying, “You’re only as sick as your secrets”?  Well, I don’t think it’s quite right – after all, some people who don’t keep secrets still seem pretty sick to me.  But I do think there’s healing in  telling someone the things you’re afraid to admit.  Having a DCFS worker show up at my house to investigate me for child abuse ranks up there as one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, but at least I had the good sense not to try to hide it from everyone I knew.  I was involved in a MOPS group at the time, and I told the whole group – endured their shocked expressions – just so I wouldn’t have to carry that memory as a shameful secret.

Even so….sharing it here?  With anyone who happens to read this blog?  Still embarrassing.

But I’m writing about that experience for a reason.  I was falsely accused, anonymously, and I still don’t know why.  I was having a hard time with the kids that day at Target.  Maybe someone saw me and thought, “That crazy woman looks like she could lose it on her kids.”  Maybe someone was extra-sensitive to the dynamics in an (obviously) adoptive family.  Frankly, after reading the stories of adoption and abuse that I’ve seen recently, I wouldn’t blame them.  Maybe the tipster was just a jerk.  All I know is that it was a false accusation:  it was frightening, humiliating, traumatic.  And it was unfair.  Because I was innocent.

But what if I wasn’t?

What if I really had shaken my baby in the parking lot at Target?  There’s nothing special about me that makes me above suspicion, is there?  (Let me go ahead and answer that:  no, there is not.)  The woman from DCFS was doing her job, and I’m glad that she showed up and questioned my children and me, because if the allegation had been true my baby would have needed someone to act on her behalf.

DCFS was not my enemy.

Libby Anne, a Patheos blogger, recently published a series of posts about the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, essentially accusing them of…well, let me give it to you in Libby Anne’s own words:

Put simply, HSLDA is doing everything it can to keep people from reporting child abuse and to inhibit child abuse investigations, has opposed laws against child abuse, and is working to undo compulsory education laws altogether, effectively decriminalizing educational neglect.

The HSLDA is sacrosanct among many of the homeschoolers I know, and it is with some trepidation that I tell you, I think Libby Anne has a point.

I have never joined HSLDA, despite being strongly encouraged to join by other homeschoolers.  Why  not?  My reasons aren’t especially well thought out.  I’m not much of a joiner; I don’t like the alarmist tactics I’ve seen the HSLDA use; my relationship with the public schools in my area has been largely positive, rather than adversarial.  It just didn’t seem necessary.

If I had been a member of the HSLDA, and if I followed the advice they give to their members, things would have gone differently the evening that the DCFS showed up.  I would have immediately assumed a defensive posture with the caseworker, declining to answer her questions until after I’d contacted my HSLDA lawyer.  I certainly would have refused her request to interview my children.  That honestly didn’t occur to me that day, when the caseworker was at my door.  As alarmed as I was, I trusted in God and the truth

I understand that I was not guaranteed such a positive outcome.  If the caseworker had not believed me that night could have been the beginning of a long ordeal.  I know that the system doesn’t always work the way it should.  But we need that system, as imperfect as it may be.  Too many homeschoolers operate as if every homeschool parent is loving, every home is a sanctuary, and the only threats are from outside (the government, the public schools, the child welfare system).  The reality is that abuse and neglect take place in some homeschool families just as they do in every other kind of family.  The difference is that many homeschoolers, spurred on by the philosophy of HSLDA and the conservative homeschool movement, believe that they are sovereign over their children, that their authority is nearly absolute – limited only by God and perhaps the church, but certainly not by the state.  I think we’ve underestimated sin.  We’ve been on the alert against the abuse of power by the government but oblivious to the abuse of power in our own families, our own communities, our own homeschool groups.

What if HSLDA simply stepped up and acknowledged that abuse takes places everywhere, including among its member families?  What if they utilized their platform to educate homeschoolers on how to recognize and report abuse when they encounter it?  If you think this is beyond the scope of HSLDA’s work, remember that they have campaigned to “reform” (translation – “loosen”) child welfare laws.  Why not take responsibility for protecting children as well as parents?

