by Suzanne Wielgos
 

Pop quiz: do you think your homeschooled children show respect for non-homeschooled kids? 

Perhaps the answer to that question lies in a deeper question: have you, as a homeschooling parent, ever made comments about the behavior or character of traditionally-schooled kids that were unintentionally overheard by your own kids?

This issue came alive for me and my family recently.  It made me really think about how we, as homeschooling parents, teach our children not to judge other kids whose parents have made different educational choices for them.

Last year, we participated in a field trip to a well-known Chicago museum.  The venue was crowded, but not uncomfortably so.  At one point, a bunch of rambunctious, loud schoolchildren came past with chaperones who were trying, unsuccessfully, to keep them quiet.

One of the homeschooled children participating in our field trip gazed at the group as they passed.

“Well,” she said to no one in particular, loudly enough for others to hear.  “You can tell that they are public school kids.”   Her voice dripped with condescension.

I immediately felt embarrassed and glanced around to see if anyone outside of our group had heard her.

I looked to her Mom to see if she would correct her child’s judgmental comment.   But Mom either did not hear, or  agreed with her daughter and did not care that she could have been overheard by others at the museum.

Sometimes homeschoolers are stereotyped as acting “holier-than-thou” and behaving as if they believe they are better than other kids.  And my experience at the museum just reinforced this negative stereotype.  Just as this girl had decided, somehow, that public school kids lack discipline or behave inappropriately, she had herself lived out her own negative, homeschooing stereotype.

We have all, undoubtedly, tried to raise our homeschooled kids to behave respectfully and appropriately in public.  And in most cases they do; I can’t count the number of times when field trip docents or other leaders have complimented parents on the attitudes and cooperation of our homeschooled children.

However, I wince when I remember other events…events during which members of our homeschool group behaved intolerably.  There was the apple orchard field trip after which some of the group’s children went wild and tore apart hay bales, spewing straw all over a barn and resulting in our being asked to never come back again.  There was the group event at the public library when children ran and screamed through the stacks and wreaked havoc in the restrooms.  After repeatedly asking the children to stop (I was coordinating this event) and attempting to locate their parents, I was so embarrassed that I gathered up my own kids and left.  There was the field trip to a local college in which one homeschooled student grabbed  an unattended window washing pole and began swinging it around dangerously.  His Mom was nowhere in sight; as security approached us, I asked him to stop and later received a withering glare from his mother for intervening before the security guard could.

Should I continue?!

The point is this: we all occasionally experience bad behavior from children, homeschooled or not.   We all have different expectations of our kids; what some consider simply “free-spirited” others consider “undisciplined.”

But let’s be sure that we don’t judge other children based on our own family expectations—and if we still have negative feelings towards something, let’s be careful of how we express that in front of our kids.  A meaningful conversation about something like bad behavior in public will go a long way in helping our children understand that where one goes to school does not determine his character or value.

Suzanne Wielgos became a homeschooling Mom in 1994.  Today, her oldest of five children is in college and her youngest is finishing 4th grade.  She coordinates her local homeschool group in the Chicago area, encouraging those new to homeschooling and providing a forum for discussion and support.