Homeschool News & Views

Issue 40, September 28, 2007

From Homeschool Helpers

We have mentioned the trend of baggy pants which sag to show boxer shorts, a custom which has no redeeming value at all, yet it is one of those trends which is passed along in the public school culture. Other fads are passed the same way.

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer, September 24:

For weeks, Lacey wavered at the edge of death, kept in a drug-induced coma to give her struggling body every chance to heal. A tube kept her breathing. Operations to cut out the infection were needed nearly every day.

The only cause doctors could guess at was the tongue piercing 18-year-old Lacey Filosa got without her mother knowing about it.

Lacey already had ear and belly button piercings. She'd been working on her mother to let her get one more a tongue ring.

Reedes was dead-set against it.

"I had heard horror stories," she said.

That night at the hospital, Lacey's mom learned that about two weeks earlier, her daughter had gone to a local shop and gotten her tongue pierced.

It took a while for Lacey to work up the nerve to get the tongue piercing. "I didn't think I was going to be brave enough to do it," she said.

She worried it would hurt. But when they stuck the needle through her tongue, she said that she instead felt an adrenaline rush. "It wasn't bad at all," she said.

Lacey did have trouble eating with the barbell-shaped jewelry stuck through her tongue. But she didn't notice any other problems for about a week. Then, she began to feel unusually tired, as if she was getting a cold or the flu. Her throat started hurting. She made a dental appointment to recheck an abscessed tooth. X-rays were taken of her mouth. The dentist took one look at the results and said, "You need to get to the hospital right now."

Two friends drove her to the Everett hospital. She later was told that if she had arrived just 30 minutes later, she would have died.

The bills for her medical care hit nearly $525,000, her mother said. Luckily, insurance paid all but $1,000.”

This girl had caught an infection from the tongue piercing, with a bacteria that was natural in her mouth, but not in her bloodstream.

Body piercing is another fashion fad, mostly passed by peer pressure in the public schools. When someone is willing to endure an attachment in the tongue, with all that pain and inconvenience, just to try to be somebody in the public school culture, that shows the enormous power of peer pressure. In this particular case, the peer pressure meant a lot more to the girl than parent pressure. Even though her mother opposed it and forbid it, the girl went ahead and got her tongue pierced and her body infected.

It is very important that young people have friends, but it is even more important that those friends be positive, uplifting people. It is important for those who claim to follow Christ that those they fellowship closely with also want to do that. However, in today’s world those young people are far outnumbered by those who are most interested in being like the world, and following the latest mindless fashions like baggy pants, body piercing and homosexuality.

Homeschool parents must work at providing social opportunities for their students to have these uplifting friendships. The question some may have is:

What can you do?

The first thing you should do for homeschool activities is use what’s already available. That means you have to find what’s available. I sometimes hear homeschool parents say that there is nothing at all in their area. I really find that hard to believe.

There are many homeschool groups now throughout the country. It is truly amazing to see what has been done in homeschool activities, all spontaneously created by the parents. For example, in our general area we have homeschool orchestra, drama, football, baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, chess, roller skating, ice skating, bowling and reel dancing. I’m sure there are more, but I am just recalling these off the top of my head.

Notice that I said that these programs exist in our general area. That would be from thirty to sixty miles away. Around our own little town of about 600 people, there are very few homeschool activities which go on. We have a number of homeschoolers around here, even in this small area, but their attempts to establish a pattern of organized homeschool activities have not gotten very far. A homeschool parent must be willing to travel to get involved in activities. That is a cost that has to be paid, more so since the price of gasoline and vehicles has skyrocketed. If your kids are going to be on a ball team, you’re going to have to travel. They don’t have a yellow school bus paid for with tax dollars to take them all over the place. They just have you. That is still cheaper, though, than having your kid come down with an infection from body piercing, or the results of some of the other public school fads, such as sexually transmitted diseases or AIDS.

When you look for activities for your homeschoolers, don’t be selfish. You may never find the perfect activity with perfect people, according to your criteria. Don’t just look at what your family can get from the activity. Also consider what your family can do in these activities to help the other homeschool families involved. Homeschool activities are successful only because some parents are willing to do a whole lot of work for their children, and for the children of other homeschool families. Don’t be just a taker, where you participate in the activities but don’t add much. Be a giver, trying to do whatever you can to make the activities fun and rewarding for your children and the other homeschoolers involved. I have said before that it would be fantastic if local churches would get involved and help homeschool parents with these social events, as a ministry to young people and to Christian families. I know that recently a church in our area has stepped up and made its considerable facilities available to the homeschool group and that is a great blessing. But it is the parents who create these activities. There are many who do amazing things with little resources and time.

A homeschool parent should find these activities, participate in them and add to them. A sure way to get your homeschool kids involved with others is to serve the others. Maybe you’re a basketball coach or a music leader. If you share your talents with other homeschool students, then your children are pretty much guaranteed good activities and close friends.

