Smrt Lernins

Ariana asks, “How you deal with homeschooling the oldest while still caring for the two younger?”

I’ve written previously about my decision to put the Tank in a traditional preschool. I have arranged our two most rigorous curricula days to fall on two of the days he’s at preschool. Our away-from-home science lab is on the third day of preschool. This allows us to accomplish a lot while the Tank has a nice playdate. On days he is home, distraction is helpful. Sometimes he’ll do “table lernins,” working in a workbook or coloring book while Captain Science and I do school work. Sometimes I set him up with a snack and/or a movie. Sometimes he comes in and out incessantly, bothering us, until I snap at him and send him to his room. You never really know what to expect!

Babypie is a distraction for Captain Science. He loves her so much that it’s hard to keep him on task. Separation to another room (for him), frequent reminders to stay on task, or trying to arrange her nursing and napping time to coincide with his more important work all help. As she has gotten older, she’s shown a remarkable ability to self-entertain, playing alone with her toys for 20-30 minutes, easily. All I have to do is keep her away from the stairs and Christmas tree!

If we decide to home “preschool” the Tank next year, we’ll have to find some methods to keep both of the boys on task, especially with a busy toddler underfoot, but that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we come to it.

She ask wonders, “When, if ever, do you get time for yourself? Has what you choose to do with that time changed at all?”

I definitely have less “me time” than I used to. When Captain Science was in public school, I could be guaranteed at least an hour of quiet while the Tank napped. Now, it’s a crap shoot as to whether I get any quiet at all. On the plus side, Captain Science is old enough to be trusted with Babypie while I cook dinner…or use the potty in blessed peace and solitude. Trust me, with three children, making a tinkle without a pottience is me time, homeschool or no homeschool.

Officer Daddyman tries to make sure I get enough time to myself, but that’s hard to achieve. Someone always wants me, and Daddyman suffers from a distinct lack of ninnies for nursing a fussy baby back to sleep. Once a week, we go over to Patchfire’s place, and she and I head out for frozen cutard at Rita’s, leaving the kids with the daddies. That’s a nice little respite, however brief. Sneaking up to have a hot bath and a book (sometimes with a glass of wine) is a nice little luxury in which I indulge a few nights a week, though normally after the kids are asleep.

I definitely appreciate my “me time” more now, but I haven’t made any significant changes to how I use it. I’ve grown a lot closer with Patchfire, due to our bond over homeschooling, so I see more of her and her family than I used to, but I still enjoy the same things — reading, knitting, playing Pet Society on Facebook, watching a little mindless television (on Hulu or Netflix), playing a little Wii on occasion, and spending time with family and friends. An hour out with the girls is practically a panacea for mama-stress!

That’s how a [Smrt] Homeschooler balances time with all her kids…and still sneaks a little in for herself.

Do you have a question to ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler? Email them to smrtmama@smrtlernins.com!

I don’t usually “mix causes” (as La Leche League calls it, speaking of causes) on this blog. I tend to keep it relatively topical. When it comes to this topic, however, I think it’s time to speak up.

I feel strongly about the importance, nay, the necessity of breastfeeding. I have breastfed all three of my children, including Babypie, who is still going strong at 8 1/2 months. In fact, my cumulative time spent breastfeeding is over five years at this point! I’ve overcome a handful of struggles, but mostly, my path to breastfeeding has been pretty easy. I grew up in a family where breastfeeding was just how you fed your babies. I never considered any other way. I have birthed and raised my children surrounded by people who believe babies should be breastfed, and that support has allowed me to feed my children in the way nature (and, if you’re religiously minded, God) intended. Breastfeeding your children is a physiologically, biologically, psychologically normal thing to do. In breast milk are the keys to unlocking many aspects of the body’s normal growth and development. Why would I do anything else, short of dire medical necessity?

