Be Careful, Parents
All parents, but especially, homeschooling parents need to be warned and watchful. Many of my homeschooling friends had a sense of real security. True, you are in control of what your child is TAUGHT, but none of us are in control of LIFE.
I was listening last night to a rerun of Greta Van Susteren on tv tonight. She had a guest on who said that the couple (the fourteen year old daughter and the eighteen year old bf) who were finally found after he had shot and killed her parents had actually met at a homeschooling function last spring (May?) and were exchanging nude pictures of themselves via camera and email, and meeting several times per week.
A dear friend of mine thought her kids were safe from drugs, etc because she was homeschooling, only to learn later that some of the neighboring kids supplied them. Her child died, after many years of problems with using drugs and alcohol, in her 20's.
Another dear friend of mine also had homeschooled for some years. Friends in the area again introduced drugs. One child ended up on drug runs in the middle of the night many times, often missing school the next day (claimed illness...) was in drug treatment by 14, but talked the way out with the counselors focusing on parents as the problem. We did not know until then that a 14 year old could sign themselves out of treatment! That child later did nearly a year treatment elsewhere, but only after much stress and worry, etc.
Kids today are not safe ANY PLACE, but many think that they are because of the fact that they are not in public schools, etc.
Watch those computers, please. If you have cameras on them... disable them when your kids are around, or put them away when you have to leave. Get those filter programs that you can get, as annoying as they can be! Learn how to track history on the puter, but don't teach the kids, or they can learn just as easily how to clear history (speak from experience there!)
Put a lock/password on the sign on for the internet, so that they cannot GET on the internet when you are not there! So what ever you have to do on your puter to ensure that this kind of thing does not happen with your puter. And remember that teens can be sneaky and get up in the middle of the night when you are asleep and do LOTS of things that you would never dream of them doing. If your puter signs on automatically to the internet, find out how to disable that feature if there are children in the home.
When my son was into sites that he should not be into, I put a password on my puter that would not let him get to the sign on that I had. He had to 'close' that screen, and tried to go around it then by signing on without my password. But he had NO idea what I had changed the password to, and without going through MY password entrance, he could not get on the internet until I was home. The puter was in the living room, and so was I. I never had one obscene site pop up again once I had cleaned cache, etc, and password locked the way to get onto the internet in this way. I left the password OFF the log on screen for when he tried to go around my password to use the puter.
It is still that way on that puter to this day, because I do not know how to get that function off the puter. Now that it is used by the grandkids, however, I prefer it that way once again. They cannot use this newer puter. And, BOTH are in the living room!
I don't know if this 14 year old girl had any idea that her 18 year old boy friend was carrying a gun that morning or not, or if perhaps she went with him because he 'commanded her' to, and in shock, did as she was told. That is up to the Police to find out.
If she had any part in the murder of her parents, I hope that they can find evidence of it. If not, I hope that she is given much much counseling. Her life, the lives of her siblings and other relatives and friends will never be the same.
He will also be charged with statutory rape of a minor, from what they said on the news today, and possibly, depending on what they learn about her involvement (if any) in the murder of her parents, kidnapping. So very very sad.
Later news said that the police found 54 guns in the home of the 18 year old! 54 Guns!
As much as I believe in the Second Amendment, who NEEDS 54 guns? Why were they available in any way to him? Were they collector's items? Was someone there selling guns?
Why 54 guns?
Be careful, parents. All parents. Children are not safe today, anywhere.
But it seems that either are their parents.
God bless!
posted by WI Catholic @ 11/17/2005 02:37:00 PM
4 Comments:
I can add an interesting perspective on this one.
Me and my oldest younger sister grew up in the public school system. She and I, although we dabbled a little with party drinking (it was a small suburban town) we never got into drugs or violence. My half sister, homeschooled by my stepmother is 19 now and running wild. She was so sheltered growing up that the minute she had any freedom, she went crazy dabbling in more then just the alcohol I can tell you.
My point is, I recieved something my half-sister did not. I was exposed early to a big world where I was forced to make big decisions. Because i was taught not to do anything stupid or endanger my life AND I had the freedom of making that decision for myself, I stayed out of trouble.
I'm hoping my sister is just going through a phase and will "grow up" soon. By my 18th birthday, I was already a grown-up.
