When we moved from a city to a small town, I found that the people here cared a little too much about what other people do. They just love to talk about other people who are different from them in any way. So here I am, older than most of the other mothers around here because they started having kids right after they finished high school--if they even finished high school, married to a guy who rides with the PGR and sometimes wears his leathers and a do-rag into the local stores. I made the mistake of putting a picture of my son wearing his leather vest and talking to some of the other PGR riders (who do look kind of rough, but they are really good people) into the homeschool yearbook. We had gone to visit a VA nursing home and my son and I rode in a chase vehicle, but people like to talk. I also made the mistake of telling another homeschool mom whose daughter is also gifted that I wished my son could go to the public school part time for things like band or the once a week gifted pull-out class. Another homeschool mom heard me talking and I found out that quite a few homeschoolers here think their kids should be kept away from public school, or government school as they call it, because of all those bad influences. I made the mistake of having only one child at home to homeschool because you are supposed to have a lot of kids. I was told by several homeschoolers that they always knew they wanted to homeschool and had more than one child so their kids would have someone to play with. One of the homeschool moms during homeschool PE talked about how "smart" her kids were because they were good at physical activities in front of my son who has motor dyspraxia. I sent an email that I thought was only going to the mom with the gifted daughter about how lonely it was homeschooling because we felt different but I accidentally sent it to the whole homeschooling group and I think my son was right when he said he thought we were being shunned. Some homeschoolers with our group went out of their way to avoid us at the Walmart.
When the principal, a teacher, and the superintendent told me I needed to homeschool my son after kindergarten, I made the mistake of complaining about the school to anyone who would listen. I questioned what I thought was a ridiculous policy of academic redshirting and I wanted to know why they thought coloring in the lines was more important than learning, and why they thought all little boys had to play football and all little girls had to look pretty and be cheerleaders. I talked to a parent of a child in another school district about our school when my son took swimming lessons a few years ago not realizing the swimming teacher was a teacher at the school. It seemed like everyone I talked to in this town was a teacher, a former teacher, or there was a teacher in their family and I was an outsider criticizing their way of doing things. My son's best friends' mother is a special ed teacher and she is the one person who I think really understands my situation, but I think she feels sorry for my son because he is all by himself with me during the school year. She thought part time school would have been best for my son but it is not allowed in our state.
My husband and I had to decide what was most important for my son's future. He needs to go to college because he won't be able to do jobs that require a lot of physical strength and ability. It might be fine for most of the kids in our small town who graduate high school after being on the honor roll for years but for some reason can only manage to get an average composite score of 19 on the ACT.