Not every woman has the support I had. Many of them are raised in formula-normative homes and know little about breastfeeding. Misconceptions, social pressure, and outright lies persist. Husbands, family, and friends put pressure on women to stop breastfeeding early, or to not start at all. Women pass misinformation along to each other. Doctors and nurses are woefully ignorant about the realities of how human lactation works. Formula companies have millions and millions of dollars to dump into advertising. They have, successfully, waged a campaign devoted to making breastfeeding seem irrelevant, frumpy, vaguely primitive, and somewhat shameful and embarrassing (make sure you cover up with one of those tents “hooter hiders”). On the other hand, breastfeeding doesn’t exactly have corporate sponsorship. There’s very little money to be made off successful breastfeeding, beyond pumps for working moms (usually a one time purchase) and a few inexpensive fripperies that can make breastfeeding a little more convenient, but aren’t at all necessary for most women. Breastfeeding isn’t big business with big businesses ad budget.

That’s why I’m here today stumping for the Best for Babes Foundation, a non-profit organization that is devoted to changing the perception of breastfeeding. They want to “market, brand, and mainstream” breastfeeding as something that is healthy, empowering, normal, and even hip. They do this through educating women about institutional and cultural “booby traps”, offering positive images of breastfeeding role-models (no frumps stuck at home wearing oversized button-up shirts here!), tips on finding breastfeeding-supportive care providers, and more. They also very honestly acknowledge the potential pitfalls of an advertising campaign for breastfeeding.

I’m trying to do my part, through spreading the word, and you can help, too. On the right hand side of Smrt Lernins, you’ll see a little rectangular box advertising Best for Babes. Click on that box (or on this link) and you’ll be take to a page explaining how you can help Best for Babes run its ad campaign. You can also follow @BestforBabes on Twitter and join their cause on Facebook. While you’re at it, why not check out the awesome website, PhD in Parenting, a supporter of Best for Babes and a great resource for parents.

Now back to your regularly scheduled smrt lernins.

Google maps now lets you take a virtual walk through Stonehenge. Since tourists aren’t allowed to wander through the stones currently, this is a fun alternative way to get a close-up look at these stones.

The January Itch. Patchfire promises me (somewhat menacingly) that I will get it. Apparently it has something to do with an impatient longing to change all your curricula, rearrange your schedule, and plan for next school year. We’ve made so many changes already in our short time homeschooling, however, that I’m not sure to what extent the January Itch will overtake me. I hope that by continually reevaluating and changing curricula as needed during the year, I can get the positive aspects of it and not the frantic, stir-crazy negative ones.

In that spirit, as we approach the halfway point (we’ll hit 90 days on Wednesday), it’s time to take another look at what’s working and what isn’t. We’ve made some curricular changes (which my brain keeps seeing as “circular changes,” which is also true), some pleasing, some less so. We’ve let some things fall by the wayside, some for well and some for ill. Here are my feelings on some of our current curricula:

Dance Mat Typing — This free typing program offered by the BBC is much adored by my children, and somewhat loathed by me. While it does seem to be helping Captain Science with his typing, I can’t stand the songs and noises this game/program makes, though I admit that I enjoy the goat’s Scottish accent. We had a bad few hours a couple weeks ago, when Captain Science reached some level with a snoring hippopotamus on Officer Daddyman’s computer (to which I didn’t have the login) and the Tank inadvertently logged him out — leaving us with a loudly snoring typing program that we couldn’t turn off! I give Dance Mat Typing a C for the annoyance factor.

Editor in Chief A1 — I purchased this level because it was recommended for Captain Science’s age level and because I was concerned that the new format of the curriculum would cause him to get lost if we started at a higher level. Bad call on my part. This book is far too easy for Captain Science. The writing in the exercise paragraphs is simplistic and awkward, leading Captain Science to sometimes improve the writing style and count it as one of the expected number of corrections for the exercise. He has no problem identifying the grammatical mistakes and correcting them. The size and spacing of the lines provided usually results in him writing overly small or having to write on a second piece of paper. Because he finds the work so tedious, he’s often lazy in the rewrite. I have higher hopes for higher levels of this program, however, so Editor in Chief gets a C+.

Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents — This curricula works perfectly for us. My only continuing complaint is the answers being on the same page as the questions. Captain Science is good about covering them, doing the work, and then checking and correcting them himself. He’s flying through this book thus far. The format suits him well. The story is interesting enough to keep him engaged and doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the mathematics instruction to deliver the story. I give Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents an A+.

Logic Countdown — This is the curriculum Captain Science begs to do. I find him working on pages outside of school hours! I like the variety of logic puzzles, the mental tools being taught, and the fact that it’s broken into small, manageable bits for easy assignment. I view the answers in the back of the book as a guideline, though, not the definitive answer, because Captain Science often finds unusual ways of grouping objects that make perfect sense to me, but aren’t the obvious (or “normal”) answer. I’d like to spend more time working on this, though it’s hard to make it the priority subject, since it feels more like fun than work. Silly me! I feel this curriculum really gets gifted students, so I give Logic Countdown a nice, solid A.

Spencerian Penmanship — I confess, we have yet to start this. It looks so daunting. It looks like it will require a lot of initial micromanagement of Captain Science’s efforts. I admit that I just don’t have the energy for that. The font itself is gorgeous, but the books are just so fussy! I’d like to be the mom who goes through all the steps in the theory book, but I doubt I ever will be. We’ll give this another go in January, but right now, Spencerian Penmanship gets a big fat F for failure on my part.

Vocabulary from Classical Roots 4 — I like the idea of this program, but the truth is, Captain Science’s vocabulary is too advanced for this level. There’s also the issue mentioned in my last weekly review, where ambiguity in the questions leads to “incorrect” answers, and there’s no taking into account the possibility for students thinking outside the box. The word choices are good and the method of instruction is sound. I just think we could find something better suited to someone as linguistically gifted as Captain Science. Vocabulary from Classical Roots gets a B.

Writing Strands Level 3 — Captain Science likes this curriculum a great deal, considerably more than I do, in fact. I like that it establishes a foundation and builds upon it, but it doesn’t ask for enough in a single lesson, it’s too simplistic, and it’s taking too long to get to the actual meat of the writing. It engages Captain Science much better than IEW did, he doesn’t balk at writing lessons, I appreciate the tone of the materials, and the example writing is solid, but I feel like I’m still on the look out for the writing program for us. Perhaps, as a writer and writing instructor, I will never be satisfied until I develop my own curriculum. Until then, Writing Strands gets a B-.

I’m alternating between dread and excitement over the complete revamp of our schedule I’ll be doing for next semester, in order to accommodate new subjects like Latin and piano. It’s beginning to look a lot like Aieeeeee!!!!mas.

I missed last week’s review, which makes that my first one skipped this year, a bit of a downer and a disappointment. This week, despite Officer Daddyman being in domestic violence training (preventing and pursuing, not perpetrating) and me having to solo parent, has been exceptionally productive, academically-speaking.

I have noticed an irritating trend of learned helplessness in Captain Science, cropping up most noticeable in areas where he’s asked to either apply a general idea specifically or glean an idea based on data that doesn’t spell it out exactly. Now, I know this child well. I know he’s capable of all of that. When he demonstrates he knows how to round decimals, but insists he simple can’t round pi to the thousandth place after the decimal, because the book doesn’t say how to round pi specifically, it’s hard to resist the urge to whack him on the head with the book (of course, I did resist, but it was difficult). When he’s been able to read and extrapolate ideas, even very abstract ones, from reading for years, but he can’t come up with why he thinks Cleopatra was a good or bad ruler of Egypt because the books doesn’t specifically say she was either, that book-whacking urge resurfaces (I resisted it then, too, but golly! Difficult!).

