None of yesterdays funnies were funny.
I fear for you young people. Becky’s generation, not Chuck’s. He likely can make it through.
We are losing our country.
Covid 19 has something to do with it, but not all.
The recent farce that we call an election was the beginning. We may never recover from it.
😦 My mom’s death. Just heard a man who has jammed or been in shows with my husband has passed away. He was around my age; I would imagine. So sad for his wife and family. His son was in bands with my daughter.
🙂 God will never leave us or forsake us. He is compassionate, gracious and pure love. He is almighty and able to hold us on course.
I have a rant and a rave wrapped into one comment. It might also be something of a QoD, though on the wrong thread.
The rave is that it was so nice to see in the weekly paper that is delivered with our mail on Fridays that one of my piano students was named student of the month at our community’s middle school last month.
The newspaper covers local news for our community and the community just south of us. Pictures of the students of the month at the two high schools and the two middle schools, along with the names of the students’ parents, were published.
For the school district in the neighboring community, the students were listed as “son” or “daughter” of __________ [parents names]. For my community’s school district, the students were identified as “child” of ___________ [parents names].
Please correct me if I’m missing something, but doesn’t the latter seem to shout, “We won’t label children as “sons” and “daughters” (or “grandsons” and “granddaughters” if they’re being raised by their grandparents) because that implies the students belong to either one of only two categorie: male or female.”
The only thing I thought of is to wonder whether foster children are called foster sons and foster daughters. Was there perhaps a foster child among the student of the month winners in my school district that would make the term “son” or “daughter” inaccurate, and perhaps they labeled each of the students as “Child of…” to avoid having one student differently labeled?
Or is there another perspective I’m missing?
It seemed to me, though admittedly in my lack of full knowledge about the subject, that this is another attempt, like the debate on correct use of pronouns to reflect gender fluidity or whatever, to squelch the idea that one’s offspring can only be labeled as son [male] or daughter [female].
😦 I have been very tired all week, exhausted, and, of course, not sleeping.
🙂 Having the Adorables do most of the Thanksgiving dinner.
🙂 meant, several tasted things they made and found, what do you know? Sweet potatoes aren’t so bad after all! (Especially when Grammy throws marshmallows on top–yuck).
🙂 Plenty to keep me occupied until . . . 2021. 🙂
Chas, I have several adopted nieces and nephews who are certainly called daughters and sons by their parents. (And nieces and nephews by me and other aunts and uncles.)
What I’m trying to remember is if I’ve ever heard the term “foster daughter” or “foster son” before, referring to children who are not adopted but are placed with foster families. I have heard of foster parents making reference to their “foster children” or “foster child” but never, to my recollection, referring to their “foster daughter[s]” or their “foster son[s].”
Sorry if this is a bunch of linguistic gymnastics, but if I knew that no one would ever refer to their foster children as sons or daughters, then maybe it would be logical that those students were referred to in the newspaper as “children of…” instead of “daughter of…” or “son of…” — if one of them was, say, a foster child of the adults listed.
But it was so odd to see that one group of children, those from my school district, described generally as children instead of sons or daughters, like has always been the case before our ultra-politically-correct culture started demanding the removal or addition of certain gender designations.
Is the day coming (or already here?) that the terms “son” and “daughter” are offensive?
On a slightly different note, my state’s homeschool laws do not permit foster parents to homeschool their foster children. (We aren’t allowed to homeschool anyone’s children but our own biological or adopted children.)
So in a sense, the state doesn’t “recognize” foster children as being sons or daughters of their foster parents, even though we speak of the parents as being “foster moms” and “foster dads.”
I don’t know where I’m going with all this. Just random musing, I guess.
Also, one of my adopted nieces was fostered by my BIL and SIL before they adopted her. I didn’t really think of her as my niece during the foster years, and I don’t recall them referring to her as their “foster daughter” in the years before she became their adopted daughter.
