Homeschool

No Charity in The Remnant ~ Part 1: The Sinner’s Prayer

March 22, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

by Whisper Rain

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. We’ll call her Whisper Rain. :) She was a furiously happy little girl- she had tons of energy & was sometimes loud and difficult, but her parents loved her very much just the way she was.

Soon her little brothers and sisters started coming along, and happy little Whisper got even happier. She was confident- and bossy sometimes- but her little brothers and sisters didn’t seem to mind. She made up stories and jumped on the couch, and even cussed like a sailor once in awhile.

One day Whisper’s Mommy was excited! She had met Jesus, and now she finally felt like, through his strength and with his guidance, she could be the Mommy she’d always wanted to be for her children. The Rain family started going to church, and the people there were very nice. The children did all kinds of fun things at church, and made friends. Whisper started public school and made more friends! Sometimes they’d take along some school friends to church, and they all had a good time together.

All the kids in the neighborhood liked to come play at the Rain’s house, because it was a fun place to be. Sometimes she’d go to their houses to play too, and sometimes while she was there she would see parents fighting and yelling, and slamming doors… and that kind of scared her. It was so different from home, where Mom and Dad would sing songs with you and play hide and seek and video games with you… Whisper liked her family.

When Whisper was in third grade, her Daddy lost his job and her parents decided to move down south to look for work. One of Daddy’s friends was planning to move too, and the families got to know each other and decided to make the move together! Their new friends, the Orwells, had a boy right around Whisper’s age, and they quickly became friends. Finally, the house sold and Whisper said goodbye to her grandparents and cried as she watched them get smaller and smaller in the U-Haul truck’s big rearview mirror. It was a LONG drive to this new state they were moving to! Everything there was different! Their new town was so small! The people there talked with a funny accent. But at least they had their new friends nearby!

Spoofing the Visionary Daughters Quiz

March 8, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly
[Note: After NLQ featured the Visionary Daughters Quiz back in November, "Jadeswan" posted her own version of the quiz on the forum. For NLQ readers who have not yet joined the forum, here's a small taste of what you're missing ~ :) ]
by Jadeswan
I decided to try my hand at spoofing the quiz. I’m sorry it’s so long but once I got started it was just too fun to stop. I guess I “just couldn’t help myself.” How foolish! Big Grin

(Just a note in case any of what I wrote steps on anyone’s toes: please keep in mind I grew up under this mentality. Yes, it is snarky but only towards the bonds that kept me chained to fear for so long.)

1—How do you respond when criticized /corrected?
A: I begin throwing things at the criticizer and screaming obscenities.
B: I laugh hysterically and start in on a litany of the criticizer’s faults.
C: In all circumstances I love to be criticized. I show a joyful countenance when my father chastises me (with a Biblical rod, of course) for leaving a book on the table. When my mother tells me that wearing my hair in a ponytail could cause men to lust, I am grateful for her sound advice. If no one is criticizing/correcting me at the moment, I go around asking everyone in my family what each one thinks I do wrong. It is so wonderful that I even self-criticize constantly.

2—I like to talk…
A: Nonstop—during funeral services, during my best friend’s graduation ceremony, at the bedsides of relatives who are deathly ill.
B: Only if everyone will shut up and listen to my awesomeness.
C: I don’t really talk at all. I only whisper—mostly Bible verses and quotes of things my father and pastor say.

3—When I talk I tend:
A: To tell racist jokes and ribald stories.
B: Let out the skeletons in EVERYONE’s closest.
C: See above. (Question 2, answer C.)

4—In the heat of the moment, I often:
A: Get into fist fights
B: Call my family names.
C: I don’t really have a “heat of the moment” because heat is akin to passion and passion is evil. I don’t really disagree with anyone ever—except for wicked people, of course—but when people do disagree I try to help them all agree with the truth. If they won’t I go to my room and read my Bible.

