This post is going to be somewhat brief. It’s late and I have to get up in the morning. At the same time, I have to be honest and say that this subject grieves me (and I know it does many of you as well). One of the things that tears at me is the fact that this subject has been on my mind (and often discussed with Andrea) for years. About 3 years ago, Andrea and I discussed something she found (a story I may tell in a subsequent post) and the weight of it has never really left me since. Part of that weight has been the thought that what I am going to talk about in this post and a few future ones needs to be done. Have you ever had that feeling that I can’t not say this?

In the post below Doc left a link to Growing Families International (Ezzo). As it turns out, these folks are ones that Andrea and I have discussed before. To our understanding, they promote very similar treatment of children as do the authors of TTUAC.

I have scraped the following from their homepage:

The primary focus of Christian parenting should be defining God to our children and we believe that task is best accomplished by introducing and guiding our children in and by God’s moral law.

On Friday night, while reading, I found this:

You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:4 NIV)

In the New Testament, whenever the term ‘the law’ is used without any distinction (i.e. a specific law) it refers to the law given to Israel in the Old Testament. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul is telling them that setting out with a focus on observance of the law (i.e. Ezzo’s defining God via moral law) is contrary to Christianity and salvation. What we can conclude from Paul’s statement is that children will not learn about (or get to know) God by being taught as recommended by the Ezzos.

Without promise of when, I’ll pick this subject up in another post.

(cross posted to Andrea’s blog)

Just wanted to let everyone know Andrea is resting. She’s sore and weak, but otherwise doing quite well under the circumstances. I’ve done all the laundry so she’ll not have any of it to do before next weekend and looked after alot of the things around the house to make her week as easy as possible.

The note I’ll add here is that except homeschool journal blogs, I’ve done no blog reading since Wednesday. It will likely be Monday night before I get a chance to do much catching up.

Also note, there’s a blog ad over there on the left. Sounds interesting.

Thanks to every one. I’m home, Andrea slept well this evening. She has moved from the couch to our bedroom and is going to have a bite to eat before going to sleep. Hopefully, I’ll be able to join her before it gets too, too late. Until this evening, I’d only talked to her on the phone, but from what I can tell she is feeling a little better.

This is our 6th week of living separately. It has been a challenge. But, over the years it has been fairly common for me to be away working at this time of year. For the last 4 years, I’ve been home for both of our birthdays and our anniversary. This year, it looks as though I will be away for all of them. Today is one of those special occasions that if I were home would involve a nice bouquet of flowers. It had occurred to me that I could have arranged to have them delivered. But better yet, we’ve arranged to spend some of the day together. So, for this morning, I’d just like to say

Happy Anniversary Sweetheart!

The image below was created by Rebecca. To read more on the boycott click on the image.

The note I would like to add is that TTUAC is not the only parenting book which advocates a judgement (i.e. crime, punishment, shame, humiliation) based parenting approach. I don’t have the info on any others at this time. But I do recall Andrea and I discussing more than one of these books over the years. If you know of others could you drop the info in a comment? TIA

Via: Joanne who has provided additional resource links here.

More US federal legislation. Mary has researched the bill.

HT: Susan

Joanne has asked the following question in her comment on the Yet another Adventure post:

Will there be any kind of moderation on your end in terms of parenting philosophy that is endorsed? I don’t expect a complete lack of punishment or spanking. Just protection from the culture of abuse being embrace by more and more Christians.

I’ve had a few hours to consider this question. I think mostly that I am saddened by the fact that moderation may be necessary for something other than a spam blog or link farm blog. It isn’t as though Andrea and I had not discussed this more than once in the months leading up to getting the domain and space to run it. In fact, we had talked about the homeschool journal site before we started this one. And we have always understood and agreed that removing an offensive blog might be necessary.

But, offering homeschoolers a place to blog where they didn’t have to advertise or promote something was worth that risk. The story of Sean Paddock (see below) may mean that an ‘if’ has turned into a ‘when’.

