Are They Hearing What We're Saying

When we do things in a radically different way from our mothers and grandmothers, they often take it personally as a direct reflection on what bad parents they were. Unfortunately, sometimes this is true; they really were bad parents, but it isn't very constructive to point that out now. For some of us, it's simply a matter of different life styles and preferences. In still other cases our mothers just followed bad advice, doing the best they could. However, for them to admit the advice was wrong is, to them, to admit they parented wrong. It's a purely emotional subject, they can't deal with it dispassionately.

My husband was primarily raised by his grandmother because of the instability of his parental units. We won't go into details, (some of which have been covered in the 'Tale of Two STudents' posts) but let's just let it be understood that we really mean it when we say his early childhood was unstable. So his grandmother was his 'primary caregiver' when he started school. When it was time for him to go to kindergarten, he freaked out and wouldn't get on the bus. It was apparantly a pretty bizarre scene, it took them thirty minutes to get him on there, screaming and kicking all the way, and they spanked him again and again because they thought he was just being pig-ugly-stubborn. In fact, he thought they were sending him away. Forever. That is a horrible, heartbreaking story- but his grandparents meant well. They didn't know what he was thinking, and they acted upon the best information they had at the time. They didn't know, in fact, a good many things that we smugly think we know all about, and which our children will dismiss as old fashioned when they are parents. And the Headmaster, it must be said, turned out pretty well in spite of it all.

So- we homeschool our children. We do this because of the good things we see that it does for our family- not because of the bad things we see public schools doing to somebody else's family. If every public school were perfect and every child in them was perfect, we would still homeschool. Still, there are times when we simply mention that we homeschool, and based on the reaction, you would have thought we were out in the streets with uzis looking for wicked people who public schooled! The hostility is not a common thing, but it does happen, and it is always incredible (as in not credible to me).

However, I've learned that just as the Headmaster's grandmother has always felt guilty about putting him on that schoolbus, other people have something they feel guilty about. She meant well, but didn't realize how emotionally vulnerable his parents had made him, didn't know he thought they were sending him away forever, and now she feels awful. Other parents have in all liklihood have similar regrets, sensitive points, and hot spots.

Sometimes the mere fact that we homeschool is a reminder of those regrets, and people react defensively when there is no need. It might help to remember that sometimes they're reacting so strongly to what they think they're hearing rather than to what you're really saying. And oddly enough, sometimes it is the people who ought to know us best who really know us the least.

Many years ago I wrote a humorous article about some area where our family departs from the cultural norm and I asked a relative with some expertise in English to proof-read it for me, and the relative agreed. I didn't hear back, so I asked if the relative had received it and had a chance to look at it. I got a noncommital answer. I waited and asked again later. Rinse and repeat. I thought the article must be very poorly written. About a year later I was visiting a second relative who mentioned asking the same person to proofread some school papers. I said that I hoped those papers were reviewed in a more timely manner than my own had been, and I guessed that maybe the relative did not like proof-reading very much.

"No," said second relative, "That's not it. She doesn't like your writing. You're too mean and sarcastic. I tend to be the same way, but I'm working on it. You're not tactful, either."

I was fairly floored. Let us ignore the lack of tact, sensitivity, and consideration on the part of second relative, I was upset that instead of giving me an honest answer about why my article wasn't being proofread, there had clearly been some ongoing discussion behind my back by two people from whom I had expected much better. I began to wonder just how well we really knew each other, because it certainly seemed to me that the relatives I thought I knew would not have behaved like that, and clearly my good judgment of them was at fault. It seemed also likely to me that they did not 'get' my sense of humour.

I decided to see if it were really my writing or their judgment at fault, so I submitted the article to the magazine I'd originally intended it for. They published it without alteration. Not only that, but I received a couple letters from total strangers who liked the article. Furthermore, there were no complaints in the letters to the editor in the next issue of the magazine (there may have been complaints, but the publishers did not deem them worthy of publication). As an amusing sidenote, I was asked by the first relative to use my maiden name in future published writings so people would know we were related (I have, um, declined that honour).

New converts have noted that the people they find most closed against their new found faith are often their closest family members. And homeschoolers often find those who are most offended by their decision to homeschool are also close family members. We wonder why the people who ought to know us best seem to put up the strongest walls against us when we depart from the family norm. But perhaps we should not wonder why people who formed their judgment of us when we were ten years old cannot relate to us as the adults we have become. They are not hearing what we are saying for a number of reasons, not least because they do not really know who we are. For some of them, they also need to have their choices validated by repetition. To see close relatives making other choices, often opposing choices, is often perceived as invalidating their own decisions- even if you never say a word.