I really wanted the kids to make it through the school year. There were so many times when I questioned my decision to put them back into school - specifically this small rural school with unqualified teachers. I could make a long list of weird things the teacher said to the 7th grade that were actively hostile towards public education, science, and diverse thought, but it's exhausting and embarrassing to list all of these things and realize that I didn't make this decision sooner.
What ultimately pushed us over the edge is was the fact that Brother's mental health was suffering. For weeks he was lying in bed at night stressing out about death. He was keeping us all up because his anxiety was so high he could not fall asleep and wanted to be comforted. We encouraged him to practice thankfulness, meditation, deep breathing...but it was not helping. We has many conversations about how he was (or was not) fitting in and making friends at the school. We were pushing him to be open-minded with these kids with different values and we tended to blame him for his lack of friendships. One night over dinner his thoughts and feelings exploded from deep within. He said, "why would I want to be friends with these kids who vandalize the bathrooms, do drugs, talk about suicide, are "emo," and depressed?!? I don't want to fit in with these kids!" Then he went on to tell us about the morbid culture that exists in his class where students played a "game" asking a kid to consider two of their classmates and decide who they would "save" and who they would "kill" (if they HAD to kill one) He was matched and killed by a number of his classmates. Only one saved him. When he was asked to match two kids he said, "neither, I would never kill anyone." Of course that is the right answer, but no other kids gave it. He then went on to share that one of the kids in his class said, "I would murder everyone in this class if there were no consequences." The teacher was in the room during this game and did not stop it. Well suffice it to say that was the end of that. He didn't go back to school the next day - instead I wrote to the admissions staff and let them know we would resume homeschooling.
F-that. I can't put my kids in this environment anymore. When we homeschooled (and now that we are doing so again) we look around the world to find ways to learn from our experiences. Yesterday there was a Preparedness Fair in town of St. Johns. We went and I told Sister that next week she will have to write me a paragraph about "what is a Preparedness Fair?" I told Brother that he would right me an essay about those things that he learned about that were very useful and those that are more questionable (I want him to have a good bullshit detector). Everything is a lesson if you frame it in that way. Though this is the attitude I had towards the school experience, safety concerns trump all of that.
My kids are generally positive, caring, giving and open with those around them. They observed the opposite in the kids at school. It's understandable. In this rural community some of the kids only eat when they are at school. Many parents are under or unemployed. One girl's family was making money selling pigs by the side of the road. It's a very poor rural community and I knew that going in. I didn't expect the death cult aspect of it. However if your life sucks that bad I suppose you are looking forward to the afterlife.
I want to build mentally healthy kids - not beat them down with a continual depressing exposure to the absolute worse side of rural America. Even Sister in second grade had a sad experience with making connections. Here she is, innocent, loving, caring - each day coming home from school making cards, bracelets, notes for teachers and other kids. She talked continually about one girl who she said was her bestie. When that girl's birthday came, Sister wasn't invited. It was soul-crushing. The little kids used profanity regularly and, one day on the bus, Sister was told by an eighth-grader that she doesn't have any friends. Many of these rural kids live hard lives and taking out their shit on my little sweeties was becoming a past-time for them. Yes, I want my kids to deal with adversity, but let's be real - in the adult world I would not spend 2 minutes around such shitty people. Why force kids to continually interact with a hostile crowd?
So here we are. Homeschooling once again. I'm not sure what the future holds, but today I am glad to have my kids close to me again and to protect them from all attempts to drag them down into the muck with the sad and downtrodden out there. They will have plenty of time, as adults, to have to deal with all that. At home we can reflect upon why people act that way while making sure that they have good mental health.