I’m nipping that helplessness in the bud and Captain Science does seem to be responding to that. I told him in no uncertain terms that he was neither helpness nor incapable, and that I wasn’t going to hold his hand through assignments. I also told him that if he could only learn through being spoon fed select bits of information through worksheets and books that give all the answers, I may as well send him to public school, because that’s not what we’re about here. He agreed that being spoon fed wasn’t much fun and didn’t teach him much, and he’d rather make more of an effort at home. Since we had our talk, he’s definitely shown me he is willing and able to step it up. I’m very proud of his efforts from Wednesday onward!
Last week, Captain Science completed his last bridge in Life of Fred: Fractions and started Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, completing chapters 1 and two. This week, he completed chapters 3-5, the bridge to chapter 6 (only missed 1, corrected on the first try), and chapter 6.

In history, Captain Science read about both Julius Caesar and Cleopatra in History: The Definitive Visual Guide, and wrote essays about his feelings on their respective rules (and in Caesar’s case, whether or not his assassination was justified – he felt it was). He’s enjoying Rome tremendously, everything from history and culture to language…which brings us to our next topic!

Captain Science has decided that he wants to learn Latin! He’s been coming across Latin phrases in his Percy Jackson, mythology, and history books, and asked if he could learn “the Roman language.” Who am I to say “no,” when the main reason he wasn’t learning it from the start was what I perceived to be a lack of interest on his part? I’ll be researching Latin curricula over the break and he will start in January!

Captain Science completed a review of chapter 7 in Growing with Grammar, leaving only the “growing with words and punctuation” section before we take a break from GWG. He finished exercises 5 and 6 in Editor in Chief A1. Unfortunately, I think this level is much too easy for him, and while I like the format, I’m unimpressed by the writing. Despite having originally balked at it, due to its popularity and reputation as the only acceptable program for gifted students, I have become swayed to the Michael Clay Thompson language arts curriculum and am considering picking up Grammar Town for Captain Science to start next semester. I might also replace Vocabulary from Classical Roots with Building Language, since the vocabulary in Vocabulary from Classical Roots has been underwhelmingly challenging. Captain Science completed review quizzes of chapters 1, 2, and 3, then the test for the whole first section. The ones he got incorrect on the test, I understand why he chose the answer he did. The answers he chose also made sense if you looked at the question another way. One example was a fill-in-the-blank that said, “Because young children will often lie to please you, you should question them _____.” The correct answer was “delicately,” but Captain Science chose “delightfully.” I asked him why, and his reasoning was that if you appear to be very happy with them, they will be more likely to tell the truth. That’s apparently the same argument Patchfire’s Eclectic Girl made, when she answered that same question in the same way! Gifted minds, I guess.

He’s also doing some outside-the-box thinking in logic. He completed several Logic Countdown pages over the last two weeks, and in the ones where you have to find the relation between the items or choose which doesn’t belong, the relations he draws are often interesting. Today, one problem had squares with dots on them (1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 dots). The obvious answer was that 1 didn’t belong, because it’s odd and the others are even, but Captain Science chose 8, because the others were all the numbers and patterns found on a six-sided die. I accepted it as correct.

Tonight, we did another water-related science unit at Patchfire’s house. Captain Science, the Tank, and I all did a crystal-growing project on Thursday night, too, which was fun. We grew faux red tourmaline. It does appear to be working, though crystals are growing everywhere but the granite stone, which was supposed to be where they grew. Oh well.

The Tank had his Christmas pageant at preschool. He was one of the only three-year-olds who sang and his hand gestures were flamboyant. He enjoyed himself immensely. It was the exact same pageant performed when Captain Science was two and three, with the exception of the overly long prayer by the new minister at the beginning. Really, you’re not converting anyone at a preschool pageant, sir. Let it go.

Officer Daddyman is now home, but my week isn’t over yet. Tomorrow, we have Captain Science’s birthday, which means housecleaning instead of a much needed morning of sleeping in. Oh well. Maybe Sunday?

I’m sure a lot of you remember the Barbie doll that said “Math class is tough! Let’s go shopping!” (often misquoted as “Math is hard!” Same sentiment.). With a new awareness of how culture and the education system encouraged the dumbing-down of girls in math, parents reacted quite vocally to this doll. The last thing girls needed, they said, was a doll who told them math was too difficult and that vanity and other shallow frivolities were where it’s at. Mattel responded by removing that phrase from the doll’s litany of inane statements.

