Sunday School Blues

  I have, for several years now, taught a Sunday School class that goes by the appellation "The Most  Unusual Sunday School Class in America".  It is full of, in its current incarnation, somewhere between 10 and 15 boys between the ages of 10 to 13, and in our class, there is no telling what may get covered.  We  hold these 'what Does the Bible Say About.." sessions where nothing is off limits and their intrepid teacher will try his best to give a Bible answer on anything from  girls to guns.  I tell my  boys that if they pay attention they will come out of my class with a Bible  knowledge to match almost any Bible degree holder from any school in the country.
  We have contests from time to time, and I've noticed that the one or two studious kids usually win these contests, which is hardly surprising.  When we  have contests as teams, the one or two  studious kids will drag their team across the finish line, which again is  hardly surprising. I am always playing with the group dynamics to try to  motivate the unmotivated, and the latest contest has a twist.  Points are awarded for various activities ( Scripture memorization,  bringing your Bible, sword drills, etc), but unless everybody on your team  participates you get no points. This puts the studious kids in the unenviable position of motivating their teammates. If 5 kids on the  team  memorize the assigned verse, and the 6th kid doesn't, no points for anyone.
  This is all good and well, but my oldest son is in this class, and he isn't unmotivated per se, he's just  terrified of failure. He is shy to the point of paralysis, and   tends to worry himself sick about things that really aren't worth worrying about. He approached me and wanted to quit the team. I told him he wasn't allowed to quit. He said he didn't want to let everyone down. I said "Then don't".
  I understand, from a  big picture perspective that all he needs is a little success, and he will find it suits  him, but he has to get there first. The 'never say die' attitude comes easily to me, but not to him.   He has had successes in his life since he is blindingly intelligent, but the notion of other people's fates resting on his efforts paralyzes him.  In truth, I can't 'make' him perform.  He is fully capable of  doing the work, and equally capable of convincing himself that it's not worth the risk of looking foolish.
  I must admit that I am at a bit of a loss on how to help him.  All his life he has heard from me  to never quit, never surrender.  All of his life I  have told him that he should  fight till he drops and then be fully rested by the time he hits the floor. All of his life I have  quoted Winston Churchhill and  Rocky Balboa. Yet here we are, with a  task that seems, to him at least, insurmountable, and he would rather not try than fail.
  Here's the dirty little secret about his dad; I'm not particularly good at anything. I can't run very  fast or jump very high. I  am quite average looking and have a flaky memory.  I have no ear for music, and a  pretty horrific speaking voice.  Nothing comes easy for me, and  naturally  talented people  make me a little sick. But what I will do is take  my lack of ability and bury you with my effort.
  I am trying to avoid the  trap of pride in making this some sort of personal issue. I don't want to push him that much harder because he's 'my' son. I am trying to give him the exact same advice that I would give any of the other kids.  Don't give up. People are counting on you.  Do the work. It's better to  try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed.  Don't just lay there and bleed, get up and fight!  Someday he'll need that mindset. Someday the stakes will be  much higher than they are now.
  So like I said, I don't know what to do. Do you?

The New Pediatrician

  For those of  you who have been following all this, all I can say is 'so far so good'.  There has been no negative fallout on the real-world side from our departure from our pediatrician.  There have been no  visits from government workers, no inquiring phone calls. When the story went viral we got lots of interesting emails from people who  were supportive, and a handful of emails from  critical people.  Some people  encouraged me to  look outside of mainstream medicine.  To those people, let me say that I agree with you, for the most part, and  our doctor visits are rare. Some people   predicted death and suffering for my family. I managed to ignore those people.
  But as the hoopla died down, I was tasked with finding a new family doctor that would  meet our needs, not violate our convictions, and  that made my wife comfortable. Not exactly an easy task.
  I started working the yellow pages, and amassed a  short list of potential candidates. Some of them  weren't taking new patients,  at least 2 were getting ready to retire, and maybe  4 or 5  had been absorbed into the local South Georgia Healthcare Borg compound.  This meant, in the short term, that they had no receptionist, just a maddening phone tree with no human beings in sight.  Long term, it meant all their office policies were dictated by corporate bean-counters, which didn't bode well.  My list was getting shorter and shorter and I hadn't even  had a chance to  ask the Big Question; the vax question.
  Finally I found an office  just a few miles north of us, actually in our town, and a human being  answered the phone.  She said that yes, they were accepting new patients. Now came the moment. I had tried to figure out how to phrase this question so that I was clear, but not so clear that someone felt the need to call the authorities on me.  I said " Do you have an office policy regarding vaccinations?"  There was a pause, and she said "I'm not sure I  understand what you mean."
  So much for subtle. I said "I want the choice to decide which vaccinations my children will or will not take.  Does your office honor those choices?" Another pause and she said " Why wouldn't we?".
  Hmmm, good question. "Well, ma'am, some people won't see your family unless all the government mandated shots are given." She made a sound  that sounded like genuine surprise and said "Well we don't do that, and we wouldn't do that. Now we will notate that you declined the shots, but goodness, no, why would we force you to get shots?"
  I ran up to the office which is  literally 4 miles from my front door, and gathered up the necessary paperwork for 6 new patients.  The office  is a bright, cheery place and the receptionists don't hide behind frosted glass, which has always been a pet peeve of mine. All seems to be well. I guess time will tell, but it looks like we're back in business.

