Family Living on Purpose (FLOP?): Erika Shupe pt. 10

[elliha]

Actually, the extensive scheduling might have masked Aspergers quite well. It is common that people with AS use schedules to handle their everyday life. 

[Howl]

I also wonder how the kids responded to the news that they were going to be put in government school, after probably hearing that it was so awful, or at least picking up on why it's bad.  Also, it's such good news because hopefully the kids will get up to speed on grade appropriate work if they are behind.  

I'm sure Erika helps with transitioning them back home at the end of each day by making sure anything they learned can be untaught if it doesn't agree with Erika's worldview. 

Really, such an interesting development. 

 

[BlessingsVonFundiePants]

I shudder to imagine how many green smoothies/chiropractic sessions/prayer binges this child was subjected too before Erika admitted defeat and sought professional guidance 

[mango_fandango]

I will never forget when Erika posted a photo on the old FB page of a drawing done by one of the twins, which was apparently their first attempt at a chart. Only Erika would get excited about that. And possibly Teri Maxwell.

[Hisey]

2 hours ago, usmcmom said:

I think the kids are going to find public school to be a place of liberation and peace. I really feel bad that the two oldest girls were robbed of the experience to be out from under their mother's thumb. 

I think the two oldest girls didn't know what "school" really was. I mean, they heard from their mother that it was bad and terribly damaging and ungodly. They probably knew cousins who went to public school but couldn't get a real sense of it from them. 

NOW they are seeing school. They are seeing the little kids come home, full of chatter about their friends. They are seeing the school projects, the plays, hearing about music class or the story the teacher read or the game they played in math. They are watching Brandon run at a cross country meet. They are seeing Anna Marie learn fractions, something they never really learned well because they were so busy helping their mother feed the twins. 

They are seeing their little brothers and sisters have fun, and nothing really terrible is happening to them at school. I think it's only now that Karen and Melanie are understanding what school is and what they missed.

[ActualReality]

Did anybody else notice that her blog is not closed for comments.  Interesting.

[princessmahina]

I just had a thought:

Erika on the PTA.

Erika doing a fundraising thing and completely taking it over and pitching a fit because THEY'RE NOT ADHERING TO A SCHEDULE.

Erika volunteering to bring dessert to a class party and bringing froot loops. And wondering why the other parents give her stink eye for bringing cereal instead of an actual dessert (or bringing jelly beans and rationing them to the classmates, their parents, and the teacher)

I want to know more about Erika, the public school mom. And I'd like to know it all from the other parents.

[usmcmom]

I have worried that "helping them transition," for Erika means making sure they all speak quietly, they walk into the house calmly and follow any after-school routines to the letter. I think it means "thou must show no excitement nor release any energy in an unacceptable way when thou returns home from school."  

Here was my transition plan:

Open front door and stand back while they burst through like two starving hyenas.

Watch them drop an impressive amount of gloves, bags, projects and coats on the floor right by the door.

Redirect them to food. "Looooook  mama has food for you. That's riiiiiight; a cookie.  You're getting sleeeeepy."

Listen to them run upstairs or outside to begin doing whatever it is they want to do before homework and supper.  

Call them inside at the appropriate time and tell them to pick up their school stuff because mama might trip and break a hip. Listen to them run upstairs and dump the same piles in their rooms.  

This was all wrong, wasn't it????

*to be fair, my friend with seven kids and my friend with nine kids had pretty much the same plan. Eh....good enough for them.....

[feministxtian]

7 minutes ago, usmcmom said:

I have worried that "helping them transition," for Erika means making sure they all speak quietly, they walk into the house calmly and follow any after-school routines to the letter. I think it means "thou must show no excitement nor release any energy in an unacceptable way when thou returns home from school."  

Here was my transition plan:

Open front door and stand back while they burst through like two starving hyenas.

Watch them drop an impressive amount of gloves, bags, projects and coats on the floor right by the door.

Redirect them to food. "Looooook  mama has food for you. That's riiiiiight; a cookie.  You're getting sleeeeepy."

Listen to them run upstairs or outside to begin doing whatever it is they want to do before homework and supper.  

