Posted on 12/15/2020 5:39:28 AM PST by Drew68
My ten-year-old kid doesn’t go to school, doesn’t play sports, takes no dance or theater or music classes. We never go to the movies. We don’t go to restaurants, and I try to limit his contact with any other human beings.
This is my choice as a parent, yet that doesn’t stop people from mocking and judging my parental prerogative. It’s like they think there is only one right way to raise a kid. Such arrogance.
People keep telling me that these choices are going to have lasting, long-term, negative effects on my child. Come on, man. Kids are adaptable. In fact, if all these adults weren’t freaking out about him being locked in his house away from his friends, he wouldn’t even know any better. He’d think it was normal, and not give it another thought.
Contact with other kids and adults is soooo important to child development? Prove it. I don’t have a degree in education or anything, but I’m pretty sure that these claims of lasting damage are way overblown.
All these progressives, with their “We need more programs for kids” all the time, “let’s spend a billion dollars to make sure they get stupid art classes,” I mean, let’s be real. Art class is a waste of time. Our kids don’t really need it. It’s just a way for a bunch of losers who wasted their student loans on art school to eke out a few bucks. Even the progressives don’t actually think it really matters. If art class disappeared for a year, I bet they wouldn’t actually care.
Then there is this whole “Kids. Have. To. Go. To. School.” canard. Seriously? Have these people heard of the Internet? All of human knowledge is available at a click. My kid knows whatever he wants to know. Earlier today, I says to my kid, I says, “Hey kid, who is Boog Powell?” Like 8 seconds after looking down at his phone he said, “An outfielder for the Orioles.” So what are we paying teacher’s unions for? Eight seconds! It’s all online.
I am sick and tired of being accused of child abuse just because I choose, as a parent, to keep my child locked in my apartment as far away from any other human beings as possible. And don’t even get me started about the mask. On the rare occasions he does leave the apartment, my son never does it without a full face covering. Is it statistically unlikely that a kidnapper might take a shine to his smile and snatch him up? Sure. Is that a reason not to be vigilant? Never. If it can save one child, it is worth it.
I understand that my parental methods seem strange. But there is nothing, nothing, nothing more important than making sure your child is completely safe 100 percent of the time. Is the football team really worth the risk of concussion? Is gymnastics really worth the risk of a broken neck? We have virtual reality goggles now; our kids can all experience that at equal skill levels with no risk. You know, virtually. Call it, I don’t know, virtual learning or something.
I know you’re all drinking your coffee reading this and thinking This guy is crazy. But I’ve thought this through. It’s the future. Nothing else makes sense. The purpose of life is to live as long as possible and consume as much as possible. That is only going to be achieved by atomizing our reality. I’m preparing my son for that. He could live to 150 years of age all by himself if he orders the right supplements from Amazon.
All I ask is an open mind. Don’t judge. I am doing what I think is best, even if you think it is barbarism and tantamount to child abuse. You never know. I mean, it’s a crazy world, you might just happen to come around to my way of thinking soon. Don’t feel the need to apologize.
Soylent green just isn’t for me...
Wow.
Excellent piece. Thanks.
Good for you.
btt
He there genius this isn’t mocking homeschoolers. It’s mocking Covid rules. Homeschoolers don’t do what he describes and lock them in an apartment.
Isn’t it ironic that BC (Before COVID) “socialization* was the end all and be all of a child’s life?
It was the whole reason to go to school, (although when *I* was in school, all we heard was *You’re not here to socialize, you’re hear to learn. Stop talking*) and now with COVID, isolating your kids to *keep them safe* is the byword.
People are such idiots and have about a 10 second memory.
Remember when we were told that a child shouldn't spend more than an hour a week in front of a computer screen?
Now my kids' teachers assign YouTube videos of OTHER TEACHERS teaching subjects.
Damn. What a job.
He only wears a mask when he leaves the apartment? What is wrong with you? The main purpose of apartment HVAC systems is to share germs among all the tenants. (They also heat rooms up in the summer and cool them off in the winter, but that’s just to take the focus of the complaints away from the spread of illness.) Anything less than 24/7 mask wearing is child abuse.
Please be sure to help yourself and children to a lesson on satire. Perhaps one on irony as well.
We homeschooled ours in the first part of grammar school. The internet was introduced In, what? mid high school. It’s overrated, by the way. The three Rs of a 10 year old’s education got us to the moon and back. So did getting outside. Skating, swimming, walking for transportation, climbing trees bike riding. That’s how science seeps in...and socialization.
“Don’t judge me” goes only so far in succeeding at one’s goals, that’s where the value of parents having good social connections comes in. Checks and balances. I’d tell this writer, At ten years old kids hang around with their parents friends kids - which can be done in a pandemic. It’s not a judgement. It’s shared experience.
The adult kids around here do that. They miss being with peers at school, but they always socialized with people of different ages, generations. Parents are the ones reluctant to get small, play a game, watch a movie appealing to everyone. Just go to the classics. We have collections and now firestick. Musicals, Marx Bro’s, any action movie, LOTR, Star Wars
People aren’t doing this?
And get to church. Not a judgement. Just help. Last week there was a study headlined, ‘people who attend religious services do way better emotionally in the pandemic’ Really? Any busy body from any generation during any crisis could say that. And they do. Well...they did, until people started saying “don’t judge me”. But... people aren’t following a religious life? I forget that. I’m reminded when I visit family. Emptiness.
Parents would do well to think about their kids’ educational needs from the perspective of ‘what did I need, growing up?’ That can start from a question of ‘what did I want? What did I like doing? That’s where ten year olds learn from. They’re driven to learn. Let them tell you.
“ Remember when we were told that a child shouldn’t spend more than an hour a week in front of a computer screen?”
I remember, “turn that TV off!”. “Get out of this house!” “What are you kids doing in this house?!”
My grandson is questioning why he needs to go to school if all the information is on the internet. I told him it was to introduce him to different ideas that he might not of thought of on his own. I’m not sure how this parent feels about his child being able to develop social skills with other people, but I think that is also important.
I think the point being made by the original posting is that the way everyone is living today in 2020 would have been considered abusive if you had done it in 2019. This isn’t really about homeschooling or children or anything specific like that. It’s a general observation that what we are doing now, would have been considered insane if you had chosen to live like this in 2019.
I have also seen the order “your kid must be in front of the screen staring at me so I know I have their attention” rather than sitting on a couch or possibly listening in the rest of the room.
Exactly. As far as I can tell, this article wasn't actually written in 2019. It's just presented as if it were to highlight the absurdities of everything.
Genius...it was written in 2019, BEFORE the Covid Crisis
I did miss that it was Dec 15, when people started freaking out over Covid. For some reason I thought it was January 2019
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