Girls aren’t bad at math by nature. They don’t struggle more because of something miswired in their brains. The difficulties with math (or perceived difficulties) were programmed by culture — girls were treated as being poor at math, so many rose to fulfill that destiny. We’ve gotten better about that. Recent studies have shown a marked improvement in how girls performed in math when taught in a gender-equitable manner. When encouraged in science and math, rather than solely in the arts, girls not only perform as well as male peers, but excel. Time magazine had an entire issue on women in math. When all is said and done, girls are not bad at math. They’re just told they are, repeatedly, by society and institutions, until they believed it. Now many of us are working our damnedest to make they aren’t being told to believe it.

Today, I stumbled upon a t-shirt listing on Hyena cart, for a pink shirt made from fabric that says “I AM TOO PRETTY TO DO MATH.” Yes, too pretty to do math. That this fabric is even manufactured is repugnant, but the listing for this shirt is simply beyond the pale:

I AM TOO PRETTY TO DO MATH. Youth Raglan T, YPS 10, 12, 14, or 16

Most of us have an instant imagine of someone who this suites…
that little lady who just HATES doing her math.
Or that girl who just knows she is too pretty for this…
or the one who just don’t have the time to waste doing math.

Apparently, girls might also be too pretty to use proper grammar, capitalization, or punctuation.

Too pretty to do math. “Too pretty for this.” “One who just don’t have the time to waste doing math.” Too pretty to do math. Waste time doing math. Really? Really? ”

What is the message here? Don’t worry your pretty head with thinking, because it’s a waste of your time? What would be a better use of that time? Finding a good husband, perhaps? Or maybe the message is that only ugly women need to do math, because only ugly women need to have any kind of career. Never mind that beauty fades, husbands leave, and you little bubble heads who can’t add 2 and 2 are going to have an awfully hard time balancing your little pink sparkly checkbooks.

Does the work-at-home mom who made this listing, with its sexist and insulting message, and who chose Psalm 139:13 to adorn her store banner, believe God knit girls together too stupid for math, too vapid to do anything but fluff their hair and paint their nails? Does she really believe beauty and brains are not only mutually exclusive, but that beauty is preferable to intelligence, effort, or achievement? Who will buy this shirt, I wonder, and what lessons are they teaching their daughters? Certainly not that a girl can be both smart and beautiful, that there’s a great deal of value in making an effort (even if it doesn’t come naturally to you), or that girls can do anything.

For the record, Patchfire’s daughter, Eclectic Girl, is a math whiz, doing algebra at age 9. Math comes as naturally to her as breathing, or as naturally as language comes to Captain Science. She’s a pretty, vivacious, empowered little girl with stunning eyes and a bright pink room…and she can knock your freaking socks off with math. Don’t tell me that a girl can be “too pretty” for math. Don’t you dare.

If you’re looking for t-shirts with girl-empowering, intelligence-valuing messages, try Mind Candy Clothing.

MJ has a few questions for the [Smrt] Homeschooler this week. She asks, “How long to do you plan to homeschool? What/how do you base you decision on whether or not to homeschool the other kiddos? And/or will you start Babypie out on the ‘public’ path or just skip it altogether and do homeschool from the beginning?”

Right now, my plans for homeschooling have no upper limit (other than college, obviously). That is going to be entirely up to Captain Science’s needs as he ages. I’m sure there will be many subjects where his needs outweigh my abilities. Luckily, that doesn’t necessarily mean a return to public school, unless he wants to attend one of the magnet high schools in our area, of which we have several. He could attended our local university (or one of the downtown universities) as a joint-enrollment student. He could take classes at Pierian Springs, which offers classes for upper grades with a collegiate style schedule, format, and campus (complete with collegiate pricing, though. Ouch!). We can get packaged curricula or find online classes for Advanced Placement classes, if it’s outside my subject area, and he can take the AP tests to exempt out of college courses. There’s tutoring, co-ops…we have lots of options. Returning to a mainstream public school really isn’t one of them at this juncture, though.

