Good Examples Happen
My friends LaRue and Jack live in Grand Junction and were home school-ers for their five kids. Now those five kids are home schooling also. Last week I was visiting and went to a family band practice at the home of an Amish family also home schooled.
My thoughts weren’t about being Amish or home schooling, but about the different shapes of families and the comfort therein.
At band practice, everyone moved so easily. A small girl strummed a mandolin, roughly on beat, completely drowned out by the others. Someday she plans to be part of the band but for now she’s intently watching the others, serious about her participation.
It always surprises me that all the kids are home all day. They drop in at grandma’s to make cookies and pick things up in the middle of a Wednesday morning. The moms are planting gardens and calling LaRue like she was the library, “Do you think the tomatoes will get enough sun on the side of the house?” “Can you use honey to replace sugar in banana bread?” The phone rings all day long with a constant conversation about life: homemaking questions, family news, project planning. They never seem to run out of things to say to one another.
LaRue and her children have clients from the State Home and Training School in Grand Junction living with them. Most of them have two clients and they’re paid to take care of them. In the whole family, there are seven severely handicapped adults. The smaller kids are comfortable with these adults and treat them somewhere between aunts and uncles and younger siblings. They come camping and on family picnics and the big Sabbath gatherings they hold each Saturday for their Seventh Day Adventist church services.
So what’s amazing to me is how completely integrated they are with modern society and yet how apart they manage to be. It’s not like they don’t know how to use computers and find things on sale. Everyone has a Sam’s Club card and eats at Taco Bell, although they’re vegetarians and in some cases vegans, meaning they also don’t drink milk, eat eggs, or wear leather shoes. The kids are all involved in this life and don’t have any desire to run away. They’re teenagers being raised on cashew nut gravy! Ick!
I think to key to managing this incredible feat comes from the love and flexibility that are constants in their home. They’re not judgmental although Jack loves to talk about the Old Testament and can be a little overwhelming about it sometimes. And he can be pretty damning when he talks about government intervention. But on a personal level, they function very comfortably with the realities of life. In other words, they can talk about sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll without blushing.
Because of relative isolation, they’re pretty unconcerned about what the neighbors think. They like to come here to shop because they can find modest clothing more easily than in Colorado. They don’t dress like pioneers, but the girls are more likely to wear skirts than other kids. They don’t have lots of rules, I never hear them lecture, but life is just so pleasant with them that it doesn’t occur to anybody to want to go anywhere else.
There’s also a sense of pride in being a little different. Nobody talks about it but it’s understood that this is the deal.
I just wanted to tell you about them just so we could remind ourselves that lots of other people are trying too, and sometimes we can succeed.
My thoughts weren’t about being Amish or home schooling, but about the different shapes of families and the comfort therein.
At band practice, everyone moved so easily. A small girl strummed a mandolin, roughly on beat, completely drowned out by the others. Someday she plans to be part of the band but for now she’s intently watching the others, serious about her participation.
It always surprises me that all the kids are home all day. They drop in at grandma’s to make cookies and pick things up in the middle of a Wednesday morning. The moms are planting gardens and calling LaRue like she was the library, “Do you think the tomatoes will get enough sun on the side of the house?” “Can you use honey to replace sugar in banana bread?” The phone rings all day long with a constant conversation about life: homemaking questions, family news, project planning. They never seem to run out of things to say to one another.
LaRue and her children have clients from the State Home and Training School in Grand Junction living with them. Most of them have two clients and they’re paid to take care of them. In the whole family, there are seven severely handicapped adults. The smaller kids are comfortable with these adults and treat them somewhere between aunts and uncles and younger siblings. They come camping and on family picnics and the big Sabbath gatherings they hold each Saturday for their Seventh Day Adventist church services.
So what’s amazing to me is how completely integrated they are with modern society and yet how apart they manage to be. It’s not like they don’t know how to use computers and find things on sale. Everyone has a Sam’s Club card and eats at Taco Bell, although they’re vegetarians and in some cases vegans, meaning they also don’t drink milk, eat eggs, or wear leather shoes. The kids are all involved in this life and don’t have any desire to run away. They’re teenagers being raised on cashew nut gravy! Ick!
I think to key to managing this incredible feat comes from the love and flexibility that are constants in their home. They’re not judgmental although Jack loves to talk about the Old Testament and can be a little overwhelming about it sometimes. And he can be pretty damning when he talks about government intervention. But on a personal level, they function very comfortably with the realities of life. In other words, they can talk about sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll without blushing.
Because of relative isolation, they’re pretty unconcerned about what the neighbors think. They like to come here to shop because they can find modest clothing more easily than in Colorado. They don’t dress like pioneers, but the girls are more likely to wear skirts than other kids. They don’t have lots of rules, I never hear them lecture, but life is just so pleasant with them that it doesn’t occur to anybody to want to go anywhere else.
There’s also a sense of pride in being a little different. Nobody talks about it but it’s understood that this is the deal.
I just wanted to tell you about them just so we could remind ourselves that lots of other people are trying too, and sometimes we can succeed.
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