Six Arrows, I referred to my girls as my foster daughters. However, “son” or “daughter” doesn’t take into account a guardianship situation. I don’t know whether the school would have referred to the girls as my daughters, and if I were caring for relatives (nephews or grandchildren, for instance), then they would be children in my care but not sons or daughters. Especially in some ethnic communities, grandparents rearing children can be quite common.
And in fact, the reasoning behind “child” might actually go the other way. If I had a child in my school who was a boy wanting to be called “she,” I’d be glad if we’d already set the precedent of “child” and I wouldn’t have to write something untrue (“daughter”) or something sure to be inflammatory (“son”).
Related to that, one of my own pet peeves is overuse of the word “spouse.” I get it that it’s a shorthand for “husbands and wives.” Like “siblings,” it has a place. But when you say, “Men, it’s OK to bring your spouses,” to me the term is being misused. If the sex of the spouse(s) is known, then use the more specific term.
As to foster children, part of protecting them from prejudice and bullying and being found, is to not refer to them as foster children. In paperwork, they are, but in person, they are children.
Schools have to keep their paper work in order so I have noticed, in the time we were getting foster or adoptive children, they have changed their paperwork to indicate guardian rather than parent. That covers grandparents, foster parents, bio parents, step parents, older siblings, etc.
We were not allowed to homeschool our pre adoptive children, but after a while, they made exceptions. The adoption agency okayed us homeschooling the children so we did. It really was in their (the children’s) best interest.
I knew of at least two families in our local homeschool community who had biological and foster children. It would have been so much better, too, IMO (and the parents’) if they could have homeschooled all the children in their home. They had to add the challenges of busing and communication with the schools and the usual problems associated with public education and so on to the challenges and time commitment involved with homeschooling.
😦 I just discovered how hard it is to send an ebook internationally. It took a 20-minute conversation with ChristianBooks to finally just send a gift card. If I’m mailing an ebook to a gmail account, what difference does it make what country it is in?
Six Arrows, for me I couldn’t have homeschooled anyway. For several reasons. One, I needed the schoolday to do my work; foster care doesn’t come close to paying the bills. (It cost me several times as much as I “earned” from doing it.) Two, I’d never done homeschooling and couldn’t simply jump in and do it. Three, not having done it and not knowing the ages of the children I might get, I didn’t have any homeschooling material, and it made no sense to buy material for children who were likely to be in my home only a couple of weeks. (I had them two weeks in one school year and four weeks in the next.)
The vast majority of foster parents who don’t currently have children in their homes wouldn’t be prepared to homeschool, for similar reasons. I think it makes sense to say that foster parents can’t homeschool the children BUT that they can appeal and see if an exception will be made. In my case, it was actually helpful that I wasn’t allowed to homeschool, since I had people in my life who thought that sending children to public school was a wicked choice. So being able to tell them (1) they aren’t my children; I’m not even the legal guardian and (2) I’m not allowed to homeschool them gave me an answer.
At least one person suggested I put them in a private school, but I told them I didn’t even know how long the children would be in my home and private schools have waiting lists, and frankly I couldn’t afford the expense of foster care as it was, and I certainly couldn’t afford a private school. But at least two of the staff at my public school had Christian bumper stickers in the school parking lot (secretary and assistant principal), so it seemed likely the kids were in a situation where they were going to be in fairly good hands at school. Not my first choice, necessarily, but foster care isn’t a first choice. Sometimes you do the best you can and let that be “enough.”
I believe Six was talking about families with children they are already homeschooling. It is possible to do both and sometimes the best option for personal reasons, but nobody expects everybody to want to or try to homeschool foster children who may be there three days or eighteen months or whatever. And yes, it makes it much easier to say the State limits us and we are okay with that because they do in many areas.
Cheryl, what Mumsee said. The families I knew who were doing both homeschooling and public schooling were already established homeschoolers at the time they started doing foster care of school-aged children. Both of those homeschool moms also had husbands who worked outside the home. So those moms didn’t have to work enough hours at a paid job to provide the sole financial support for the family while juggling foster care and homeschooling for the first time on top of that. I would hope no one would expect such a thing of a person who was in a position like yours when you had your foster daughters.
