Smrt Lernins

To all the bigots,
To all the bashers of any[one/thing] non Xtian,
To all the misogynists and the homophobes,
To all the ones who equate being gay with being a sexual predator,
To all the ones who subtly or not-so-subtly blame women for their assault because of how they are dressed,
Or because of how they act,
Or how they don’t act,
Or because they had already had sex once anyway so what does it matter,
Or because they had the misfortune to be born with dirty-dirty vaginas and uteri instead of Paul-approved penises,
To the ones who throw around the word “heretic” as though it were the 16th century,
To the ones who throw around the word “heretic” without realizing how incredibly damn ironic it is for a Calvinist Protestant to call someone a heretic,
To the ones who call anyone who believes in a different flavor of Christianity a sinner,
To the ones who shame their daughters for being anything other than their primitive and controlling version of “feminine,”
To the ones who shame their sons for being anything other than their primitive and controlling version of “masculine,”
To the ones who claim to “love the sinner, but hate the sin,” when you obviously hate both,
To all of you who would rather keep your children ignorant than risk them learning something that’s outside your teensy little bubble…

We will win.

We “heathens” and “heretics” and “sinners” will win.
We will win because we have less shame about our bodies.
We will win because we aren’t afraid to accept new ideas.
We will win because we can distinguish between evidence-based science and something written by men, translated by men, voted on for inclusion by men, preached by men, and enforced by men.
We will win because we don’t think someone or something made us inherently wrong or bad.
We will win because we will not teach our children to hate who they are.
We will win because we will not let our children tell other children to hate who they are.
We will win because we will accept your children into our families with love and tolerance when you have driven them away with shame and hellfire.
We will win because we won’t accept victims being blamed for the crimes against them,
Because we don’t equate “purity” with character,
Because we don’t equate individuality with sin,
Because we don’t equate intelligence with heresy,
Because we don’t equate pettiness with godliness.
Because we don’t equate shaming with modesty.

One day those hateful seeds you sow
In your churches,
In your communities,
In your children,
Will grow into ugly plants,
And when that is all you will have to reap,
You’re going to have a lean, lean winter.

Enjoy your harvest. You’ve earned it.

Love,

The Heretic The Heathen The Sinner Smrt Mama

What do the Rosetta Stone language curricula have to do with creationist pseudo-science?

Yeah, my first answer would have been “nothing,” too, but now, if you “like” Rosetta Stone Homeschool on Facebook, The Old Schoolhouse magazine will be happy to send you free creationist e-books to befuddle, mislead, and indoctrinate your children into the glorious world of creation non-science. All you have to do is email gena@tosmag.com and you’ll be sent a list of The Curiosity Files e-books from which to choose*.

Personally, I’m having a hard time choosing. Which burning scientific inquiry do I most need answered?

Does the dung beetle really “bring glory to God?”
What does the Bible tell us about MRSA?
Were blue diamonds sent as a special gift to us?
Is the blue-footed booby an “evolution stumper” that “defies the theory of natural selection?”
Can these handy curricula can help hammer home the important fundamentalist idea that “male and female roles [are] very different?”

So hard to choose! *sigh*

Seriously, folks. Pseudo-science like this is insidious. It’s dressed up in fun little packages, but the stuff inside is designed to lead children away from real, evidence-based science. I genuinely pity children who are taught to blindly accept creationism, rather than developing a truly scientific mind and learning to discern fact from fancy, evidence from belief, and science from religion. Let faith be faith and science be science.

*A friend told me about this giveaway, with no info as to the name of the curricula that would be given away, just that it was science. Yes, I suspected that any science e-books given away by TOS would be creationist. However, I was under the impression that Rosetta Stone was a secular curricula, so I’m curious why the “reward” for liking their company’s homeschool curricula branch is a decidedly religious curricula.

Yesterday, my unbroken NaBloPoMo streak was broken by the frustration that is “my internets is down!” Instead of writing about our beautiful Thanksgiving, which was as awesome as I’d have hoped, I’m going to celebrate this Black Friday by bitching about AT&T’s technical support and technology in general.

