I woke up rather early from an awful dream where I moved to Canada to marry this horrible man I went on two dates with from the dance community. There is zero chance I would do this. Even dreaming about the possibility makes me sick to my stomach. His second wife, the mother of his child, is one of my least favorite people on the planet and I don’t want to ever be in a room with either of them again because how they parent is so repugnant to me. So dreaming that I would be marrying into that shit show… blurgh. Stupid brain. I hate you stupid brain. Why do you even consider such gross options in life? I miss pot and the lack of dreaming it facilitated. I’m a complete moron in my dreams.

Middle Child is having nightmares about school. There’s a boy in her class who tried to knock her down the stairs. On the first week of her being in school she watched him drag younger children around by their hood. Eldest Child says she’s afraid of this kid too because he’s pretty violent.

I told the Head that my children were having bullying problems. She asked me for names. I said I could not give the names but she should ask my children. My children went to school and asked to speak to her. She acted confused why they would think she would make time to speak to them. I’m not happy about that part of how things are going. In my next round of emails I will mention it again. She needs to talk to them about the bullying they are experiencing.

She wants my children to stay in school but she doesn’t want to have to put in effort to find out who is giving them problems. I mean, I know I wrote positive things about the fact that they seem like a better group to work with than other teachers I have known… but it is still school. School is shit and I understand why MC is feeling over it after two months.

EC is feeling pretty annoyed because her class’ performance for the Christmas show involves the kids having to sing very loudly over a recorded song with a loud singer. Most of the kids in her class won’t sing at all because they are not interested in performing. She started off being angry with the kids because their lack of intensity leaves her feeling like she must sing twice as loud to make up for them and she is damaging her throat. She’s been doing some name calling of the kids and insulting their work ethics. I told her that she has not had seven years of being beaten down and constantly forced to do bullshit for school that she doesn’t want to do so she doesn’t understand their position. None of them opted in to this activity and they don’t want to be there. Why are you calling them names because they are engaging in the only form of protest available to them?

I asked her if it would be appropriate for me to call her names when she doesn’t feel like doing all the chores my greedy little heart might like to assign her. Her eyes went wide. Then she said, “Ok well it totally sucks that the teacher picked a song where we have to sing really loudly to drown out the singer–that’s not fair.” I agreed that the teacher made a rude choice. That’s totally fair to criticize. But criticizing people for not going along on an activity they don’t want to do? Meh. I can’t get on board.

It is utterly striking to me what a rule follower EC is. She wants to conform to the demands of authority left, right, and center and she thinks it is shameful when others don’t want to do it. But she’s also starting to notice that authority in school is not at all like the authority she grew up with. In school the authorities set rules based on their convenience or on arbitrary standards and the teachers really don’t care if the rules are appropriate in a given context. Such as: all children must carry a coat out to the playground for breaks and lunch because it is Scotland and it could rain. It frequently doesn’t rain and the children overheat in jackets so the kids leave the jackets sitting around and then they get lost and the children are in trouble. EC has been complaining about constantly feeling overheated and uncomfortable and she can’t understand why the staff wants her to feel that way.

Because the staff doesn’t care about your personal comfort. The staff cares about enforcing “the rule”.

Whether it is raining or not you have to have a jacket on.

Apparently the staff is giving her lip for showing up in shorts and short sleeved polo shirts because it isn’t “weather appropriate” but she is constantly overheated. They don’t think this is possible for someone who is from California because it is colder here. Dude. She lived in her underpants in California because she was always uncomfortably warm. I promise you that she can overheat here. She doesn’t understand why the school doesn’t care that they are making her miserable.

Welcome to school. You wanted to find out what it was like.

There are eight more school days for my kids in before Christmas break due to our trip to the Consulate. I put the chances of MC going to part-time school in January at about 80%. Do I want to do it? Not particularly. But I did not force EC to go to school when she wasn’t ready and I don’t feel ok about forcing MC to go. I am more than capable of teaching the subjects she is struggling with and the teacher is literally unable to provide the one on one attention I can provide. Of course the teacher thinks that MC would learn much better by being in a group of peers and normalizing off of other students. I don’t agree. I find that dynamic pretty fucked up.

The teacher did not look like she appreciated it when I said, “As someone who has been a public school classroom teacher the thing I appreciated the most about home educating is the lack of wasted time for transitions. In a class room you are lucky to get ten productive minutes out of each hour because getting all of the children to focus at once is practically a miracle. With home educating that whole hour can be productive and that’s why I don’t start academics until many years later and we blast through many years of progress in a short period of time with far less effort.” School is invested in believing that it must take many years to force large groups through a given set of knowledge. It literally doesn’t have to be that way. It is how school does it. But it is not a necessary part of the learning process.

Home educating (I’m trying to adapt my language because the local crowd is hostile to the “Americanism” of saying home school) is much more concise and effective than school. I can understand school feeling insecure about that. But I don’t care about your feelings any more than you care about my children’s feelings. And thus the world goes round.

I do not exist to provide you with little people to affirm your feelings about yourself. I am here to support my children.

I will have to ask for a formal explanation of the layout expectations so that I can help kiddo figure out how to do it. We’ve been talking about presentation differences for years. It is utterly hilarious to me the way the teachers here are super smug about their layout being standardized in primary schools so every child must be held to it. As if I haven’t already had to learn APA and MLA and a variety of other standards for different earlier schools. This standard isn’t somehow more magically wonderful and correct. It is just what you prefer. Whatever.

