Comments

I like Blogger's commenting system. I like Wordpress' system on Wordpress pages that doesn't require you to have a Wordpress account to comment. I don't want to sign up for an account with yet another system just to leave a comment. I have enough user names and passwords to keep track of already. Yes, my computer remembers them for me—most of the time. There's always an exception, and since it has been filling in a password for me, when it drops the ball, I've completely forgotten what the password was.

Open ID is okay, usually, I guess. It makes me jump through a few easy hoops, but then generally lets me comment. I really wish people would use Blogger or Wordpress instead. But not the Wordpress that makes you sign in. I hate intensedebate. It makes me jump through more hoops than any of the others, and often still doesn't let me comment. If you use intensedebate as your only commenting system, I won't bother leaving a comment.  

I've seen some blogs with their own domain names use a commenting system similar to Wordpress: enter your name, email address (will not be displayed) and web site / blog url (optional). These are fine. As long as your web design is easy on the eyes, your page is quick to load, and your commenting system doesn't present unnecessary barriers to commenting, I don't mind that your have your own domain name, although I think it's overrated. That is all.

Pinky, We're Going to Take Over the World!

Today's post is reprinted with permission from Boarding in Bedlam. I tried to find the original comment Arby quoted, but decided I had better things to do. I assume it's buried somewhere in the 777 (and counting) comments.

Arby is a stay-at-home, homeschooling, father of General Mayhem, Major Havoc, and Captain Chaos. He is happily married to The Boss. They live in Apathy, Kansas, with The Big Fuzzy Dog, several chickens, a few fish, and Reggie the Rent-a-Dog.


Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Pinky, We're Going to Take Over the World!
Well, it’s almost time to begin the new day. In a few minutes I will gather my hand-picked students, chosen for their unique gifts and abilities, and start them on their daily lessons. That is the position of Tracy, a teacher writing on a Wall Street Journal community forum. In her post, Tracy wrote:

Homeschooling - I have no problem with homeschooling, but please don't compare that with my job. There are VERY FEW similarities. If I had only 3-4 self-selected students to educate in the comfort of my own home with any bathroom/food/physical activity/food break and could set my own hours and discipline appropriately, etc. etc. etc ------ I could get even better results than those parents. If you don't believe me, then please fund that study and I will be happy to participate. I will even take 10 students.

She discovered our secret. Homeschoolers self-select only the best students. This self-selection process skews the results of home education unnaturally higher than those of our public school counter-parts. Tracy is such an incredibly talented teacher that if she would do the same, her homeschooling performance would be better than the rest of us teacher-wannabes. I’m stepping up today to raise my hand and admit, “Guilty as charged!”

I self-selected only the best students for my homeschool. I did not simply accept the children that God gave me. I self-selected a girl with a congenital heart defect. She’s a stroke victim with learning delays that caused us to hold her back one year in school to better prepare her to complete the first grade. It gave us time to help her gain the ability to hold and manipulate a pencil. Nothing screams “academic success” like repeating kindergarten! I self-selected OCD Boy. He’s the child that must ask the same question three times in a row before hesitantly accepting the same answer given three times in a row and gingerly moving forward through his exercises. If he had his way, I would be holding his hand through every question on every task that he completes. His ability is high. His self-confidence is low. I even self-selected Walter Mitty, my teenager whose hold on reality is tenuous on his best days. I wanted him to possess a genuine talent for mathematics coupled with a genuine loathing for the subject that allows him to stretch even the simplest math assignment into a five hour marathon.

I’m a bit of a sadist that way.

I’m fairly certain that if I asked my homeschooling friend Daniel, he’d admit that he self-selected autism for his oldest boy. Teaching a non-autistic child would be so…mundane. I’m quite certain that most of the thousands of the parents who homeschool their special needs children would agree. And those homeschooling parents who chose “normal” students? Selfish bastards. All of ‘em. They could have self-selected special needs children, but nope, they opted for normal. And we all know that normal homeschooling children never act up, disobey, sass, fail to complete their work, fail subjects, miss deadlines, lose assignments, daydream, lollygag or repeatedly make the same mistake that their parent-teachers have explained to them over and over and over again until they are banging their heads on the refrigerator in frustration. It never happens because those traits have been self-selected out of normal homeschooled children.

