Trust No One
That heading sounds like it came from a spy show. In a recent t.v. show a man was asking his co-worker questions about someone's clothing. She says to him, "Why are you asking me? You think because I'm a woman that I know all of this?"
"No, he says, "I'm asking you because you're a good agent, and you would have noticed these things."
Some of the answers to 'why' that were noted in a previous post come from observing. When we began our family I had two examples to gather from. My Mom, the single mom who worked outside of the home, or my Grandmother who didn't.
I thought, okay, someone must stay home with the kiddos, might as well be me. Why would I want to import someone else's annoying habits when I have enough of my own? So, it was SAHM for me. (stay at home mom)
The summer I was fourteen I had been an 8 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. baby sitter for three neighbor children. The same year I had also babysat my cousin Cathy's baby occasionally on Saturdays. That was difficult for an extroverted loner, but we all survived. However, it took me awhile to get the hang of being a full-time mom.
I prayed, and somewhere along the line I found a T Shirt that said: Children are People Too. I prayed some more, then we had child number two. Things did get easier. I prayed some more.
When I was small, Grandma would set me on the table in front of her and recite nursery rhymes. 'A was an apple pie, B bit it, C cut it, D dealt it...' or 'Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard...' Grandma knew them all from memory.
With my children, I read them to sleep every day and I would come back later and read them awake. Reading was inculcated into their minds daily. We enjoyed nursery rhymes, a whole plethora of stories and I also read them the Little House Books. They picked up the love of reading and frontier history.
Five years slipped away so quickly and by the time our oldest was in Kindergarten/first grade we had four children. I hated to let them go, and was determined to keep them home as long as I could. Our time was precious.
When our oldest was in Kindergarten the school was getting some pushback from him. You wouldn't be looking for rebellion that young, but I began reading about the 'generation gap'.
The article said when your child is taught one thing at home and another at school, no matter if you are a college professor at home and your child's teacher is a minor elementary teacher, the child will gravitate to what his school teacher says. Voila! Cause of the generation gap!
In the elementary school, parents were involved in the Parent-Teacher conferences. Old Fuzzy and I always went. Our second grade son received an award for Excellence in Reading, an award for being the top in his class.
You can imagine our confusion when at conferences we were told he was put in remedial reading. When questioned about this, the reply was, 'it's in case he ever has trouble with reading...'.
My 'distrust genes' had not quite kicked in yet, and to this day I can't believe how naive we were. I didn't know they had also put him in remedial math class, and wouldn't find that out until quite a few years later when he went to college .
I'm convinced that the distrust genes are garnered from the roots of being of Irish decent. Combined with the hard lessons I've learned that not all who I've thought were friends actually were. That being true with personal relationships it's double with governments.
No one knew exactly what was happening throughout education facilities, but there were some signs.
Within the next few years several chickens would come home to roost. Life had more lessons in store for us.
James 1:27 "Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."
