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Post by arietty on Aug 10, 2010 22:48:14 GMT -5
Okay I have watched the Nancy Campbell video posted by Sierra in this thread (thank you Sierra).
She does not come across as weird AT ALL for what she is--Australian, christian, pentecostal woman in that age group. She is completely typical and I have heard many people who are even more exaggerated in mannerisms than she. Now I know you all want to watch this stuff and think it's psychopathic demons or whatever but you are incorrect. It's a misreading of cultural differences though I think there are similarities in some American pentecostals as well.
No one talks like this in the Reform churches! LOLOLOL
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Post by arietty on Aug 8, 2010 23:50:03 GMT -5
Dame Edna does incorporate it! Though she talks a bit fast. But yes, Dame Edna is pulling the Grand Dame thing. Turn into a "keep sweet" christian and you would probably nail it.
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Post by arietty on Aug 8, 2010 23:38:17 GMT -5
People!
Narcissism, psychopathy, inner ugliness, demon possession!! Please could we rein it in a bit.
Most people wouldn't know this but Nancy's sing song voice and lilting manner of talking is very typical of Australian women in her age group, even more so coming from the state she lived in for many years. It is so quaintly odd that I have a few non-Australian friends who imitate it for amusement, and we sometimes even have mock conversations like this because we have all known women who speak in this manner. It's something of a Grand Dame kind of thing and while more common in Christian circles is certainly not exclusive to them. It's actually a cultural oddity. I have had 3 pastor's wives in churches I was in speak like this to varying degrees.
Yes her teachings are cracked and dangerous. But I think the other speculations based on her mannerisms are not useful.
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Post by arietty on Aug 6, 2010 22:08:25 GMT -5
If I had read that article by Serene in the latest AR when in my QF days I would have been SO convicted that whatever I was currently stressed or unhappy about was really.. NOTHING. That article would have absolutely inspired me to put up with no hot water, 6 kids in one tiny room, everything falling apart, husband enraged all the time.. I probably would have read it 20 times to encourage me to persevere.
Funny how "persevere" ends up meaning "don't deal with" in this lifestyle.
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Post by arietty on Aug 6, 2010 21:57:57 GMT -5
I have SO much to say about this.. I began my walk into QF with Above Rubies 20 years ago so this topic is always of interest. Firstly I completely relate to Serene's brainwashing herself into being positive. I did that for many many years, lived with almost no hot water in a shack (nothing as bad as Serene's situation though.. that is very painful to read). Positive, positive, positive, count your blessings.. and I still have some residuals of this today (not facing realities because it is still too easy to slip into some spin about it). I know how compelling it is to be in survivalist mode.. it gives meaning to everything. It's never dull because you are fighting for your mood and sanity 24/7. When I read Vyckie's stories of horrendous pregnancies I see the same thing, survivalist mode. Living in very difficult circumstances is kind of addictive, your identity is more and more wrapped up in being strong and overcoming and all that stuff that people leading much more comfortable (lukewarm) lives don't have. You constantly feel you are experiencing GROWTH and learning hard lessons. Yes it is certainly asceticism. KM made a good point about money, sometimes people really do not have the money to fix things.. what money they do have may be allocated to other stuff, like a business they need to run to make any kind of money. However it is really sad to come from a big close family and be living like this. Half my kids are adults now, though not at the grandchild stage yet. I can say though with absolute assurance that if in the future one of them ended up in such severe dire straits (house destroyed by flood!!) they would NOT be left to live in it with little children. We are a BIG family and we would band together and offer practical and real help including housing. So even if this is the case for Serene (no money) what is the point of having a huge close family if you aren't there to help? I am sure many people read this story in AR and wonder the same thing, no matter how devoted to the magazine they are. It seems to fly in the face of decades of family, family, family teachings from this publication. Now it's quite likely that Serene and her husband have refused offers of help, homes to move into. It's an easy thing to judge, that the family isn't helping, but it may be they just refuse to accept stuff and stubbornly do not wish to admit this homesteading project is a failure and move on. I have known so many families like this However given the ages and quantity of the children I do believe it's time for the family to step in and be pushy on this manner, this is not safe or healthy AND it does not seem temporary. Here's some info about the adopted children and the water problem (the land has no water, it's not pipes): www.oldpathsfamilyfarm.net/blog/2008/02/22/sam-serene/It's very hard for a man who has slaved away at homesteading building a house from scratch to admit that this has