We Need a New Pediatrician

  We need a new pediatrician.

  The reason we need a new pediatrician is rather involved.  A while back, the pediatrician that our family has frequented for years came out with what was, in my opinion, a rather draconian and insulting policy regarding immunizations. The policy was simple; you will take the shots the CDC recommends, or we will not treat you.   The written policy went on to refer to the unimmunized as ‘selfish’.  Their policy is reproduced here.  When I read the policy I was incensed, and it lead to a number of family discussions. My wife wanted to stay with the doctor, and I did not.  My compromise was that we would stay with his office until we were forced to leave by this issue.

  Fast forward a few weeks and their office calls to tell me that my oldest needs to come in for his 11 year physical. I had never heard of such a thing, and the person on the phone was just a message service with no insight into such things.  I wanted to know what was driving this physical. My kids aren’t in government schools so I couldn’t imagine any reason that   pre-6^th grade physical would be required. My wife called their office a time or two on my behalf and got no answer that would satisfy me.

  On the day of the appointment my wife called from the doctor’s office and told me that   part of the 11 year checkup was a series of immunizations.  One of the  immunizations was for HPV( Human papillomavirus vaccine), It's ’recommended’ by Big Pharma for both girls and boys to prevent genital warts and certain types of cancer. We had already declined this for my daughter before the new policy came out.  One of the shots was a Tdap booster (Tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis) booster.  The last on the list was the Meningococcal vaccine which supposedly prevents meningitis. She read them off to me and I made a command decision.   She was to instruct the doctor that my son would receive a tetanus booster and that was it. I hung up the phone and waited. I felt in my gut that this was going to be a day of confrontation.

  A few minutes later the phone rang and my wife told me that the pediatrician wanted to speak to me. His first question was whether or not I had actually done any research before I decided to risk my child’s health. I told him I didn’t think the risk was that high, and that injecting foreign substances into my child’s body wasn’t my idea of health care. He warned me of all the meningitis outbreaks that still happen in America and told me that I was putting my child in grave danger. He said, and I quote, “If he catches it, I don’t want to have to stand there in ICU and watch him die because he didn’t get this shot.”  Keeping in mind that meningitis is treatable with penicillin and that death from it usually only happens in a previously compromised immune system, the message was clear; take the shot or death may happen.

  I continued to decline the shots, and he asked me if I was aware of their office policy.  I told him I was and that I found their   low regard for parental choice very troubling. By now we’re both yelling at each other, which wasn’t the best way to handle it. He asked me if I understood that he could no longer treat our family unless we got these shots.  I made some comment about how much money his office makes off of immunizations. He told me he didn’t have time to argue with me, that we were done here.  He handed the phone back to my wife. I instructed her (still in a fairly harsh tone of voice unfortunately) to pack up our son and come home.

  Once I was off the phone, he began to work on my wife.  He apologized for getting so upset on the phone with me, and he wanted to give us some time to ‘think about’ it before we severed the doctor-patient relationship. He gave my wife the party line on vaccines in general, and somehow my upcoming mission trip to Haiti came up.  The idea was floated out there that I could bring back some plague from Haiti and infect our unvaxed kids.  Before she left, my wife had to sign a ‘Refusal to Vaccinate’ form that they would keep on file.  They also informed my wife that she would not be able to get our children’s medical records. Their policy is to release those records to our next doctor, not to us.

