We hate your blog.

1. We hate your use, even your coinage, of the word, “unschooling.” You’re talking about 4-5 year olds. They haven’t even been schooled. At least let your kids/grandkids get brainwashed by the secular-liberal intelligentsia before yanking them out, and reprogramming them with your particular brand of crazy.

Why do Jesus' hands look lacquered?

2. We hate that you have prepared your kids and grandkids for a lifetime of social awkwardness and an inability to cope with actual human beings in a social environment. Don’t worry kids, when life gets hard in the future, because of your unschooling, you’ll know to run far, far away.

3. We hate that you use religion as a thinly veiled excuse to pull your kids out of actual schools, where they might have had a chance to escape the back/swampwater you live in and have a normal life. Remember, sheltered today is dysfunctional tomorrow.

4. We hate that we had to get out our Crazy-to-English translation dictionary to read your blog. Some examples:

“My grandson, Jules Paul Smiley […] is 4 years old, looks like 8 years old, acts like 12 years old.”

• Translation: He’s husky, husky enough that he gets made fun of. Solution: take him out of environments in which he might learn to adapt and deal with kids his own age.

“Jules is actually enrolled in Pre-School at a Public School, as he currently lives with his Dad and paternal grandparents. When visiting with his Mother, who lives with us, He [sic] uses the Unschooling Method.”

• Translation: His father doesn’t let him come visit very often, because he then has to be re-acclimated to normal living circumstances. Also: his mother was un/homeschooled, briefly re-entered society, then retreated back to the safety of the compound.

“After hours upon hours of research and testing, gripping [sic] and complaining, begging and pleading, from BOTH ends, I had to finally call a ‘Time Out’ and head for my Prayer Closet.”

• This translation presented some problems. While a typically homeschooled student may be expected to know what “gripping” is (it’s what you do to a baseball bat, right, or do to the hair of an especially recalcitrant child?), in this context, it actually means “griping.” Apparently unschooling relies on a system of unspelling. Our second translation issue has to do with the “Prayer Closet.” After consulting numerous authorities, we have determined that there is no translatable equivalent. If you have to pray in the closet, you’re doing it wrong.

“To think I was even contemplating Public School, how horrible is that?!! What really sucks the most is how Satan uses other family members, who don’t understand enough to support what you believe and do, when it comes to Homeschooling, much less Unschooling. Anyhow, ‘The Light’ FINALLY came on, and The Lord showed me that ALL I NEEDED TO DO was Sit Back, Relax, and Watch as my daughter UNSCHOOLED herself and began to Teach Me!!”

• Translation(s): i. The meds aren’t working/I refuse to take the meds.     ii. My family wants my kids to be normal. Those a-holes. They are the devil.

Final note: Neither extra punctuation nor capital letters equal emotion.

5. We hate that not only have we spent more time reading this blog than the author spent writing it, but that this blog may have been the inspiration for the movie, “The Waterboy.”