I might do with Babypie what I’m doing with the Tank, and put her in a year or so of preschool at someplace like the little Methodist school where the Tank goes. It will depend on her needs. I have no plans to enroll either of the kids in a mainstream school past pre-K, though. I’ve become too disenchanted with public education’s methods and goals. I think homeschooling is better for my kids and for our family as a whole. If one of them shows a need for a different environment, we’ll address that as it comes.

As a bonus, MJ also would like to know, “What’s the wackiest religious based material you’ve seen out there?”

Oh, MJ. How could I pick just one?

Officer Daddyman is in police training all week and sleeping down at the training center (it’s about two hours from here), so I’m flying solo with the three kids. Not only that, but my first line of defense, Nana and Papa, are on a much-deserved anniversary trip to the beach. It’s my first week alone with the kids since we’ve started homeschooling, so I’m a little nervous!

The first day has gone smoothly thus far, with a little hangup over Captain Science’s use of the word “scandal” in his history assignment — the rule is “don’t use a word if you don’t know the meaning,” and he didn’t know the meaning. Even after looking up the definition, he didn’t understand what the big deal was about Julius Caesar’s “adulterous relationships with married women” — and I did not enlighten him! Roman history is colorful, to say the least. I’m hiding A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome from his, as I don’t want to explain about some of the methods of execution. Being, ehem, loved to death by a bull to recreate the conception of the minotaur before a live studio audience? I’ll skip that lesson and the subsequent therapy bills.

I managed to successfully get everyone schooled, run my errands, and am now trying to decide what to feed them, before heading over to feed Nana and Papa’s cats (and possibly hitting Target for an additional stocking hanger for our mantel — five people, five stockings, but only four hangers currently, you see). I’m trying not to feel too down about Daddyman being gone all week, our undecorated half-lit tree (stupid pre-lit trees with stupid shorts in their stupid wires), and the fact that there’s still so much work to be done on the house before the holidays and our post-holidays guests. Oy! Humbug.

I’m getting a little worried about splitting Rome in half with the holidays like we’ll be doing. Will Captain Science retain everything over a two week break? Will he retain anything? Will we have to redo what we’ve done? Maybe I should make some trivia cards and pretend it’s a game, but really it’ll be homeschooling. Like that cookbook where they hide the vegetables in the cupcakes so kids don’t know you’re feeding them something other than white flour and sugar. And seriously, what kind of dumb idea is that cookbook, anyway?

Digression, for the win. It’s only Monday, and already I’m cracking up!

I am developing a game plan for the week, and that game plan is “keep them as busy as possible.” We’re going to run errands, go to meetings, do anything we can to stay active. We are going to be on-the-go-schoolers this week, because I cannot be cooped up in this house with our snaggledy-lighted naked tree like some sort of shut-in, just because it’s too damn cold for the kids to go outside barefoot (which, yes, they whine about). I have outlawed whining this week and declared that any “didn’t get my way” crying fits will result in laps run or times out, depending on the age of the child (Babypie excluded). I shall broker no crap this week, thank you ever so much.

Off to stuff the children full of some semblance of dinner before Babypie’s nap is over, then loading them all run them around to sleep. At least tomorrow is the La Leche League meeting, so I don’t have to concoct any entertainment (or lunch). Maybe I’ll make Captain Science sit in, take notes, and call it a science lesson. Maybe I’ll just trot my children out as an example of either evidence of breastfeeding’s link to increased intelligence or a warning of how extended breastfeeding and babywearing can turn into a scary snowball, rolling downhill into full-blown homeschooling hippie crunchiness. We shall see.

