I have three children, two boys and a girl, ages nine, seven, and five. My seven-year-old son has been popping wheelies on his bike since he was three (He’s our Sporto), and my five-year-old daughter mastered the bicycle last year, when she was four. No wheelies, but she can bike without falling. My nine-year-old son … has had zero interest in riding a bike WHATSOEVER.

When we’re at home and his siblings are doing laps around the circular driveway, he’s usually writing stories and illustrating them, or reading, or building monstrous Lego creations that are more intricate that any of the ones that you buy in the store. We’ve tried (half-heartedly) for years to get him to ride his bike. He’d ask to play hockey (because his friends play, not because he loves to play) and we told him to learn to ride his bike first. We offered to pay him cold, hard cash, which he knows the value of, and always wants more of and … nothing.

It’s been a bit of a family joke, and we tease him about it, and that’s been that. I own a bike, but so rarely use it — I’m more of a runner/boot camp girl. My husband doesn’t even own a bike, unless you count the motorcycle (Kawasaki Vulcan) that we share. He’s a runner/gym guy too. It’s not like my son is not active or anything. He’s in soccer, a running club, and we all took up skiing this past winter as a family. He’s healthy, he’s happy, he’s fit. He just couldn’t ride a bike.

Until this week.

My son has a new (girl) friend, who is the sweetest thing ever. She also rides her bike to and from school, and he told me that he confessed to her that he didn’t know how how to ride his bike. She was “OK with it”, apparently. And then, while at the end-of-tax-season party this past Monday, my son called me because he had something exciting to tell me. He had been riding his bike.

Tuesday afternoon after school he kept practicing and was so excited to show me his new skills.

The things we do for (young) love, hey?

Finally got a shot!

“Can she sit independently?”

“No, not quite.”

“Does she have a Jolly Jumper? Does she like to bounce on her feet?”

“Well, she has a Jolly Jumper, yes, but she doesn’t really do much with her feet.”

The doctor nodded and sat baby Mary up on the exam table. “I just want to see what her core strength is like.” She let go and Mary slumped to one side. She sat her up again, let go, and she slumped to the other side. “She’s almost there.”

“Uh … Okay?”

Fast forward two freaking days and Mary suddenly started sitting up completely independently (unless and until I reached for a camera) and became a baby human bouncing machine. Then, just to top it all off, she cut her first tooth.

Practically overnight, I have a six-month-old baby who is bouncing and sitting and chewing and on the verge of crawling. And I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. Babyproofing wise, that is.

This is my third baby, but it’s the first baby we’ve had in this house. We lived in apartments with our other babies, single level dwellings where everything was within earshot at the very least. I think at one point I had some junky old baby gate that I used in the kitchen doorway, but that’s long gone. As it stands, we own zero baby gates and I think I might want to keep it that way.

Is that crazy?

Here’s why. The cost and the hassle of buying and installing them is a big deterrent, for one. By the time the third baby comes along, it starts to seem silly to buy anything much less install it for just one measly kid. I don’t trust my other kids, for another. Are a six and three year old going to close a baby gate behind them every time they go up and down the stairs? Not a chance. In fact, the gates might give me a false sense of security. And, really, the stairs are the least of my concerns. The entire house is a Lego-Barbie-shoe-marbles-and-beads choking hazard shit show with open scissors and markers lying around just to keep things interesting. I really can’t see that changing substantially short of buying a big cage to keep my older children in. (Entrepreneurs, take note!)

So I’m thinking that maybe I’ll just skip the baby proofing, pretty much? I’ll keep the baby in her playpen and high chair and crib while I sip martinis, vacuum in pumps and a full skirt, and wait for my husband to tell me who to vote for. But actually, yeah. Playpen, high chair, crib and baby wearing should keep her out of trouble when I’m busy and I’ll put her down when I can give her my full attention.

Do you think that can work? Has anybody else gone against the grain and not babyproofed? How long do you give me before I’m hightailing it to the nearest baby gate retailer begging for mercy?

I recently watched an episode of Parenthood, wherein Haddie Braverman suspects that her cousin Amber might be off having fun with her cute, young, politician boss, and goes and tells her own mother, who immediately jumps up and drives half the night to break up the pair of consenting adults before anything, I don’t know, consensual, can happen. She then drags her niece outta there, presumably to the apartment that Amber lives in and pays for on her own, because she’s an adult.

