Hanging Out With Mainstream Moms… Honouring Other People’s Dumb Ideas and Religion??
yuck. More and more I can’t be around so-called mainstream families and a lot of homeschool moms. We are radical unschoolers which isn’t that odd here- but other similar style parenting families may not have kids my kids play with….
Yesterday my VERY shy son met a friend at a homeschooling event.. the mom was quite nice and her little boy adorable ( 4 years old ). The other older kids were doing something and I mentioned I had some paints, etc and did he want to do them with us- he replied he couldn’t because he had to do his homework. Yikes…
Later on the two boys talking about games and my son asked me for his Game-boy to show his new friend. His mom stopped me and said that she would prefer if her son didn’t look at it- and that he kids were not allowed video games…
My son was totally perplexed. I find it hard trying to explain other people stupid ideas and concepts to my kids. I am being blunt here. I normally don’t refer to other people ideas as stupid… this is one place I feel like I can be very raw and honest and not choose my words carefully.
I did tell my son that other families have different rules , etc and it REALLY bugged me that now MY son couldn’t play with his game boy… well I could have taken it out but in my mind wold have been more cruel to have that little boy watching B. play then B. waiting to play until later…
I have come across other families with rules that make no sense to me and have to curb my behaviour and go along with it. We have a boy come visit us and stay over night and his dad doesn’t allow him to have sugar… I though this was some kind of food allergy thing but turns out its because of dentist bills. The kids can have sugar Christmas, Halloween and Easter. They CAN have potato chips, raisin, dried fruits, etc which are just as bad if not worse! Have they not heard of a tooth brush??? So while they are here I am supposed to police them… which I just cant do so I tell parents that there kids can follow the rules but I am not here to enforce rules… Would I be different if it was an allergy- yes.
I have a very good friend who is vegetarian as are her kids. were were out one day and her daughter ordered a chicken sandwich and I asked her if it was okay and she said yes. I did feel weird… I mentioned to the mom that I felt I had to respect the child’s desire to have the sandwich and not follow a “rule” … The mom knew exactly where I was coming from and told me her kids could eat whatever they wanted and was their choice. Whew.
A religious thing? I don’t know. I am a DIE HARD atheist and believe people have a right to follow there own spiritual path,. I don’t think I could “enforce” if Jewish girl went fro a piece of bacon at the table. I highly doubt an orthodox family would let there kids stay in a home that wasn;t kosher and if they did there are all ready all kinds of rules being broken.
I certainly don’t think I would push the issue and wouldn’t serve pork but diary + meat would be hard. Tough one for me.
I am not sure I can even respect religious laws. I have been grappling with the idea of tolerance being the same as condoning vs. the right to choose your own path and feel more and more strongly that tolerating a stupid religion is the same as condoning (and by stupid I mean ALL ) . My belief is that religion is a weapon used to CONTROL thoughts and actions of people and very dangerous.
I also know if I were to express my real feeling my kids would have a VERY small pool of kids to play with 
I can’t just narrow my social choices to other radical unschooling, atheist families. Hard one to balance.