I\u2019ve been trying for the past few months to make plans with a couple homeschooling families we\u2019ve recently met. It\u2019s hard. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t have time in our schedukes to get together, it\u2019s trying to figure out what to do to accommodate all the rules and restrictions of their families. I never really thought of myself as a free-wheeling hippie until August through noe. I\u2019m wild and crazy, y\u2019all\u2026did you know?<\/p>\n
One family that we met this past summer has sons my older boys\u2019 ages (12 & 14). It\u2019s hard to find homeschooled boys once they get older. I was elated. The mom seemed normal. The kids weren\u2019t too odd. Then I asked if the boys wanted to come over and I got an email of her list of must nots. Her boys aren\u2019t allowed to watch television. They can\u2019t watch any movie with a higher rating than PG. They are not allowed to play video games. Period. No, we couldn\u2019t go to the neighborhood pool and swim because there might be girls there in bikinis. (For the record, we go swimming at such an early hour that the girls in bikinis are still at home blow drying and straightening their hair.)\u00a0I would have said \u201csend them outside to play\u201d, but when it\u2019s over 100 degrees my boys didn\u2019t want to be outside. <\/span>Summer ended and we tried again. We kept striking out. He sons arent allowed anything violent \u2013 which included football, my sons\u2019 bows and arrows that they shoot at targets in the back yard, and rough horseplay. They were allowed board games, but mom preferred we keep it to chess or checkers. Add on top of that all of their food restrictions \u2013 no grains, sugars of any kind including honey, food color, or dairy \u2013 and I was at a loss for what to do with them. We ended up not getting together.<\/span><\/p>\n The other family has children the same ages as my #\u2019s 2-5. I was again thrilled to have found them. Until I called her to set up a play-date\/get-together. The library has an amazing pre-teen program. Last week they had a woman come in to teach the kids to do stage make-up. I thought the older kids would love that and the littler kids could play and hang out in the children\u2019s library. \u201cWe don\u2019t go to the library. Ever.\u201d I was told.\u201dThey have objectionable materials right out there where the kids can get them.\u201d I was a little confused because our librarian is crazy conservative and doesn\u2019t care what you think about it. Anything racy with nude-y pictures is kept behind her desk and you have to ask for it. Come to find out that she meant Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Since my children have read and loved both of those series and loved<\/i> them, I knew from the get-go that this wasn\u2019t going to work out. Plus, I just can\u2019t have the Harry Potter discussion again. \u2026 but seriously, to not go to the library<\/i> because of it?<\/p>\n This has all had me thinking about raising kids in bubbles. We all do to one extent or another. My kids can\u2019t watch slasher movies, shows with any nudity, sex scenes, or\u2026other stuff I\u2019m sure that I\u2019m forgetting. We make sure to meet their friends, keep an eye on what they\u2019re up to, and have strict rules about who\u2019s allowed to hang out at our house.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m beginning to wonder how much these super strict moms (myself included there) are hindering the development of their children. The traditional school proponents who talk about how our children are losing out because their worlds are too homogenous might just have a point. There is a value in getting to know people who are different from the people who live in your own house. There are life skills to be learned from going places like the library where there are things that may not be strictly kosher for your family, and educating your children about avoiding temptation. I just keep thinking about how real life doesn\u2019t look like the perfect bubbles of safety inside our homes.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know what the solution is, but I\u2019m beginning to worry that we might be raising a crop of what my grandma calls hot-house flowers. If you grow plants in perfect conditions inside a greenhouse, you will get a crop of the most amazing plants you ever saw, but if you take those same gorgeous plants outside in the wind, hot, cold, and rain \u2013 those plants will quickly die. Because their environment was always perfect, they never grew strong enough to be able to live in the real world. While I am certainly not advocating putting children (especially young children) in questionable circumstances\u2026.I also know that I want to raise children who are strong enough to withstand whatever storms blow their way.<\/p>\n If you know the solution, please share it with the rest of us. Until then, I\u2019m just going to keep praying about how to work it all out and continue encouraging my kids to meet and talk to all different kinds of people. I just keep thinking about the bubbles we try to keep our children in\u2026and the thing is, bubbles only hold so much air. If you spend too much time in one, they stop being protective and become suffocating.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been trying for the past few months to make plans with a couple homeschooling families we\u2019ve recently met. It\u2019s hard. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t have time in our schedukes to get together, it\u2019s trying to figure out what to do to accommodate all the rules and restrictions of their families. I never really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n