nice people: why we won’t cave to medical cowardice

We got 13 inches of snow last weekend, and shortly afterward our daughter lost a lens outside while sledding. Or maybe it was when they put sleds away. Or maybe it was somewhere in between. She had no idea, so we scoured the yard in ten-degree temps looking for it after she came in and told us. And then that night, in zero degrees, my husband and I looked again with flashlights.

Yeah, no. We didn’t find it.

nice people: why we won't cave to medical cowardice

So we called to get it replaced. But no, you can’t just get it replaced; her prescription was one year and 49 days ago, and those 49 days make a huuuuuge difference because they mean she needs a whole new exam, according to the eye doctor’s office.

I told them we pay out of pocket, and we don’t do recreational medical appointments.

They gave us a little runaround but eventually acquiesced a little, to the point of making an appointment for me (because, Dorothy, we’re not in our 30s anymore) and during my appointment, my daughter could walk in to get the lens in her glasses replaced. So far, so good.

Until the lady said they require masks.

Now, just so you know…I have a medical exemption for at least three reasons. But this isn’t about medical exemptions, just as it isn’t about medical care or science or critical thinking.

This office didn’t care about medical exemptions; they require masks.

“So,” I asked, “your office discriminates against those who cannot wear masks for medical reasons?”

“No, this is a private practice,” the receptionist said. (I’m pretty sure this is the same one that answered the phone earlier with, “Hellocanyoupleaseholdthanks.” It wasn’t a good start.) “It’s Dr. Whatshisname’s policy.”

“Oh! So it’s Dr. Whatshisname who discriminates against people with medical exemptions?” Yeah, I’m that fun at parties, too.

After a few seconds of bluster and stammering, she went for the plandemic talking points about numbers and “safety” that have nothing to do with medical care, science, or critical thinking, as I already mentioned.

“If Dr. Whatshisname believes all that,” I said, “he’s not someone I would trust with any form of medical care for my kids or myself. Please cancel our appointments.”

And that’s when she hung up on me. (I bet she’s real fun at parties, too.)

Now, I know there are a lot of nice people out there just doing their jobs. Just sending their kids to school. Just going to work, just not rocking the boat. But don’t expect me to believe that these people are wearing masks for the health of others, because it is their perpetuation of the myth that prevents people like me who cannot wear a mask from getting medical care.

“I don’t wear it for me, I wear it for you” is a bunch of self-righteous BS and I’m over it.

Next we tried Dr. Whosit, recommended by one of my best friends. Made appointments. It looked good. And then they said to bring a mask.

Whoops.

“I can’t wear a mask, and I won’t make my kids wear them, either,” I said.

“Well, it’s our policy, blah blah, can you bring a medical exemption letter?”

“I don’t need to bring a medical exemption letter,” I said. “My medical history in other areas is none of your office’s concern.” And they know that, as does every other medical office, but they’re hoping you and I don’t know that, of course. (Hellloooo, HIPPA!)

“Let me find Dr. Whosit so you can speak to him.” Great, thanks.

A minute on hold, and Dr. Whosit comes on.

“Hi, can I help you?”

I explain our situation. Dr. Whosit is nice but admits that he just does what the State tells him. I answer that I am not going to the state for my medical care, I am looking for someone who actually practices medical science instead of political science in their patient care.

“Well, it’s only for a little while in a small room. Couldn’t you wear a mask for just that time?”

“No, I am not going to suffocate myself or my kid for just a few minutes. Would you?”

No, he wouldn’t, but he was asking me to.

And this is the (lack of) logic we are encountering at every level of this. These people would call OCS or DFYS in a heartbeat should you intentionally cause lung damage to your child or restrict their oxygen in any non-state-approved way, but they balk when you stand up against them for wanting to do it.

The reason they balk is because so many people have no problem actually allowing other people to restrict their children’s oxygen. How dare we question those from their lofty position on a high horse?

if your medical provider is still requiring masks, they either don't understand basic science or they agree to foolish things that morons instruct them to do. Find a better doctor.

I know, they’re just nice people, refusing to rock the boat while simultaneously making excuses for all the leaks in it. This is okay. It’s fine, we’re all fine…and the water just keeps rising, because nice people keep allowing it to.

King Hezekiah was a nice person, too. In the line of Biblical kings, he was actually a pretty good one.

One day Hezekiah gets sick and is about to die. So he prays, and God not only heals him but also provides a miraculous sign to prove that he’s healed. Pretty good, right?