I’m not suggesting that HSLDA has never done anything beneficial for the homeschooling movement.  I’m simply hoping that HSLDA will use its considerable influence to address child abuse in the homeschool community.  Please, stop making it easier for abusive parents to hide themselves behind homeschooling.

I’ve read enough stories of children starved, beaten, burned, molested, exposed, caged and murdered to stay with me for a lifetime.  Homeschoolers, those were our children!  I don’t care if their parents were “sincere” homeschoolers who lost their way or frauds who identified as homeschoolers to make abuse and neglect easier to conceal.  Through our resistance to transparency and accountability, our insistence that parental rights are the greatest good – we have become part of the problem.

I’m sure that there are incompetent and corrupt CPS social workers out there, but I’d like to thank the rest.  They are on the front line of a battle we all should be waging.  DCFS, CPS – they are not the enemy.  Child abuse is the enemy, and the homeschool community needs to fight against that abuse and for our children – all children.

HSLDA, why don’t you lead the way?

Note:  This issue is much, much wider than Libby Anne vs. HSLDA.  For an overview of the controversy and other reactions, including the response HSLDA posted to their Facebook wall, see this post at Homeschoolers Anonymous.

Who’s beautiful? Who’s sexy? Why are we so crazy?

Articles about the destructive body images promoted by the media are a dime a dozen.  I won’t be preachy about this because we’ve all heard enough of that particular sermon and it doesn’t seem to be doing much good.  But somehow the juxtaposition of two particular magazine covers really got to me today.  First there was this was, which I’d already seen several times:

I do think Gwyneth Paltrow is beautiful, so I’m not about to criticize her -or even to make fun of her self-assigned role as lifestyle guru, though that has been done to great effect elsewhere.  I genuinely think she’s beautiful, in a very specific way.  Tall, blonde, fine featured and very, very thin.  She is not the kind of woman you would describe as shapely or voluptuous but that’s okay.  That’s not her look.  It’s not Gwyneth’s fault, I suppose, that her kind of beauty is the one most sought after by fashion designers and advertisers.  Sure,  girls receive constant media messages telling them that they will be beautiful to the degree that they are lean, angular and look good in this kind of outfit.

But again, Gwyneth Paltrow is not responsible for the fact that our culture upholds her look as an ideal.    There are exceptions, after all.  Even if we seldom see shapely women on the runways, we still recognize the more fulsome beauty of women like Salma Hayek, Christina Hendricks and Kim Kardashian.  Don’t we?

Right next to the People magazine I saw this In Touch cover:

Yep, they’ve actually done a little zoom in shot of the fat roll under Kim Kardashian’s arm.  She is pregnant, she’s gaining more weight than we allow in our pregnant celebrities (and to know how much we allow, check out Kate Middleton these days) and so, obviously, she can never be sexy again.  Never.  To anyone.  The extra weight which many of us put on when we are growing people inside our bodies obviously turns us into hideous, revolting beasts.  As a matter of fact, fat moms never have second children because their husbands (or music mogul boyfriends – whichever shoe fits) cannot ever stand to be with them again.  That’s how it works.  Right, guys?

Such horse crap.  Notice the little headline at the bottom?  “Her obsession with her teen sister’s body”?  Don’t blame Kim:  we’re all obsessed with the teenage body.  For many of us it’s a teenage body we didn’t even have when we were teenagers.

I was a very skinny teenager.  I had the build – if not the wallet or the poise – to pull off designer fashions.  My body changed in my late 20s and early 30s, but at the age of 36 I lost 30 pounds and got back to high school weight.  I went to a family gathering and was flattered when someone asked if I’d been sick.  Even more flattered when an aunt said, with great feeling, “Please don’t lose any more weight.  You look like you’d barely cast a shadow.”

So I could blame the media for the kind of poison they spew at us, at my three daughters, but the media feeds us what we want.  Most of us are complicit in enforcing narrow, unhealthy ideals of female beauty.  I certainly am.  Those side-by-side magazine covers just drove home to me how crazy this gets.  When we reinforce the most aryan ideal as the most beautiful in the world while simultaneously regarding the pregnant body as something to be despised….people, we are seriously messed up.