Some time around the end of high school, possibly after I took my SAT and ACT, I started receiving a lot of recruitment letters from the various branches of the armed services. Now, as an ultra-liberal, disorganized sort of girl, who very much likes to be comfortable and not ever sweat, I wasn’t particularly interested in joining the armed services, so mostly I chucked the mail in the trash. That was, of course, before the Army offered me socks. I had a well-known weakness for colorful knee socks, and the Army offered to send me a pair of white knee socks with ARMY written down the sides in big, bright green letters, if only I’d send in the post card.

Suffice it to say, I sent in the post card.

After that, the phone calls began. At first, I demurred or just said I wasn’t interested, but the Army would not be swayed. I fielded quite a few calls from overzealous recruiters promising me the world (and to see the world, not realized I’d already seen quite a bit of it), if I would just enlist, which of course I had no intention of doing. One day, during a Girl Scout meeting, a recruiter called. I tried to politely extricate myself from the phone call (I’ll hang up on telemarketers, but have a harder time hanging up on the military), but it wasn’t until the recruiter started asking about my plans for the future that my escape route presented itself. “What do you see yourself doing with your future?” the recruiter asked. “I want to be a housewife,” I answered.

After a brief, silent pause, the recruiter said, “Well, thank you for your time.” That was the last phone call I ever received from any branch of the armed services.

Of course, at the time, being a housewife wasn’t actually my life’s aspiration. I was planning on going to college and do a nebulous something. I knew I wanted to have kids one day. I knew I wanted to stay home with my kids when I got around to having them. I didn’t, at that point, anticipate that in three years time or so, I’d find myself pregnant and facing an exceptionally truncated time line for “some day,” looking desperately for the avenue that would allow me to stay at home. Now, another nine years after that, I love staying home with my children, and continue to do so despite having gotten both my BA and my MA, which would allow me at least a few out-of-home career opportunities if I chose to pursue them. I like what I do (most days). I enjoy my current career as a mother and home educator.

What’s so important about all of this, though, is that I had a choice. I had plenty of options along the way, and stay-at-home-mom was just one of them. I had chances to pursue another career in my field, but chose another option, though I do think mothering is as much my field as writing and editing are.

One of the things that bothers me most about the ultra-fundie curricula is the complete lack of choices for little girls. You will grow up, get married to a suitor of our approval (if not outright choosing), have many babies, stay home and raise them, and maybe one day, when all the kids are grown, possibly be allowed to pursue college, work, or hobbies…if your husband approves it. Pearables’s Lessons in Responsibility for Girls books, which are alternately titled Home Economics for Homeschoolers (to make them more palatable?), teach all the important lessons in the domestic arts for girls who will never need any skills but those. Teach your long-skirted daughter to cook, clean, sew, and throw a party for her husband’s unexpected company. And goodness me, let’s not forget the importance of a young lady assembling a hope chest. Of course, a boy’s responsibilities include things like managing money, protecting the wimmens, being a priest in their home, and choosing a career. No such luck for girls. Girls, you see, don’t need options. Marry, have babies, keep house, and don’t pine for the fjords. Fjords are for boys.

I chose to be a wife. I chose to be a mother. I chose to stay at home as my primary occupation. I could have chosen a different path. I was educated well enough to have those paths readily available to me. I was raised knowing I could pursue any career my brother could, with the possible exceptions of a submariner (at the time, at least) and Chippendale dancer. I brushed the Army off with claims of wanting to be a housewife, but I could have enlisted if that had been my cuppa.

My daughter will have those same options available to her. If she chooses to stay at home and raise children, I’ll be supportive and proud of her choice. If she chooses to become a race car driver, painter, or CPA, I’ll be equally supportive and proud of her choice. I’ll see to it that she has the early education needed to provide a foundation for all of those choices. I will give her a broad, deep education to the best of my abilities and help her find others who can expand on that when my own resources fail. I won’t teach her to be a servant to her husband, that cleaning is woman’s work, that girls have to be protected by boys, or any of the other messages one can find in such treasure troves as the Vision Forum’s catalogs.

Secular education. Score one for the girls — the ones who want to enlist and the ones who just want to wear the knee socks. Choices are what it’s all about, and you can’t make a choice without the proper groundwork.