agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have four kids, all homeschooled. They are all straight-A students, very involved in various activities or passions, and the lights of our lives. Academics have always been very important to us, especially my husband. It’s not about the grades or the prestige of being able to tell the other parents “my kid’s a doctor!”, it’s about seeing them succeed and be financially independent from us. Our educational method worked! Our kids are happy and successful so far. The oldest two, “Caeden” (20M) and “Aimee” (18F) are in college, studying to be a surgeon and a criminal lawyer respectively. Our youngest two, “Brooklyn” (15F), and “Erin” (13F) are still figuring out what they want to do with their lives.

For Brooklyn’s freshman year, I encouraged her to look at degree plans, take community college classes, and check out internships for fields she might want to go into. I know there are a lot of things open to high schoolers in our state, and I wanted her to take full advantage. She is taking a plethora of community college courses right now, and she has plans to intern with a psychologist and a nurse practitioner next summer. She wants to potentially be a psychiatric nurse practitioner, which makes my husband very happy. He places a large amount of respect on the medical, engineering, and law fields. He’s now turning to Erin to see how we can help her figure out her passion. Erin has always been very advanced for her age, far beyond the normal 13-year-olds. She’s taking two community college courses right now! We haven’t pushed her into this, she is just naturally motivated to get after it. I love this about her. She’s always had an interest in art that went beyond a love of drawing, and after taking her first summer art class at the community college, she now wants to be an artist.

I love that she discovered this about herself at a young age, but my husband isn’t so happy. He says that art is a hobby, not a job. He thinks that you cannot make a career out of art. Huh? The entire reason we’re homeschooling our kids this way is so they can pursue ANY passion of theirs, not just what they feel like they have to do. Unfortunately, my husband thinks that Erin will grow out of her “phase.” Erin stubbornly insists that she wants to do art, and I’ve been backing her. He doesn’t understand that people can do jobs outside of nursing or law, and he has started bullying Brooklyn into telling her sister “what a real job looks like.” Brooklyn has panic attacks regularly because he’s been cornering her and yelling at her. I’ve had numerous talks with my husband, but nothing seems to get through. How can I help my husband realize that Erin’s passion is worth our acceptance and respect?

—Art Is a Career!

Dear Art Is a Career,

Remind your husband that there are many highly successful professional artists who earn an impressive living via their work, but also that there are other ways in which artists can support themselves while pursuing their passion. For example, many artists teach to keep the lights on. Point out how stressed out his approach makes Brooklyn feel. Explain that you all can talk to Erin about the challenges of supporting oneself as an artist and encourage her to think about ways she can both pursue her artistic passions while preparing herself for a life of financial independence; for example, she can double major in college and have a career that allows her to do art in her spare time. Erin is still young enough to change her mind about what she wants to do a few times before she even has to apply to college, so there is no need to put tremendous pressure on her to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Continue encouraging her in spite of your husband’s criticism and let her know that ultimately, her path is in her own hands and that she will be the one to decide on her future career.

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Academics have always been very important to us, especially my husband. It’s not about the grades or the prestige of being able to tell the other parents “my kid’s a doctor!”, it’s about seeing them succeed and be financially independent from us.

Not about that to LW, maybe, but as the rest of the letter shows, her husband has always felt differently.

She wants to potentially be a psychiatric nurse practitioner, which makes my husband very happy. He places a large amount of respect on the medical, engineering, and law fields.

See? To him, it's always been about the prestige of having a child who is successful in a very particular way.

The entire reason we’re homeschooling our kids this way is so they can pursue ANY passion of theirs, not just what they feel like they have to do.

Again, LW, this is why *you* are homeschooling your kids. Your husband was never singing that song.

Unfortunately, my husband thinks that Erin will grow out of her “phase.”

No, he really does not think that. If he thought that, he'd leave her alone. Instead....

he has started bullying Brooklyn into telling her sister “what a real job looks like.” Brooklyn has panic attacks regularly because he’s been cornering her and yelling at her.

he abuses both your youngest daughters!

How can I help my husband realize that Erin’s passion is worth our acceptance and respect?

LW, your problem is not that he doesn't understand that Erin's passion is worth respect. Your problem is that he's abusing two of your children. Until and unless you can see things as they actually are, you're never going to be able to make any progress fixing this problem, because you're unable to see where the problem even lies!

Columnist's advice, by the way, is at Harriette's level of usefulness. Here is my advice:

"Tell your husband that if he continues to abuse your daughters, you'll put them in public school and file for divorce. Sure, he might be able to get custody - but if you fight him, it'll take so long that Erin will be off to college before he wins. Is that really the game he wants to play, or would he like to try a new game called 'I am a mature and responsible adult, and I will not push my issues on my children' instead?"

Yes, exactly this. He is abusing both of those kids, particularly the youngest.

Also, as someone who got a full ride to art school, it’s not as impractical as he seems to think.

