Have you been pondering in your mind, "which cookie is the most healthy for me to eat, oatmeal or peanut butter?"  Maybe you already know that one is definitly more healthy than the other.  There's only a couple of days left over at The Contenders debate over which cookie is the most healthy.  Go check it out and leave your arguement!

Our homeschool support group had a meeting tonight and for a change we met at a nice restaurant.  It was a pleasant evening, but really, I like the usual meetings better.  With the background music (big band era) and soft spoken women I had a hard time hearing everything. 

One mom brought up an interesting question.  She has two teenage daughters who want to go to public school.  She does not want them to go, of course, and she wondered if any of the rest of us had teens who loved homeschooling and might be willing to tell her daughters why they have no desire to go to public school.  So, our next months meeting is going to be a panel of teens who enjoy being homeschooled, and parents who have children who are begging to go to school can come to this meeting and hear their peers contending for home education. 

I think it's a good idea but part of me wonders, will the teens that come to listen, be willing to listen?  Where did they get the idea that going to public school was an option and why are they considering it?  My own children know that there is no option.  They don't hang around to many public school children and definitly not on a regular basis.  My children have expressed that they are very glad that they don't go to public school.  They are not being influenced by the diseased culture of public education. 

Isn't somewhere, at the bottom of it all, the problem more in a lack of authority?  Aren't teens who express the idea of wanting to go to public school saying that they don't agree with what their parents have set as what is best for them?  The desires to go to public school are seldom of an academic nature.  They want to go back for selfish reasons, and because of that they will wind up in trouble. 

I'm not saying that all students who were once homeschooled and then go to public school will have problems.  Some of these students were prepared for the eventuality, for instance going to high school, but it had always been the parents decision.  Some of those teens may not like the idea of going to public school, but it is what their parents decided to be best for them, and they are willing to subject themselves to their parents authority. 

When I hear a parent say, "Johnny wants to go back to public school.  I can't force him to stay home, it would only make him angry if I did."  It makes me wonder, "Who's in charge here?"  Obviously not the parent because if your child is going to be angry over a decision you make in their best interest, then you never had control of them to begin with. 

We aren't talking about just a little child being mad over not getting their way.  That passes and is soon forgotten if a parent trains them correctly.  These parents are more concerned about ANGER, and they don't want their child ANGRY with them.  These teens hold anger as the key to their desires.  They are the ones in charge.  Their parents handed over their authority on a silver platter.  That kind of homeschool is doomed to failure anyway.