But then Hezekiah gets an impressive visitor who has heard about his sickness, and sends envoys with letters and gifts to him. Hezekiah responds by showing off everything he has, exposing his assets and weaknesses to this foreign entity.

He makes himself look good while thoughtlessly endangering future generations.

But maybe it was unintentional. Maybe he just wasn’t thinking. Maybe he felt sorry about it later.

Or maybe not. Let’s read:

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord: Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” 

Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?”

– 2 Kings 20:16-19

Why not? As long as it doesn’t affect my time, and my life is easy, and I’m not inconvenienced, who cares?

I’m pretty sick of nice people, to tell you the truth. Nice people are giving up our freedoms, rolling over so evil people can abuse our children and convince us that it’s the (self)right(eous) thing to do.

I found some leads and made appointments with a new eye care center who is so popular they are booked out for quite a while. Turns out, supporting freedom is actually pretty good for business.

But friends, this is a serious issue: Where are we capitulating? Where are we giving an inch, and they are taking a mile?

We are dealing with vax mandates this year because so many of us capitulated to mask requirements last year.

It might be inconvenient to find a new doctor or optometrist or dentist or hair stylist. I know it’s not easy. It wasn’t easy for us when we moved our whole family last year to a new medical provider, a different church, and new social media platforms. Hey, I can’t even remember our new PO Box number. Change is hard, I get it.

But we’re not called to do easy. We need to remember that. We’re called to do obedience, and to stand for freedom. And if we don’t do it now, our kids and grandkids won’t have a choice about it later.

the cost: a challenge to adoption agencies, from the families who are living it

Thirty-seven thousand dollars. That’s how much it cost to adopt two of our children.

And that was – forgive me – a screaming deal. We adopted them at the same time, from the same country, on one adoption fee instead of two separate fees. Many adoptions cost that much or more just for one child.

the cost: a challenge to adoption agencies, from the families who are living it

Talking about the numbers and the money bothers me because children are not commodities. Ignorant people joke to adoptive families about buying or selling children, revealing their cluelessness about the reality of child trafficking. Adoption expenses are not a sale; it’s more like ransom money to get children out of institutions where they are languishing and put them into a family where they can heal.

And if you’ve adopted or have been a reader here for any length of time, you already know. Healing can take a long time.

And healing is worth it.

But here’s why I’m bringing up the money and numbers: Those costs do not come close to those incurred after adoption, literally and metaphorically. And people need to know that. People making insensitive jokes need to know; people thinking adoptive families get paid (what the what?!) need to know.

Potentially adoptive families need to know.

In discussing all the adoption costs with different agencies, it was never required (or even recommended) that we save for therapy. Personal health insurance was required, yes, but that doesn’t begin to cover the entire costs of therapy and counseling for multiple people in a family – parents, adoptive children, biological children – who undergo the turmoil, trauma, and secondary trauma those early adoptive years often involve. When you are replacing a destroyed mattress every six months for the first two years and repairing or replacing other damaged necessities, the copay for therapy becomes out of the question since it’s not a basic need.

We applied thousands of dollars to our international travel expenses. Hundreds of dollars were set aside to be converted to euro and lev just for meals. But also, it would have been good if we knew to set aside an account for therapy — $3000 to $5000 would have been a good start.

Why don’t adoption agencies require or recommend this? I mentioned it to a friend, and her response was, “They’ll never do it. Adoption agencies are making a sale, not equipping people for life after adoption.”

It sounds jaded, but from my experience I have to agree with her. Are we wrong? I hope adoption agencies will prove it.

It’s not just adoption agencies, though. Friends who adopted through foster care and private adoption said this:

NO ONE PREPARED US. And we know they knew. Other families were and are our saving grace in this area of support.

It would have taken just one home study writer or one agency worker thirty minutes to give us the real low down, and no one ever did.

I contacted our adoption agency three times about Upside Down after it gained the merit of being featured on Focus on the Family. I told them we hear from adoptive families all the time. Most of these families are desperate, and almost all of them tell us that Upside Down has the information they wish they had before they adopted. So I asked our adoption agency to consider making it one of their required (or at the very least, recommended) materials.

Three times I contacted them. Why three times? Because I never heard back. Not once.

We adopted two children with that agency. We are one of their families. And I never heard back.

Maybe my friend is right. Maybe they are more interested in the sale, and not interested in equipping families. Maybe they are concerned about losing a sale if they scare people off.

(Maybe, after the obligatory first two years of intrusive home visits by a 20-something social worker whose sole parenting experience was with her biological toddler in a two-income family, they figured we’d consumed the entire plethora of support they offered and we were on our own. Or maybe that was just us.)