Dispelled ~ One Girl’s Journey in a Home School Cult ~ Part 7: Surviving Abuse

February 15, 2011
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

Please note: The content contained herein does not necessarily reflect the values and opinions of the NLQ blog and its administrators.

by Chandra

For a brief while, the storms in my life had appeared to reach a kind of calm. While I still, at 17, remained friendless and lonely, at least Candi’s abusive and bullying behavior towards me took a backseat as I prepared for my last year of “high school.”
My education, all twelve years of it, had been a complete fraud. The closer I become to achieving my degree in Special Education, the more I am dumbfounded how one parent could let their child’s academic achievements become so neglected. Not only am I a soon to be educator, I am also a parent of three sons who are all in school. Honestly, it sickens me.

My best friend and I have since concurred, that even though the state of Missouri had laws on what we had to achieve in order to graduate school, we both knew that neither of our mothers had done a thing to help keep us up to date and within the bounds of one of the nation’s laxest homeschooling laws. We both understood that in order to graduate, we had to meet certain requirements within our high school transcripts. Though both of us pleaded for help, our mothers ignored our pleas. We took matters into our own hands (just to have freedom!) and forged our own transcripts. Not my proudest moment, and I am sure that I did myself no favors. However, to borrow a cliché’: Desperate times call for desperate measures. If every state had strict oversight of homeschooling families, and a social worker assigned to each family in order to catch neglect and abuse, then this would not be an issue.

I can say with a great amount of confidence that based on my preliminary research, nearly 80% of homeschooling graduates that I have spoken with never completed 100% of the requirements that were needed in their state in order to graduate (if that state had no oversight or accountability written into their laws). The only ones who have met these standards, within these lax states, were the ones whose parents either a) enrolled them in an on-line learning school or b) their parents’ had a higher degree (e.g. a Masters) and a great amount of emphasis was placed on academic achievement (not character achievement). Someone needs to intervene on behalf of these children, and something needs to be done to rework the current laws on homeschooling. Yet again another reason I write.

I was pretty lonely in my senior year, and really regretted the fact that when I spoke to my Grandmas they would frequently ask me if I ever wanted to attend a senior prom. Wanting to please my parents, and escape the brainwashing of my mom, I gave them the answer that my parents needed to hear. I was happy being homeschooled, and “saving” myself for that one special person. Dating in high school, I told them, was wrong. Deep down, I wished that my mom had been out of the range of hearing so that I could have a private conversation with one of them and tell them just how unhappy I was. Not only was I not allowed to tell them what was really going on in my life, I was never trusted to talk to them apart from my mom. I was deeply saddened that I was missing out on such a big part of high school. I would look at my cousins’ prom pictures and my heart would cry. I longed to have a formal gown, longed to dance, longed to just have fun. And more than anything, I longed to have a friend.

Steadfast Daughters in a Quivering World ~ Part 6: Soul-Binding

December 17, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

[Note: this series is dedicated to Quivering Daughtersby the former-Quiverfull moms at No Longer Quivering.]
by Daisy

My name is Daisy.

I am a good person…but I was a bad parent.

Tragically, by choosing QF/patriarchal fundamentalist methodology as the pattern for my home, believing that it would provide the very best insurance against messing up with parenthood, I messed up. I messed up badly. I hurt my kids and, worse, I silenced them when they tried to tell me about it. Criticizing your parents is, of course, disrespectful and therefore opening a dangerous door that may lead a child ultimately to rebelling against God – and as I believed that put my child in danger of hellfire, of course, I conscientiously nipped dissent in the bud at every opportunity.

As it happens, my eyes were just opening to the dreadful truth that QF had sold me a bill of goods when my oldest child found her voice. I was on the way out of QF teaching, patriarchal Christianity and my marriage when that beautiful daughter tried to describe her pain to me by starving herself almost to death. Shortly after she began her lengthy treatment for anorexia, another of my children found a way to tell me that her soul was in agony. A razor blade and a veritable hill of pills were her loud-hailer.