I’ll preface this by saying that my daddy is an executive director at AT&T. He has worked in the industry for about five million years, long before personal computers came about. That whole “Al Gore claims he invented the internet” thing? Well, my daddy actually built the internet, or the physical framework for it, anyway. When the first home computer came out, he brought one home, disassembled it, and put it back together…and made it faster. There is nothing my daddy cannot fix, computerly-speaking.

My daddy talked me through as much troubleshooting as possible over texting, then directed me to tech support. I called tech support and, after navigating an absurd assortment of menus, managed to get a woman who identified herself as [possibly] Eva. I wrote down “Eva” on my little note pad, in case I needed to know. I didn’t realize until a little later into the call that possibly-Eva had an accent of a type with which I am not familiar (she turned out to be in the Philippines) and she pronounced a few words oddly, so her name might not have actually been Eva at all. I’ll continue to call her “possibly-Eva” for the duration of this post.

Possibly-Eva didn’t seem to know very much about tech stuff for a tech support call center. She was clearly working from a script and any variation from that confused her. We spent an hour on the phone together before we got disconnected and she didn’t call back, despite asking for a call-back number in case we got disconnected. The high points of that hour included her insisting that “admin/password” were a very good username/password combination, because I won’t forget them, her coaching me through reconfiguring my router so poorly that my father had to spend an hour reconfiguring it again today, and her asking if I could “go upstairs and ask [my] dad for the router information” (to which I responded, “Um…he doesn’t live here, because I’m in my 30s, and this is my house.”). A service ticket was never opened for my issues.

My father had to call the support center himself to even get a service ticket. Let me remind you, he’s an executive director in this company, and they didn’t want to give him a ticket. He had to call again the next day to get a technician out to my house, at which point he was told it would be another four days before that would happen (and he did something he rarely does and which I never ask him to do, play the “do you know [x very high level manager over the technician's department] — well, he and I are peers and friends, and I’m happy to escalate this to him if I have to” card). A tech was at my house a few hours later, which is apparently a miracle. He was very nice, fixed some problems outside, fixed some problems inside, and when he left, the guys (my daddy and Officer Daddyman) turned out computers nothing would work. *headdesk*

They work on it for another half hour and can’t get it working. They go back over and work on it later and VOILA! It works.

We come home from my parents’ house and my laptop works on the newly reestablished network just fine. Daddyman turns on his computer and tries to connect and CRASH, there goes the network. Texted my daddy, rebooted the router, but nada. At my daddy’s instructions, turned off Daddyman’s computer, rebooted the router, and as you see, I am now online.

Beware: Officer Daddyman’s computer eats the internet! This is most definitely an Eff Off Friday.

I’m putting this morning on notice, Colbert-style.

With Officer Daddyman doing daytime training classes this week, I’ve been the only one here to deal with the children’s morning-time insanity. I have had enough and I am putting a stop to it. Every morning this week and every morning of the week two weeks ago (when Daddyman was also in training), they have woken me up well before my alarm by fighting, screaming, arguing, hitting/biting, tattling, banging on my door, and generally acting like little savages. This morning, Tank bit Captain Science (well, “bit,” because it’s more a symbolic act of jackassery than it is an intent to injure), the Captain Science taunted Tank about how he (Captain S) gets to walk the dog and Tank can’t, and then Tank chanted “shut it, shut it, shut it!” at Captain Science every time him made a sound, until Captain Science threw himself on the ground, sobbing, “You’re torturing me! You’re torturing me! WHY? WHY?!?!”

So, how’s your Eff Off Friday going?

When I came downstairs, shortly after the dramatical sob-fest, I announced a new house rule: if anyone wakes me by screaming, tattling, crying, etc. over anything less than a life/health-threatening situation, all TV, computer, and Wii privileges would be lost for the day. The boys seemed to understand I meant it. Perhaps it was my crazy eyes, as it’s hard to not have crazy eyes when one is awakened from a deep, enjoyable sleep (which is rare enough for me lately) by shrieking hooligans.