It’s time to let the world in on a little secret. Homeschoolers hold all the secrets to manipulating DNA in order to produce only the best possible students.

Pinky, we’re going to take over the world!

Or maybe…just possibly…Tracy has no idea what she is writing about.
Posted by Arby at 10:15 AM

http://boardinginbedlam.blogspot.com/2011/02/pinky-were-going-to-take-over-world.html

Papa Bear said...

I thought you must have a hidden camera in my house. Did I mention that, along with autism, GL has OCD? And after he asks the same question 20 times, I ask, "What did I say?" He repeats my answer verbatim, then asks the same question again.

And your "Walter Mitty" describes BB to a T!

I must have forgotten to fill out the girl with a heart condition page. Either that, or they're so popular, they're backordered. I seem to remember requesting twelve little blessings who were all candidates for Mensa, Mr. / Miss Congeniality, Most Diligent, Most Likely to Succeed, and sainthood. Ability to run a 4 minute mile while still in high school optional. Instead, I got my kids. I wouldn't trade them.

Sometimes less is more.

A friend posted on Facebook:
Why the heck are they still playing Christmas music??? That's ridiculous!

I replied:

Because Christmas doesn't end until Jan 6. And we wouldn't be so tired of it if we hadn't been celebrating for two months straight already. You've heard of the 12 days of Christmas? Christmas was intended as a festival that didn't begin until Dec 25, and ran until Jan 6, 12 days, long enough for any celebration. The four weeks before Christmas are Advent. (Actually, it starts with the 4th Sunday before Christmas, so the length varies from year to year.) Advent is supposed to be a season of fasting, repentance, and prayer.

And what about all those songs that don't have anything to do with Christmas, but are just winter songs? They play them all through Nov and Dec when there's not much snow, and it's not technically winter, but stop Dec 26, when winter is just getting under way. No wonder so many people find winter depressing!

Another Weapon in the War on Sagging Pants

Some days, I think Griffin and Goldilocks might be twins. Big Daddy Autism commented, "Griffin's is usually bunched up and sticking out over his belt line. We let it go since we are just so happy he dresses himself (mostly) and he wears his shirts so long and untucked that nobody can see it." Goldilocks does the same thing: Pants low, underwear high, long shirt covering his underwear. I see only three problems here:

1. He wears his pants so low, he walks on them, leaving very few pairs to pass down to Brother Bear.
2. His underwear do show every time he reaches, stretches, bends or,
3. puts his hands in his pants. He habitually shoves both hands in up to the elbows.

I don't watch a lot of television, or I would have heard the song Pants On the Ground before today. This afternoon, every time I saw his tightey whiteys, I chanted a line or two, and he jerked his hands out and hiked up his jeans. Again, it doesn't seem to bother him to grab himself in public, but he doesn't want anyone to notice. Unless someone says something, he thinks no one sees him.

I Have a Dream!

In response to Help! lebelinoz said...

Good job. I'm always trying to get my 7-year-old to do stuff. So you're saying: if I keep trying, I may get it right in another seven years.

I replied:
When I was a kid, I always had to take the trash out, because that's the oldest son's job. I have two brothers and three sisters, but somehow they could never do it, because it was the oldest son's job. I don't know who took out the trash once I moved out, because there was no oldest son to do the job. I think my dad got stuck with the chore.


My mother won't pump her own gas because that's a man's job. If her car is low on gas, she won't go anywhere until Dad fills it for her. My wife thinks this is silly, but when we were first married, she wouldn't take out the trash because that's the man's job. I don't know who took out the trash when she was single and lived with a female roommate. Maybe one of them called Daddy to do it?

I resolved that ALL my kids would learn to take out the trash and pick up after themselves. Number one son didn't have the coordination, so number two son learned to do it first. Number one son eventually learned to do it with verbal prompts at every step. I am working on fading those prompts. Number two son now loads and unloads the dishwasher, washes the hand-wash dishes, and folds and puts away his and his brother's laundry, tasks that are still beyond number one son's capabilities. So year after year, I supervise number one son's taking out the garbage, even though it would be less work to do it myself, because he needs a job, this is one he can learn, and because I have a dream that someday he will take out the garbage all by himself!