Home schooling is fantastic, and I would have done it also, had life circumstances been different for my family. My point wasn't that homeschooling does not give kids enough to live, etc, but that sometimes, as parents, we just don't see dangers out there, because we think we are safe.
I know too many very mature homeschooled kids now adults who went on to college after being homeschooled through high school who did well and maintained the value system that was from home throughout College and to this day.
But homeschooling cannot keep our kids from meeting others who are not in our best interest.
Sometimes, also, we think that we are 'safe' in our 'safe' Church family, only to find that there is someone there who has been living a double life, as in the case of the BTK Strangler, etc.
Homeschooled kids also have to make decisions for themselves. We all do. Some of us choose rightly, some not so rightly.
This young man chose VERY wrongly. The young lady in question is only fourteen. Some on the news tried to imply that it was 'parenting'... where were the parents, etc? The deceased parents were doing the right thing about their daughter. She had been out all night long with this young man. They had to have been worried out of their minds.
We lived through that experience here, also. Terrifying, not knowing where your kids are after curfew! Though our guts tell us when some are not 'right' for our kids, we cannot always know just how WRONG they really are. And today, this can be very dangerous, indeed.
That was the point of my warning, I guess.
As for your half sister... it is so very hard to watch someone 'dabble' in things that are not healthy, are actually potentially dangerous, isn't it? Especially when they are right in our own family.
As for being a grown-up by 18, grin... many oldest children are for lots of other reasons... I was 'mature' enough to be allowed to babysit (with Mom on hand to come if there was an emergency) by age ten. I can relate well!
I also hope that she finds her way back soon, too. God bless!
Wi,
I didn't mean to imply that homeschooling is wrong or bad, and as I read back it did sound that way, my apologies.
I just think it's important not to over-shelter our children, and it does depend on the kids and the parents.
Quite honestly, I would never home school my child, as I don't feel I have the credentials to teach her. Although education is a big part of Nursing and I'm good at the sciences, I tend to stink a little at geography, history, and the more complicated mathamatics. I don't trust myself to teach her properly.
As in the case of my half-sister, my step mother who homeschooled her barely graduated from high school and did not, frankly have the intelligence to home school her children. My halfsister unfortunately is not real bright and if she decides to go to college, won't make it very long.
My younger half-brothers, I hope are naturally bright enough to do the learning on their own.
It's just my own example of one bad situation. They are not all bad.
I, too, have to apologize, Jodi, cuz I did not mean for you to think that I had meant you implied that.
I could not have homeschooled, either, due to my own lack of 'organization' per se. We would have been doing 'field trips' a lot! And my undoing would have been trying to get math concepts across. My own patience would have been tried way beyond that which would have been beneficial for my kids.
Had our circumstances been different, where I had a supportive husband who could have taken on the math and science sides, it may have worked out, but that was not the life we had. Some do not see this in themselves. In order to homeschool, we HAVE to know ourselves, and our limitations, and reach out to those who can pick up on our weak areas.
I think that some are convinced that they have the ability to protect their kids from every evil in the world, Not just homeschoolers, but all parents. We can't. No one can. Some of us learn that in ways that drive that point home rapidly when we lose control of our own lives. You, when your dh died from cancer. I, when my dh decided to go to the Civil Court rather than the route strongly encouraged by the counselors.
But we as parents have to be alert to the fact that there are dangers today that never were there even 20 years ago. We can't just assume that we are safe nor that our kids are safe anymore.
No one should become paranoid, but instead, alert. The two 'kids' involved in this tragedy used the internet in a way that did not exist when my kids were their ages to do things that few parents would ever dream that their own would do!
My friends and I really thought that they were giving their children the best protection that was available. But we all learned that even the best parents have no real control, and the danger is in thinking that we do. We get complacent; we forget and let down our guard. We assume that because we are with others 'like us' in our approach, we are safe.
Those two parents never thought that an 18 year old would come to their home and kill them, and I am almost certain that they had NO idea that their daughter and he were exchanging nude pictures via email, etc. But they did know that he was too old for their daughter, and that there was 'danger', that they had just spent the night worrying about where their little girl was.
We need to be vigilant, not complacent, and not only try to keep lines of communication open between us, but also close some that are potentially dangerous when not guarded and used properly.
Jodi, I love reliving my student nurse days through your blog, by the way! It was a VERY long time ago for me, though less than fifteen years ago as a student hygienist.
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