Feeling the awesome authoritative glow of having calmly, but effectively asserted myself as lead dog of the pack, I mentally compiled a list of other morning-time behaviors I would outlaw if I were less authoritative, more authoritarian, and just a little more bitchy. If I ruled me children with an iron first, I would forbid:

• Chewing on clothing
• Shouting of the made up word “foofy!”
• Flailing in the computer chair
• Falling out of the computer chair
• Sucking and slurping at an apple as though it were a teat
• Taking an hour to eat the same apple in tiny, noisily chewed bites
• Removing pants and yelling “boopah! boopah!” with no actual intentions of using the potty
• Kicking me when I attempt to put your pants back on you
• Asking me the same question more than twice, despite having been answered twice
• Climbing up me without an express invitation
• Continuing to climb on me after being told not to do it
• Pawing at my chest to nurse
• Pawing at my arm to get my attention
• Barking at that “other dog” in the yard, which is actually just your reflection, stupid!
• That certain tone of voice you use, especially for the word “Mama”
• Repetitively chanting any word, phrase, syllable, or noise
• Eating someone else’s snack when they set it down
• Bragging and being smug about something you’re doing or have done that someone else is/has not (including eating their snack)
• Dawdling through the first activity of the day, so it takes two hours to do a 30 minute activity
• Begging for more “home-stoo” work, then snubbing every activity I come up with
• Taking more than one bathroom break an hour unless you’ve been drinking coffee or have a stomach bug
• Using the baby and/or dog as a distraction method to put off school work

Do you think I’d have any luck enforcing those rules?

How can someone ever feel ok with the concept of “breaking a child’s will?” How do you write those words without vomiting on your own keyboard? What is wrong with these people? Because no decent human being would to that to a child.

Ok, Christians — you want to know one area where I think you reasonable, compassionate folks need to speak up and put a stop to something? THIS. Someone is invoking your name here. Worse, they’re invoking your God’s name and what is supposed to be your God’s holy word, and they’re using it to justify repeatedly hitting a child and then expecting the child to be happy about it. You need to stand up for your God and your Christ and put a stop to this. Non-religious people like me aren’t heard by these monsters. They might hear you, though. You need to tell these…these…things to stop hitting their children in the name of God.

“If she does not obey the 1st time, quickly, & w/a happy heart, she will get spanked. So, she has been spanked 10x today.”

Your child is THREE, you monster. Yes, monster. You are a monster. You have arbitrarily decided that a three year old can “obey” perfectly and happily every time and that if she does not, she deserves to be hit. You have hit her ten times in one day…not for doing something like putting herself or others in danger, but because she didn’t immediately obey and then be happy about it. You are a monster. You do not deserve children.

“she gets spanked 3x each time (b/c she is 3)”

You hit your daughter once for each year of life. You are sick. You are a monster. You are hitting your daughter for failing to be happy. You are hitting her three times for each time she isn’t happy and you are claiming to do it in the name of Godliness.

“After a spanking, she always wants to hug me”

Perhaps because your daughter needs reassurance that you don’t hate her. After all, she’s only three and you are hitting her ten times a day. You are hitting her because she isn’t smiling and acting happy when you give her commands. Of course she needs to hug you. How else will she know you love her? It isn’t through your other actions, because your other actions are monstrous. Have you also considered that (since you admit later that you do ask her if she wants to hug you), she might also terrified of being hit three more times if she tells you no?

“I group obedience, submission, respect, etc. when I mention all of those things. For example, I talked back to my bosses and did not respect them (NOT GOOD) and submission to my dh is a struggle at times – I want to help my children with those things (esp. my girls)…”

Why especially your girls? So that they’re prepared to be beaten by the domineering husband you’re programming them to marry? You are beating the “will” out of your daughter so that her husband won’t have to do it for her? Does your husband hit you because you don’t submit well enough? I wouldn’t be surprised, since that also seems to be pretty normal in these circles. Is that what you want for your daughters? You want them to be mindless slaves?

Another monster on this thread commented: “I always said to mine, “When Mommy spanks the bottom __________” and my kid would finish the rest of the statement with “…it makes the heart sweet.”