A former neighbor of ours, when she grew up and left home, lived in Arkansas for a while. When she moved back to our area a number of years later, she had two school-aged kids that had been homeschooled while they lived in the South.
She hadn’t homeschooled them, though — she sent them to a neighbor of hers who was homeschooling her own kids.
When the former neighbor moved back here, she asked me if I would homeschool her kids. (I was already homeschooling mine.) She was quite surprised to hear that, as our state law was written, it meant I couldn’t homeschool her kids.
Yeah, I understood the scenario was parents already homeschooling bio children. My point was that it seems to me to make the most sense to say have as a default “You can’t homeschool foster children” but to have the law written where exceptions can be made.
I’d say, for instance, that if the biological parents haven’t lost parental rights, that they can approve the choice to homeschool, and that under these circumstances the state does have a right to see what the curriculum is.Make it a real possibility, but not just something foster parents can say “We want to homeschool” and the agency says “Sure, whatever.” Lots and lots of foster parents haven’t had children, or haven’t had children for several years, and certainly haven’t had children with the level of special needs that most foster children have. Foster parents could in good faith intend to homeschool, but if they aren’t already doing it with an established routine, they’re highly unlikely to be successful. My own two cents.
I would think that homeschooling foster children could be problematic for them when they leave your home. Homeschoolers are often teaching different curriculum at different times than the school system. Have the foster children remain in the public system would likely help keep them on track with their studies.
My dear friend who has nine biological children, several grandchildren and several permanent foster children just picked up a newborn ‘medical’ baby. She and her family are amazing. She once said she didn’t understand how anyone could foster, falling in love with the children only to have them leave. Then another foster mom said, it’s not about you, it’s about loving those who need you, when they need you. What a turn around. Her last medical baby just turned 5 or 6, is now perfectly healthy and just went to live with his grandma. It broke her heart to see him go, but it also blessed her that she had been part of the process for him to not only go to his own home, but to live to be able to.
Thank you to all on this blog that have fostered and loved children!
One of the benefits a good homeschool effort can offer is to help foster children, who are often far behind in school, adding to their challenges. The individual help and attention can work wonders. I have told you before how I caught one of the teachers treating one of my children like he was expected to misbehave because he was a foster child.
Kare, it’s true that homeschoolers a lot of times don’t follow the same curriculum or scope and sequence as their local school district. However, I’ve also found it to be true that even public school districts don’t do things the same as other school districts. At least not while I was teaching. (I taught school for two years in one district and five years in another — both in the same state — and while the state laid out minimum guidelines for how many minutes of instruction per week must be devoted to this or that core subject or enrichment subject, the two districts used different curricula and instructional time frames suited to their needs. In fact, during part of my time in the second school district, one of my duties was to write the K-6 vocal/general music curriculum for that district.)
I would also add that even if all school districts had a mandated curriculum that they must use statewide or nationwide, there are so many other factors that could mean a student might not have been on track with their studies. The fact that they were exposed to the same studies at the same time as their peers in other locales doesn’t guarantee that learning took place. Poor teacher management of the classroom, lack of administrative support for a teacher with students who have behavioral problems, and other factors too numerous to discuss — all these can affect children’s ability to absorb the material presented, and can leave educational “gaps” in students of even the most well-intentioned teachers.
Children, in whatever educational environment they’re in, who know they are loved (especially by their Creator God), who learn they have worth as human beings, are blessed to receive that fundamental knowledge about themselves and their value. The rest (academics and extra-curriculars), while important, are secondary to their learning that they are precious and beautiful.
Wandering Views 
None of yesterdays funnies were funny.
I fear for you young people. Becky’s generation, not Chuck’s. He likely can make it through.
We are losing our country.
Covid 19 has something to do with it, but not all.
The recent farce that we call an election was the beginning. We may never recover from it.