Andrea and I set up homeschooljournal.net to allow homeschooling families to talk about homeschooling. I would personally like our society to have the opportunity to see that we are not all nut cases.

What was done to Sean Paddock had nothing to do with homeschooling. Not all children who endure such treatment, or other forms of abuse, die and if the statistics are reliable, the vast majority of those children are not homeschooled. I would expect a parent might talk about parenting philosophy because it does play a part in home education. I talk about parenting philosophy in this blog. What I would not expect is a set of instructions for crime and punishment under the guise of ‘discipline’. One of the reasons I was satisfied with the name homeschooljournal is that the name creates a line in the sand.

Doing this is a new adventure for both of us. Perhaps, I’m really trying to address 2 questions: Do I want to ‘moderate’ a blog? No. Would I? Yep.

I first read about this on Thursday night at Carlotta’s. If you look on Carlotta’s sidebar, she has a number of posts on the subject of child welfare. They are all worth a read.

Andrea and I briefly discussed the story in a google chat. Andrea told me not to read the linked news story. And I haven’t. If I have time and the heart to do so, I’ll write on this subject sometime. As much as our society pressures us to compartmentalize our selves, I do not for a moment regret that I cannot help but feel an indescribeable amount of sorrow, not only for this young man, but also for the thousands upon thousands of children who are treated in a similar manner.

For now, I’ll borrow the words of Valerie who has written a good post about it:

But one thing that I don’t understand is the insistence of some Christian sects on using the older bits of the Bible — translated from a far more distant time and culture – as t.h.e. guidelines. Those people were neolithic nomads. At least Jesus was a person who lived an urban life. Why not focus on the newer parts with the message of love and acceptance, ’suffering’ children to come unto me, doing good to the ‘least of my brothers?’ How much more ‘least’ can we get than small children. (But that leads to a different can of worms. Why beat children you’ve insisted have a right to be born?)

Good question: Why?

In some of my reading today, I’ve come across many comments asking parents if they really wanted a better school system, then why not stay in it and work towards improving?

On the surface, it seems like a fair and valid question. But what then do you tell a parent who has worked with teachers, who has argued with principals, who has shown up to every meeting, volunteered at every event and in some cases been the president of the PTA?

What do you tell that parent whose child still didn’t get adequate help for learning disabilities, still got bullied, still got beated up with teachers present? What do you tell that parent whose child is bored in school, who is unchallenged, who gets in trouble for working ahead, whose teacher refuses to believe for months they can read well above grade level and forces them to chose books below their skill? Or worse, what do you tell the parent who is begging and pleading for school officials to “do something” to help their child just so they can read, let alone pull up to their grade level, but the child gets moved ahead to keep up with their peers?

What then, when the battle is so uphill?

So why not do it yourself? It’s certainly less work. Less begging, pleading, cajoling, arguing, fighting, less stressful, less money.

After all, in the end it is about the child, not the system.

Ron and I have been working on a top-secret project for the homeschooling community and we need some testers for feedback. It is a homeschooling weblog site powered by Wordpress MultiUser, a branch of WP (kinda like WP Lite).

Features:
a chance to try out Wordpress
your own subdomain
your choice of username
over 50 templates (and growing)
comment moderation & spam controls
invite your friends
archiving by category
options for greater functionality
importing and exporting content
integrated blogroll – can import current blogroll
multiple authors
site statistics
static pages (like an About page)
future posting
password protected posts
file uploading
trackbacks/pings

And did we mention this will be FREE? (Donations would be accepted but not required.) We are not affiliated with any business, publication, or association. There are NO ads. This site is not geared to any specfic kind of homeschooler, but ALL homeschoolers.

This is a private venture of ours. Because we are still in the testing phase, we have set membership to a limited number of invites. Please leave a comment if you would like to try it out.

(cross-posted to both blogs)