You, madam, are another sick individual. You are perverse and what you are doing to your children is despicable. You’re teaching them to equate a beating with love. You are telling them you hit them because you love them. You are telling them that hitting them makes them “sweet” and more lovable. Do you want to make your children into victims of domestic violence? If you do, congratulations! You’ve found the method.

Christians, I implore you. Please, PLEASE. Only you can intervene. I am not a Christian and thusly, my words will be meaningless to people like this. You, however, might be able to make a difference. I am so grateful that so many self-identifying Christians, even those who are from a more Bible-literal tradition, have stood up and said that this woman’s behavior is inappropriate. Christians like Daisy, whom I absolutely cherish as a gem amongst the rubble of the internet, are the ones who can make changes. You are the ones who can make a difference. Christianity is your belief system, not mine. It’s your culture, not mine. I’m a stranger, an outsider, who can only judge and comment from without. You have to make changes within that culture. You, as a group, need to continue to shine light on these darknesses and say “This is NOT God’s love.”

ETA: TulipGirl has some excellent suggestions for resources for Christians who want to put a stop to this particular subset of pseudo-Christian parenting:

http://parentingfreedom.com/discipline/

http://www.freewebs.com/suffer-the-little-children/therodorshebet.htm

http://www.wholeheart.org/

Families Where Grace Is In Place by Jeff Van Vonderen
Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson
Relational Parenting by Ross Campbell
Grace Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel

You’ve probably met those parents. Those parents: the ones whose children can do no wrong. It’s never their children’s fault; their babies are being wronged by the system or picked on by a bad guy.

I always prided myself on not being one of those parents.

I wasn’t one of those parents throughout Captain Science’s rocky pre-homeschooling educational career. When educators brought problems (or “problems”) to my attention, I didn’t immediately jump to the assumption that my child had done nothing wrong. In fact, I tended to err on the side of it probably being something he was doing that wasn’t quite right or, at least, not quite what they were looking for. When we had that horrible last year in public school, the third grade year of misery, I thought that perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a little something wrong with Captain Science. After all, if both his teacher and the gifted teacher thought something wasn’t right, it had to be him, right?

I was determined to not be one of those parents, brushing off concerns about possible developmental or behavioral problems simply because it was something I didn’t want to hear. Even though my gut told me that there was nothing “wrong” with Captain Science (even if he were different, different =/= “wrong”), I tried to listen with my brain instead. As a result, I not only jumped through hoops, but I made my child jump through hoops. He was assessed by a speech therapist. We asked my PT sister-in-law (who specializes in children with developmental/neurological disorders) take a look at him. We had my SLP brother-in-law and my PhD in early childhood education mother-in-law quietly assess him. We took him to a counselor to ascertain if he was “on the spectrum” as his teacher implied (“He reminds me so much of a boy I had in here last year who had Asperger’s.” “Having a label isn’t a bad thing! Everyone had a label these days!”) or if he had some deep-seated emotional problem that was causing his school problems.

After we’d jumped through the hoops, we discovered that the answer was that Captain Science was a quirky, incredibly bright boy with one glaringly big problem: the very school system that had insisted we had to jump through hoops to begin with.

At about that point, it hit me: maybe, just maybe, being one of those parents didn’t necessarily mean being blind to my child’s faults. Maybe it meant being my child’s advocate and supporter first, speaking up for him first, taking his side and believing his rightness first, instead of assuming that the adults were right and my child was probably wrong. Instead of presuming him guilty and allowing his accusers or detractors determine the means through which he would be cleared or condemned, perhaps I needed to presume him innocent until they could come up with some compelling evidence as to why I should believe he was anything otherwise.

Last night, I had a golden opportunity to be one of those parents when Captain Science’s soccer coach’s mother called to complain about his behavior at soccer practice (Captain Science is apparently one of “three or four” miscreants on the team). Instead of immediately becoming angry at Captain Science and assuming he had, indeed, cut up, I asked for some concrete examples. The coach’s mother could give me none, but said her son (the teenage coach) would. The coach had a difficult time articulating any specific examples, or articulating much of anything at all, other than one claim that Captain S had told another coach “you can’t make me” — something the coach I spoke to didn’t experience first hand, but only heard about after the fact. The only direct complaint the coach could give me was prompted by his mother, whom I could hear carrying on in the background: Captain Science had taken off his shirt during practice and hadn’t immediately put it back on when asked. This apparently greatly distressed both the coach and his mother, but is hardly an infraction I feel necessitated calling home.

