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I've been thrown off a blog. Excommunicated and banished. It didn't hurt my feelings at all. There are interesting aspects, though. The parting shot was
You are no longer welcome here, Sandra Dodd, advocate of mutual-respect parenting. Your comments will no longer appear without first being moderated, and I will no longer read them when I see your name.Interestingly, the blog owner kept using my name, and in the closing my FULL name. It was like advertising. And it's one of those "no publicity is bad publicity" moments, I think.
I had suggested that derisive criticism of parents giving kids freedom was fear-based. Maybe that scared her?
I was accused of not knowing what the blogger believed, but I read the sidebar. Christian, Well-Trained Mind, cynical, snarky (based on the names of some of the posts). That was enough for me to ask other unschoolers to be very polite if they were to go there. And I did that, on the AlwaysLearning list.
I thought if anyone here was in a CALM, collected, polite but analytical mood, it might be a topic to look at. I'm not asking for "support." I'm holding my own, and am not worried about the effect on unschoolers at all. I still thought some of you might find it interesting, or maybe be able to bridge the gap between her beliefs and mine. Interpreters, perhaps. . . . The blog author's mind won't be changed, but some of her readers' might. Go gently, if you go, please.I also read the profile of the blogger (after I had posted twice, not before), so I knew some good stuff about her birthing and parenting practices, and that being a Texan is very important to her (and her birth practices
), which was interesting. I probably knew more about her than she knew about me at that point, although God knows there's plenty about me out there.http://barefootmeandering.com/archives/2008/05/from-the-misguided-
parent-files/
1. There is absolutely NO way you can get me to lie!
2. The swamp cooler reminds me that summer is almost here!
3. I cannot live without my .... I can't think of a fill in, though there are many things I DO love, like flush toilets, running water, my house with its great roof, my family, running automobiles, telephones, books, my computer, the internet, my friends...
So I could live without them, but not as contentedly.
4. Time travel and invisibility are two things I'd like to try.
5. When life hands you lemons, be grateful you're still in a position for life to hand you anything at all.
6. Music is my favorite childhood memory. My mom singing, me learning piano, playing my Mamaw's piano when I visited; singing with my cousin Nada under the workbench in the yard, learning to harmonize on You Are My Sunshine, when we were nine or so; singing in the children's AND adult choirs at church; Miss Lopez teaching us lots of songs at school; singing in Girl Scouts; staging a little home version of "Hansel and Gretel" with Nada and Irene from a school music book my dad found at the dump; learning to play clarinet when I was ten... Buying NEW Beatles albums for $5 at J.W. Owens department store (a couple of quanset huts on Indian land by the Rio Grande), then it moves to teenaged music memories, and adult...
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to Keith and the hot tub, tomorrow my plans include helping equip Keith and Marty for an upcoming SCA campout and Sunday, I want to maybe go see miniature horses!
"from the misguided parent files"? She couldn't have called it "parents with different ideas from mine"? It's sad when people can't listen to each others opposing viewpoints with taking their toys and stomping home mad.
ReplyDeleteLori
Hmm...sometimes I like a good discussion, but I'm not in the mood for one that is coming from the belief that I'm a neglectful parent.
ReplyDeleteHere's my thought that I wanted to post, but didn't: if you're involved in what your child is doing, I think the chance of a video game addiction is much less; if you're living an interesting life and strewing interesting things in your child's path, I think the chance of any addiction is much less. I know that when we are involved and interesting, my SCHOOLED stepson (10) (who has arbitrary limits placed on him by the state and never has his fill of doing whatever he wants) will put aside his Wii and PS2 controllers, along with his DS and PSP, without a second thought.
But I suppose that's merely anecdotal evidence and not fact. =P
I thought that you presented your point of view respectfully, despite the fact that the blog author threw the first punch with the use of the word "horseshit". That was rude and showed disrespect.
ReplyDeleteYou must have struck a nerve, otherwise you wouldn't have been banned.
I have been a big fan of yours for over 3 years now. I struggle with letting my kids self regulate but I believe it to be a valid concept. I appreciate knowing how your kids turned out or are turning out. I can see how controlling my boys has a negative impact on our relationship, but I still struggle, especially when I want them to go to bed and they want to keep going and going and going. They are 6 and 3. I understand why some people don't want their kids to self regulate. But I think it is worth a try to let them. We let our kids self regulate as much as we can. We are doing better all the time. Video games are not a problem since we have never tried to control that. LOL. They dont play all day and all night.
