http://www.freerice.com/

It is a vocabulary game (with the correct answer provided if you get it wrong) that through its advertisers donates rice to the UN World Food Program for every question answered correctly.

If anyone knows of any more of these, please drop me a line saying so.

Yet another post that has nothing to do with homeschooling in its stricter sense. It’s about lessons so important that they aren’t covered in curricula.

This morning, I watched the PBS cartoon Arthur with my daughter. It started out about how annoying it is for kids to hear so many ‘no’s. Then the episode was about how important it is to be able to say no when you want to, or need to.

That’s a timely topic.

My friend’s wife’s daughter was just murdered by her abusive boyfriend. She stayed with him for three years, off and on, till he finally killed her. The whole time her family told her to end it, they supported her, but she still always went back. As a child she’d witnessed her father beating the crap out of her mother many times, till her mother finally said NO MORE and left. Unfortunately the daughter was never able to say that herself.

When I was in high school, my friend’s mother killed herself. She had finally left her violent husband, but her culture was against divorce and her younger kids and husband pressured her to get back together with him. She didn’t want to reunite with him, and didn’t want to tell them all no. So she jumped off a high rise instead.

I chat with women in a family group online. A few of them say their husbands are sometimes violent. Some others have guys who manipulate them deliberately. Almost invariably, these women stay in those relationships.

Their reasons are twofold:
1) “But I love him.”
and
2) “I’m not perfect either.”
which I guess means either that they think no one else will want them, or that they aren’t in a position to fairly criticize.

Since I can’t reach through the computer to smack these women, I’m going to answer them here.

1) A healthy relationship includes love, trust, and respect. One of those alone is not enough. Do you trust and respect a man who hits you? I couldn’t. If you don’t, get out. You’ll love again, and you’ll be loved again. Unless you stay with this violent guy–he might just kill you, and then you won’t care much about love anymore.

Are there others in your family that see the violence and suffer its effects? If you love them, get out, because they are being as victimized as you, even more so.

2) So freaking what if you aren’t perfect? You don’t have to be perfect to object to having someone hit you. Unless you are violent towards your partner too, the reasoning doesn’t work.

The last argument is the most ridiculous of all. Would you rather be happy alone or scared and angry in an abusive relationship? If those are the only two options, isn’t it a no-brainer?

Get out, get therapy, and swear off dating for a year till your head is on straight.

I know I am oversimplifying. I know that domestic violence is about control, and that the hitting is just one piece of a larger picture of mental domination. I suspect the victims (of both genders) don’t leave because they feel dependent on their abusers and think they need them.

But I am sad, and frustrated at a problem that, on its face, is easy to solve and yet that traps so many.

Anyway, that’s why my thought for the day is: teach your kids to say no.

Thank goodness I’m able to stay home with my daughter. Aside from the sheer joy of being with her, it keeps her away from the preschools and daycares.

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of the teachers and kids from Mile Square Daycare. They have nowhere to play so they go to the public parks, where I get to watch them. Yesterday when we arrived at the park I heard a child crying loudly. I automatically took a look around and located a young boy, perhaps 4 or 5 years old, wandering around crying. I went back to watching my daughter, but its a small park and I could hear him continuing to cry. After what seemed to me to be a long time, I looked at my watch. At that point I’d guess we had been in the park for 5-10 minutes, and he’d been crying straight through that time. I have no idea how long this had been going on before we got there either. I watched for the next 20 minutes while he continued to wander the park, crying hysterically. During this time the teachers were standing together chatting. One went over to him and without saying a word pulled him into her lap. That sounds nice but she did it like it was a chore, and he pulled away. She let him. Another walked over, grabbed him,washed his face, and walked away again, all in silence. Finally a third teacher took him by the arm (still not talking) and lead him to the bench near the teachers. One of them said, in a surprised tone, “You still crying?” Like she hadn’t NOTICED.

At this point a fourth teacher went over to talk with him, but by this time nothing intelligible was coming out of his mouth. This lady tried for less than a minute and then walked away laughing with her teacher friends.

They continued to ignore him, and he continued to cry, for the next 10 minutes. Eventually he stopped crying on his own.

This is not the first time I’ve seen them act this way. One of the first times I took notice of this lovely group was when a girl was crying. She walked through the middle of the teacher group and no one so much as looked at her. She then sat down right beside one of the teachers, clearly looking for comfort, and was ignored entirely until she finally gave up and walked away on her own.

It’s Cry It Out for preschoolers. The interesting thing is they don’t treat every child that way. Some come running over crying and a teacher asks them what happened, rubs where they got hurt, and sends them on their way. It’s the difficult kids who seem to be ignored. You know, the ones who take some time and effort to work with. The ones who most need the attention.

Then there’s the real problem child. I don’t know how old she is, I’d guess 3 or 4. She clearly has special needs of some sort. I’ve never seen her talk or heard her make a sound, she even cries silently, and she doesn’t ever play with the other kids.

Anyway, this all takes place in a water park, which is a fairly stupid place for Mile Square to bring these kids since they don’t want to children to get wet (no bathing suits or towels or changes of clothes). There is other playground equipment there too, but the water is the main attraction.

The girl with special needs loves the water. Periodically the teachers tell her to leave the water, or come over, pluck her up, and put her down away from it (always without talking). The only result is that she cries, then gets up and goes back into the water. This child leaves that park SOAKED every day, and she’s going to catch pneumonia, and it will be entirely because of the daycare’s negligence. She either needs to be supervised consistently, or she needs to be provided with a change of clothes so she doesn’t sit around wet all day. I suppose its possible that she has dry clothes in the facility, but if that is so, why do they drag her out of the water and make her cry? Why not just let her get wet and enjoy herself?

I was furious yesterday watching all this. These people should be ashamed, but I suspect that instead they feel their ’strategy’ of ignoring upset kids is working–after all, if no one gives a damn that you cry, eventually you stop crying so much, right? IMO it’s nothing but neglect.

I am so thankful that I don’t have to worry about my child being treated that way.

I’m turning the blog pink for October, though the theme is so beautiful I may just keep it.

The folks at breastcancer.org have a lot of great information on their site, including symptoms and instructions on how to perform a monthly self-exam. The people at the Susan G. Komen Foundation have a great sit as well at www.komen.org. Check them out!