If you, like me, raised your children in QF until at least their early teens, you may have already had to endure the sorrow of watching your children rise up and call you Monster, or at least, Failure. If you haven’t yet, it is my opinion that, you probably will. And, believe it or not, this is a good, good thing. I do hope your child does not need to resort to the dramatic acts my oldest two did in order to gain your attention, in fact, I would plead with you to listen to them well before that becomes necessary. But I want to encourage you with this:

As parents we should not be afraid of the volume or power or ugliness of the moment – or indeed the many moments – when our child finds her young adult voice. What we really should be afraid of is her silence. That compliant 25-year-old looks and sounds like an adult, but she has a 12-year-old soul. Like the tiny feet of Chinese girls crushed and tightly bound in rags by well-intentioned parents to prevent their healthy growth, that child may be the victim of a sort of a ‘soul-binding’. This disastrous mistake may have doomed her to endure both a crippling emotional agony and an ongoing rage that her mother could dare to insist that such a violent and abusive act was perpetrated because of love.

Dispelled ~ One Girl’s Journey in a Home School Cult ~ Part 6: Growing Pains

December 9, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

Please note: The content contained herein does not necessarily reflect the values and opinions of the NLQ blog and its administrators.

by Chandra

For the last six months, I dreamt of living in Texas and of being free. I knew that I didn’t know Gabe, but just the thought of getting out of the hell that I was currently in was all that I cared about. Everything else paled in comparison to the nightmare that I was living. My optimism still kept me going, and I was confident that even though I had been keeping an enormous secret from my parents, and that I didn’t know who this guy was, I would still find love and freedom. Two things I desperately wanted.

I began to use the babysitting and housecleaning money that I would receive weekly from our neighbors, to buy wedding magazines and collect things for my hope chest. I was truly convinced that the right way of doing things was to go through a betrothal process that would eventually end in a tightly monitored engagement period. I was determined to win the favor of this family by being the perfect example of a good homeschooled girl. My heart, for those six months, sang.

Maybe part of the reason why I am not so enamored with springtime as the majority of the populace is because nothing ever good came out of the months of February, March, and April for me. Our homeschooling conference was to be held in June, and by the time that April had made her entrance, mom and Candi were furiously working around the clock trying to finalize all of the many details that went into planning such a major event. This meant frequent phone conversations with one another that would last for well over six hours in a given day and also numerous phone calls to the speakers and vendors.

I knew from having been raised in this movement, that Candi would be speaking with Gabe’s dad, Mr. New, about his hotel arrangements and the sessions that he would be presenting to the flock. Candi and my mom took very seriously their role as leader, or “Shepard” as they referred to themselves. Much care and endless hours were spent with each convention speaker ensuring that the material they were presenting was exactly what they wanted “their people” to hear. Rather than being a facilitator of information, they felt they had been called by God to teach these “precious families” the way that God wanted them to live: in fear. We lived in fear of government, fear of extended family, fear of neighbors, fear of culture, and fear of the world and these fears dictated our belief system. Our homeschooling group had become an isolationist cult and it was led by two very powerful women: Candi and my mother.

Sometime in April, my mother began to carry around an air of hatred towards me again and I could tell that it was something that I had done, or failed to do. I knew to ask her what the problem was would be asking for unwarranted trouble so I kept my distance from her. I hid in my room to escape my toxic family and listened to Christian cassette tapes that I had bought covertly. My mom was adamantly opposed to Steven Curtis Chapman (too worldly), Michael W. Smith (too worldly), Newsboys (rock music was not Christian music), DC Talk (Christian rappers were wolves in sheep’s clothing), Amy Grant (she had an affair), Sandi Patty (she had an affair too), Rebecca St. James (not only did God hate rock music, Ms. St. James was not a “true homeschooler” and “not one of the flock”)…and of course every CD that I owned in my collection were from these artists. They lifted me up on the wings of hope and helped my heart to feel close to Christ. But I couldn’t sing along with them and I had to hide the tapes well.

Steadfast Daughters in a Quivering World ~ Part 2: Expectations

December 8, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

[Note: this series is dedicated to Quivering Daughters by the former-Quiverfull moms at No Longer Quivering.]
by Vyckie

Proverbs 22:6 says: Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Damn ~ I really hate that verse. Let me tell you why.

1) It is from this proverb that we Quiverfull moms got the idea that through diligent training we could ensure our children would become mature Christians firmly grounded in the Lord and His word. Of course, we all know that God has no grandchildren ~ our sons and daughters must come to their own faith in Christ ~ still, there is a promise implied in Proverbs 22:6 which leads QF parents to believe that by our intimate involvement in their day-to-day lives, we can influence our children for righteousness.

