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It must be frustrating to see this problem approaching and not knowing what to do. I wonder if at some point the only way out is to radically change one's famil

It must be frustrating to see this problem approaching and not knowing what to do. I wonder if at some point the only way out is to radically change one's family's lifestyle. Maybe homeschooling, very limited technology at home, living in a community with like-minded people, something like that?

flerchin 4y ago
Let's find a solution that does not involve expanding the Amish model.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  The Amish kinda slap, they didn't invent addictive social media, put a game show host in charge of nuclear weapons, or have a bunch of corporations change their icons to rainbow icons while still being shitty. They literally realized 300 years ago that they should opt out of the nonsense America descended into
  - bavila 4y ago
    > The Amish kinda slap For anyone else who was confused by this: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/slap/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/slap/
    - TheGeminon 4y ago
      Slap means really good in this context, e.g. "this song really slaps". This makes me want to make a generational/chronological slang chart now
      - bavila 4y ago
        Thanks, just edited my post to link to the definition. Guess I'd fall under the generation that would have said "rock" instead (although the Amish most definitely do not rock).
  - Loughla 4y ago
    I know that's meant to be funny, but the Amish community is a nightmare, from the outside looking in, very closely. I live in an area where there is a large Amish community; they outnumber "English" about 4:1. Patriarchy in all decisions. The old men make choices for families based on what they know is best, and you follow that rule, regardless of your own views. Women are not allowed a voice in formal decisions. Children are a tradable commodity. If you upset an elder, your life is over. You're raised speaking German first, so that you can "learn your heritage" (read: always feel the divide between yourself and the rest of the country). You get up to an 8th grade education and nothing more. Only if it doesn't interfere with your chores. If you are sent off to college for whatever reason (my neighbor was a college educated Amish; he was the legal representative for the community) they treat you like an outsider. You are not allowed a voice in community votes, if they have them. You get the scraps. If you start a business, and someone else wants to start the same thing, you give it over to them, no questions asked. God forbid you disagree with the elders. Imagine being in your 30's, with just an 8th grade education, and your entire community, family, and support system turns their back on you and yours. You're screwed. If the bishop believes another community could use your skills, or doesn't like your family, you have to move, possibly hundreds of miles. That's after selling everything you own, usually at a loss. But that doesn't matter, because the community itself and the church actually own everything, you are just renting your own business and/or home from the church. Absolute rule by the male elders. Lies and buried secrets. That's the way of the Amish. But they get a pass, because their beards and hats look funny.
    - prepend 4y ago
      How’s their teenage girl depression stats?
      - fknorangesite 4y ago
        Given the rates of child sexual assault, probably not great.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      Some of this varies by the exact community and sect. But there are some good lessons in there too. Health-wise they are great, with some of the lowest costs, low chronic disease, and getting about double the recommended 10k steps per day. So we don't want to emulate them in every way, but we can take some lessons in certain areas. If you truly want resilient kids, that lifestyle will do it. Safety is another thing though. I saw a 1 year old just fall 3 feet off a playset and it only cried a little. The parents weren't very concerned. I guess when you have 6 kids, it's like you have "spares". Not that it's the right way to look at it, but ignoring balance of other concerns they will be tough.
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    That's kind of glossing over the nonsense they did opt into.
  - dymk 4y ago
    What’s the term for a weeaboo but for the Amish?
    - officeplant 4y ago
      Protestants
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Some of them have opted out of nonsense like reporting sexual assault to authorities, as well. From "Child Sexual Abuse in the Amish Community: A Hidden Epidemic": > “I’ve learned that sexual abuse in their communities is an open secret, spanning generations,” she wrote in the 2019 article. “Victims told me stories of inappropriate touching, groping, fondling, exposure to genitals, digital penetration, coerced oral sex, anal sex and rape—all at the hands of their own family members, neighbors and church leaders.” [1] https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/child-sexual-abuse-amish https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/child-sexual-abuse-amish
  - asah 4y ago
    lol, the Amish are not competitive on the world stage and if left to run the country, we'd have actually been invaded a dozen times already - or at the least, we'd be a vassal state. opting out of "the nonsense" is fun to think about, but not when competing countries have robotic factories.
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  The ridiculous Amish model of being conservative with new technology and considering as a community if it has benefit to the society before introducing it? Inconceivable. If a new technology comes out, we need to adopt it in 0.1 seconds, or we'll be Stone Age caveman losers!