  A week went by and I was still trying to locate a doctor that honored our choices as parents when we received a letter in the mail officially severing the doctor-patient services unless we ‘comply’. Included was a revised version of their policy in which the word ‘selfish’ is replaced with a reference to ‘herd immunity’.

  My issue is simple; it’s my child, not theirs.  Maybe vaccines are good, maybe they’re bad. Maybe Wakefield was right and they attribute to allergies and autism, maybe they don’t.  Either way, I as a parent ought to be able to pick and choose what shots are given to my child, not the CDC.  In the pediatricians defense, they are a private practice and can do as they see fit, but I think it’s poor policy and a poor business decision to sever years of customer relations over the recommendations of Big Pharma and their lackeys in the government. I think it’s poor policy as a parent to blindly sign on to whatever injections the government dictates from on high

  So we have no pediatrician at the moment, and there is a certified letter waiting ominously for us  up at the post office from the pediatrician.  My concern is not that we won’t find another doctor, and my concern isn’t that my  son will catch meningitis. My concern at this point is that a visit from Child Protective Services comes out of all this.  Out of concern for the staff at this misguided doctor’s office, I’ve not released the name of the office, but I suspect we have not heard the last from all this.

Atlas Shrugged on Education

  If you've ever read Atlas shrugged, you may well remember that there is a point in the book in which society begins to fall apart.  Trains collide, cities burn, and overall  the motor of the world begins to  screech to a violent, bloody halt.   Innocent people perish  because the  moochers  thought they could count on the  cooperation of the producers indefinitely. The producers in Rand's  work could re-emerge from the shadows and fix it, but to fix it would only prolong the inevitable since the real fix is for the false ideology of the moochers to collapse into the  horrible unthinkable failure that it is.  Ive often thought how in that scenario how difficult it would be to sit back and watch the whole thing shudder and twitch in its death throes knowing that innocent people would be hurt.  Long term, the collapse is actually the  more moral solution, but it seems to me that only a dispassionate robot could watch  it implode without a heavy heart.  Hold that thought.
  As homeschoolers our family exists outside of the system in a lot of ways.  A  couple years back we got  a charming letter from the   Department of Education (as appropriately named as the Patriot Act) of our state. They informed us that   the school year for them would be shortened to 166 days a year, but we would  still be  'required' to   teach for 180 days a year.  The reason they cited for this  was some sort of  union negotiation situation, but a  few  questions asked of the right people revealed the real reason; money. Our state  simply couldn't afford to keep the doors open  180 days, so they would teach  166 days and  fill in the gap with  'teacher work days' and  extended field trips, including a day off for the entire school system when the  local high school team became state champions.  Despite this cost-cutting measure,  the state education system   continues to hemorrhage money, and  not too long after shortening the year, they began to whittle away at  music and drama programs. They laid off  teaching assistants, and   there are rumours that the school year will be shortened again.
  It's taken  over 70 years, but the public school system with its humanistic roots is finally starting to topple, but  a monstrosity that large  takes a while to fall.  Think what you will  of me, but as this   behemoth falls  ,  there are good kids who will be hurt. they will receive an even more sub-standard education than they already have.  Screams for more funding will grow shriller and shriller.  Having established that they have the right to my money, they will clamor for more and more of it. The cost of education will rise even as the worth of it plummets.  There is no other way this can end. The system cannot be mended.  The only moral thing to do is to let it collapse.
    Without my tax dollars, the system would collapse sooner, and cleaner. But the  government school industry  enjoys a monopoly on  its funding source, and  although I can  pull my children out of their classrooms, I cannot  voluntarily stop funding their classrooms.  They will steal from me as much as they can, as long as they can, and the only thing I can think to do  to hasten its demise is to encourage  people to  pull their children out of the system.  That is where the battle is, in my estimation.  A mass exodus from the dying organism seems to me be our best choice. I  think you have a moral obligation to remove your children from the government schools. Your school may be a little better or a little worse, but I assure you that  at the higher levels, they all have the same agenda.
  This is a moral issue.It's  more moral for them to steal our  money than it is  to steal the  hearts and minds and future of our children.  So we fight the  battle where we can; with our  attendance. Without our children, they can shorten the  school year as much as they want, and they can cut every program not directly related to their agenda, and the impact on us will be  minimal.  The collapse is  coming, but  boy is it going to be  slow, and painful and ugly. I cannot save your children, I've done what I can to save mine.