I hope my daughters’ generation is less crazy than mine.

By the way, I eventually gained almost all of those 30 pounds back.  So Kim, honey, my armpits are fat, too.

Spring, wonderful spring

An excellent use for a sunny afternoon

I’ve written a lot of very serious posts lately, and I have another serious one in the works.  But daily life has actually been light and happy this spring.   The weather has been unpredictable but we enjoy the warm sunny days when we get them.

Gotta start somewhere

Cheesy is going back to her natural hair.  She’s always been my most free spirited kid when it comes to style, and she thinks the idea of having a big, funky afro is awesome.  Actually, she thinks the idea of shaving her hair close the scalp sounds awesome, too, but I’m too cowardly to  let her take that step.  I’ve been reading up, so to put this in the proper parlance, she is transitioning without doing a “big chop”.  I’m buying up scarves and cute head bands to make this switch chic, and I have a friend who is graciously helping us with the styling while the relaxer grows out.  Hair transition diaries are quite a big thing on the internet, so I’m joining the club.  The photos show where we’re starting at, and how her hair looks dolled up with a braid out and headband.  I’m taking photos every week or so to track our progress.

A smile that can rock any hairdo

Mr. Right and I went to Memphis for our overdue 25th anniversary getaway.  We stayed downtown, walked almost everywhere and loved it.  I’m very much pro-Memphis now, but even more than the touristy stuff I enjoyed almost four days with my best friend.  All that time, and we hardly got on each other’s nerves at all

It keeps raining, and our basement is not entirely watertight.  That’s the downside to spring.  We just wet vac and keep going; it’s all pretty routine after living here for so many years.

Prom!  Striker went to her first prom with her boyfriend, which means we got to see this:

My girl, so grown up and lovely

Striker also started her first job a few weeks ago, slinging frozen custard at a local hot spot.  Job means money, money means car insurance, car insurance means Striker will be a licensed driver very, very soon.  She’s just a little excited.

We’re nearing the end of track season and B.Lake is killing it, taking first or second in almost all of his races (usually first). He got his hair shaved into a Mohawk recently.  I may not have been 100% enthused about this, but I choose my battles carefully.  It’s his head, after all.  I wish I had a picture of him running track to show you, but since I don’t I’ll share this one of him wrestling a few months back.  Doesn’t he look fierce?

Lean, mean, wrestling machine

Bee is reading like a house on fire.  She just read the entire Bone series (including the prequel), finishing a book ever day or two.  She’s also been funny, funny, funny lately.  Bee seemed like a serious little person a few years ago, but she was obviously just taking time to perfect her comedy stylings.  She and Cheesy make each other laugh all day long, except when they’re bickering.

As for Baph and Mr. Right, they both work all the time.  All.  the.  time.

I was thinking I’d take the summer off of school since my focus has been shot over the last few months.  I’ve been feeling burned out, but….I just can’t bear the thought of “losing” the whole summer session.  So I signed up for just one class, Introduction to Theology.  I’m hoping it will be fun, in the weird way that I define fun.

I’ve also written a few movie reviews for Zekefilm lately, if that interests you.  I reviewed a Romanian drama called Beyond the Hills, from the director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.  Last week I reviewed a dysfunctional family comedy called Pasadena.  And I was part of an online conversation about The Exorcist, following a Zekefilm screening of that film.

I can’t believe we’re only a few weeks away from the end of another school year.  This is the time of year when I’m usually alternating between panicking over what we didn’t finish and poring over the Rainbow Resource Catalog dreaming of how much better we’ll do school next year.  Next year is always the year when my daughters will start their dried herb business, or self-publish their novels, or go to the world finals in Morris dancing.  And we will read ALL the wonderful children’s novels we haven’t gotten to yet (CharlieandtheChocolateFactoryAWrinkleinTimeAnnof GreenGablesBridgetoTerabithiaTheWind intheWillowsTheSecretGardenEllenTebbits HolesThePhantomTollbooth…..).  And the field trips we will go on!  Basically, this:

But I tell you the truth:  I’ve never approached the end of a school year with more contentment and gratitude.  We didn’t accomplish everything I planned, but we learned a lot and we had such a good time together.   More and more often I find myself thinking that my kids are delightful people.  How did I get so lucky?

