Feb 07 2010
On Doing What’s Done
There’s an email list for parents of children who are considering cruising. We’re a funny and eclectic bunch. You get questions about Personal Flotation Devices (and why the heck can the UK create a fabulous kid’s PFD with integral harness and the USA just will not?), questions about homeschooling, questions about all the crazy details that bringing a family onboard brings up.
Hands down, the most common question on there is about telling family. For a bunch of folks who are mavericky (hey, if Sarah Palin can use it, so can I) enough to choose this onboard life, it is astonishing to me how many are living under the cringe of parental disapproval.
Or, turned on its head… it is an everlasting wonder to me that there are so many parents who managed to have children intrepid enough to break the mold and do something fascinating and amazing, and yet they don’t appreciate it. The tales of folks whose parents, upon learning of their plans to go cruising with their grandkids, stopped speaking to them, or worse, started engaging in hardcore emotional warfare, would break your heart.
One of my posse told a painful story of her father in law attempting to forge an (unholy) alliance with her mother in order to “guilt” she and her husband into giving up cruising, settling down, and getting steady jobs so their kids could attend good schools, attain the Ivy League, blah blah blah. Never mind that these kids have experienced Mexico, first-hand, for a year, and know more about language, culture, geography, history, and the environment than any of their shore-based peers. For this guy, unless it’s credentialed, it’s not valid, and he’d rather the schools and the state raised these kids than their own parents.
One of my fellow listies, a man named Doug, who’s got the most amazing family living aboard a catamaran on the east coast of the US, apparently was made as crazy by these tales of manipulation and pressure as I was, and he cut loose with this:
It’s kind of funny. To oppose something, you must know it. Not simply think that your way is the best way because it’s the only way you know. And the whole buying a house thing really helped sooo many people right now. Who would have thought that you too could be in hock for 300k in a state that allows the bank to come after you (as 30 states do) when you short sell your house? That’s really wise. And there’s nothing like a $300,000 hole to fill before you have one penny to your name, that truly helps college. I mean seriously, have these people even read the news over the last 4 years? Normal advice from normal people gets you in the middle of the road where you get run over everytime.I do think it’s a parent’s primary responsibility to give their kid the best education possible. That’s why homeschooling outperforms private schools in every testable subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homeschool_academic_scores.jpgThat’s why immersion learning of a foreign language is the best learning possible.Brick and mortar schools are there for one and only one reason; convenience of the parents who need to both work to pay the 300k debt they owe for the house their father in law told them to buy and they couldn’t sell.All right. Cease fire. Standing down…..
Yeah. What he said.
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What he said. In spades.
Well said on all points! Our house is now for sale! (Truly!).
How do we get signed up for this email list?
You tell ‘em Doug!!
We are on a long, slow path to understanding with my family. At this point we’re at what I’ll call “grudging acceptance.” They can’t wait for our sabbatical to be over, we hope our life choices extend ad infinitum.
What he said…but how do you reach agreement with your partner in the first place about life’s adventures, even if its not a boat… sigh… rock on team H