SO much about the way that whole scene played out drove me crazy. For one, Amber, for all of her previous questionable decision making, is an adult, and should therefore be exempt from being dragged out of a hotel room like a drunk 14 year old by her aunt. For another thing, what 17 year-old in the world – Haddie – finds out that her older cousin is going away for the weekend with their cute young boss, and runs to TELL HER MOM ABOUT IT? Especially when that somebody – Haddie – spent half of the previous season lying about being with her older, formerly badass boyfriend.

Nobody likes a tattle-tale, right? Isn’t that what we are supposed to teach our kids? I try to be proactive about it, telling my children, when they come to me with the minor transgressions of others, Worry about your own body.

What I mean by that is, I don’t particularly care that your sister took all the clothes out of her bottom drawer and flung them around the room, because right now that is keeping her busy, allowing me to finish what I’m doing.

And I certainly don’t want them to grow up to spoil each other’s adult lives – Haddie – by telling on their adult cousins when they go away on an otherwise lame business weekend with their cute boss. Worry about your own body, Haddie!

But – there’s a lot of in between here. For instance, in the future,  I do want my 12 year-old daughter to tell on her 14 year-old sister when her 14 year-old sister is doing the dumb sh*t that 14 year-olds will do. And I do want my 10 year-old daughter to tell on her 8 year-old sister if her 8 year-old sister is doing the dumb sh*t that 8 year-olds will do. See what I’m doing here?  I need them to learn to assess a situation and learn how to respond appropriately. Sometimes full disclosure on behalf of the sibling is the right response.

Yes, I’m totally picking and choosing when I want my kids to spill it to me. Petty offenses (she’s flinging clothes), personal business (she’s picking her nose) and normal rites-of-passage (she skipped a class), no. I don’t want my kids to tell on each other. More serious behaviour (she’s stealing clothes), personal harm (she’s smoking) or chronic flaying of the rules (she never goes to class), yes. Tell me. I will even reward you.

But most importantly, and I say this as both a younger and an older sister, I want my girls to stick together. I want them to look out for each other, to trust each other, to count on each other, even if it means that I don’t always get the intel I would want.

Because in the end, I will always haul a 14 year-old’s ass out of a sketchy situation, but by time they’re 19 – HADDIE! – I hope I’ve taught them to trust themselves and each other, make good decisions and worry about their own damn body.

As you may have gathered from last week’s post, it’s been a hard couple of weeks for me. If you read my personal site, then you know the back-story, and if you haven’t read it I can sum it up: Life has hit us from all sides. The biggest struggle right now has been with my middle child, my youngest son. He’s always been our most sensitive child, and this year has seen him dealing with anxiety. He had a few-day bout of it in the fall, but we worked through it and everything has been fine.

Two weekends ago something snapped, likely due to the fact that we had a power outage and a barfing little sister all at the same time. He, well, he freaked. Especially because this all happened while my husband and I were out at a concert. Thankfully (SO THANKFULLY), the babysitter on duty was their 23-year-old Auntie, and not one of the young teenage girls we often use.

Since then, he’s been worried about things that have happened in the past, and things that have never happened but might possibly happen in the future. He’s worried he might barf/slip on the ice/hurt himself, etc. It’s also come out that a couple of kids on the playground were a little extra rough while playing hockey and soccer and he’s afraid that will happen again. He’s missed a lot of school as he doesn’t want to be away from us and has been constantly clutching his stomach and crying, while saying that his tummy hurts.

It’s been hard.

We’ve spent hours and hours talking to him and reassuring him and trying to get him to focus on the good stuff. We’ve been working with his teacher (She is AMAZING) to get him back to school. We met with our family Doctor (also a family friend) on Tuesday to make sure there was nothing physically wrong, and that helped my son to know that he was not sick, but just worried. We also have an appointment tomorrow with another woman we know who is a child psychologist, and who has given us some good tips over the phone in the meantime.

I may know my kids better than anyone else, but this has been a harsh lesson that I can’t always make it better, no matter how hard I try. He knows how much we love him, and I think he’d be in much rougher shape if that weren’t so concrete in his mind. We saw some improvement yesterday, so there’s hope, but I don’t think we’re out of the woods quite yet. That’s why we’ve called in the troops.