The Good, the Bad, and the Truth

I linked this article because I think it demonstrates an important truth: optimists don't have a monopoly on inspiration. Put another way, pessimism and inspiration are not mutually exclusive. I began composing a reply, but I was interrupted interrupted by my son screaming, pounding on the walls, and tearing down pictures. Why? Because he suddenly decided he needed an "adventure" by which he means someone getting in the car with him, taking him someplace, and buying him some food. (And no, this wasn't about hunger. He'd just eaten half a pizza.) No one would drop everything immediately and do that for him just because he demanded it, so he started his screaming and wall-pounding. This was not a meltdown. A meltdown is much worse. When I said no, he began alternately threatening to keep pounding on the walls until I took him on an adventure, and briefly stopping his pounding to demand an adventure as a reward for stopping. I told him that no means no, and I will not respond to manipulative behavior. That meant we had no choice but to ride it out. So we did.

That's life around here. I tell it like it is. When something good happens, I celebrate. I don't mope around whining about my miserable life as the father of a boy with autism. When things are hard, I don't put on a counterfeit plastic smile and spew some saccharine platitudes about the glass being half full when it's darn near empty. I'm 100% real 100% of the time. Some people can't handle that, but at least I know they're rejecting the real me, not some synthetic version of me manufactured to please the public and failing to.

Have you noticed how a sanitized, Disneyfied version of a great story, whether a true story or a classic work of fiction, is never as satisfying as the original? Tame the fear and the sadness, and you tame the joy as well. I have no choice but to face anger, fear, and sadness untamed. I intend to embrace wild joy. That's what I like about Understanding My Son, Kicking Kittens, Life is a Spectrum, Big Daddy Autism, Both Hands and a Flashlight, On the Spectrum, Autism Herd, etc. The laughter is sweeter and the tears more poignant because they are real. I'd rather have real sadness than fake happiness. I will not allow other people, nor other parents, nor even other autism parents tell me how to interpret and experience my life in their funhouse mirror. It is what it is.

A few months ago, I visited an online homeschooling forum. Several moms were--let's call a manually-operated digging implement a spade--bitching. And there's no bitching I find quite so irritating as euphemism-clad Christian bitching. So what were they bitching "sharing" about? It seems that each mom had at least one kid (usually a daughter) who was a pessimist or, at the very least, whose optimism wasn't up to snuff. Here's the deal-breaker: they were not content to demand an honest assessment of events from that child; they demanded that she put a positive spin on everything. They were going to train this pessimism right out of her and make her a bleeding optimist! Their methods ranged from the absurd to the cruel. Have you ever felt the urge to do the impossible, reach through the computer screen and slap someone? If a positive attitude were so good and powerful and holy, and a negative attitude so rotten and weak and reprobate, how did they expect their negative attitudes and actions to inspire optimism? I immediately began composing a rebuttal in the form of a satire, titled "Optimism is a Serious Character Flaw." I wasn't foolish enough to send it. In fact, I never finished it, though I might one of these days.

Yes, we all have our good days and bad days. Yes, we all have moments when we tend toward excessive pessimism and others when we tend toward foolish optimism. If you choose not to talk about one or the other, you have the right to remain silent. But when you tell someone else they have no right to speak the truth because it makes you uncomfortable, and especially when, by speaking, that person inspires another to take righteous action, you can just go where liars go. I refer, of course, to Washington.

Coming Soon: Autism Parents: Two Camps, and Why I Don't Fit in Either One.

Could you help welcome new readers?

I need help because a link on Homeschooling Bloggers Haven has brought some new readers to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I want them to enjoy the same posts as my long-time readers. Would you please list your favorite posts in the Comments? I'll compile them into a "top ten" list (or more, no one says it has to be ten) so new readers can get the flavor of the blog. It will also give me a better idea what you'd like to hear about in future posts.

Stupid Google, Stupid www.blogger.com

...lets me leave comments on other people's blogs, but won't let me comment on my own blog.

This goes under Which church would you choose?

Would we be more involved if we moved closer? Most families are so busy with every available lesson, sport, school, neighborhood, and regional activity, not to mention some parents commuting over an hour to work, that even those who live close find it hard to get together. We choose to opt out of these things, but so far, we're the only ones. And it's a small church. How many official church functions are offered besides Sunday services? About one a month. And with his sensory and social difficulties, some events just aren't possible for GL.