Reply #147: no, it isn't! They are our kids first, not the school system! [View All]

[DollyM]

I remember writing a nice letter to the speech therapist at school was was giving our daughter tons of homework on top of her other homework. I don't know what she was trying to prove but this little girl was so stressed, she was literally pulling her hair out! I told the s.t. she would do a reasonable amount of work for this and we would work with her at home. Sure enough, I got a nasty letter from the school principle telling me that they were, and I quote "the experts here". I told her I was the expert of my child, not them. We homeschooled from then on.
The school system seems to think that they own your children since they get them 7 hours a day. I actually had my son's third grade teacher complain to me before the famous yearly "achievement tests" (Thank you George Bush)that she was competing with "family time" instead of kids working toward preparing for these achievement tests. Last time I checked, I have never heard a judge or police officer say that they someone's kid is a mess because they spend too much time with their kids.
Your kids are your gifts, you can't bring them into the world and then pass them off to someone else to raise and influence. Our son was labeled as mentally retarded until we pulled him out of public school. After he was homeschooled, his IQ scores went up by 15 points! Sorry but many times, the public school does a pitiful job. A parent is the person who can best bring out and nuture their child's talents and abilities. We do this "job" becasue we love our kids, not because we get a pay check.
Parents have been brow beaten over the last 40 or so years into thinking that the school system knows best for their child. It just isn't so. When we had kids in the public school system, if we wanted to take them out for a field trip that was stimulating and more important than the dribble they were learning (or not learning) in the classroom, we did it. That is why we had a child that the school system wrote off as MR and he proved them wrong when he was allowed to have the stimulation that only homeschooling could give him.
Never, never, never forget that they are your kids first and you know what is best for them.