I still go googly eyed over the Rainbow Resource Catalog, though.

I’m sorry, but this makes me laugh every time.

I don’t hit and I try not to yell

My last post may have left some people wondering where, exactly, I stand on spanking.    Since I’ve openly criticized certain parenting philosophies, I want to be honest about how I’ve disciplined my own children, and how my practices have evolved over time.  This is my story:  the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I was spanked.

Like almost all of the kids I grew up with back in the 70s, I was spanked.  It didn’t happen often because I was a compliant little girl.  I remember getting the belt from my dad once, for spilling ink on his desk.  I remember being spanked in the store parking lot after he caught me stealing gum at the grocery store.  I remember my mother slapping the back of my thigh after I’d lost my flute (again) in grade school.  That’s it:  that’s all I remember of being spanked.  I don’t believe I suffered long term because of it.

I have spanked.

When I was starting out 21 years ago I didn’t take parenting advice from the Pearls or Ted Tripp:   James Dobson was more my speed.  But like most parents I knew, I spanked sometimes.  My oldest was a very easy child to parent (like mother, like son?), but I still spanked him now and then.

I don’t spank.

What changed?  For starters, I changed.  Until I became a parent I didn’t realize what a temper I had.  It was alarming to discover how angry I could become at the sweet little boy God had entrusted to me – but that was nothing compared to what was coming.

When my oldest son was seven we adopted Daughter #1 from India.  She was three years old; tiny, beautiful, smart – and very spirited.  She was like a stick of dynamite in our quiet little family.  I have one memory in particular of those early months.  Striker was tantruming and I was holding her down on her bed.  Finally, finally she went very quiet and still, just looking up at me.  I thought, “Aha!  I win!”  Then my daughter lifted her head off of her pillow and spat in my face.

Little swats on the bottom meant nothing to Striker.  Harder and more frequent swats didn’t mean anything, either.  I wasn’t ready to swear off spanking, but I knew that we were going to need other approaches.  One Sunday morning at church, when Striker was four, she threw another tantrum (there were many).  As I struggled to remove her from the foyer an older man approached me and gently said, “You know, it wouldn’t hurt her to be spanked once in a while.”  I think I just smiled awkwardly and returned to trying to get my limp, screaming daughter off the floor.  But inside I seethed, thinking, “You have no idea how many spankings this child has gotten.  They don’t work.”

So I was starting to wise up to the fact that spanking is not equally effective with every child, if by “effective” we mean it produces the desired behavior.

Fast forward a few years and I’m parenting four children.   Cheesy had come to us as a newborn, and five months later B.Lake came home from Haiti as a three-year-old.  He was developmentally delayed and grieving.  I was overwhelmed.  I struggled to develop a healthy relationship with B.Lake.  In retrospect, I waited far too long to seek professional support.  The bitter truth is that on a few occasions I completely lost it with my little boy.  I behaved in ways that shamed and terrified me.

This is the point in the story where some of you will decide I’m crazy, but I’m telling you the truth.  One Sunday while sitting in church I had a very powerful spiritual experience, almost a vision.  It had nothing to do with the service itself, about which I remember nothing.  I had the sense that Jesus was sitting beside me (seriously, in the pew), and he was showing me my life with B.Lake up to that point – all of my failures, all of my worst moments, all the times when I’d directed my rage and contempt at this child.  Then Jesus showed me the future, and it was equally grim.  B.Lake was a bitter, angry young man – and given what I’d just seen, who could blame him?

As the vision ended I wept in despair over the damage I’d caused.  But Jesus was still there, and he asked me, very simply, “If the situation was hopeless, why would I show you this?”

And so, like Ebenezer Scrooge, I believe that I’d been given a chance to change the future by changing myself.  If you still think I’m crazy, just know that it was a good kind of crazy in that it motivated me to reshape my behavior toward my son.  In the long run it changed the way I parent my other children as well.

