“You might want to take those off,” I said to my then 12-year-old son about the sunglasses he was wearing.
“Why?” he asked, incredulous that I didn’t see the magic in his obviously amazing sunglasses (a roadside find from his paper route).
“Well,” I said quietly, not wanting to hurt his feelings, “just because it’s almost dark, and you won’t be able to see your way around the corn maze. You know, honey, when you’re homeschooled sometimes you don’t know what’s cool (yes, that’s what we said in the 80‘s and 90‘s) and what’s not so cool. I’m just trying to tell you what I think before someone else tells you in a not-so-nice way.”
Well, he pressed on and wore them as the sun was going down behind the horizon. As he exited the car and joined a group of nearby acquaintances, I waited with the windows down, and I heard, “Why are you wearing those?”
“Because...” he responded semi-confidently.
“Because it’s dark, and it’s stupid to wear sun glasses in the dark,” said one of the group of kids.
“I know,” he responded much less confidently as he returned to the car to put his beloved sunglasses back.
It probably was about a year later when we had the same conversation regarding a pair of sweet, weight-lifting, fingerless gloves he was so keen on that he wanted to wear them to his first basketball practice. He stubbornly insisted, once again, that my fashion sense was thoroughly outdated. I was, once again, vindicated by “popular” opinion. You know what? Fingerless gloves and sunglasses are cool... under the right circumstances and in the right context.
The strange part? I wanted him to be able to wear those things, because I wanted him to feel confident and good about who he was and what he liked. Why did I advise against it? Aside from practicality and (in the case of the sunglasses) pure safety, I was afraid of the cruelty he would almost certainly encounter at the hands of his peers. On the other hand, I find him truly peerless.
I was not homeschooled, but I remember those kids. The boys always wore high-waisted high waters, polo shirts with the tiny alligator on the right pectoral (yes, just call me a nerd - I love it), and penny loafers. The girls (and moms) wore the t-shirt, long jean jumper, and white tennis shoes. I could see them coming a mile away. It was almost like a nerd uniform. They came to the private school I attended for standardized testing and sometimes sports - awkward sports. Their bizarre way of not even seeming to notice or care what everyone else in the whole world was wearing and how they were acting was great fodder for jokes. While everyone I knew was wearing Air Jordans, Oakley sunglasses, B.U.M Equipment sweatshirts, Guess jeans, and Paris Sport Club anything, homeschoolers didn’t even seem to know that they could buy a pair of $70 jeans. They were really missing out - poor things.
Enter these 17 (as my oldest son likes to remind me) years later, and I am a homeschooler. My older sister became one fairly recently and started to head up a local homeschooling group. When the former leader of the group handed her the reins, she said one thing my sister laughed about with me later, “Homeschoolers are rebellious by nature. So don’t be surprised when they buck the system.” She thought that was hilarious... “rebellious by nature”? That was truly the last thing she said she would ever think about homeschoolers. I laughed too, but, honestly, I’m realizing that we are! I don’t want to do anything I’m told to do. I like my flexibility. I like answering to God alone. I like freedom.
We recently welcomed a foreign exchange student from India. We love him. His name is Joel. He rooms with our oldest son, and he is truly becoming part of our family. A stipulation of the organization through which he came to the USA was that he would need to attend school somewhere. I thought this would be good for all of us - getting in a normal school routine... getting a dose of another reality - one that most people already deal with if they have school-aged children (and for which I truly applaud them). I’ve discovered something. I.hate.school. I’m trying to figure out why. After all, I went to school. Many schools are great. Many teachers are amazing. I think I just really am rebellious. I don’t like being forced to do things about which normal people don’t even thing twice - like having a non-flexible schedule, baking cookies, volunteering for various school duties, raising funds, signing permission slips...
