Clarify

I love this picture. It reminds me of one of my challenging children. He wasn't a 'bad' child, just a challenge.

You always knew his feelings on the matter at hand. Sometimes he was cooperative, sometimes not, but always lovable. Especially now in looking back.

After describing myself as difficult, I read a post from a current teacher of public school and what she described as 'difficult'.

Back in our day any child misbehaving in a destructive, belligerent, rude manner would have been dealt with appropriately. When I admit to being difficult I mean I was not a team player.

My third grade teacher became so frustrated at one point she picked me up at my desk and shook me. I wasn't paying attention, and my modus operandi was to sit and stare out the window. I must have done passing work, because I always passed.

I was not a destructive child, just passive. They could make me sit in that classroom, but they couldn't make me do anything while there.

I survived and eventually graduated, as did the rest of my cousins. Most of us had labels. Try as the school systems might, they could never find a label to use against us. I was from a broken home, my uncle's children came from a large family, and that made us less smart—for some reason.

I absorbed those lessons and then my own children came along. Our older two children were trouble makers. Smart, friendly, even likeable, but trouble makers, and that tainted anyone coming behind.

Homeschooling had by that time become a remote possibility. Some unsettling feelings from the public school had come to play and an odd coincidence or two came up.

Our two oldest were in middle school and going into high school. We had raised several questions about things that came about during fifth grade. We were informed as ninth grade loomed, 'the school was aware that some of the coming events we may not want our ninth grader to participate in and...'

That summer we were contacted by another parent needing someone for the home school phone tree to pass on info...

I tried to explain we didn't home school, but I could pass on their info if needed. The other parent and I conversed about homeschooling and she sent me some curriculum catalogs.

Most people at the stage of high school were considering putting their home school kids into public school—we pulled ours out, along with our about to be 3rd, 4th, and kindergartner.

Deuteronomy 6:6 "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7) And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."