I try not to yell.

I used to feel that, whatever my parenting failures, I was better than people who think they are entitled to abuse their children by virtue of an awful philosophy of discipline.  At least I was sorry after I treated my children harshly, right?

At some point I realized that it would matter little to my children why I was cruel, or whether it was premeditated.  It was a ridiculous defense to think that losing my temper was less evil than calculatingly setting out to mistreat my children.  And so I stopped making excuses for myself. Because I had not been able to administer spankings calmly and judiciously, I took away all permission to spank my children.  I looked for alternative ways of teaching and correcting.  And I waged spiritual warfare against my temper.

Here’s one thing I’ve found over the last decade of parenting.  Anger doesn’t help.  It’s an unavoidable emotion sometimes, but it gets in the way of parenting well.   My children hear me better when I don’t shout.   A gentle answer does, in fact, turn away wrath.  Kindness really can lead to repentance.  Mercy triumphs over judgment.  If a holy and perfect God can extend grace to His children, surely I can do likewise.

There’s more than one way to parent

Some parents reading this will think, “I spank, but I don’t have temper issues like you do.  I’m not abusive.”  Okay, then.  All I ask is that you not judge the non-spankers as unbiblical, permissive, and unconcerned about their children’s characters.

Other parents will read this and think, “I would never have spanked in the first place.”  Fair enough.  Please don’t assume that all parents who spank are abusive.  I’m only speaking of my own experience, and indicting only myself.

But maybe someone reading this is where I was.  You spank because it’s what you know, what you’ve been told to do when your kids misbehave.  Still, you’re not handling it well and you know it.  Your anger frightens you.  You feel guilty.  You worry that you are damaging your children.  Please know that I understand.  I’ve been in your shoes.  You can message me privately if you need to (sharon65a@sbcglobal.net).  My suggestion is that you stop using corporal punishment altogether.  Err on the side of protecting your children.  You don’t need to spank.  There are other ways to parent, even as a Christian, no matter what you’ve been told.

So that’s where I’m at.

I’m a very imperfect parent, but by the grace of God I am growing into a more gracious, less angry mother with the passage of time.  It probably goes without saying, but I don’t miss spanking.  I am happier and healthier without it.  Cheesy and Bee are receiving benefits that their older siblings didn’t have at their age, and I wish that I could go back and redo the early years with my other children.  I can’t, though, and sometimes that’s heartbreaking.  There are also still times when I lose my temper and yell, but those times are less and less frequent.  I’m working on it.  And I no longer hit.  Ever.  Because it’s wrong for me.  And because I don’t need to do it.

What I should have said 13 years ago

It was one of my first homeschool meetings, an evening devoted to people like myself:  the rookies. Three veteran couples were there to encourage us, answer our questions, and give us the benefit of their experience.

I don’t recall much from that evening, but I remember one of the veteran dads counseling us, raw recruits that we were, on the importance of discipline in the home. And by “discipline” he meant something very specific. He went on at great length on the virtues of “beating” (his word, not mine) children regularly, abundantly, at the first sign of rebellion. His weapon of choice was the yardstick and he told us that he’d broken many over the years in an effort to drive wickedness and rebellion from the hearts of his children. Teenagers taken in as foster children had also received frequent beatings, something I suspect their caseworkers did not know.

I listened, trying to hide my shock and disgust. I was new to homeschooling, but I’d been parenting for almost a decade and there was no way I would be taking this father’s advice. I pitied his children; wondered about his quiet wife who nodded and smiled as he shared his “wisdom”; marveled that he could seem so jolly while describing the physical abuse of children entrusted to his care.

But here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t speak. I didn’t say,”Excuse me, but what you are describing doesn’t sound like discipline. It sounds like abuse.” I didn’t say, “I’ve been licensed for foster care myself and what you’ve done to your foster children is illegal. I’m going to report you.” I didn’t even meekly suggest that perhaps “biblical” parenting needn’t be so violent. I was silent because he was a veteran and I was a newbie. I was silent because he was a man and I was a woman. I was silent because I didn’t want to make a scene or alienate others in the group. I was silent because I was a coward.