actually failed. It means that all that work you did was for nothing if you just give up and move into a rental home in the suburbs. But what do you put first, your children or your pride? This is all complicated by believing you were called by GOD to build on this land.. very hard to admit it isn't working out. I know my QF friend has persevered into absolute financial disaster because they have not been able to admit mistakes having decided that every whim and choice they ever make is a Called By God decision. I think the positive spin has meant that they have talked about them as their children and adopted even when it was all up in the air. I don't understand how adoption agencies allow adoptions when a person has no running water. I'm copying the info that is there in case that page disappears. I think it's a real disservice that the Campbells don't discuss the difficulties of adopting older children. I do not get this AT ALL. You will find plenty out there about RAD and the huge challenges of adopting older children from war torn countries but not from the Campbells who just drop any mention of the ones that didn't work out and focus only on the positives. Don't they want to equip people looking into adoption, to help people be prepared? It's creepy AND deceptive. They have obviously walked through some tough times with adoption, don't they have anything to share about it? btw someone is sure to object to all this gossiping about the Campbells. I think that because they have been holding their lives up as examples of godliness for over 30 years, detailing the bits they want people to emulate that filling in these blanks is not malicious or intrusive. It's just the rest of the picture that they have been mailing into peoples homes for decades.
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Post by arietty on Aug 3, 2010 22:25:37 GMT -5
I went to an Above Rubies meeting in which Val Stares preached that you have given a piece of your "soul" to every man you ever had sexual contact with.. she became all tearful and confessed that this haunted her because "somewhere out there is a man other than my husband that has a piece of my soul".
I was deep into fundyism at that point but I thought this was a load of crap.
Also looking back, what the heck was the point of that teaching? She was preaching to a group of women who were no doubt mostly converted to christianity as adults, married women with some kind of past. Why did we need to be told that this supposedly irreparable loss of our souls had occurred?
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Post by arietty on Aug 3, 2010 19:29:00 GMT -5
I was reading through the blog of the woman who had the Arby's proposal and found her strongly worded criticism of Debi Pearl. She has a couple posts critiquing the Pearls and looks like she will continue them. kristinaskeeps.blogspot.com/2010/03/pearls-and-no-greater-joy-introduction.htmlIt's nice to see that not everyone swallows it all.. especially happy about this as Kristina is having her first baby soon so may not embrace those abusive "training" methods. It's a good reminder IMHO that people can follow some aspects of this movement but not embrace everything. I also wonder if the Pearl's star is starting to fade.. and maybe the critical voices are starting to be listened to within these movements.
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Post by arietty on Jul 31, 2010 19:11:34 GMT -5
You know, I feel somewhat nostaligic about Mother Earth News and all the back to the land stuff I read. One of my favorite books was "Five Acres and Independence." The thing is, I could probably have lived that lifestyle IF I wasn't homeschooling AND raising a plethora of babies at the same time. I think it was the homeschooling that really did me in. I remember one day realizing that we don't expect every male in our churches to teach by virtue of their gender because we don't think they are all called or qualified. What made us think that all women are called by virtue of being mothers? I would rather stick pins in my eyes than teach another child to read! Home schooling works for some families. But in families where you have no involvement by the "patriarch" who thinks his job is done when he brings home the pay cheque, combined with ongoing pregnancies, birthing, etc., the logistics are such that it is very difficult to get an adequate education or anything to be done well. You know, I think maybe one of the reasons that some patriarch types think that girls don't need college, etc., is because it lessens the burden of education on THEM. You can call it godly living instead of educational neglect. I get nostalgic about some things but when I try and take them up again they are just like dry chaff to me. It's odd.. my focus has really moved on. And yes the pattern I've seen is that when the mom reaches burnout and the older childrens educational needs are way past her abilities to teach the family has a revelation that the reason they are burned out is that they have neglected the most important calling of homeschooling.. CHARACTER. This becomes a get out of jail free card for high school. As long as you are pumping character into those kids (via chores or endless scripture memorization) you are raising godly offspring. Forget about algebra. I toyed with homeschooling my pre-schoolers.. I wanted to be one of the alternative groovy homeschoolers this time rather than a Rod and Staff homeschooler.. but I concluded that even with a many year break I am still utterly burned out on the idea.
