Homeschool Mondays — Freaks

**Because it’s Monday, and we could all use a little encouragement**

“I wish that I could homeschool,” my neighbor told me.  “I would in a minute, but their dad says no.  He prefers the public schools.  He’s afraid that they’d become freaks.”

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard this over the years.  There is a fear in all of us (even those of us who’ve been doing this for what seems like forever) that somehow our children need an institutional school setting to make them “normal,” as though it is peer pressure and bad cafeteria lunches which take the weirdos that all children are and turns them into socially acceptable versions of themselves.

I say “Who wants to raise ‘normal’ children.  I hope mine are freaks.”

When I was in school, the kids who worried about getting good grades and actually studied were freaks.  The girl who graduated high school still a virgin was a freak. If they went to church and actually liked it…freaks.  The kids who thought that reading was fun were freaks.  The ones who actually enjoyed the challenge of Mrs Throm’s English class were freaks.  The ones who refused to make fun of others, were genuinely kind, refused to play those mean reindeer games….freaks, freaks, freaks.

I know, because I made fun of them.  (I hope they can forgive me.)

It wasn’t until I was a couple years into college that I discovered the truth about the freaks — they were the interesting ones.  While the “cool” kids spent their weekends getting drunk or getting laid, the freaks challenged each other to become better more honest versions of themselves.  I saw that there was an honesty in their freakiness that the “cool” ones weren’t yet smart enough to appreciate.

I hope that the children I’m raising are freaks.  I’ve dedicated my life to it, because “freak” in our society has come to be a euphemism for people who are genuinely themselves.  I’m hoping that my children will be the ones who run up the down escalators of life, and refuse to be forced in going one direction just because their peers are all going that way.  I want them to learn to dance to the music they hear in their hearts, and to sing the words out loud for all the world to hear.  I pray that they will learn to shrug off the opinions of others and listen to the truth of their own lives.  Those are the people I’m educating them to be — freakishly, wonderfully, completely the person God created them to be.  It’s one of the many blessings of homeschooling, our children have the privilege of discovering who they are without a chorus of other voices telling them what that looks like.

It is the freaks who change out world and keep it interesting.  The freaks are the ones who start computer companies in their garage, win the national spelling bee, the priest who sets hearts on fire for God, or the artist who is touted as the next Picasso.  They are the kinds of people we all wish to raise — the ones who refuse to let other people define what “normal” should look like for them.

Think back to high school…what made the “cool kids” cool was that studied air of boredom and too much time on their hands.  Do you want to raise bored and boring people, or do you want to raise people who are excited by life?

Homeschooling may not be the only way to get there, but it’s one of the surest.  Please, God, may they all be freaks.

**For the record: There’s a difference between being socially inept and being a freak.  Whereas raising a freak may be desirable, raising the socially inept is a thing to be avoided whenever possible.