Have you ever had to deal with this (and have any advice)? Do you find it easy or hard to ask for help?

Photo courtesy Ohio University

What are you going to be for Halloween?

It’s a question we ask and answer over and over again at this time of year, whether we will be taking our children trick-or-treating for the first time, or trying to out-do our friends at the annual costume party.  And there are many of us that put quite a bit of effort into Halloween costumes – making a child’s costume by hand, spending too much money on a store-bought outfit or wracking our brains to come up with something clever and original that will have people talking until next Halloween.

But this year, a group of students at Ohio University would like us to think about something else when we are planning our Halloween costumes, and have come out with a campaign to help us do just that.

We’re a Culture, Not a Costume is a poster campaign launched by Students Teaching Against Racism in Society (STARS), and has each of several posters featuring students of various cultural backgrounds holding pictures depicting people dressed up in stereotypical and racist garb. In one poster, a woman of Asian descent holds up a picture of somebody dressed as a Geisha. “This is not who I am and this is not OK” the poster proclaims. It’s a strong message, and not surprisingly, the campaign has gone viral, exploding on Facebook and in other social media channels.

And while many of the images are disturbing (the student of Arab descent holding up the poster of somebody dressed as a Sheik-come-suicide bomber is particularly unsettling), I have to admit, I am unsure of where exactly – when it comes to Halloween costumes at least – the line that separates parody and archetype from  racism, is drawn.

I would probably not have thought of somebody dressed up as a Geisha as somebody being insensitive to Japanese culture. Why that is, exactly, I’m not sure. Because the misogynistic or enslaving implications of Geisha culture outweigh the racist ones? Because Geisha is no longer widely practiced and therefore already in the realm of parody and history but not stereotype? Because I am too ignorant to fully understand the implication? Like I said, I’m not sure.

There are definitely costumes that should never be worn, for cultural reasons. Dressing up as a Nazi comes to mind as about offensive a costume as you can get, but how many cave-dwelling Osama Bin Ladens do you think there will be at the Legion this year? Anybody with access to some combat fatigues and wig can go as Gadhaffi, and I’m pretty sure he’d get a few good guffaws. Their death count may not have been as high or as swift as Hitler’s, but genocide is genocide and I doubt people need to see any despot’s party tricks.

Does intention or model, I wonder, have any bearing on precisely how racist one should perceive a costume? I would cringe at the site of an ‘Indian Chief’ costume, all headdress and war paint and animal skin pants, but what about the dress and raven-hued hair of the hero princess Pocahontas?  I’ve already said that I have an issue with somebody dressed as an Arab sheik (bombs or not), but what about a little girl donning the costume of her beloved Jasmine? Is it ok if Disney does it first?

Last year, I dressed up as one of four sister wives at the inaugural Blissdom Canada Costumes and Karaoke party, something that could have been seen as offensive to a member of the Mormon Church. We knew that was a possibility, but quite frankly, dismissed our uncertainties almost immediately because we felt that parody trumped cultural insensitivity, and we went on to become some of the most widely talked-about masqueraders there.

This year, my group went as Georgian zombies, which should probably have only offended the most die-hard of Jane Austen enthusiasts, but are we now to scrutinize every costume for potential of offense? Perhaps the answer is a resounding yes, but I also wonder about (note – wonder about, not condone) the notion of turning even the most innocent of intentions into cause for alarm. I’m just glad that my own kids’ Halloween costumes are already decided. Hopefully the dragon and Bat Girl won’t get anybody’s ire up.

So what do you think as Halloween draws ever nearer? Is this about cultural sensitivity, or are we just being oversensitive?

Barbie.

One word that strikes fear in some Bad Moms hearts while for other Bad Moms it brings back a flood of fond memories of dress-up and make-believe.

Who knew Barbie could be so complicated and controversial? Oh who am I kidding, she always has been that way. For a toy based on a German character who embodied the sexual revolution, she sure has firmly entrenched herself in women’s movement. It’s just unclear what side she’s on. Anyway.

Here at the Bad Moms Club we have covered the various sides of Barbie debate from giving in to the entire Barbie phenomenon, protesting those who believe  Barbie defines the ideal female physical form, boys and Barbies, Barbie’s beliefs or lack thereof, or alternative uses/repurposing of Barbie. We’ve really tried to run the gamut, a gamut that really never ends. Enter the newest course:

Barbie has a new twist and I’m not sure what I think about it but I’m pretty sure I like it.