Now, many years later, I know that I sinned that night. I had an opportunity to speak up on behalf of mistreated children and I didn’t take it. Perhaps no one would have listened to me or taken me seriously, but I still should have spoken. I knew that what I was hearing was not just wrong but evil, and I let it go unchecked, unquestioned. I listened as evil was called good – and I did nothing.

This week I fell down the internet rabbit hole into a world of what might be called “homeschool survivor” blogs. The stories are awful, angry, painful to read. I love homeschooling and my immediate response to criticism of the homeschool movement is defensive. I want to shout, “We’re not like that! We’re not like that! We’re not like that!”

But the truth is, some of us are like that. And it’s time that we confessed it, and started holding each other accountable.

The problem is rarely motive. Homeschoolers, as a category, take parenting very seriously. We don’t set out to damage our children, but to do the very best for them that we possibly can. That very seriousness can be a trap, I think. We are prone to particular temptations, many of which are expressed in this article by a homeschool veteran, Reb Bradley. You’d think that doing something so nonconformist (homeschooling) would mean that homeschoolers would be nonconformists generally, but that hasn’t really been the case. There is tremendous pressure to get it right – to turn out ideal children, raised in ideal families – and we are easy targets for experts who promise to deliver results. So we listen to the loudest voices and quiet our consciences and treat our children like objects to be manipulated and molded into polished, shiny finished products rather than as the complicated, untidy, beautiful persons they were born to be.

The problem is not homeschooling as an educational option. And further muddying the waters, the problem is that there’s more than one problem. Here are a few of them:

We confuse external control with internal transformation.

We crave the approval of other homeschoolers so much that we ignore the warning bells going off in our own homes.

We emphasize parental rights and parental authority to such a degree that we dehumanize our children.

We swallow poison as long as it’s coated in Bible verses.

I don’t want to be party to that anymore. It’s not enough to say, “Well, I don’t do that to my children, and other people’s children aren’t my responsibility.” Homeschool friends: do we accept that argument when we’re talking about abortion, or child pornography, or child sexual abuse? Do we feel off-the-hook as long as it’s only other people’s children who suffer, and not our own? I’m as stubborn about parental rights as the next homeschooler. I do not want someone from the government telling me how to raise my children. But perhaps that means we take responsibility for speaking truth to each other, for being honest even about our failures, and for listening to the children our community has raised.

I repeat: the problem is not homeschooling. There is so much potential for good in homeschooling, and every year that potential is realized in thousands of lives. But I’m convinced we can do even better, and it begins with recognizing where we’ve gone wrong. As I read through some of the stories at Homeschoolers Anonymous my heart ached to see how many included abusive doses of “biblical chastisement” or parenting by the “rod”.

So even if I’m 13 years late, I’ll say this now:

That father was wrong. The “biblical model” he was presenting was dangerous and destructive. What he was describing was abusive parenting.  Brutalizing foster children who have already been traumatized and almost certainly have difficulty trusting adults is a special kind of heinous.

You cannot beat sin out of your child; that’s not how spiritual transformation works. What you can do, perhaps, is silence your child out of fear. They may learn to hide their anger, resentment, bitterness, rage, depression and hopelessness from you.

Or perhaps you will discipline your child to death.

“Breaking the will” of a child is a terrible goal, and does not correspond to the way that our kind and merciful Father God deals with us. “A bruised reed He will not break.” Homeschoolers have unwittingly broken many bruised reeds and it’s time to stop.

(Note:  For more stories from former homeschoolers, I suggest Recovering Grace (specifically addresses ATI/Gothardism), Becoming Worldly, Defeating the Dragons, Elizabeth Esther – and of course, Homeschoolers Anonymous. When it comes to “chastisement”, Elizabeth Esther has done a great job over the years of covering Michael and Debi Pearl, whose To Train Up a Child has been especially influential – and deadly.

My follow up on my own disciplinary journey is here:  I don’t hit and I try not to yell