Call them inside at the appropriate time and tell them to pick up their school stuff because mama might trip and break a hip. Listen to them run upstairs and dump the same piles in their rooms.  

This was all wrong, wasn't it????

*to be fair, my friend with seven kids and my friend with nine kids had pretty much the same plan. Eh....good enough for them.....

I drove my kids to and from school for quite a while...my transition plan? Park the van. Remind children to pick up their crap. Let kids tumble out of van (remind them not to kick baby brother in the face). Kids race in the door, drop their crap on the dining room table. Watch a bunch of butts hanging out of the fridge and/or pantry. Wonder why the hell the dogs seemed to have multiplied. Pray baby brother doesn't wake up. Inform children that homework needs to be done. Sort through folders, notebooks, planners. Pray for strength because without it someone wasn't going to survive until dinner time. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

[nausicaa]

31 minutes ago, princessmahina said:

I just had a thought:

Erika on the PTA.

Erika doing a fundraising thing and completely taking it over and pitching a fit because THEY'RE NOT ADHERING TO A SCHEDULE.

Erika volunteering to bring dessert to a class party and bringing froot loops. And wondering why the other parents give her stink eye for bringing cereal instead of an actual dessert (or bringing jelly beans and rationing them to the classmates, their parents, and the teacher)

I want to know more about Erika, the public school mom. And I'd like to know it all from the other parents.

OMG I totally want a PTA mom to go rogue and come on here and dish. 

[usmcmom]

I sort of worked with an "Erika" on fundraising projects and in the concession stand. I was really conflicted about sharing duty with her. She micromanaged everything like it was a NATO summit BUT she could get stuff done!!  Also, outside of these school duties we were great friends but I always knew she was going to morph into SUPER ORGANIZER!!!!11!!! when a project came up. 

Heh. She probably had similar thoughts about me "She is just so nice and easy to talk to, but WOW! when it comes to fundraising she is really lazy!  

[Anonymousguest]

I haven't read the new post because it just doesn't sound interesting to me, but it sounds like the exact opposite as my method of picking up kids. I'm almost late every time and I just play on my phone until they get in the car. Works for me.

 

[Lurky]

7 hours ago, Howl said:

This is something that drives me nucking futz.  Some shit happens where the blogger has to do a 180 on their previously stated, set-in-stone god jesus bible patriarchy beliefs.  And yet, there is no insight (none, zip, zero, nada) offered about how one deals with this type of change, despite how a forced change in direction and how one successfully copes with that is so useful. They don't even bother to truly recognize that there has been a drastic change, ESPECIALLY with super high control OCD types, like Erika here and I'm talking about you, Lisa Pennington.  And yes, damn it, I'm doing an armchair OCD diagnosis. 

Same!  This kind of thing could really help other families facing transition, or a parent who has to put their child into Public School because they're too ill to continue homeschooling, or whatever. 

I've got to admit, I'm mostly fascinated because I was always very pissed off when things changed without explanation as a teenager - why I wasn't allowed to wear makeup at age 12, but then at age 13, when I didn't want to any more, my mum was really pushing me to.  Or why I wasn't allowed to get a Saturday job, but my sister was.  All those kinds of things - stuff I was allowed to do, then suddenly stopped, too.  It's not that I was change-averse, it was that I get really frustrated when I don't understand the logic behind things (I can cope with understanding and disagreeing!). 

So how one goes from continually telling one's kids that public school is evil, ungodly and dangerous,to packing them all off, without basically apologising to the kids for getting it wrong before, is fascinating.  I wonder what it does to kids' trust in their parents, especially when it's such a huge big lifestyle change.  And I'd love to know how a parent handles this, genuinely. 

But I really feel for parents who followed 'teaching' like this, and were persuaded by Erika's homeschooling fervour, or the Jeubs'/Penningtons' etc etc, and now are stuck without support if they want to make similar changes too.

 

[FunFunFundie]

Somebody posted a comment on the FLOP page that they thought one of their children had Asperger's but they hadn't had him evaluated.  This makes me fuming mad.  All children are blessings!  Until one of them needs something like care and attention.