One of the biggest questions I field (and so do all other homeschoolers) aside from, “Who monitors you?” (as if I and my kids are a danger to society if our educational style isn’t monitored) is “How do you get them properly socialized?” Well, as new homeschoolers 6 years ago, my husband and I were very concerned with making that a priority. After all, we didn't want our kids becoming home-grown weirdos like all of the homeschoolers we'd ever seen. I remember reading an article at the time in which a man mocked the idea that putting uneducated people who lack impulse control with other uneducated people who lack impulse control (children with other children) would somehow make both groups of people smarter and better... that this somehow constitutes "socializing" children. His argument was that the best way to socialize children for maximum maturity and sociability was with more mature and experienced people - people with more confidence in their identity - people less likely to be harsh and unkind with them - namely adults. I saw his point. In general, I find that children who socialize often with adults are more easily able and ready to talk with me and feel comfortable just carrying on conversation with me as peers would. I have had some of my best conversations with our kids’ homeschooled friends.
I wear makeup. I have since I was 11 years old and noticed that my mom and all the other girls I thought were “pretty” were wearing it. I am still scared to leave the house without at least some measurable makeup on my face. My girls could not be less interested in touching the stuff. We went to a bling store the other day at a local bazaar. Claire and I browsed all the cute, shiny hair pretties, clothes, hats, jewelry, shoes, and other accessories. Out of all the things Claire could have purchased with her long-anticipated birthday money, she chose a plaid pink, green, and purple golfer’s flat cap and a matching green velour purse in the shape of a big flower. She wears these with some cargo capris, a t-shirt, and brightly colored Chucks, and the kid looks like a million bucks in an outfit I would never have chosen for her. Most of the time, she’s still just a kid... a marvelously unjudged kid. She’ll wear two mismatching hair ties in her tangled hair, hole-ridden (and not stylishly or intentionally so) pants that are too short, a t-shirt that’s two sizes too big, and shamefully dirty shoes (to match her often shamefully dirty face). These types of things used to make me cringe. “What will people think?” I thought. I love to see my kids coming into their own. My handsome 17 year old and his “piece” as he calls the soul patch under his bottom lip... my cute adolescent daughters with not a self-conscious bone in their bodies, my young’n’s who wear whatever is their favorite color or is the most comfortable. (Tonight Violet wore an old pair of secondhand pink stretchy pants, a totally different color of pink and black shirt, and dirty pink crocs.) Nobody is there every day to make them feel like freaks if they’re not clones. I’m not pointing at anyone else’s kids. I was that clone... the one to notice the freaks that didn’t fit in with the rest of “us” in the “real world”.
One of my favorite things about the very diverse group of homeschooled people we know and with whom we associate is that they are largely uninhibited by social expectations and are, for the most part, unabashedly original. It’s not uncommon to see kids in the local group we attend who have pink or purple hair, amazing/fun/original fashion sense, or unbridled passion for nerdery. When we go to a group meeting (which is relatively rare), we will see kids with disabilities, a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicity, people who don’t “fit in” elsewhere. In the home environment, they have the luxury of remaining "safe" and unjudged most of the time.
As Joel started his first week at the local school, he was confronted with the fact that he did not have a cool phone. Smart phones were everywhere... in the lunch room, in the classroom, on the bus, etc. Partly due to this, and for other unknown reasons, he found himself very lonely there. We don’t provide a phone for our own kids. We haven’t needed them to have one until they were driving. When Austin began to drive, got a job, and paid for his own addition to our monthly contract, he got a phone. If he messes up, his phone is our phone. We wouldn’t let him have a smart phone even if he paid for it himself. The rest of our kids don’t have phones either. We make the kids leave technology of all kinds in the living room when they go to bed at night. We want them to associate with God and with other humanoids. We want them to feel a little lonely or bored at night. After all, that was always when I did the best reflection on my day and my self and prayer about both. If they went to school, a phone would likely be more of a necessity... adding mega cost to our bill. What they don’t know other kids have, they don’t miss. We don’t find it necessary to waste money on brand name clothes they’ll outgrow in 3 months. We don’t feel obligated to spend on electronics and toys they don’t know exist. Not until recently did I realize how much money we save by having the kids here all day and not having TV to show them what they’re “missing”. After only a week at school, it was clear that if Joel did not have a smart phone, buy school lunch (instead of taking his own), and wear what the others were wearing, he would never be cool enough to socialize - no matter how original or fun or friendly he was. He would always be set apart - and not in a good way but rather in a “freakish” way. This would likely not be his experience at many schools, but it was in the one he attended.