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😀 Pigskin Picks fun
😀 Wandering Views friends
😀 Leftovers
😀 God Is Sovereign
😫 Election Fraud
😫 Miscommunication
😫 Leftovers all gone
😫 Covid #s rising
😀 Covid deaths down
😀 I can drive
😫 No where to go
😀 Good books to read
😀 Miss Bosley
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😦 My mom’s death. Just heard a man who has jammed or been in shows with my husband has passed away. He was around my age; I would imagine. So sad for his wife and family. His son was in bands with my daughter.
🙂 God will never leave us or forsake us. He is compassionate, gracious and pure love. He is almighty and able to hold us on course.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I have a rant and a rave wrapped into one comment. It might also be something of a QoD, though on the wrong thread.
The rave is that it was so nice to see in the weekly paper that is delivered with our mail on Fridays that one of my piano students was named student of the month at our community’s middle school last month.
The newspaper covers local news for our community and the community just south of us. Pictures of the students of the month at the two high schools and the two middle schools, along with the names of the students’ parents, were published.
For the school district in the neighboring community, the students were listed as “son” or “daughter” of __________ [parents names]. For my community’s school district, the students were identified as “child” of ___________ [parents names].
Please correct me if I’m missing something, but doesn’t the latter seem to shout, “We won’t label children as “sons” and “daughters” (or “grandsons” and “granddaughters” if they’re being raised by their grandparents) because that implies the students belong to either one of only two categorie: male or female.”
The only thing I thought of is to wonder whether foster children are called foster sons and foster daughters. Was there perhaps a foster child among the student of the month winners in my school district that would make the term “son” or “daughter” inaccurate, and perhaps they labeled each of the students as “Child of…” to avoid having one student differently labeled?
Or is there another perspective I’m missing?
It seemed to me, though admittedly in my lack of full knowledge about the subject, that this is another attempt, like the debate on correct use of pronouns to reflect gender fluidity or whatever, to squelch the idea that one’s offspring can only be labeled as son [male] or daughter [female].
Thoughts?
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😦 I have been very tired all week, exhausted, and, of course, not sleeping.
🙂 Having the Adorables do most of the Thanksgiving dinner.
🙂 meant, several tasted things they made and found, what do you know? Sweet potatoes aren’t so bad after all! (Especially when Grammy throws marshmallows on top–yuck).
🙂 Plenty to keep me occupied until . . . 2021. 🙂
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Six. my middle GD and her husband went to China to adopt what became their third of four children.
They consider her their daughter.
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Chas, I have several adopted nieces and nephews who are certainly called daughters and sons by their parents. (And nieces and nephews by me and other aunts and uncles.)
What I’m trying to remember is if I’ve ever heard the term “foster daughter” or “foster son” before, referring to children who are not adopted but are placed with foster families. I have heard of foster parents making reference to their “foster children” or “foster child” but never, to my recollection, referring to their “foster daughter[s]” or their “foster son[s].”
Sorry if this is a bunch of linguistic gymnastics, but if I knew that no one would ever refer to their foster children as sons or daughters, then maybe it would be logical that those students were referred to in the newspaper as “children of…” instead of “daughter of…” or “son of…” — if one of them was, say, a foster child of the adults listed.
But it was so odd to see that one group of children, those from my school district, described generally as children instead of sons or daughters, like has always been the case before our ultra-politically-correct culture started demanding the removal or addition of certain gender designations.
Is the day coming (or already here?) that the terms “son” and “daughter” are offensive?
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On a slightly different note, my state’s homeschool laws do not permit foster parents to homeschool their foster children. (We aren’t allowed to homeschool anyone’s children but our own biological or adopted children.)
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Posted before I was finished with my thought.
So in a sense, the state doesn’t “recognize” foster children as being sons or daughters of their foster parents, even though we speak of the parents as being “foster moms” and “foster dads.”
I don’t know where I’m going with all this. Just random musing, I guess.
Also, one of my adopted nieces was fostered by my BIL and SIL before they adopted her. I didn’t really think of her as my niece during the foster years, and I don’t recall them referring to her as their “foster daughter” in the years before she became their adopted daughter.