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Post by arietty on Jul 30, 2010 21:52:06 GMT -5
OH Cheryl.. been there, done that, lived in a shack for many years and babies. A terrible, tiny shack. The ex SO enjoyed talking about everything he was going to do with it, his extension plans.. why he was going to build a house out of mudbricks and he would make the bricks HIMSELF by hand, one by one because he really valued the joy of building with your own hands, it's a lost art you know... all utter and total crap. Never did anything. We had almost no hot water for years because the water heater was nearly dead but he refused to fix it, became enraged at any offers of help. I was boiling water on the stove to give the kids baths.
Anyway.. one of my trigger points is the whole Ponderosa syndrome as someone called it here. I knew so many christians that went off into rural areas to build their ark/ranch/homestead.. many are divorced now. You take some guy who has never built anything more than a bookcase and suddenly God has called him to build the family home out in the pure countryside.. the stories I could tell you, the years, sometimes decades people spent living in tin sheds while they husband built a house on Saturday (Sunday being taken up with church activities, or for some a strict day of rest). Incredible. One family of many I knew had all their children grow up in a temporary tin shed and move out of home before the house was finished enough to live in.
This was REALLY popular in the 70's to 80's, Jesus people era.. whenever I run into people talking like this they get an earful from me, LOL.
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Post by arietty on Jul 23, 2010 20:14:28 GMT -5
"Now and then, we heard updates about Willa’s life in the years that followed. They were always cast in hopefully negative terms: her health or her marriage was failing, her children were doing poorly in school. This meant that God was after her, and that sooner or later she would wake up, fall on her knees and confess her obedience to Him. "
This bit REALLY got to me. Wow, do I ever remember thinking this way, it was default thinking in the church at large not just in the more extreme circles. Something bad happening to a wayward person? GOOD, this was an opportunity to turn them toward God. It is really so creepy and wrong.
I know in trying to figure out my own spirituality these days I've been looking for how positives--love, beauty--could be the path or direction towards a belief in God. It's such a novel idea to me I feel like a 4 year old just starting to comprehend that letters come together into words, though what those words will turn out to be is still a mystery. This paragraph in Sierra's post made me realize why a positive way to God was such a novelty--that is not what church life is steeped in. Read any testimony, LOL.
Very well written Sierra, you have really captured the "project" dynamic. I felt like a project just joining a mainstream church as a christian some years ago--all the invitations to the endless meetings and services and events--once they saw that my participation in these things was not going to be wholehearted I felt myself dropped and relegated to the category of fringe attender. People did all their friendship building at church events and if you had a life outside of this you weren't a candidate.
I've been in both places as have a lot of us I'm sure.. earnestly worrying over the wayward friendship and whether it was tainting me and the children, praying and praying and expecting the person to become a believer or a better believer (they never did). And finding myself to be the project. This style of conditional friendship has done more to drive me away from the church than any sexism or theology (which are things you can actually attack, not subtle at all).
GREAT POST Sierra.