So we try.

2) It is from this same verse that our children get the idea that their adult future is our responsibility. I don’t think we ever blatantly taught our daughters that their marriage, their career (or lack thereof), their walk with God, their ultimate happiness ~ all are inseparably dependent upon their upbringing ~ but we did teach them the principle of authority … and with authority comes responsibility. If Quiverfull parents are going to claim the authority to guide and direct our daughters’ education, training, choice of a mate, career path (or lack thereof), and even their daily devotions and quiet time ~ then are we shocked when these same daughters blame the parents when things don’t work out and they are struggling?

In other words ~ we can’t say, “Mom & Dad are to be the primary influence over our children’s education” unless we’re also willing to be fully accountable when those children are in some ways unprepared for higher education, the marketplace or domestic duties due to gaps in their learning. We can’t spend years teaching our daughters to trust and expect their parents’ intimate involvement in their choice for a life mate, and later, when as young women, they are in relationships which are necessarily messy and imperfect, say, “Don’t blame me because you are unhappy!”

Of Pilgrims, Puritans, and Patriarchs

November 25, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

If everything you know about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims comes from “The Mouse on the Mayflower” or Mrs. Pumphrey’s “Stories of the Pilgrims” some of what you are about to read may shock you! Appropriately for Thanksgiving this article will show you how the Pilgrims, Separatists and Puritans pre-date today’s Christian Patriarchy movement.

by Hopewell

Back in England in the early days of the 1600s things were not going very well for anyone who didn’t really like the established Church of England. As a state-Church it was mandatory for folks to worship there and to financially support it. In the town of Scrooby and elsewhere there grew up little clusters of folks who just plain rejected the established Church and were so radical that they created their own Church in someone’s home. This was, of course, against the law—an early act of civil disobedience! The Scooby group and others looked to the New Testament, not the Church’s Book of Common Prayer, for direction in all things in life. These “radicals” felt the Book of Common Prayer “tampered with the original meaning of the Bible (Philbrick, 2006, p. 8). They even viewed hymns as a “corruption of God’s word” and sang only Psalms set to music and dared to read directly from the Bible! (p. 9).

Their theology set them apart from the established Church, too. They believed that after the Fall of Adam and Eve, God only made a covenant—only “saved” certain people. This became known as predestination and those few saved were known as “Saints” or the “elect.” This meant that no one knew who was saved [although they were always wondering about it—even in Church] and that there was not anything a person could do to change their status. They were constantly “comparing their own actions to those of others, since their conduct might indicate whether or not they were saved” (p. 9). They saw their Church as one of “visible Saints,” but not knowing who was and who was not, in fact, among the elect, the Church elders used discipline to deal with wayward members and even “excommunicated” those who refused to walk the “right path” as the elders saw it to be.

Eventually things became so bad in England that some Church members were jailed for their religious beliefs and practices. The Scrooby group moved to Holland. Interestingly, they found the religious tolerance and freedom there not to their liking! It gave THEIR members freedom, too! They started deciding for themselves what they believed—some even dared to reject infant baptism!!! (p. 16). A group in Holland led by John Robinson moved to Leiden and set up their own congregation with its own rules. Things eventually got intolerable again—this time because their children were becoming urban Dutch workers rather than rural English Christians. They boarded the Mayflower and the rest is told in myth and history books.

Visionary daughters quiz

November 21, 2010
Print FriendlyPrint Friendly

Over on the NLQ forum, we’ve all been taking Visionary Daughter’s “Are You A Fool?” quiz ~ it’s annoyingly hilarious ~ and I thought No Longer Quivering readers who aren’t on the forum might like the chance to join in on the fun.

Here’s question #1:

How do you respond when criticized/corrected?

1) I hate it! I get angry and defensive.

2) I usually laugh it off. (Sometimes I roll my eyes.)

3) If I get criticized for the same thing enough times, I usually start to take it seriously..

4) I’m thankful for the smallest hint of reproof and take it very seriously.

Take the Quiz!!

What do you think?