Don’t isolate yourself so much by your approach that your family cannot participate in anything. Christian homeschool families have strong principles, and this leads them to be careful about what they do. But, for the most part, when you are involved with other Christian homeschool families, you are dealing with the finest families in the country. Surely you can find some activities you can share with them.

Again, there are multitudes of homeschool activities around the country for you to join. However, it still may be that in your area, or at least the distance you are willing to travel, there is little to choose from. What can you do?

You, hopefully with others, will have to begin your own activities. After all, at some point that is how all these activities got started, anyway. They all were begun from nothing.

So what activity will you do? Will you start a sports program, usually a basketball or volleyball team? That gets quite involved, and takes a lot of time and money renting gyms, buying uniforms, finding teams to play and paying referees. A lot of parents and students enjoy that very much, though, and are willing to put that much effort into it.

Another alternative is to have a sports league. Instead of traveling all over the country playing games in different cities, just set up a local informal homeschool league with local homeschool students, parents and homeschool grads. You will miss most of the expense and trouble of having an interscholastic type team, and the kids will still have a lot of fun with sports.

Drama productions are great fun for homeschool groups. Most of the fun is in the rehearsals, but when the final performance is given, it is very rewarding to the students and parents. These productions can be given for the local area or in local churches as an outreach for Christian homeschooling. As long as the play itself is uplifting, this is a very beneficial activity. It is not competitive as sports are, and can introduce the local communities to homeschooling. Nothing convicts people about homeschooling so much as seeing Christian homeschoolers.

Reel dances are another great homeschool activity. For whatever reason, reel dancing has been eagerly adopted by homeschoolers all across the country. It is a type of folk dancing that is centuries old, yet just as much fun today as it was in George and Martha’s time. It is similar to square dancing except done in lines instead of squares, and I think it’s simpler to learn. We have reel dances once a month, and the kids start calling early in the school year wanting to know the dates of the reel dances. If an area didn’t have a lot of other activities, I could see where they might have a reel dance every week.

Music is another area of interest which allows young people to join together in a mutual effort. Formal orchestras or bands are quite involved, and require a good deal of expertise from somebody. If that’s too demanding for you to begin with, you might have a music night once a week, where the young folks and parents just get together to play and sing music. Others who are not so musically inclined might want to come along, too, just for fun, and almost anybody can sing a little bit. This type of activity does not take much in the way of facilities. Just get together in somebody’s basement and start picking and grinning.

I feel that for young people to really develop close friendships and continuity in relationships, they have to get together at least once a week. Playing sports or music together, having drama practice or practicing reel dancing are all very doable activities for you to start, if you have no homeschool activities which already exist.

However, having said all that, I still think that the very best homeschool activity is just to have a place where the kids can get together every week. It might be a gym or a park and the main activity might be volleyball. Almost anybody can play volleyball. Our Monday Night Thing started out as music first, followed by volleyball. The young folks got so wrapped up in the excitement of volleyball, though, that the music got left behind. Now they need another activity, at least once a month, to get together and have a music jam session.

Our weekly activity involves older students and grads, but a weekly get together is good for students of all ages, even down to kindergarten. Often schools or churches will rent their gyms for a reasonable cost, which can be shared by the families. If a gym can’t be found, homeschool students can get together in a basement for a few hours of board games. But don’t do it on a hit or miss basis. Do it every week with consistency, and the activity will build loyalty and participation.

As I said, I believe that just getting together once a week for whatever activity the kids want to do is the very best activity of all. Even if students are involved in more structured activities, such as sports teams or orchestras or drama productions, they will still enjoy participating in the weekly get together. It costs each family very little. All they have to do is show up. They’re not obligated to be there, as they are with a sports team, and they make it when they can. It doesn’t take any scheduling or great planning. Somebody just has to put it on every week. This activity is good for all ages, not necessarily mixing kindergarten with teens, but the weekly get together is enjoyed by them all.

I am truly amazed that this easy, informal activity is not held in more areas, or even all areas. I hear of far more basketball programs than weekly get togethers. Even in our area where we have the Monday Night Thing for older teens and grads, nobody has one for the elementary students, who would enjoy it just as much. So now that I think about it, maybe we need to get something stirred up along that line. Maybe you do, too, in your area.

Again, -- I hear homeschool parents complain that they have no activities in their area. So either find some or make some. The older your homeschoolers get, the more important this is. But it is important for all age groups, even down to pre-school. Ask the kids and they will tell you so.

And if it seems like a lot of trouble for you parents to put on these activities, just imagine how your homeschooler would look trying to eat a hot dog with a pierced tongue. These fads, like saggy baggy pants and body piercing, which are passed from friend to friend in the public schools are not harmless. The latest fad is homosexuality. It’s becoming cool to be queer. Homeschool parents, go to the effort of finding or creating activities for your students, so they can have lots of positive friends.