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Post by arietty on Jul 22, 2010 18:05:55 GMT -5
I've said it before her.. Christians make marriage into an entity that is more important than the individuals in it. Everything must be sacrificed to keep the entity intact. This in itself is a dysfunctional view of the marriage relationship. Yes to this! Reading Vyckie's excellent post and all these excellent comments made me suddenly realize that Jesus' admonishments about divorce were (IMO) strongly focused on protecting women in a society where they had no rights and their husbands could just summarily divorce them and leave them destitute. It's so bizarre that these admonishments are now more commonly used to entrap women in unhealthy relationships. That is very interesting. Maybe KR would like to weigh in on whether she sees scriptural admonishments about divorce to be about protecting women. I would like to believe this was the case (coming from Jesus in particular) but I would have to go back and reread a lot from that perspective and umm.. I just can't do it, lol. And then there's all the Paul parts that might add too much annotation to Jesus's words. It's true that a women divorced in those times was disgraced and ruined so I can see how warning men about leaving their wives has a protective element.
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Post by arietty on Jul 21, 2010 18:08:27 GMT -5
arianadream that's a good reminder that we can get into these kinds of relationships in all kinds of ways. Reading your post made me remember how it occurred to me one day when I was first divorcing and a ton of condemnation was coming down on my head that if this relationship had been any other kind people would have been screaming at me to leave it. If it was a parent treating me like that, a sibling, a live in boyfriend.. I would have been lectured about my dependency and the dysfunction of the situation would have been drummed into my head by the well meaning. But with marriage lots of potential negatives (dependency, enmeshment, one person having a lot of control) are lauded as positives to strive for, or at the very least as the default setting. Thinking about Vyckie's situation, imagine if she was living with her dad and he was lecturing and wearing down the children like that--NO ONE would encourage her to stay in that setting. I've said it before her.. Christians make marriage into an entity that is more important than the individuals in it. Everything must be sacrificed to keep the entity intact. This in itself is a dysfunctional view of the marriage relationship. I'm sure you will do well ariana and your family relationships will be renewed by getting some distance and Independence GOOD LUCK on the jobs!!
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Post by arietty on Jul 16, 2010 19:32:02 GMT -5
Good for them.
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Post by arietty on Jul 16, 2010 19:28:31 GMT -5
Vyckie, please please remember to post trigger warnings for writings that contain descriptions of abuse. It's important for women to be able to consent to what they're about to read! I agree with this, not to criticize V who was trying to get that blog post up after delays and whom we all are very grateful to for this forum/blog!! The worst physical abuse I suffered always happened when I was pregnant. Sometimes it's good to be be able to brace yourself that abuse is coming in a post.
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Post by arietty on Jul 16, 2010 0:45:32 GMT -5
Cheryl I am so sad to read your story. My mother also told me that if I ever got pregnant I would be "out on my ear" and she "wasn't raising some bastard kid". She said that when I was 16 and I never forgot it, it was soooo horrible. I did not get pregnant, but if I had what would I have done? I had no one. Now that I have teenage girls I cannot BELIEVE any mother would say such a thing. Several of the fundy families I know have had their teen girls get pregnant and they have rallied round and pitched in and embraced their daughters with love. On the one hand I think my mother said that just to scare me into not being stupid but on the other I know she would not have supported me in the least.
I went through a big Calvinist phase myself. So sad too to think we actually believed that going to church or hearing some great speaker would inspire our husbands to be nice.. it really only inspires people who want to be better to others and to improve their relationships, not people who want to have more power and control.
Well. I am glad you are out. As to the flowers, my trigger things are mostly people since I live in the same area. But there's a lot I'm done with as far as church goes.. I will never sit though another talk about gender or marriage for instance. They don't trigger me, I just think most of what is taught is utter BS.
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Post by arietty on Jul 8, 2010 19:46:51 GMT -5
I think there is an element of fetishizing Jesus.
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Post by arietty on Jul 3, 2010 23:15:18 GMT -5
Rambling here..
I had no extended family at all. Everyone dead or living overseas. I knew I needed the church.. after my divorce when the church labeled me a jezebel or whatever and completely dumped me I had no one AT ALL, just me and a whole lot of little kids.
