Could Embarrassing Your Parents Work?
I had this thought recently: Could a child embarrass their parents to the point of them putting their kids into school, or at the very least, push them to seek help/tutoring?
Mind you, I imagine this would only work in limited cases with older kids/teens, and certainly not with abusive households, where retaliatory violence or further isolation is a risk factor. This also would likely have to be done on multiple occasions, in front of family, medical professionals, church groups, etc. I am basing the possible outcome of this theory on my own family dynamic. I loved my mom but she made choices that hurt me, and looking back, if I had been more vocal, there may have been a chance that my life would have changed for the better. Hindsight is 20/20, and I shouldn’t have felt the need to hide my home-life.
When I was growing up, I had little-to-no friends. I also was extremely hyper-vigilant around adults, to prevent them from finding out what was going on at home. How I wasn’t receiving a proper education, as well as living in a hoarding situation (as I would later learn, there were no laws against home schooling, let alone the neglect that came with it). I remember a number of times being out-and-about with my mom, where strangers would come up and ask if I was home-schooled (as we were out I guess during public school hours, which caught their attention). In one instance, a woman at Whole Foods approached me and my older sister (in college, the only kid who went to public), grinning ear to ear “Are you home schooled?!” “What’s your GPA?” I said “uhhhhhh” and looked at my sister, who in turn told her to "ask our mom” who was rounding the isle. The woman went to happily chat with my mom, telling her that she wanted to home school.
What if I had been honest? ‘What’s a GPA?’
What if in other instances of adults inquiring about my education, or home life, I had just spilled the truth? ‘We don’t do school work much at all, I can’t do math’, ‘my parents hoard and I don’t have space to do work or play’ etc. Maybe my mom would have had to revaluate her choice to continue home schooling me? Called Got-Junk? Saved money to hire a tutor or sign me up for online education?
I think about how small children are painfully honest, often embarrassing their parents because they don’t know any better.
We grow up and learn social etiquette, not to rock the boat.
What if YOU, reader, were brutally honest?
When someone asks, ‘Do you enjoy being homeschooled?’ in front of your parents, don’t lie. Channel your inner 4-year old:
‘No, I don’t learn anything and don’t have friends.'
‘No, my mom stopped trying to teach me and I’m falling behind.'
Why should you be embarrassed? Why should you have to protect your parents from criticism of the poor decisions they made?
What are your thoughts?