  - oblio 4y ago
    Are they just conservative though? Or paleoconservative? I.e. not 5-15 years behind current tech (okish), but more like a century (catastrophic)?
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Mennonite with a cell phone: https://youtu.be/Pt_XU4W4DBA?t=858 https://youtu.be/Pt_XU4W4DBA?t=858
warner25 4y ago
That's exactly how we've positioned ourselves so far, for a variety of reasons that mostly reduce to not feeling like our values fit in well with American society at-large. It's not perfect, but I hope you're right and it helps with this issue.
dmonitor 4y ago
this model breaks down because you have to enter society eventually. transitioning from homeschooling to highschool junior year and then into a large university was very difficult in my personal experience.
- warner25 4y ago
  Yeah, I see that side of it too. I'm an Army officer, and there's an interesting phenomenon in our ranks. Officers who attend West Point live under some extreme restrictions, whereas officers who are products of ROTC and OCS tend to a have a normal civilian college experience. You can guess who gets into the most trouble after they graduate and enter the "real Army" with all the freedoms that young officers have. We have a long history of tinkering with how much freedom to give new enlisted troops during their basic training and specialized job training, trying to balance "discipline" with the fact that it's counter-productive for us to graduate new troops who immediately go wild when they get to their first real unit.
- seanw444 4y ago
  It worked well for me. Homeschooled until 7th grade. It helped me make friends, because I had no concept of cliques at the start. Also gave me a good "bullshit" meter for some of the crap public school has started teaching.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  This was very much my observation of my nieces and nephews who went through that experience. They went all the way to adulthood home schooled, and the net result was they were wholly unprepared to be adults in modern society. They made it, mostly, but it was a rough couple years of adjustment. On top of that, far from acquiring the values their parents hoped they'd get, they ended up with the reverse. Their attitudes are largely polar reversed from their parents, and they're incredibly resentful of having had those values pushed on them for the entirety of their childhood.
- snerbles 4y ago
  I've been through the whole gamut. Homeschooling to private middle school was rough, mainly in my social circle going from a polite mixed-age group to a crass morass of the local rich kids. 18 months of that did more for my toilet humor repertoire than four years in the military. Private to rural public school was a bit more relaxed. Less fistfights and emotional distress, but the academics were truly lacking - the district didn't have any more course material beyond Algebra 2 so I spent 8th grade math as a study hall. Chill, but ultimately wasted time. Switched to a public charter for high school, and did a combination of home study and local community college courses. By that point I knew what I was "missing" from regular institutional education and was fine with the trade-off.
antod 4y ago
As a parent of a 13yr old girl, we've tried with mixed success during her preteens to find her interests/activities she liked where she could get good at something and have a source of self esteem that came from somewhere outside her peer group interactions. But yeah, the interest dies away a bit by 13 and we're not fully sure it worked. But we can see that her peers that didn't have earlier hobbies/skills had even lower self esteem. Shrug
- itronitron 4y ago
  You might want to look into sewing/textiles/fashion as a creative and intellectual activity. It's a nice combination of history, creativity, technical work, and learning from/with adults.
- nativeit 4y ago
  You might want to look into electronics/woodworking/rock climbing/astrophotography/playing an instrument/ice sculpture/welding/open-source research and investigation/archery/scuba diving/optics and lasers—insert any relevant option here that features history, creativity, technical skills, and mentorships—as a creative and intellectual activity. It's a nice combination of history, creativity, technical work, and learning from/with adults. Also, it wouldn’t be so immediately on-the-nose misogynistic as something like “sewing and fashion” to suggest for someone whose only known traits are that she’s a thirteen-year old girl.
biomcgary 4y ago
I'm a father of a non-verbal autistic son. We have chosen a non-traditional path for him to avoid bullying and he is generally doing quite well (and slowly becoming a bit more verbal). It helps that he has siblings that love him as he is. Our kids have a mix of private schooling, tutoring, and homeschooling. They spend a lot of time outdoors and have very limited access to screens and no social media. We chose this path because the typical classroom has 25-30 barbarians and 1 civilized person, if you're lucky. Most social media appears completely overrun by highly tribal barbarians.
- siquick 4y ago
  > We chose this path because the typical classroom has 25-30 barbarians and 1 civilized person, if you're lucky. If you ingrain this kind of superiority complex into your kid then they will have major problems when they enter the real world where they have to cooperate in a world of “barbarians”.
  - wombatpm 4y ago
    Have you spent time around high school and jr high students? Barbarians is putting it nicely.
stuckinhell 4y ago
There is a reason homeschooling pods are in fashion with middle class and above right now. It's a growing trend.