My 2nd husband has a huge extended family which at first looked very appealing to me.. I wanted to be a part of that. I actually yearned to be a part of it, still wanting community. But it did not take long to realize that I would have to talk the talk and walk the walk (fundamentalism) to find any acceptance and my husband is absolutely gun shy of their judgments and has very little to do with them. So they work well among themselves and enjoy being a huge family but we are just too worldly for them. I have to avoid things like even being their FB friends because my kids might post something on my wall that is BAD.. a bad word, talking about bad music, talking about going to a bad place (bar, club..), expressing anger about ANYTHING.. really what is the point.
However I now have that extended family I longed for and Vyckie it is all thanks to QF, HAHAHAHA.. my older kids are adults and we help each other, socialize together, go to concerts, watch films, laugh our heads off, drink wine and rely on each other. It's been quite meaningful for me after being so isolated for so long. I don't think we would pass any family values tests LOL but we are very close knit.
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Post by arietty on Jul 3, 2010 22:02:26 GMT -5
I felt like the dinner you went to just hours before you moved away was their last ditch effort to turn you into people like them. When they did not get the kind of feedback that would indicate they were on the road to success they cut you off. Sending the baby photo was probably obligatory witnessing on her part, "look God has blessed me with my gazillionth child.." (and maybe the people she sends it to would be inspired to reproduce themselves).
I really sympathize with you Shelley, it is painful stuff to read and I think many of us have gotten sucked into faux friendships like this whether it is religion or Amway as the goal, lol. (I personally hate, yes hate, the way I've been used in the past by people calling me out of the blue and acting for 30 minutes on the phone like they care about me and want to connect only to sting me with the Amway invitation at the end of it. I have promised myself that the next time this happens I will blast the person with exactly what I think of these tactics.)
It brought back a lot of memories. That odd feeling of being shunned right there in the middle of a conversation because I said something that registered as ungodly to the women I was with, the struggle to fit in when the rules were so hidden.
It sounds like Cecelia didn't have a lot of friends despite all her going to conferences.. maybe that was an element for her too, trying to create an acceptable friend for herself, but you just didn't comply the way she wanted.
And the way the children answered the phone! JUST WEIRD by any standards.
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Post by arietty on Jun 10, 2010 21:26:41 GMT -5
The church explicitly fed my mother's longing for a boy by insisting on old testament role models for women. The virtuous woman would be the one blessed with many sons. Daughters' names are rarely ever included in the Bible. It was implicit that having daughters indicated some sort of secondary status. When I read your blog post I felt that what your mom really needed was counseling and people around her who wanted to help her move out of her grief and into an engaged and happy life. Maybe she needed some meds too, to bump her out of this trench. If she had been in a more mainstream church she would have been encouraged to seek counseling but because she was in the Message her grief over "barrenness" and biblical longing for a son were confirmed to her as the place God wanted her to be. She started out where many women are, in grief at the loss of a child. But she had no healthy relationships to move her through that grief.
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Post by arietty on Jun 10, 2010 21:17:42 GMT -5
I think you all are forgetting that we are talking about real people here. Real people have empathy and compassion and they care when people they love are suffering. So, ya, the reason why these kids don't tell their parents to go jump in a lake is because they know their parents are overworked and overwhelmed. They want to help as much as they can because they are empathetic. They don't have the life experiences to understand that life with 2 kids is different than life with 8. Plus, they are taught that children are a blessing. I know in my house we truly do enjoy babies and we love to ooh and aah over every little thing they do. As an adult I understand all the responsibility that goes along with the chubby cheeks and fat thighs but kids don't get that connection until they are much older. They just know they feel stressed out and unable to meet the high expectations. Don't forget, QF families are people too. The parents really do love their kids and the kids really love their parents and their siblings. Is it so odd to imagine the dynamic that everyone is trying to help everyone but the work gets redistributed unfairly? That's what happens. There is no sinister intent. It just gets messy and people's needs go unmet. QUOTED FOR GREATNESS. And some families are happy families, just stressed and unbalanced in some ways.