Do I want to keep home educating? No. I don’t. I’m exhausted and I’d like to be selfish and have more time for myself. But if it is what my child needs I am going to do it. This is her decision, not mine. And I’m about 80% sure at this moment that she is going to pick home educating because she learned that school sucks.

Yup. I hated school. Your father hated school. School is a miserable experience. I don’t blame you for wanting to opt out now that you have had a taste. The more I think about it the more I feel a little sick about the school trying to say that she should have to spend six more months there before I let her decide. It feels like “We haven’t had enough time to break her spirit and convince her that she’s not allowed to opt-out of abuse. Please keep letting us work on it.” The assertion that you must learn to conform to an arbitrary, abusive environment or you will never be able to have a job is so repugnant and repulsive. I don’t believe that.

My shitty hand writing has never prevented me from getting a job I applied for, no matter what the schools like to tell me. I mean, I didn’t apply for being a college professor… so I guess the timed handwriting aspect of the final exam for my masters did limit my potential… but I absolutely loathed being an adjunct instructor. I hated teaching college students. So was there really a loss of life potential there? I don’t think so.

My hand writing kept me teaching the kids I wanted to teach. Was that really a limitation? I don’t honestly believe my hand writing is going to keep me from future work I want to do. So how about if you fuck right off with your nasty attitude about how hand writing is the measure of intelligence.

“It is clear that MC should be in the highest reading group based on comprehension but her hand writing isn’t good enough so I won’t allow her to be in it.”

And you wonder why she is bored, acting out, and doesn’t want to be in school. Hm. It’s a fucking mystery. You think I should work with you to convince her that she has no option other than comply with your demands or be punished by being forced to work below her intellectual potential. She has to jump through an arbitrary hoop before she is allowed to learn anything interesting.

Or she could stay home.

Yeah. That’s school for you. MC wants to set project goals and work towards them. She knows that she is currently in the grade where EC got to work on a music video (to learn programming) and a big comic (with lots of supportive research because the comic was about California history), she did a couple of big fun real-life based maths projects, there were countless hours spent on art history as a passion project, and we went through three different fun science curriculums. EC spent this year working on learning more like how college classes are run. MC is being told she has to read baby books that are boring as shit because she doesn’t write well enough to learn anything interesting.

I FUCKING WONDER WHY SHE WANTS TO LEAVE SCHOOL.

Home educating is both a real education and fun. School has fun elements too–I can’t provide all of the group access that school can and they have resources I don’t have… but it comes in a whole package with kids who want to knock you down the stairs. It comes packaged with people spitting on you. It comes with constant name calling because you dare to be proud of being intelligent and bookish. Nerd is a constant refrain. And these kids don’t mean it as a compliment. They are trying to be derisive. Luckily my children have not been in school their entire lives so they respond with confusion, “Of course I am a nerd. Why wouldn’t I be? Nerds grow up to be rich and have good lives?” The other kids are not getting the power they would like to have from this exchange.

I am happy to the core of my being that my children are not building their sense of self-identity on the other children at school. Kids suck. Kids are assholes. Kids want to keep each other at low levels so that no one will be expected to work that hard. Fuck the expectations of kids. Keep reaching. Keep growing. Keep having high standards for yourself. You will be ok in the long run.

Sometimes people make comments about how if I have an abrasive personality I won’t have friends so I should conform more. Hahahahahahahahaha. I am abrasive as fuck. I have absolutely all the contact with friends I can possibly handle and sometimes too much. Our first overseas visitor is here and it’s going super well. It’s absolutely perfect that she can have space in the apartment to herself when she wants it and she can opt-in to conversation and food and companionship when she wants it. I’m really glad she is spending so much time sleeping. She desperately needs it. When she wants to come out our topics are ranging from education to philosophy to psychology to remodeling projects to books to cooking/food to animal training to parenting to cultural mores to group dynamics to stress management to nutrition to exercise to limiting our children having access to time wasting entertainment. I’m utterly thrilled.

But sure. If I don’t learn how to be more conformist and people pleasing I won’t have friends. Right. That has sure been demonstrated over my lifetime. Not. Yeah my 98 person Christmas card list is evidence that my behavior is totally off-putting to all people. Why don’t I get my shit together so maybe someone will like me.

Dude I need to be more abrasive so that I cull the damn list of people in my life because I’m overwhelmed trying to pay attention to so many people. Shut up.

I am going to do fine making more friends in Scotland. I am always fine at making new friends. The adults I talk to here tell me that rather than conforming to authority the expectation here is that you will just lie to any authority that questions you. I get that.

I already have a list of local people I need to follow up with for our next round of contact. But I’m tired and I haven’t wanted to get to it yet so I haven’t. It’s not a requirement that I hurry up. I plan to be here for a while. I’ll get to it. Maybe I will get distracted because it will be more important that I devote my limited energy to building connections to the home education community. We’ll see.

I’m tired and I should be asleep. But dreaming about following that annoying douchebag to another country is so obnoxious that maybe not sleeping is better. Stupid brain. ugh. He wasn’t even a good lay, what are you doing stupid brain? He’s a terrible parent. He’s whiny and self important and self aggrandizing and ugh. No. All the no. Ew. Never. Blurgh. It makes my stomach recoil in utter panic. Not for all the tea in China.

My brain is an asshole.

It’s kind of funny: having this lovely guest and having MC tell me fervently that my company is better than anyone else’s company… it reminds me that yes, my company is lovely and I would like to have more of it. Hahahaha

Ok. And now my frequent flier miles are gone because I have booked three friends coming to see us. Schweet. I’m really happy that all of our traveling has been rewarded with such a delightful outcome.