Now, I would like to stress that I have a high appreciation for the practice of "guarding your senses." What you choose to expose yourself to not only shapes your personality, but affects what I consider the skeletal system of your character: your habits. I could write an entire book on the power of controlling your personal universe, but this image is not about how you manage your world, but how others manage it for you.
When I was young, my mother would describe the secular world as some sort of shark tank, and compare her decision to shelter us (by homeschooling, and other things) with giving us weapons, skills, and training instead of just pushing us in. I suppose she expected to raise a crop of expert hunter/survivors, but what she ended up with (at least in me) was an overgrown child covered in gear who didn't know what a shark looked like, or even how to swim.
Please, parents, don't throw your kids to the sharks; but don't try to delay the inevitable encounter, either. Just jump in with them. Show your kid how to live in this world, and when you come across undesirable elements, point them out, avoid them together, or fight them off your child, so he sees how to do it. Engage with the world alongside your kid, and he will take cues from you in ways that neither of you will even realize. Spend time together from the beginning, talk intelligently about the world from the beginning, and you might never actually have to have "the talk" about drugs or sex or other heavy things because you already have in subtle, big picture ways.
Would you rather have your son avoid destructive behaviors because you told him to, or avoid them because you have shown him how to have real fun, make friends, and deal with emotions in other ways? Would you rather have your daughter stay pure because she's afraid of how you will respond, or because she knows she is strong and beautiful, and has a healthy respect for herself and her body? Would you rather your children agree with you on critical issues because they brought it up once and you bulldozed them, or because they see and understand the whole world in the right way?
As a bonus, if you treat your children like the whip-smart mini humans that they are, the urge to treat you like an out-of-touch adult who wouldn't understand will be soothed as well. Live alongside you children, and they will shape their lives in response to yours.
Here is a funny example. A long time ago, the three-year-old sister of a friend saw a black girl for the first time and asked (rather loudly!) "Why is that girl so dirty?" Of course, my friend wanted to sink into the ground, but honestly, it was better than the first time I brought the issue up. I was a preteen, and I used the "n-word," not because I was a terrible racist, but because I had heard the term in historical context and had no modern conversations to teach me what was offensive and what was acceptable. My mother hastened to correct me, but was disappointed that she hadn't managed to make me "color-blind," that I would even need a word to refer to black people. Now, I was colorblind, in the we-are-all-people sense, but I was not literally. As my friend's little sister demonstrated, race is obvious. Sheltering does your children no favors.
My friend's moment was brought on by the dynamics of her community (if she was raised in the city, for instance, a different skin color would probably not have been confusing), but mine was made by my mother's reluctance to address racial issues. It would take me until college to figure out that race was something to be celebrated, not just ignored, and to appreciate the complexity, depth and emotion of the civil rights movement. Children don't need to be lectured about everything, they just need to be exposed to things, and learn from how the people they respect respond.
Here is a more extreme example: We were friends with a homeschooling family whose parents seemed to have chosen homeschooling as a method of retreating from the world. They never watched anything but religious videos, made all their friends through church functions, and (it seemed) thought about very little that was not somehow related to the Church. When the oldest daughter graduated, she joined a convent, and I cannot imagine what else she could have done. She was friendly and smart, but so completely removed from the rest of the world that she would not only have been at a loss to function outside of a religious community of some sort, but unhappy.
I think this family can be compared to other religious communities, such as the Amish, and the same principles applied to more extreme communities, such as polygamous families and cults, whose children choose to remain even with the opportunity to leave. I expect that is incredibly hard to interface with all the influences, social structures, behaviors and ideas that they have been unexposed to for so long.
Please, parents, engage with your children! Engage with the world, and let them see how you do it! It is the only way to make sure that they are strong in their beliefs, and ready to live their lives in the wonderfully complex and beautiful world that we have. It fosters a healthy respect in both of you, not only for each-other's point of view, but for all the other people who understand things differently and believe different things. Remember, it's an ocean, not a shark tank, and it is wonderful to discover it together.
~Maria
(PS. I would also like to mention that homeschooling was absolutely wonderful for me. It shaped me into an intelligent, mature, self-directed, well-read young adult who loved to learn and knew how to teach herself. Homeschooling itself is not bad at all, or even necessarily isolating, but it gives the parent much more control, so if she wants to shelter her children, it is extremely easy.
I would also like to stress how much I love my mother, and how passionate and intelligent she is. Unfortunately, this little essay reflects how I wish I saw more of the world before being thrown into it alone, and she did have a hand in that, however accidentally.)
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