Please understand, I know that there are people in all schooling options who display this type of originality, and I know some that come to mind as I write. I applaud the ability of those people to stand out - which is much easier for us to do in the safety of our own accepting home-environment than it would be for us if we were daily faced with the reality of not fitting a mold. However, I am embracing the fact that, at least for awhile, their originality is being appreciated and is growing unhampered by negative comments, embarrassment, or criticism from the outside world. They may not always be able to remain completely oblivious to what is expected of them from the standpoint of society in general, but they know what we expect of them... to be kind, to respect others, to forgive, to ask forgiveness, to laugh, to work hard, to be a friend... to be a kid. The rest will come soon enough. Is that sheltering my kids? I hope so.
A few years ago, my son and a friend of his watched a movie that contained the line, “I’m not some God-loving, homeschooled FREAK!” Since then, they laughingly call one another and their other friends variations of that line. “You homeschooled freak” has become one of the staples around here in such a funny way that Levi (5 at the time), actually called one of his friends that attends regular school a “homeschooled FREAK” in a not-so-nice way during an argument they were having over a video game. It was so hard not to laugh that I admittedly burst out laughing really hard and said, “Um, Levi... you’re the homeschooled freak here,” and then I made him apologize. I called this boy’s dad and told him what happened, and he laughed about it too. After all, I think normal people all feel like freaks sometimes. We feel deep down that inadequacy: We’re not doing enough. We aren’t enough.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 139:13-14 that God created us, knit us together, in fact, in our mother’s womb... making us “fearfully and wonderfully”. These things make me realize that - just like the rest of creation - after God made me, He looked at me and said, “This is good.” That was before I ever did a thing. If He was happy with what He made when He looked at me, who am I to be unhappy with it? If He was happy with what He made when He made my neighbor, my co-worker, my boss, my classmate, my friend, my enemy... who am I to say otherwise? Can I ugly up what He made good? Yes, and I do every day. Maybe I am even doing it right now. I hope grace covers me.
When confronted with the idea of having to shave his beloved facial hair for a school dress code, Joel balked saying that he would look like a girl without it. We tried to reassure him that he would not and that it was very common to have a shaved face in the USA, but he would not be consoled. Austin said, “If you have to shave, so will I. And look, the dress code doesn’t say we can’t grow some sweet sideburns.” “Yes!” I added, “That would be awesome!” Joel was not as buoyed as we’d hoped and responded sardonically, “Yes, because I want to look like Wolverine.” I said, “I was thinking more James Dean than Wolverine.” Neither of them knew the screen legend to whom I was referring, and then it was my turn to be disappointed. However, I realized that every culture has its expectations for appearance and behavior. Not all of this is bad. It's in us to want to fit in with other people... to be part of a group. Emulating what has been accomplished by others is an essential bent of humanity, but it's what has never been seen before that truly has the power to move the human heart. That is why originality is so essential. We live in such a marvelous day and age - in which we can instantly see, via the internet and television, the amazing things people do... from over-the-top marriage proposals, to amazing rescues, to musical talent... These things can be so pervasive that we forget that merely being the human God created you to be is truly amazing.
I hope I am encouraging you to not just encourage originality in your own kids and the ones you love but to help your kids appreciate it in others too. If we see a rainbow mullet at Walmart or a giant red afro walking down the street or some sweet lamb chop sideburns, we are the first ones to stop and let the kids admire it... take it in... love it, and maybe even tell the person so.