flerchin 4y ago

Let's find a solution that does not involve expanding the Amish model.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
The Amish kinda slap, they didn't invent addictive social media, put a game show host in charge of nuclear weapons, or have a bunch of corporations change their icons to rainbow icons while still being shitty. They literally realized 300 years ago that they should opt out of the nonsense America descended into
- bavila 4y ago
  > The Amish kinda slap For anyone else who was confused by this: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/slap/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/slap/
  - TheGeminon 4y ago
    Slap means really good in this context, e.g. "this song really slaps". This makes me want to make a generational/chronological slang chart now
    - bavila 4y ago
      Thanks, just edited my post to link to the definition. Guess I'd fall under the generation that would have said "rock" instead (although the Amish most definitely do not rock).
- Loughla 4y ago
  I know that's meant to be funny, but the Amish community is a nightmare, from the outside looking in, very closely. I live in an area where there is a large Amish community; they outnumber "English" about 4:1. Patriarchy in all decisions. The old men make choices for families based on what they know is best, and you follow that rule, regardless of your own views. Women are not allowed a voice in formal decisions. Children are a tradable commodity. If you upset an elder, your life is over. You're raised speaking German first, so that you can "learn your heritage" (read: always feel the divide between yourself and the rest of the country). You get up to an 8th grade education and nothing more. Only if it doesn't interfere with your chores. If you are sent off to college for whatever reason (my neighbor was a college educated Amish; he was the legal representative for the community) they treat you like an outsider. You are not allowed a voice in community votes, if they have them. You get the scraps. If you start a business, and someone else wants to start the same thing, you give it over to them, no questions asked. God forbid you disagree with the elders. Imagine being in your 30's, with just an 8th grade education, and your entire community, family, and support system turns their back on you and yours. You're screwed. If the bishop believes another community could use your skills, or doesn't like your family, you have to move, possibly hundreds of miles. That's after selling everything you own, usually at a loss. But that doesn't matter, because the community itself and the church actually own everything, you are just renting your own business and/or home from the church. Absolute rule by the male elders. Lies and buried secrets. That's the way of the Amish. But they get a pass, because their beards and hats look funny.
  - prepend 4y ago
    How’s their teenage girl depression stats?
    - fknorangesite 4y ago
      Given the rates of child sexual assault, probably not great.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Some of this varies by the exact community and sect. But there are some good lessons in there too. Health-wise they are great, with some of the lowest costs, low chronic disease, and getting about double the recommended 10k steps per day. So we don't want to emulate them in every way, but we can take some lessons in certain areas. If you truly want resilient kids, that lifestyle will do it. Safety is another thing though. I saw a 1 year old just fall 3 feet off a playset and it only cried a little. The parents weren't very concerned. I guess when you have 6 kids, it's like you have "spares". Not that it's the right way to look at it, but ignoring balance of other concerns they will be tough.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  That's kind of glossing over the nonsense they did opt into.
- dymk 4y ago
  What’s the term for a weeaboo but for the Amish?
  - officeplant 4y ago
    Protestants
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Some of them have opted out of nonsense like reporting sexual assault to authorities, as well. From "Child Sexual Abuse in the Amish Community: A Hidden Epidemic": > “I’ve learned that sexual abuse in their communities is an open secret, spanning generations,” she wrote in the 2019 article. “Victims told me stories of inappropriate touching, groping, fondling, exposure to genitals, digital penetration, coerced oral sex, anal sex and rape—all at the hands of their own family members, neighbors and church leaders.” [1] https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/child-sexual-abuse-amish https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/child-sexual-abuse-amish
- asah 4y ago
  lol, the Amish are not competitive on the world stage and if left to run the country, we'd have actually been invaded a dozen times already - or at the least, we'd be a vassal state. opting out of "the nonsense" is fun to think about, but not when competing countries have robotic factories.
faeriechangling 4y ago
The ridiculous Amish model of being conservative with new technology and considering as a community if it has benefit to the society before introducing it? Inconceivable. If a new technology comes out, we need to adopt it in 0.1 seconds, or we'll be Stone Age caveman losers!
- oblio 4y ago
  Are they just conservative though? Or paleoconservative? I.e. not 5-15 years behind current tech (okish), but more like a century (catastrophic)?
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Mennonite with a cell phone: https://youtu.be/Pt_XU4W4DBA?t=858 https://youtu.be/Pt_XU4W4DBA?t=858

warner25 4y ago

That's exactly how we've positioned ourselves so far, for a variety of reasons that mostly reduce to not feeling like our values fit in well with American society at-large. It's not perfect, but I hope you're right and it helps with this issue.