[Hisey]

This latest post led me to change my mind about what Erika's doing.  Few people who work a job have the time to spend 60 minutes a day cooling their heels in a parking lot every single day. Even if she was working, say, 10-2, she'd be more aware of time constraints for people who work, and less judgmental. She'd say something like, "If you can spare the time, it is really relaxing just to come to the school early." Instead, she openly mocks the fools who wait in line, with no real understanding that some may be coming from work. So I think she is a SAHM.

I think that maybe something drastic happened that showed the inadequacy of Erika's homeschooling. Perhaps Karen got fired from a job because she could not do simple math or use a computer. I could see that getting Bob pretty scared that he'd be supporting all the kids forever. As noted above, it is probably something that makes Erika look bad, which is why she is showing "discretion" about what she shares.

[desertvixen]

Quote

 Erika needs outside validation that she's the first parent to figure out how to properly pick up her kids from school.

Erika needs outside validation period. 

Personally, I hate picking up at school because it's always a madhouse.  If I have to pick the MV up at school (and it's not because she's staying late for a club) I pull her just before school gets out, so I can escape the parking lot.

[mango_fandango]

Or it could be something really personal that she's finding hard to deal with. Maybe Bob got ill and can't do the same job anymore, or maybe his business collapsed and he couldn't revive it. Hmm. Actually I'm leaning slightly towards the former. Bob has been redundant before (when he wasn't self-employed) with the longest period being five months right after the twins were born. Unless of course the job market is particularly bad where he is. We don't know what degree Bob has (I'm assuming he went to college). 

I also wonder what Melanie is doing. From what we know, she is not in school. As I've said before, schedules indicated that she was in the same grade as Karen so I think she graduated last year as well. 

[Hisey]

1 hour ago, mango_fandango said:

Or it could be something really personal that she's finding hard to deal with. Maybe Bob got ill and can't do the same job anymore, or maybe his business collapsed and he couldn't revive it. Hmm. Actually I'm leaning slightly towards the former. Bob has been redundant before (when he wasn't self-employed) with the longest period being five months right after the twins were born. Unless of course the job market is particularly bad where he is. We don't know what degree Bob has (I'm assuming he went to college). 

I also wonder what Melanie is doing. From what we know, she is not in school. As I've said before, schedules indicated that she was in the same grade as Karen so I think she graduated last year as well. 

When someone asked if the older girls had graduated, Erika said "finishing up." I took that to mean Melanie was finishing up with school. I figured Karen was done, she's 18.

[mango_fandango]

Yeah. It wouldn't make sense for Melanie to go to high school just for senior year. It's probably easier for her to finish off at home. 

[Hisey]

34 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

Yeah. It wouldn't make sense for Melanie to go to high school just for senior year. It's probably easier for her to finish off at home. 

I also think Melanie might flounder taking typical senior courses like calculus, statistics, and physics, particularly if they are AP classes. Not through any fault of her own, but I tend to doubt Erika taught her algebra, geometry, trig, bio and chemistry to a high school level.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

16 hours ago, Hisey said:

(snipped to save space)

I have noticed Asperger's is used as a catch-all diagnosis a lot. It is seen as a less stigmatizing diagnosis. Child not reading and writing at age 12? It's Aspergers. Child having daily temper tantrums and punching walls? Aspergers. I don't think Erika would accept a diagnosis for a child if there were only mild behavioral or learning struggles. No, I think she'd just ignore those things or deal with them privately, to protect her brand and her image. So I worry that the child with Asbergers is actually displaying quite serious behavioral or learning problems, forcing her to accept a "label."

(snipped)

I apologize in advance for the wall of text below. I'm putting it behind a spoiler, but it's just a little bit about my experience of getting a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome for my child.

Spoiler

I can only speak from my own experience, but my child's diagnosis of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), with the explanation that not too long ago the diagnosis would have been Aspberger's Syndrome, wasn't a catch-all diagnosis. There were little behaviors that caught my attention and worried me a bit from the time she was very small, but I didn't push for a formal diagnosis until she was having trouble in first grade. First I had to talk to her pediatrician and get a referral to a counseling and testing center. Since there was a 6 month wait for testing, we started counseling to get us some immediate help. (I'm so glad we did that.) Then came the testing and evaluation. It took a whole day (about the same hours as a school day) and it included interviews and pages and pages of questions for me and hours of interacting with evaluators for her. 

