Hoosier Homeschooler #2.001 | February, 2008

Recently one of the homeschooling groups my family is involved with went on a tour of a chocolate factory. (Yes, Virginia, there is a Golden Ticket in Indiana, and there are pipes of molten chocolate — but they're not quite big enough to suck up little children.)

We were the largest group this factory has ever given a tour to. By the end of the tour, our tour guide was impressed. I was relieved. Fortunately this kind of reaction to large groups of homeschooled children of diverse ages is common. Still... it's good to get to the end of a tour, especially in a chocolate factory, without one or two of your entourage having to be rescued by Oompa Loompahs.

Several of us headed out for a very late fast food lunch afterwards. We were four moms and 10 kids. The moms sat at one table and the kids at another. The kids were ages 8 to about 12. On top of that, four kids are "learning disabled" with ADHD and/or Aspergers and/or dyslexia. All four are also highly gifted.

This sounds like a recipe for chaos, right? In addition, there were two sets of good friends, plus another couple of kids who see them once in awhile, plus another several kids that don't see the others often, and one guest. I can tell you're doing the math. This could have been cliques galore.

Instead, what happened was that the kids were first quietly talking, and then decided to play a game. The game wasn't so quiet, but then again, this was Micky D's.

But neither was the game chaotic or bumptious. And the kids weren't pairing off, or doing the "usual" one-upping or "typical" things that you'd expect to see in a group of this age with the mix of good friends to guests.

And neither did the parents control or hover, although sometimes a child would come over to the table to ask permission to get a refill or dessert.

What were they all playing? A word game. At one point one of the kids came over and asked, "What's the the longest word in the English dictionary?"

That question raised some eyebrows among other people there. Actually, we were getting stared at a LOT, and not because the kids were being too loud or too rude. I think it was because the kids were not being... typical.

We puzzled people. We looked like a field trip, but there were no teacher-types, with rules and clipboards and yelling at everyone to get back in the herd and insulting everyone in the process. I think that really confused a lot of onlookers. There was no yellow bus and we weren't wearing name tags or school shirts. Maybe the idea of a fairly large, diverse group of kids treating each other with respect, playing a pretty brainy game, while still having fun (some of it bellylaugh-worthy) with no one directing everything was just too much to digest!

Literally, everyone from the guy fixing the ice maker to the teen obviously cutting school was staring at us, trying not to let us notice. The one guy that didn't stare was busy on his laptop, just a few tables away. We weren't bothering HIM.

What's interesting, is that in a situation like this, homeschoolers are in the 'real world.' This is our ... normal. To the people who aren't used to the spectacle of large groups of children out and about during a time when they should be cooped up in a school building, the images and social interactions they witness, just didn't make sense. The onlookers were trippin' out on fieldtrippin' homeschoolers, enjoying the real world.

HH Gallery Photo
Copyright B. B. Bennett

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