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Six Arrows, I referred to my girls as my foster daughters. However, “son” or “daughter” doesn’t take into account a guardianship situation. I don’t know whether the school would have referred to the girls as my daughters, and if I were caring for relatives (nephews or grandchildren, for instance), then they would be children in my care but not sons or daughters. Especially in some ethnic communities, grandparents rearing children can be quite common.
And in fact, the reasoning behind “child” might actually go the other way. If I had a child in my school who was a boy wanting to be called “she,” I’d be glad if we’d already set the precedent of “child” and I wouldn’t have to write something untrue (“daughter”) or something sure to be inflammatory (“son”).
Related to that, one of my own pet peeves is overuse of the word “spouse.” I get it that it’s a shorthand for “husbands and wives.” Like “siblings,” it has a place. But when you say, “Men, it’s OK to bring your spouses,” to me the term is being misused. If the sex of the spouse(s) is known, then use the more specific term.
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I had not thought about what you mentioned in your second paragraph, Cheryl. Good point.
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As to foster children, part of protecting them from prejudice and bullying and being found, is to not refer to them as foster children. In paperwork, they are, but in person, they are children.
Schools have to keep their paper work in order so I have noticed, in the time we were getting foster or adoptive children, they have changed their paperwork to indicate guardian rather than parent. That covers grandparents, foster parents, bio parents, step parents, older siblings, etc.
We were not allowed to homeschool our pre adoptive children, but after a while, they made exceptions. The adoption agency okayed us homeschooling the children so we did. It really was in their (the children’s) best interest.
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Thank you for your comment, Mumsee.
I knew of at least two families in our local homeschool community who had biological and foster children. It would have been so much better, too, IMO (and the parents’) if they could have homeschooled all the children in their home. They had to add the challenges of busing and communication with the schools and the usual problems associated with public education and so on to the challenges and time commitment involved with homeschooling.
Not an easy balancing act.
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No, it isn’t.
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😦 I just discovered how hard it is to send an ebook internationally. It took a 20-minute conversation with ChristianBooks to finally just send a gift card. If I’m mailing an ebook to a gmail account, what difference does it make what country it is in?
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Six Arrows, for me I couldn’t have homeschooled anyway. For several reasons. One, I needed the schoolday to do my work; foster care doesn’t come close to paying the bills. (It cost me several times as much as I “earned” from doing it.) Two, I’d never done homeschooling and couldn’t simply jump in and do it. Three, not having done it and not knowing the ages of the children I might get, I didn’t have any homeschooling material, and it made no sense to buy material for children who were likely to be in my home only a couple of weeks. (I had them two weeks in one school year and four weeks in the next.)
The vast majority of foster parents who don’t currently have children in their homes wouldn’t be prepared to homeschool, for similar reasons. I think it makes sense to say that foster parents can’t homeschool the children BUT that they can appeal and see if an exception will be made. In my case, it was actually helpful that I wasn’t allowed to homeschool, since I had people in my life who thought that sending children to public school was a wicked choice. So being able to tell them (1) they aren’t my children; I’m not even the legal guardian and (2) I’m not allowed to homeschool them gave me an answer.
At least one person suggested I put them in a private school, but I told them I didn’t even know how long the children would be in my home and private schools have waiting lists, and frankly I couldn’t afford the expense of foster care as it was, and I certainly couldn’t afford a private school. But at least two of the staff at my public school had Christian bumper stickers in the school parking lot (secretary and assistant principal), so it seemed likely the kids were in a situation where they were going to be in fairly good hands at school. Not my first choice, necessarily, but foster care isn’t a first choice. Sometimes you do the best you can and let that be “enough.”
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Cheryl,
I believe Six was talking about families with children they are already homeschooling. It is possible to do both and sometimes the best option for personal reasons, but nobody expects everybody to want to or try to homeschool foster children who may be there three days or eighteen months or whatever. And yes, it makes it much easier to say the State limits us and we are okay with that because they do in many areas.