ReplyDeleteWow, Sandra, way to hit a nerve!
ReplyDeleteI was really surprised to see such activity on someone's personal blog site...it felt like a message board the longer I read.
I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that YOU were the first hook for me when we came to unschooling. I didn't always want to agree with you because that meant I needed to change ME which wasn't going to be as easy as imposing my will on my child.
Thankfully, I kept reading and learning and communicating...
and I saw the LIGHT. And it beams (most of his teenage days) from within our son who has the totality of our support to command his own life...Now that's an education!
So, thanks Sandra, for having the courage to strike a nerve!
lol
ReplyDeleteYou're braver and/or have more spare time than I. There are a number of triggers which, when I see them touted on a blog, I just stop reading right then and there. Religion is certainly one of my triggers.
ReplyDeleteNot my favorite Roman writer but a noted Epicurean philosopher, Lucretius spoke against religion at length two thousand years ago. His only surviving work, De Rerum Natura, is about 7500 lines, much of which is a jeremiad against religion. A coupla quotes:
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa.
English:
Had gods designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
And a comment on the despicable things which inevitably follow from superstitious fears and religious beliefs:
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
English:
Such are the evils to which religion leads.
Frank, if Elvis didn't sing about it, I must not understand it... Unschoolers have shallow understanding, we are given to understand, because unschoolers don't know the difference between trivia and necessity.
ReplyDeleteOH WAIT! Carry on. I wasn't unschooled. I went to public schools in the U.S.of A and I have a college degree. Never mind. For a while I thought *I* was one of those people who have the ability to synthesize information from all kinds of input without regard to whether it was on the curriculum or not.
I guess those folks on the other blog who are so clearly unclear went to school too. One has a PhD, so MUST have the greatest number and the most infallible of answers.
Oooooh, a Ph.D.
ReplyDeleteThat stands for "piled higher and deeper," right? But does he pass the religious orthodoxy test which asks, "Were there dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?" Careful, now. It's not a trick question but it is a revealing one.
I find it amusing that many of us who are unschooling with our kids graduated from college with a teaching degree. I'm sure that's an absolutely meaningless, random factoid. Pretty sure. Maybe.
I don't know about dinosaurs, but I DO know the answer to this:
ReplyDeleteJesus has a dozen donuts and gives each disciple one. How many are left over?
Hmmmmnn, I was raised Catholic and I don't know this joke. Is it a baker's dozen? Does Jesus treat it like the loaves and fishes?
ReplyDeletePLEASE! I need the punchline before I go crazy.
Oh, oh. Too late.
Joke!? BlasFEMUR.
ReplyDeleteI screwed up the "word problem" anyway.
Jesus has a dozen donuts and twelve disciples. How many donuts does each disciple get?
THAT is the question. And it won't help to have been raised Catholic or Baptist or Jesuit-priest-in-training because I thought it up myself.
The answer is:
Each disciple eats and is filled, and there are twelve baskets of donuts left over.
I realized that was the only true Biblical-math answer, after reading an article on Biblical math in Home School Digest. It said if someone thinks pi is anything other than it says in the Bible, then one is having faith in man instead of faith in the infallible word of God.
Yuck yuck yuckety yuck. I could only stand to read her dreck for a short while. There's enough negativity in the world which is why I'm glad you're here.
ReplyDeleteThough I'm new to unschooling I can already see how much more enjoyable life is when we give our children the gift of their own lives and minds. So much less anger/strife/striving around here already!
By the by, your donut joke was hilarious, says the woman raised by a fanatical fundamentalist xian and is now a happily agnostic, sometimes meditating heathen.
Yes! I like the donut joke... I mean, parable.
ReplyDeleteIIRC, the Bible gives us the value of 3 for pi, inferred from measurements for Solomon's temple. I don't think I have the bandwidth to go read an article about Biblical math, so I'll just stick with that and say that I'd hate to ride a rocket to Mars designed by "Biblical mathematicians." (grin)
I know one Biblical math joke (I like math jokes):
Riddle: When the flood was over, Noah let all the animals off the ark and told them to go forth and multiply. Several weeks later a couple of snakes came back and said "Sorry, but we've tried everything and we just can't seem to multiply."
So, Noah immediately went to work chopping down trees. After he had enough trees all bucked, he built a big table from the logs. He put the snakes on the table and said, "There. Now you can multiply." And lo, the snakes did multiply.
What kind of snakes were they?
Answer: Adders. Even adders can multiply on log tables.
Oh yeah! Makes yer sides hurt, huh?