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Post by arietty on Jun 4, 2010 21:22:43 GMT -5
I think Cecilia considered Shelly a "ministry". ABSOLUTELY. I have a friend who was always in the position of being some powerful woman's "ministry". In the end she was always ejected from the friendship. It was horrible to watch.
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Post by arietty on Jun 4, 2010 21:00:01 GMT -5
I said in my last post I considered homeschooling my pre-schooler but decided not to. One reason I considered doing so was because I thought it would be sooooo amazing to homeschool without religion. To be one of those super academic/experience families that does lots of music and art and visits museums and joins science clubs.. I wanted to be the homeschooler it was in my nature to be, not the fearful christian homeschooler I was years ago. But I realized my kid's education should not be about me. It wasn't about working out my own issues, having a re-do of my own mistakes, it should be all about the kid's needs. I think a lot of people make choices for their kids as a way of healing themselves.
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Post by arietty on Jun 4, 2010 20:55:44 GMT -5
This Cecelia character is very mysterious. I'd also love to know why she didn't say anything about her trips as they happened. Very strange. It's almost like one of those guys who tries to make himself seem distant and unavailable as a dating technique. I thought that maybe she didn't consider Shelly to be Quiverfull enough to associate with her in front of those other families - not enough children, not enough strict rules, not enough submission... Yeah she hadn't yet arrived.As to the signs from God well.. I know that if you are looking for them you will find them. Personally I think it is very very easy to manufacture them. All of a sudden every little coincidence that just blipped past your mind lights up as a.. SIGN FROM GOD <---need shiny letters for this. If Cecelia's husband had been called from somewhere else to this job and felt it was God's will for him to be there he would have interpreted this treatment as persecution because he was doing the right thing. Since he was bored (everything was mundane) he interpreted it as God telling him to leave. Really it just (IMHO) was what it was.. stuff happened, people disliked him or were just juvenile. Events without spiritual meaning, just events.
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Post by arietty on Jun 4, 2010 20:26:01 GMT -5
Those carriers are supposed to be pretty good, I have a few friends who use them.
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Post by arietty on Jun 4, 2010 20:23:32 GMT -5
Chandra, it's terrible what you had to go through, and I'm glad you were able to make it out and share your experiences with us. As a former public school teacher, I do have to speak up and say that I'm all for homeschooling, with reasonable regulation (I live in Florida). I look back at myself when I was younger (hindsight is a marvelous thing), and I would have done much better being homeschooled at least from ages 12 - 15. I am extremely awkward socially, and the junior high years are the most unkind to kids like me. Not enough socialization? For some of us, seven hours a day is too much. Ever hear of overkill? Introverted personalities? Yeah, I'm forty now. I should be past it. I'm not. I don't let it rule my life, but the petty humiliations still sting, over a quarter century later. I still wonder at times why... and with my elder son about to enter middle school this fall, those old experiences are at the forefront of my mind. He's a very different child than I was, though; I strongly suspect he'll be just fine. I completely relate to this amanda. I was under so much deep stress going to school 7 hours a day.. not just the bullying when I was younger but the horror, the sheer horror of having to spend all that time with all those people. I remember it vividly, I always felt like the weight of all the years ahead of me before I could be free was crushing me. And the first day of summer break, when there were all those weeks before I had to return.. this is going to sound weird but I have never felt joy like that since. That was the most intensely joyful experience of my life. I guess similar to a prisoner finally being released. I was an introverted loner child and though I do think most of my teachers were perfectly good, I certainly learned from them if I was interested in the topic, I would have fared much better if I had just been left home for years with a library card. None of my kids are like this. I have toyed with the idea of homeschooling my preschooler but really he enjoys interaction with other people SO much.. he loves getting ideas from others, it would at this point be a poor choice. I'm always thinking about educational options for my kids, asking about different schools etc.. I'm ever the educated consumer on this topic. They are all different. If I ever thought one of them was under the stress I was under I would take them out in a heartbeat.
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