For some, this new Barbie means she has gone bad and I think that idea makes me like her just a bit more than five minutes ago.

For you see Barbie got inked.

That’s right. Tokidoki Barbie will be released this month and she has tattoos on her neck, décolletage and I’m not quite sure I want to know where else (odds of tramp stamp? HIGH).

Ignoring the fact that she’s wearing animal prints (oh Barbie, that’s so last year) and her pet is dressed like a cactus (that is one angry looking dog), isn’t it high time Barbie had some body ink? I mean, I’m a mom and I have a tattoo (or 12) and so do many of my mom friends.

And hey! None of us are bad people. Not one.

Granted all members of my parenting gang are Bad Moms but not in the traditional definition of ‘bad’. They are Bad Moms that embrace our philosophy of not judging other parents who are trying to raise their happy and healthy children different from standards set by media and some schools of thought.

Not that tattoos equal bad it’s just there is a school of thought that seems to think girls with tattoos are rebellious or reckless or just plain wrong.

Anyway. It makes me wonder what the ultra-conservative parents think of this latest member of Team Barbie? And not just the ultra-conservatives: what about all parents of little ones who ask for this standard classic in the toy arsenal, what do they think of this offering?

Only time — and sales — will tell.

via Nylon

Before I got married, my father filled my partner in on the secret to a happy marriage. “There are only two words you need to know,” he said. “Yes, dear.” That’s it, that’s all. The secret to blissful matrimony, according to my dad, is to simply comply with your wife’s wishes, or at the very least give the appearance that you are doing so. For the most part, I think my partner has done a pretty good job following that advice. There have been a few mishaps. Mostly when he pretended to be listening, said “yes, dear” or something similar, but then didn’t follow through with what he promised to do. But for the most part, I think he got it right.

My kids, however, still have some learning to do. I ask them to do something and they ignore me, defy me, or outright mock the request. Don’t they realize that it would be easier to live with me if they just did what I asked them to do?

In reality, I don’t expect my kids to comply blindly (the way my partner does!). I do, however, expect (unrealistically, I know) that they will at least listen to what I have to say, consider my reasons, and then discuss things with me if they disagree. Instead, they scream, ignore me, or do what I was asking them not to do. And believe me, it is hard to have a rational and calm discussion with a child who is screaming her lungs off while she paints the bathroom wall with toothpaste. Somehow when I try, I don’t feel like the message is getting through.

There is a lot of criticism of the school system for the way that it teaches our children simple obedience or compliance. I agree with that critique. I don’t want my children to follow the rules just because they are the rules. I don’t want them to obey orders just because someone in a perceived position of authority barked out those rules. What I really want, more than anything, is for them to learn to think for themselves, but to think for themselves in a way that considers their own needs, the needs of others, and the needs of our environment.

That, it seems, is too much to ask.

Perhaps it comes with time, with practice, with persistence, and with maturity. In the meantime, how do I cope?

This parenting gig would be an awful lot easier if kids were born with a reason gene. Isn’t that something science could get to work on?

Image credit: 96dpi on flickr

I hate it when writers take what could have been an interesting topic and worthwhile discussion and turn it into a rant against something they apparently know nothing about. In her article, Is Sex Passé?, second wave feminist Erica Jong says sex has become boring because younger women are “obsessed with motherhood and monogamy” (…and if you missed it last time, we’re also trying to perfect our babies by the way we nurture them).

Both motherhood and monogamy can certainly create challenges for passion and lust, but that doesn’t mean that those challenges are insurmountable. If anyone was looking for ideas or solutions in Erica’s article, however, they would be left sorely disappointed, utterly disgusted, or at the very least confused.

While writing about how women of my generation apparently idealize monogamy, Erica wrote:

Punishing the sexual woman is a hoary, antique meme found from “Jane Eyre” to “The Scarlet Letter” to “Sex and the City,” where the lustiest woman ended up with breast cancer. Sex for women is dangerous. Sex for women leads to madness in attics, cancer and death by fire. Better to soul cycle and write cookbooks. Better to give up men and sleep with one’s children. Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him. Our current orgy of multiple maternity does indeed leave little room for sexuality. With children in your bed, is there any space for sexual passion? The question lingers in the air, unanswered.

