I was afraid I was going to have to start packing the kids up for church on Sunday. Or public school on Monday.

But we can be both heathens AND unschoolers? Fantastic!

Of course, this is a stereotype that many of us have struggled against. As a prominent unschooler recently posted, ". . . not all schoolkids are universally the same either."

Yep. Ruthlessly out of context. Sort of. It was in the context of a discussion about unschooling and teens and how nice her son is and how a lot of unschooled teens are nicer than we sometimes expect from teens and it was a concession that even some publicly schooled kids are decent human beings.

Wadda ya know. There's no magic wand no matter what choices a parent makes.

Maybe if we all became parents at about . . . what age, when do we think we've got a handle on being decent human beings ourselves? Age 60? 70? When do we finish sorting out how to be good enough people to be responsible for the well-being of another human being? To have enough self-discipline not to take our failings out on someone else in our care? To have enough self-respect to truly live with respect toward our own sometimes annoying and less-than-perfect children?

Nance