My Rants – a hippie with a minivan

Weirded out…

Last night I was in bed, on my ipod touch and wanted to come to my blog to check something out. The easiest way was to write “paxye” in the search engine.

The first link was my blog but then on a whim I decided to scroll down and see what else there was.. to my surprise I found this…

This is NOT me… yet there is my Khéna, my information and my blog link…

OK… I am not naive, I know that putting yourself out on the internet opens the way for people to use your information. Or maybe I am naive in thinking that it probably wouldn’t happen to me.

Whatever the case… It is creepy…

Needless to say… if you are friends with this person on Facebook, it is not me. My Facebook link is under my real name and I now put up a fan page for this blog under “a hippie with a minivan” and once I get 25 fans I will have the link to share…

It makes you think twice to put yourself out there…

UPDATE:

The page has been taken down from Facebook. I received a lot of support from friends and many people reported it. I am so glad and hopefully it will be the end of that…

non-belief a threat?

Why is Atheism such a threat? Really?

I was “stumbing” and I stumbled upon an article about Ottawa saying that the transportation board is deadlocked in vote or rejected (depending on the article) an Atheist ad that has run in many cities that was saying “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

…Theresa Milligan argued against the ads, saying that it goes beyond freedom of speech.

“When statements are said that God probably does not exist, this is an implied statement of hatred towards all those who do believe that God exists.”…

Of course, this is not the first time I have heard this argument, but it still mystifies me.

How can saying that you don’t believe in something mean that you hate people who do believe in it?

Especially since they are not even taking a completely atheist stance and are saying that God “probably” doesn’t exist instead of saying that there simply are no gods.

What gets me is the double standard. By saying “When statements are said that God probably does not exist, this is an implied statement of hatred towards all those who do believe that God exists.” this Millagan woman actually blatantly implying that she hates people who believe in a different god than her. She may not believe that but by using her logic, if she doesn’t believe in Krishna or Zoroaster or a different god then the one that she believes in then she must hate Hindus and Parsis.

The thing is… Atheists don’t deny or hate whatever god. They simply don’t believe that gods exist. Atheists believe that religions and their gods are man-made and it is as simple as that. If religious people have a right to say “God/gods exists” then Atheist have as much a right to say “gods do not exist”. It is a statement of belief and truth on both sides, and neither are meant to be a threat.

When a humanist group says “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”, I really think that they are saying that life should be lived because it is worth living. It is as simple as that.

As expressed many times on my blog in the past, kids don’t learn right and wrong through rewards and punishment. With rewards and Punishment, children learn how to manipulate and what not do do to not get punished or how to get what they want by doing something but don’t learn the real lesson meant to be taught.

Taking away religion from ones life is taking away the rewards and punishment aspect in our own lives and instead of doing things based on outward motivation, we are free to live life in the richest way possible and do things because they are simply the right thing to do.

a little halloween rant…

I really love Halloween… there is just a certain atmosphere about it that I love… and when the weather cooperates and kids don’t have to wear coats over their costumes and it is not raining or snowing it is even greater…

What I hate though… those people who ToT in cars…

The kids hop in and out of the car or minivan (with the side door wide open for easy in and outs) and don’t walk the gaps between houses… the goal is to get more candy without having to walk too much and the parents oblige.. or maybe it is the parents that don’t want to walk either…

in any case I hate seeing it…

As Simon and I were thinking we could probably accept it on rainy and cold Halloween nights… but with a night like last… there was no excuse…

control…

Imagine living in a household or even a society that wants to control everything you do… what and when you eat, when you sleep and for how long, when and what you read and learn…

I think after a while… I would probably rebel… wouldn’t you?

So why do so many parents want to control their kids in such a way? And don’t they see what the consequences will be later on?

In the last few weeks I have heard once too often about children’s “sleeping problems”… and it has made me think about something that I have wrote before about sleep and CIO and well it brought me to the idea of control…

I think many parents seem to be under the impression that they must be in control… that it is in their best interests to control the way their kids behave, when they sleep, how they eat, what they learn, and just everything they do…

And not only do they believe that… but they also believe that if they do not control those things then it will be a free-for-all because the kids will then have complete control…

Not only does this put an enormous amount of unrealistic pressure on parents… but then when they can’t have that complete control (which is normal) then just makes a them feel more “out of control” and then they seem to start spiralling…

Spiralling into making bad decisions that lead to trying more, punishing more… and consequently being more detached and just making everything worse in the end… because being in control of someone is not showing them to make the right decisions for themselves…it is making decisions for them without learning why… so the more you try to control someone, the less they learn for the themselves… so when they rebel, they do so with a lack of skills…

Children do have a lot to learn, and yes, might act on impulse and might not make the right decisions all the time… but they do not need to be controlled in order to learn, but instead need to be guided…

And if we guide well… then the funny thing is… we are essentially “in control” of the situation…

and honestly… when that happens it is quite a great feeling…

Another meeting…

Yesterday I went to another homeschooling meeting…I was ready for it to be as usual but I wanted to go because it was being held at my good friends house and I wanted to see her and her new baby and the boys wanted to go play with her girls…

It turned out to be just a nice get together which was pretty nice… One of the girls is moving so it was kind of like a mini goodbye party and a little welcome party for the new baby… (who is so cute!!)

I still feel like the oddball there though… besides getting looked at and talked at like I was crazy because my kids went outside in socks without shoes and they might get dirty or wet *gasp* … I got the feeling that some of them pretty much think that we don’t do anything because we don’t sit and “do school”….

because we don’t have a little classroom set up… because we don’t have any curriculum that we follow… because we don’t have a set amount of time for each subject and because I don’t even care that the boys might not be interested in some things yet or that there are things that they might not learn at the expected age…

When we talked at one point about baking bread I also got a comment about how much free time I have because we don’t do anything because I am not “teaching”…

It is really hard for a traditional homeschooler to understand unschooling I guess…

There is a lot of ground between doing school at home and forcing kids to learn on schedule and doing anything at all and ignoring a child’s education.

I spend a lot of my day answering questions, finding information about things I don’t know the answers to myself… there is so much to learn without being forced…and as an aide to my children’s learning I need to have and find the answers until they are ready to be able to find the information on their own…

Not sitting down and doing school curriculum doesn’t mean that we never do anything and learn.Not having to prepare for the next lesson doesn’t mean that I never research and prepare my answers… it might not be as formal but it is a lot of work and time because the questions range so much…

The good things that came out of yesterday though was that I got to spend time with my friend before everyone got there and then for a few hours after they left… I got to cuddle a new little baby… I got to talk with some really nice people though we might not see eye to eye on some/many things… The kids got to play with some friends and outside on their great property..

and another cool thing is that the same person that assumed that we don’t do anything did mention something that she is going to be starting soon with her kids that was overheard by Xavier and peaked his interest…

so we have a little project in midst…