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Cheryl, what Mumsee said. The families I knew who were doing both homeschooling and public schooling were already established homeschoolers at the time they started doing foster care of school-aged children. Both of those homeschool moms also had husbands who worked outside the home. So those moms didn’t have to work enough hours at a paid job to provide the sole financial support for the family while juggling foster care and homeschooling for the first time on top of that. I would hope no one would expect such a thing of a person who was in a position like yours when you had your foster daughters.
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A former neighbor of ours, when she grew up and left home, lived in Arkansas for a while. When she moved back to our area a number of years later, she had two school-aged kids that had been homeschooled while they lived in the South.
She hadn’t homeschooled them, though — she sent them to a neighbor of hers who was homeschooling her own kids.
When the former neighbor moved back here, she asked me if I would homeschool her kids. (I was already homeschooling mine.) She was quite surprised to hear that, as our state law was written, it meant I couldn’t homeschool her kids.
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Yeah, I understood the scenario was parents already homeschooling bio children. My point was that it seems to me to make the most sense to say have as a default “You can’t homeschool foster children” but to have the law written where exceptions can be made.
I’d say, for instance, that if the biological parents haven’t lost parental rights, that they can approve the choice to homeschool, and that under these circumstances the state does have a right to see what the curriculum is.Make it a real possibility, but not just something foster parents can say “We want to homeschool” and the agency says “Sure, whatever.” Lots and lots of foster parents haven’t had children, or haven’t had children for several years, and certainly haven’t had children with the level of special needs that most foster children have. Foster parents could in good faith intend to homeschool, but if they aren’t already doing it with an established routine, they’re highly unlikely to be successful. My own two cents.
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I would think that homeschooling foster children could be problematic for them when they leave your home. Homeschoolers are often teaching different curriculum at different times than the school system. Have the foster children remain in the public system would likely help keep them on track with their studies.
My dear friend who has nine biological children, several grandchildren and several permanent foster children just picked up a newborn ‘medical’ baby. She and her family are amazing. She once said she didn’t understand how anyone could foster, falling in love with the children only to have them leave. Then another foster mom said, it’s not about you, it’s about loving those who need you, when they need you. What a turn around. Her last medical baby just turned 5 or 6, is now perfectly healthy and just went to live with his grandma. It broke her heart to see him go, but it also blessed her that she had been part of the process for him to not only go to his own home, but to live to be able to.
Thank you to all on this blog that have fostered and loved children!
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One of the benefits a good homeschool effort can offer is to help foster children, who are often far behind in school, adding to their challenges. The individual help and attention can work wonders. I have told you before how I caught one of the teachers treating one of my children like he was expected to misbehave because he was a foster child.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Kare, it’s true that homeschoolers a lot of times don’t follow the same curriculum or scope and sequence as their local school district. However, I’ve also found it to be true that even public school districts don’t do things the same as other school districts. At least not while I was teaching. (I taught school for two years in one district and five years in another — both in the same state — and while the state laid out minimum guidelines for how many minutes of instruction per week must be devoted to this or that core subject or enrichment subject, the two districts used different curricula and instructional time frames suited to their needs. In fact, during part of my time in the second school district, one of my duties was to write the K-6 vocal/general music curriculum for that district.)
I would also add that even if all school districts had a mandated curriculum that they must use statewide or nationwide, there are so many other factors that could mean a student might not have been on track with their studies. The fact that they were exposed to the same studies at the same time as their peers in other locales doesn’t guarantee that learning took place. Poor teacher management of the classroom, lack of administrative support for a teacher with students who have behavioral problems, and other factors too numerous to discuss — all these can affect children’s ability to absorb the material presented, and can leave educational “gaps” in students of even the most well-intentioned teachers.
Children, in whatever educational environment they’re in, who know they are loved (especially by their Creator God), who learn they have worth as human beings, are blessed to receive that fundamental knowledge about themselves and their value. The rest (academics and extra-curriculars), while important, are secondary to their learning that they are precious and beautiful.
LikeLiked by 1 person