The paperwork we got a month later details their evaluation of her abilities/difficulties in the areas of: cognitive/intellectual ability (fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative reasoning, visual spacial, working memory), adaptive behavior (communication, community use, functional academics, home living, health & safety, leisure, self-care, self-direction, social, conceptual index, social index, practical index, general adaptive composite), sensory processing (social participation, vision, hearing, touch, body awareness, balance & motion, planning & ideation), language fundamentals (concepts & following directions, word structure, recalling sentences, formulating sentences, word classes: receptive & expressive), and behavioral & emotional (externalizing problems, internalizing problems, behavioral symptom index, adaptive skills).

The paperwork ends with a diagnosis of ASD and recommends community resources, books to read (love Tony Attwood's books), and answers to some questions parents frequently ask. 

So, maybe for some kids somewhere, some professionals or amateurs are using the term Asperger's Syndrome as a blanket term for undiagnosed difficulties, but that hasn't been my experience. Getting a diagnosis was a very detailed and painstaking process.

15 hours ago, mango_fandango said:

Aspergers can take long enough to diagnose in a child from a non-religious non-homeschooling family, let alone in a fundie homeschool one.

Also, Aspergers doesn't usually hamper intelligence in the same way autism does. They can do pretty well in school if given support. I've long suspected I was on the spectrum, and I did OK in school. I found things like English literature difficult because I'm not much good at reading between the lines/working out the author's intentions etc, and even today I still have issues with essays, although how far that is to do with AS is debatable. 

(my bold)

That was a big part of why I kept going to get an official diagnosis, so that my girl could get the accommodations she needed to flourish in school. 

14 hours ago, elliha said:

Actually, the extensive scheduling might have masked Aspergers quite well. It is common that people with AS use schedules to handle their everyday life. 

And that is one of my big challenges in helping my awesome daughter; I have no sense of time, I'm a night owl, and I don't follow strict routines or schedules. I'm trying to build more structure into our days, but it isn't my strong suit. Then again, I'm more fun than Erika. We ate corndogs in the car for an afterschool treat yesterday! 

[Lurky]

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? Big love to you and your family, and keep fighting the good fight. 

I read @Hisey as suggesting it was a catch-all armchair-diagnosis, rather than relating to genuine cases.  You know, "I'm finding my kid difficult, so I'll say it's Aspergers, but won't get them tested for it, or get them more support".  My mum did a similar thing with my brother, back in the 90s, where she decided he must be dyslexic because he wasn't as good at academic work as I was - but she never bothered to actually do anything about it, just use it as an excuse - so I can absolutely see people doing the same with "mild Aspergers", as the person @FunFunFundie mentioned doing, in the FLoP group.  I can't even imagine how people wouldn't try to get their kid all the help they could, but it seems like it's a real thing.

I can completely see, BTW, why both someone doing this, AND people suggesting it's a common practice, would frustrate you - and rightly, you have to fight so hard for your daughter's diagnosis.  She's lucky to have you.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

Thanks for your kind words @Lurky.  I did wonder if @Hisey meant armchair diagnoses like you suggested, so I tried to keep my tone and words neutral, so that I wouldn't sound accusatory. I was trying to lecture more than rant. 

I hope that the Shupes get all their kids the help they need (whether they want to or not!) to succeed in school and in life. The world sucks enough sometimes. We need all of us doing the best we can if anything is ever going to change.

[Lurky]

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? Your tone was awesome, and it was really helpful to see all the steps you had to take - thank you

[feministxtian]

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? your experience parallels mine. Youngest son was diagnosed in 2nd grade. If I remember correctly, most of the testing and evaluation was done through our school system. The upside of the whole thing is that it led to MY diagnosis. I was talking to one of the counselors about youngest, and she stopped me and started asking me questions about me. I was referred to a psychologist and diagnosed. For me, it was a relief to finally have a name to put with my "weirdness". I'm still a disorganized, overly literal, not very emotional, lousy at socializing, have no organizational skills whatsoever mess, but at least I know that there's a reason for all that.