I decided to be one of those parents. I know Captain Science pretty well. If he were being consistently criticized, fussed at, told he was doing something wrong, he would be complaining about how much he dislikes soccer when I got him at the end of practice. Instead, he’s bouncing off the field each day, full of joy, telling me how much he loves it. That doesn’t tell me my child is misbehaving and being corrected, so either he’s not the cut up he’s being accused of being or his coach lacks the authority to command respect and discipline the lack thereof. Neither of those makes me feel I need to “handle [this situation] at home,” as the coach’s mommy thought I should. In fact, that female coach Captain S had supposedly sassed? He brought up, unprompted, the brand new coach he’d had that day and how tough she was. He said she threatened to make them run laps, do pushups, etc. if they didn’t follow her instructions, and, Captain Science added, “I believed her!”

So, being one of those parents and assuming my child was NOT in the wrong lead me to investigate this further, without getting upset at him or about the situation, and discover that the source of the coach’s (and his mommy’s) dismay was probably the shirtlessness (their hangup, not mine), not the sass. Sure, I’ll keep an eye on him at the remaining practice and a half to make sure he’s not being rude to his coaches, but I’m not disciplining him for something I don’t remotely believe he did. I don’t doubt that the coach may feel disrespected, but after speaking to the kid, I think that any issues of respect problem lies in him and not in his players.

Yes, I know that this isn’t exactly the same as thinking my kid can’t ever do any wrong. It’s certainly more of a middle ground. It did, however, require a little bit of a paradigm shift away from thinking adults are right, children are wrong. More importantly, it involved a shift to thinking in favor of my child. Nothing wrong with a default of “I know my kid and he’s not a bad kid.” Nothing wrong with that at all.

If that means I might be one of those parents, even just a little bit, I’m ok with that.

Cold oatmeal.

No two words can better sum up the course of my morning than these.

Have you ever had one of those mornings where you’ve realized by 10am that you should have kept on sleeping and just left the children to fend for themselves, because they’d probably learn more and wreck less than they did after you emerged from your bedroom and into the chaos that is your house? No? So it is just me?

You’re a terrible audience, Smrt Readers. I need a little more moral support than that!

Let me tell you about my morning, then, and see if you’ve ever had these experiences. I was up at 8:30, changed and dressed the baby, dressed myself, and folded a load of laundry. Officer Daddyman works a part-time once a week, and this week it fell on Friday, the same day I agreed to do some preschooling with Tank’s good friend, Dimhibbins. This already spells a busy day and I woke up dragging. The goal on these bleary-eyed mornings is simply to fix a pot of coffee and get everyone going on their daily activities as quickly as possible. Of course, no such thing happened today.

Captain Science has two morning chores: make his bed and attend to any dishes (empty the dishwasher if it was run, load if there’s anything in the sink). He had done neither by 8:30. I set him to work on that, took the dog for a walk, and all seemed well-ish. When I came back in, however, all heck broke loose. Dishes were not done, people were still running around half-clothed, and even though Tank typically pours himself a bowl of cereal, only oatmeal would do today. He started whining and yelling about oatmeal, while I discovered that someone had once again tee-teed all over the bathroom. Scrubbing toilets while Tank shrieks “I want OATMEEEEEEEEAL!” Joy.

I put the kettle on to boil, fixed Tank his oatmeal, poured water into my oatmeal bowl, hurried Captain Science along in his dish doing (it’s 9:15 at this point, so 15 minutes past our normal school day starting time), and went up to finish the bathroom. I came down to find my oatmeal stone cold, so I added a little more hot water. Tank then offered to help me feed the dog.

