Negative Influences and Homeschooled Kids
It’s been talked about before, the theory that homeschooling will help parents steer their children away from negative examples that they may find in public schools. Despite some who are anti-homeschooling arguing that this is sticking out kids in a bubble, many homeschoolers feel that this is allowing children to mature at their own pace without being pressed by peers to go too far too fast.
But are there some areas of negative influence that homeschooling, or any kind of parenting, just can’t fight?
Denise from Fast times @ Homeschool High wrote an amzing article for BlogHer called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. It is a review of the book which is a powerful read of mothers and daughters and the negative body image that can drive them to the edge. What stuck out was a comment Denise left in response to another comment:
And I can understand how you feel when people say they are “bad” for eating something like a bagel. Totally get that - and agree and understand. I my children would never say it - but they do, my oldest daughter says it a lot. I have no idea where she picked it up ’cause she’s certainly never heard me say it.
Of course Denise is dealing with teenagers who are certainly more capable of picking up things from the world around them than younger children. But it made me wonder if homeschooling can really combat some of the negative things in the world we don’t want our children exposed to too soon. Even away from the peer pressure in schools, the social pressure for women to be thin and beautiful beyond reality is everywhere.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think there are just some thigns that will creep in no matter how we guard our children? Is that necessarily a bad thing?
socialization, negative influences, peer pressure, homeschool
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:02 am
I think that the best we can hope for as homeschoolers is to hedge our children in WISELY until they can discern negative influences themselves. In order to do that we must know when to allow them to make controlled mistakes, be transparent about our own struggles and sins and release them slowly into an environment that eventually they will have to deal with.
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 am
[...] Mom is Teaching Summer Minor has posted on whether or not homeschoolers can keep every bad influence away from [...]
July 23rd, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I think the advantage of homeschooling is that we can teach our kids the truth.
No, we can’t protect them from the media’s portrayal of thin being the only way to be beautiful… but we can expose them to other cultures where ideas about beauty are different, even opposite. We can teach them about the reality of the images they see like the airbrushing, the models who die from eating disorders, etc.
I find that being with my kids so much affords me lots of good, natural conversations with my kids to discuss the the real life consequences of what they see.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Hi, I came here from Fairly Odd Mother.
My daughter is 2 1/2, and even at this age, creepage has begun. It’s an ongoing battle already to filter out marketing directed towards babies. And no, I don’t let my daughter watch tv. I haven’t watched it myself in over 10 years. So she doesn’t get advertising from that arena. But she knows who Dora is. And Cookie Monster, and yes, Elmo.
She knows these characters from images on her diapers, and toys she sees her friends hauling around. Pop culture is part of life, like it or not. The only thing I can hope to do is teach her to make wise decisions, and show her how to respect herself.
Right now, I find Dora a hell of a lot easier to stomach than any of the Disney Princess crap that’s out there. And I find those characters absolutely benign compared with other nightmares out there.
Like bras for toddlers, children’s t-shirts with revolting phrases on them, and an army of Bratz dolls encouraging an army of 3 year olds crying for makeup and nail polish and shopping games. I only hope I can find more and more alternatives and role models for her as she grows.
Maybe I should start that list right now. *sigh*
July 24th, 2007 at 6:52 am
[...] our kids July 24th, 2007 by Summer Minor When I wrote yesterday about negative peer pressure and homeschooling I didn’t expect to get such great responses. The Homeschool Blog asked can or should we [...]
July 26th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Great article and questions.
Yes, I think that we live in the world and you can’t shield kids from everything no matter how hard you try. That’s why I don’t really believe in homeschooling (but defend everyone’s right to choose what they feel is appropriate for their children). I believe in sending kids out and teaching them to deal with what they encounter in the world, although I have tempered that by sending my kids to private schools where the atmosphere is far more protected than in public ones.
July 26th, 2007 at 11:05 am
My oldest came to me when she was just THREE years old and told me she didn’t want her snack because she had a fat belly. WHAT?
It turns out that her GRANDMOTHER of all people would joke and pat her on the belly and say something about her being a chubby girl. She now will even tell Anna that she isfat, but with a smile. GRrRRR.
Every time i would catch her saying something like that I would sternly counter with “Anna is NOT fat”. Then she would say she was just joking.
It’s not a joke. It only takes one little comment like that to put a hairline crack in a child’s self esteem… which will later develop into a full blown crack that can completely damage them. I was told I had a fat butt as a child and I sometimes still hear that voice in my head.
July 28th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
The best we can do is teach our children - we can’t put blinders on them in public. Mine are young (4 1/2 & 2) but it probably won’t take them long to notice that the women in store advertising are all ridiculously thin. Or overhear an 8 year old telling her friend that she wanted a ‘a new pair of sexy jeans.’ Or, as we heard the other day, notice that Grandma used the word ’sexy’ repeatedly to describe them (Grandma won’t like the lecture she has coming from me).
The attitude is pervasive - most people don’t think twice about anything except whether they should buy something or not. My own mother (the aforementioned Grandma) thinks she has to ‘lose weight.’ She’s almost 60 and frankly shouldn’t give a crap about weight at all, but that’s how she thinks after years of discussing on other people’s weight. Oh - and she has colitis and can’t eat like a normal person. That attitude is beyond sick, and I certainly don’t want my children feeling like that.
But even if we ourselves are outside the mainstream, many of us were in it at some point. And most of the people we meet in our daily lives are in it too. We hear how our 2 yr old likes to ‘flirt’ with boys all the time. It seems irrelevant that her behavior with females is identical. If we see an influence like that at work, we can talk to our children, which is a lot better than them being sequestered away from us for hours per day and trying to figure these things out with ‘help’ from their fellow classmates.
My main wish from my ‘in the mainstream’ days was that I had been more self-aware and self-confident. I’m not a proponent of sheltering children, but I do believe in giving them the opportunity to become themselves. I would not be inclined to let them go to school before high school but would wholly support them if they were mature and confident.
I heard recently from a homeschooler with grown-up children about a daughter who who been sexually harassed in high school. The father’s inclination was to stuff the perpetrator in a trash can. The daughter’s response was to write a letter to the principal, which resulted in a swift resolution. That’s a powerful lesson. (fyi, I would also be inclined to stuff the perp in a trashcan.)