1: Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is--and it is-- it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if it we were criminals, would we admit it?
2: Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that menas that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.
3: Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer practice to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.
4: Don't assume hat every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.
5: If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a 'reality' TV show, the above goes double.
6: Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know, who ruining their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant woman and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.
7: We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.
8: Stop assuming that all homeschoolers are religious.
9: If we are religious, stop assuming that we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.
10: We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experiment, and worrying that going into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about you own educational decisions.
11: Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in teh kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.
12: If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possible teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decided to respond in kind.
13: Stop assuming that because the word 'home' is right there is 'homeschool', we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.
More coming soon!