Badge the beagle was just diagnosed with colitis (because we can’t just have a normal dog), so he gets a special diet of steamed chicken and rice right now. Tank was being a big boy, carrying the bowl of rice and chicken, and tripped over the baby gate…spilling white rice and chicken across the entire school room. Badge started dancing around, eating frantically off the carpet, while I tried to get the rice cleaned off the desk. After Badge at what he wanted, I had to vacuum up the rest of the rice. Badge hates the vacuum, so the whole while, he barked, whined, and bit the vacuum. Fun times, noodle salad.

I got everything cleaned up and finished just in time for Dimhibbins to arrive…and for me to eat a quick bowl of (once again) stone cold oatmeal. Captain Science didn’t start school until 10, a full hour after his normal start time. Le sigh.

My morning tastes of defeat, frustration, and ice cold slop.

First world problems alert: my internet has been down for almost a week* and, with homeschool starting on Monday, I’m starting to panic a little. Two of Captain Science’s classes (computer programming and science) and one he and Tank are sharing (art) are online. We still have some pieces of curricula to order. We need to sign up for the homeschool soccer league. We might sign up for classes at a local co-op (since we aren’t hosting one this semester, a nice respite). We need more consistent internet for this kind of stuff!

Officer Daddyman made a rather irritable comment to me the other night, being a bit tired of hearing me carry on about how inconvenienced I am, about people having survived just fine before the internet. Of course, the same could be said for, say, refrigeration (did I mention our fridge was also on the fritz?) and telephones (oh yeah, same electrical storm that fried our internet killed our phones) and electric lights (our house gremlin has been blowing those like crazy, too) and air conditioning (thankfully, this still works, though with 100 degree outside temperatures, it’s not making too much of a dent in the heat). Once you’ve become accustomed to and built certain facets of your life around access to those things, however, having them suddenly take flight into the wimbly ether is rather…fraktastic. Can’t put it more eloquently or eruditely (or less geekily) than that.

More than the resources, however, I miss the “s word.” Socialization. We usually worry about our kids getting enough, but as a in-the-home-all-day Mama (because I don’t like that whole “work at home” vs. “stay at home” thing…all mamas work), I often pine for some adult time. Chatting online with Patchfire and The Mama and my other homeschooling (and non-homeschooling) mama friends is an important part of my life. It’s a way of swapping ideas and just generally staying sane. It’s lonely at 11pm when Daddyman is at work and I want the house to stay quiet (so no phone calls), but I can’t talk to someone online, read any news, listen to any new music, etc.

*sigh* Hopefully, we’ll have internet by Monday, because how on earth can I go without blogging about our first day of school? Oh internet! I don’t know how to quit you.

*I’m swiping a little wireless from my grandmother while drinking a glass of wine.

Someone *coughFourSquarescough* suggested that Fridays should become “Eff Off Fridays” at Smrt Lernins. While it’s true that I have a gradually increasing list of individuals who feel the need to rain teetee down upon my joyful blogging parade, and that those individuals certainly deserve a great big bucket full of Southern-style “how nice” and a blessing of their little hearts, I can’t quite muster up the energy to write a truly eloquent “eff off” post.

What I can tell you all to do, however, is to eff off and read.

That’s right, y’all. Get the eff off of my blog and go do some reading. Here are my suggestions:

For you homeschoolers who have never experienced public school life, I offer you the exceptionally amusing ellemennoppee: The Everyday Life of Miss P, Substitute Teacher Extraordinaire, because, really, whose life can’t be made better through reading things like, “Today in 4th grade, a shirtless genie on a math worksheet was given boobs.” I strongly recommend you not be drinking something while reading this blog. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Ok, Daisy, consider this your disclaimer, because if there’s ever a person whose blog you should NOT read, it’s The Bloggess. If you aren’t Daisy, however, you might be interested in learning about this high school student’s chemisty paper on tin.

The leap from two children to three children is quite a leap. One of my favorite mommy-bloggers, DaMomma, knows it well. Also, very little in this world is funnier than the mental image of a toddler with a Boston accent saying “penis” at inappropriate times.

Now, read those blogs, change your big girl panties (’cause you probably wet them with all the laughing), wipe off your screen (because even those I warned you not to drink while you were reading, you probably were), and go stroke my ego by becoming a fan of Smrt Lernins on Facebook.