dmonitor 4y ago

this model breaks down because you have to enter society eventually. transitioning from homeschooling to highschool junior year and then into a large university was very difficult in my personal experience.

warner25 4y ago
Yeah, I see that side of it too. I'm an Army officer, and there's an interesting phenomenon in our ranks. Officers who attend West Point live under some extreme restrictions, whereas officers who are products of ROTC and OCS tend to a have a normal civilian college experience. You can guess who gets into the most trouble after they graduate and enter the "real Army" with all the freedoms that young officers have. We have a long history of tinkering with how much freedom to give new enlisted troops during their basic training and specialized job training, trying to balance "discipline" with the fact that it's counter-productive for us to graduate new troops who immediately go wild when they get to their first real unit.
seanw444 4y ago
It worked well for me. Homeschooled until 7th grade. It helped me make friends, because I had no concept of cliques at the start. Also gave me a good "bullshit" meter for some of the crap public school has started teaching.
rootusrootus 4y ago
This was very much my observation of my nieces and nephews who went through that experience. They went all the way to adulthood home schooled, and the net result was they were wholly unprepared to be adults in modern society. They made it, mostly, but it was a rough couple years of adjustment. On top of that, far from acquiring the values their parents hoped they'd get, they ended up with the reverse. Their attitudes are largely polar reversed from their parents, and they're incredibly resentful of having had those values pushed on them for the entirety of their childhood.
snerbles 4y ago
I've been through the whole gamut. Homeschooling to private middle school was rough, mainly in my social circle going from a polite mixed-age group to a crass morass of the local rich kids. 18 months of that did more for my toilet humor repertoire than four years in the military. Private to rural public school was a bit more relaxed. Less fistfights and emotional distress, but the academics were truly lacking - the district didn't have any more course material beyond Algebra 2 so I spent 8th grade math as a study hall. Chill, but ultimately wasted time. Switched to a public charter for high school, and did a combination of home study and local community college courses. By that point I knew what I was "missing" from regular institutional education and was fine with the trade-off.

antod 4y ago

As a parent of a 13yr old girl, we've tried with mixed success during her preteens to find her interests/activities she liked where she could get good at something and have a source of self esteem that came from somewhere outside her peer group interactions. But yeah, the interest dies away a bit by 13 and we're not fully sure it worked. But we can see that her peers that didn't have earlier hobbies/skills had even lower self esteem. Shrug

itronitron 4y ago
You might want to look into sewing/textiles/fashion as a creative and intellectual activity. It's a nice combination of history, creativity, technical work, and learning from/with adults.
nativeit 4y ago
You might want to look into electronics/woodworking/rock climbing/astrophotography/playing an instrument/ice sculpture/welding/open-source research and investigation/archery/scuba diving/optics and lasers—insert any relevant option here that features history, creativity, technical skills, and mentorships—as a creative and intellectual activity. It's a nice combination of history, creativity, technical work, and learning from/with adults. Also, it wouldn’t be so immediately on-the-nose misogynistic as something like “sewing and fashion” to suggest for someone whose only known traits are that she’s a thirteen-year old girl.

biomcgary 4y ago

I'm a father of a non-verbal autistic son. We have chosen a non-traditional path for him to avoid bullying and he is generally doing quite well (and slowly becoming a bit more verbal). It helps that he has siblings that love him as he is. Our kids have a mix of private schooling, tutoring, and homeschooling. They spend a lot of time outdoors and have very limited access to screens and no social media. We chose this path because the typical classroom has 25-30 barbarians and 1 civilized person, if you're lucky. Most social media appears completely overrun by highly tribal barbarians.

siquick 4y ago
> We chose this path because the typical classroom has 25-30 barbarians and 1 civilized person, if you're lucky. If you ingrain this kind of superiority complex into your kid then they will have major problems when they enter the real world where they have to cooperate in a world of “barbarians”.
- wombatpm 4y ago
  Have you spent time around high school and jr high students? Barbarians is putting it nicely.

stuckinhell 4y ago

There is a reason homeschooling pods are in fashion with middle class and above right now. It's a growing trend.