For me, confusion lingered in the air. We’ve been sleeping in the same bed as our children since 2004, but I don’t understand what that has to do with sex. I mean, us Canadians sleep in our beds and have sex in canoes. I would expect that even the most conservative of Americans knows that you can have sex in places other than the marital bed, so why does an apparent maven of the sexual revolution like Erica Jong not understand that physical pleasure exists outside of the bed sheets?

In her post Dear Erica, Arwyn from Raising My Boychick wrote:

I am about to enter my 30s. I cosleep. I babywear. I breastfeed (for years). I am monogamous. And I have fucking fabulous sex.

She goes on to talk about all the places that she has that fucking fabulous sex before concluding that “if I were constantly held up in measurement against your visions of sex, your ideas of passion, your standards for sexuality, I might declare surrender and pretend disinterest as well.”

Ah yes, those standards. If you’re not doing it her way, then you just aren’t doing it right. As Jenny Islander wrote in the comments on Arwyn’s post, big flashy muscle cars are not always “all that” and sometimes a good reliable minivan will do just fine.

With three kids and one of us out of the house working most of the time, experimentation is a very low priority. Orgasms are the priority, preferably before the toddler wakes up in his crib needing midnight comforting or the cat starts to yowl that it’s about to puke. Everything else is a frill. The thing about minivan sex is, it gets you where you want to go. Muscle cars take too much fiddling around to get them to even start.

Do we have a duty to be having sex according to Jong’s rules? Betsy, who also commented on Arwyn’s post doesn’t think so: “I don’t buy into Jong’s definition of human sexuality — it sounds like a chore for a woman to fulfill, something akin to a kitchen sink that is sparkling clean.” Not everyone agrees of course, and Jessica Gottlieb has been known to tell other mom bloggers: “Ladies if you don’t want to fuck your husbands I’m pretty sure someone else does #HelpingYouStayMarried.”

All good points, all worth considering, but ultimately as with everything else in relationships and parenting, maybe there is a bit of room for figuring out what works for you and your family. Erica started out saying that “generalizing about cultural trends is tricky”, followed of course by “but….”. She should have stopped while she was ahead. Generalizing is dangerous. Some couples are having fucking fabulous sex, some are having mini van sex, some are not having sex, some are having solo sex, some are having occasional sex, some are having extramarital sex, and some are making sex into their evening chore. Surely this type of variety exists in the dating scene just as much as it exists in the monogamy scene? I mean sex for singles isn’t always mind-blowingly amazing, is it?

Passion is awesome. Passion can be worked on. But the bottom line is that throwing out a good partnership, loving relationship, and stable home because each and every day is not filled with “discombobulating and distracting” sex, just isn’t worth it for most people. That isn’t a rejection of passion, it is a realistic understanding that in an equal and respectful relationship, “piquant” may not be achievable each and every day and that isn’t the end of the world. Suggesting that it must be seems like the sexual equivalent of the 1950s expectation that a fabulous gourmet meal be served in heels and pearls every single night.

Sorry, but sometimes it is pizza night. For what it’s worth, I happen to appreciate a filet mignon more when I’m not eating it every single night.

What do you think? Is there a formula for passion that our generation is simply missing the boat on? Or are we doing okay?

Image credit: Heather Sunderland on flickr

what would you do?

He was a cute baby, perhaps 8 months old, all chubby cheeks and waving hands and little squeals. Sitting on his adult’s lap (I can only presume that it was his father, but that is indeed a presumption), that baby looked happy and clean and well-cared for. That baby made me smile.

And then the baby’s adult reached down beside him into a little paper bag, and shoved a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. The baby, being a baby, grabbed the man’s hand and yelped at him. I thought it was cute. It’s always cute when babies want what their adults have. Except then, the adult reached down into the bag again, came up with a single big, fluffy piece of popcorn, and popped it into cute baby’s mouth. Not cute! Not cute!

My stomach dropped and my eyes widened. Popcorn? For a baby? Is that adult crazy? I looked around to see if anybody else had noticed, but I seemed to be on my own. The man fished out another piece and gave it to the baby. And then another. They got into a bit of a rhythm – a fistful for me, a kernel for you. Cute baby was happy and seemed to like the popcorn, but all I could think was, cute baby is going to choke! Don’t you know how dangerous it is to give a baby popcorn?! Cute baby is going to die because cute baby’s adult is a moron!

