It's no wonder why some people think homeschooled kids are not normal and neither are their parents. With all the negative news media portraying homeschooled families, I'd think they were all a little weird too if I didn't have first-hand experience with it.
Last week I read the article in the paper about the man who kidnapped that 11 year old girl in California (she was recently found after 17 years) and at one point he claimed to someone that he was homeschooling his kids. The article went on to explain how odd the children seemed, wearing long dresses and not hardly speaking at all and looking like little robots.
Last night I watched one of my recorded episodes of 20/20 and one segment was on parents who are way too involved in their kids lives. The mom they had on as their main interview person was one of those 'helicopter moms' and called her kids in college like 30 times a day, read their emails, sent them schedules she had created and drove 2 hours every month to do their laundry, grocery shop and clean their dorms. Guess what? Of course, she homeschooled her kids and they made sure to point that out right away.
Even on the reality show "Wife Swap" they've had a couple families who homeschooled. Were they seen as normal at all? Of course not. They were portrayed as these crazy, hippie people who seemed like they were missing a few parts of their brain.
This stuff is what most people see as homeschooling. For someone who knows nothing about it, they watch these shows and then assume that all homeschooled kids and families are a little out-there. It's frustrating to watch.
With as much as homeschooling is growing I just wish that I would turn on the television one day and see a great news segment on how wonderful and NORMAL homeschooling is. I'm tired of all the negative association with it.
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