My BIL actually was in the Army reserves as an artist. Because apparently they need artists too and you can do that.

Also, I feel like saying that 13 is too young to be making major life choices like your passion and your career. It is possible she'll change her mind. My niece sure did - she wanted to be an artist, went to a good art high school, and then decided "Nah, I won't be an animator after all". This is a little disappointing to me, I'll admit, but it's her life, it's sure not mine.

And guess what? It's also possible that the other three will change their minds too, and the further they get from Dad's influence, the more likely that is. Especially since two of the three are going into fields that require a significant time commitment and years of post-graduate schooling. People drop out of those fields like flies.

I was thinking that when I read the letter, and then I got distracted and forgot to mention it.

13 is way too young for a parent to be putting huge amounts of pressure to decide a career path.

Ahaha my parents decided I would be a doctor based on what I said when I was FOUR

I am not a doctor

Heck, at 17 I started college for interior design. Two years in decided that I didn’t want to do that for a living and changed my major. I wasn’t even thinking about my career for the rest of my life at 13!

I like your advice much better, though if this family is typical of most homeschooling families I've known, LW may have been out of the workforce for long enough that she can't support herself right away if she divorces her husband.

Well, this is what extended family is for. If they can't take you in as you leave an abusive household for your children's sake, why even have family at all?

Yeah that pretty much covers it! I would also say the husband clearly needs therapy, but it wouldn't fix the pressing problem of him being an asshole and a bully. Plus he's probably not likely to agree to that with this mentality.

You deserve whatever the columnist got paid

Yes. It’s his abusiveness and terrorizing (literally) his younger children that’s the issue. (And it wouldn’t surprise me if the older children were terrorized too along the way. Or they figured out early what it was he wanted, and it was easier to go along than to choose something he’d find inappropriate. But a child doesn’t do things like that without having been put into a state of needing to be cautious in order to be safe; learning how to appease scary parents is a skill many of us learn early.)

And yeah, at age 13 I wanted to be a journalist, the same way I had since first grade (when I started my elementary school’s first school paper). By 15 I was winning school-journalism awards from my state. At age 16 I did an internship at a daily newspaper and then realized that being a journalist wasn’t my path after all. Things often change as you grow and get more experience.

OMG, a thirteen-year-old wants to do something with her life that might not make big money! The horror! Let's destroy her sister's mental health over it!

The dad is a real dickweed. There's a huge difference between "it can be difficult to make a living as an artist" and "it's not a real job".

13 is too young to worry about it but also, if it's a money thing, you could pretty easily end up with more debt becoming a lawyer than an artist...

The community college teacher in me in wincing on so many levels, not the least of which is the prospect of having a 13-year-old in my Intro to Fiction class where we read Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, and Apples," and talk about how the story teases out the necrophilia of the original.

Right? I was a hyperlexic kid who read at a college level by age eight and could easily have taken community college classes in my tween years, but thankfully, my parents were more aware than to think it’s appropriate that a middle-schooler should be placed in adult classes to discuss adult topics with young adults. There are plenty of classes appropriate to and available for mid-teens that this child could take instead.

It seems likely that her home-schooling parents have sent her to community college for math, science, or a foreign language class, and are handling English literature and language arts themselves. My impression is that a lot of home-schooling parents are comfortable admitting that they don't remember a lot of their high school math, at least not well enough to teach it, but assume that of course they can teach English, as if the only qualification is the ability to speak the language.

Although there's a strong subset of homeschoolers who are comfortable with math and science and very weak on ELA and history. The smart thing is to recognize it and outsource the subjects you're weakest in, in a co-op, community college, online schooling, or, if all else fails, by hiring a tutor.

My last summer teaching lit, I had a couple of rising HS sophomores. There were no issues, but day-um.

LW, your husband's an abusive ass, you're both pushing the kids too hard, chances are they're only doing what they're doing right now to get out from under your thumbs as much as possible as fast as possible, few things are as annoying as "homeschool" parents who brag about their kids' grades, quit it.

General advice to better parents facing a teen who wants to be a Real Artist but are skeptical of their ability to make a living at it: have them take accounting/bookkeeping/entrepreneurship/marketing/small business classes alongside their art classes (or make them pick an art program that emphasizes that). Being a successful independent artist is running a business, and if they don't pick up those skills early on it will hurt their ability to make art; the people I know who've flamed out on attempted art careers have all flamed out on that aspect. If they do well with the business skills, they'll have a head start on a backup career if their independent art doesn't pay off, and meantime they can tell annoying skeptics they're taking respectable courses like accounting. If they *don't* do well with that part or they hate the idea of it, they will find out in time to pivot to a commercial art specialty where they can make a respectable salary.

Look, I’m sure Erin has PLANS to intern with a psychologist and a nurse practitioner, but let me tell you, it’s hard to get internships in this field for qualified graduate students. I don’t think anyone’s going to be willing to let a 15 year old closer to the office than perhaps in a filing capacity.

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