[email protected]

In a message dated 7/3/2003 6:33:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:


> > Thanks. This is one I've struggled with. My kid is not a "poster child"
> > for unschooling in the sense that he isn't at all interested in academics.
> > I tended for a long time to feel defensive about that, like it was going
> to
> > make unschoolers look bad or something.
>
> If anything, my son is probably a decent poster child for unschooling; he
> likes academic stuff and forever has his nose in a thick book. (Imagine a
> child that looks like a young Ron Weasley but acts like Hermione and wears
> Harry Potter glasses for reading. That's my son.)
>
> But people still tell me how horrible homeschooling is and how reading all
> the time is so terrible for him. You'd think I kept him chained to a chair
> and never let him do anything else. Having a more-academically oriented
> child just means that you hear different criticisms. I've been working on
> not being so defensive about the socialization one lately, but it's hard.
>
> I was ragged on tonight at church by someone who can't understand why I
> won't put Tim in German school, since he's obviously "so bright" and should
> get out of the "American bubble" more often (I live in the American housing
> area by the post here in Germany). I told him that Tim isn't in German
> school because he doesn't want to be. The look on his face was priceless;
> he couldn't see why what my kid wanted would be relevant to the discussion.
>

I think we've been lucky. Mostly, the only people who are negative about
Julian's homeschooling (unschooling is just SUCH a foreign concept!) are his
paternal grandmother, who would no doubt disapprove of something, anyway, since she
still thinks I am Satan, and she's just like that, and Julian's dad's now
ex-wife, whom we also don't have to deal with much anymore.

When people talk to Juls they often gush about how smart, etc. he is. And
talking to him, they really don't get just how anti-social my darling boy is!!!

Kathryn


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