I was absolutely stuck in a moral dilemma between standing there watching, minding my own business, and sprinting up to cute baby’s adult, informing him that You can’t feed popcorn to a baby! He will choke! He will die! I had no idea what I should do.

If cute baby had been un-seated in a car that pulled up next to me, I would have rolled down my window and yelled at them. Or maybe even called 911. If cute baby had been playing near an electrical outlet, or had a purse strap tangled around his neck, I would have said something. But I had no idea what to do about cute baby being fed popcorn.

The story ends with me getting off easy – cute baby’s female adult (presumably his mother) came back to the pair from some other corridor of the mall, and scooped cute baby up. She seemed neither concerned nor surprised about the baby’s current snack, but I can’t be sure she saw him eating it. The man got up and pushed the strolled after the woman, popcorn bag tucked into the basket underneath.

So I said nothing.

But it’s been nearly two years now and I still think about cute baby, my inability to make a moral vs safety call on the subject, and wonder if I should have said something.

Should I have said something? Would you?

A story broke this week about a Toronto Daycare Caterer who allegedly lied about food sources, preparation standards, and generally pretty much everything involving the food she provided to 75 different childcare facilities around the Greater Toronto Area. After my initial horror from reading the story, I immediately called my child’s daycare — who provide her two of her key meals on weekdays — to confirm their food source. Relief was felt when they put me at ease by telling me that they had never worked with this caterer. I’ve always been impressed by the menu at our daycare and my 5yo loves everything — except for the fish cakes but at least she gave them a try. The food is healthy, the variety is impressive, and while it’s not organic, neither is the stuff I serve at home.

Anyway. I count my family very lucky but what about the parents who had children in one of these daycares? It’s one thing to find out the ‘organic food’ your child was served was no where near organic — that fact alone is enough to make my head explode but what about the parents who discovered their children were eating:

• Halal meat that was just regular ol’ meat from the local discount grocers
• Kosher meals that have never seen a rabbi and kosher meat that was slaughtered contrary to tradition
• Undercooked meat and food transported without any cooling/warming systems
• Peanut-free snacks and food that actually contained or came in contact with nuts

Those accusations are all horrific and dangerous, and enough to make me rethink daycare (not that I can but I’d be lying if my mind didn’t try to figure out an alternative.) And to think: those are just some of the accusations made against the woman who runs this business. There are also claims of unskilled workers, prep facilities that violate regulations in too many ways to list, and re-labeling of food to cover up the lack of promised items.

These things — especially that nut one — could have killed a child. Killed a child.

I’m floored. I’m horrified. And I think this probably happens more than we’d like to think.

So why do people who run businesses do things like this? In my opinion it’s the bottom line: to save money. It almost always comes down to the almighty dollar. What a wonderful society we live in, eh?

The woman in the centre of the accusations is Susan Blouin, owner Whole Green Kids. She lives in a rented McMansion in Thornhill (a nice area north of Toronto for those outside the GTA), she drives a Porche Cayenne SUV, and apparently declared bankruptcy 4 years ago because she owed over $400,000. What does she have to say about the whole thing? In a nutshell: it’s disgruntled workers who are out to ruin her. Well Ms. Blouin, you will get your day in court (I hope) and I know you are innocent until proven guilty but even if one of these accusations is true, you should be ashamed of yourself and punished for letting your business operate this way. Everything on this list of accusations leads back to the operations of this business, and this is how I feel about anything she has to say about blaming this all one someone else:

• Untrained workers? Management’s fault
• Poor worker moral? Management’s fault
• Unsanitary conditions? Management’s fault
• Poor quality product? Management’s fault
• Poor Management? Owner’s fault
• Unchecked conditions as per The Board of Health? Okay, I’ll give her that one. Someone in that department needs to answer for that.

Please let this be an anomaly in the childcare system and please do not let this go unpunished if proven true. Families that need daycares put a lot of trust in those who provide that safe environment for the children, we don’t need this kind of worry with everything else that’s going on.

So what sayeth you fellow Bad Moms/Parents? Have you heard of similar stories? How do you handle a situation like this? How do you keep from running away from society and homeschooling the little ones? This Bad Mom wants to know.

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