But here’s the thing: If a family is easily scared off after reading a 100-page book or being told that part of the requirement for adoption is to save a few thousand dollars in an account for future therapy, those families should not be adopting in the first place. This is an easy filter.

I’ll be contacting that agency again soon, and several others also. We’ll see if the response is better this time. (UPDATE: After some emails back and forth over about 6 months, our former agency last told us they got a copy of the book and were still reviewing it — it’s a 40 minute read, front to back — and then declined to return my phone call or last email. So it sadly looks like they are in the business of selling adoptions, and not supporting adoptive families.) And if you are an adoptive family, you are welcome to contact your agency and recommend materials you wish you’d had when you were in process, too.

Meanwhile, though, what can we do for adoptive families now? How can we encourage and empower them, and help them toward wholeness? What can we offer to potential adoptive families who are rightly curious about what they might be signing up for?

We can be honest with them, because what we’ve learned hasn’t come cheap. We can be as transparent as possible while still honoring the privacy of our kids and families.

The core of adoption support is not going to come from professionals who don’t have personal adoption experience. Those services are basic and they can help, but the most impactful support to adoptive families is going to come from other adoptive families who have been there. If that weren’t the case, one of the most common things we hear from adoptive families wouldn’t be “I would never tell this to someone who hasn’t adopted, but I know you understand.”

But that’s what we hear, because we do understand. Nine years later, we’re still walking this out every day.

So here is some of that honesty from a mom who’s been there: Don’t Make Me Use My Mom Voice: Adoption, Attachment, & Discipline, a 1-hour training by yours truly. This was originally requested by an adoption agency who is actively equipping their families, and now we’re making it available to other adoptive (or potentially adoptive) families who need it. Foster families, too. This training will help you feel more equipped in all your parenting and relationships and personal wholeness.

We need people who have been where we are – and are still walking that road – to come alongside us and say, You’re not alone. You’re right, you really do know what you’re talking about even when you don’t feel like you know nearly enough to do this. This is really hard, but we’re going to get through it.

And that’s cheaper than therapy.

as weird as you are: what homeschool really is

Homeschooling has always been misunderstood, but 2020 didn’t do it any favors and now there’s even more confusion.

The fall of 2020 saw an unprecedented number of families transfer their kids from public and private school to homeschool. And this fall has been the same, for many of the same reasons; even more parents this year want to make the move to homeschool.

as weird as you are: what homeschool really is

It’s a bold, brave choice that requires a family to make significant changes, and it can be overwhelming. That has never changed; the overwhelm has always been there whether it was last year, this year, or sixteen years ago, when we started.

But this year I’ve noticed one difference: Many parents who wish they could get their kids out of public school have washed their hands of homeschooling because they feel like they tried it last year with the forced lockdown, and it was miserable.

So let me clear something up real quick. This is important:

If, because of lockdowns, you were forced into schooling at home, schooling online, or doing a ton of assignments with your kids that their school told you to do, then I hate to break it to you, but…you didn’t homeschool.

I hope that’s a relief to some of you.

Just because your child did assignments at home doesn’t mean it was homeschool.

If they were still registered with another school and doing everything that school told them to do, a repeat of that experience is not what you would be signing up for if you chose to (really) homeschool.

Because homeschool is not checking off a list that someone else assigned you. Homeschool is not hours and hours in front of a screen in zoom meetings or other online classes. Homeschool isn’t just doing the same things you would do at school, but moving the location to your kitchen table (or the couch, or your bed).

Homeschool is none of those things. So if you were given that impression last year and it left a terrible taste in your mouth, I am so sorry. No one can blame you for saying “We tried homeschool last year and we hated it” because we would hate it that way, too.

But we can show you what it really ought to be. And that should give you hope, especially if you wish there was an alternative to the indoctrinating mess that many public schools have become. If you are tired of the CRT and other agendas, the unhealthy mask mandates, the disregard of parental rights, and you want to make school about education again (whoa, what a concept!), let’s talk about what homeschool really is.

And right from the start, I admit that I can’t give you the full picture. Because homeschool is different for everyone, and that is the beauty of it. It is for you and for your kids, not for a predictable system so they will all go in different and come out the same after being squeezed to conform to a mold they may never fit into.

But here are some basic principles:

We read. A lot. Out loud and quietly, to each other, to younger siblings, to older siblings, to Grandma, to the cats if they will listen. So many books, so little time. When someone’s sick, audiobooks work in a pinch.

We do stuff: Projects and hikes and visits and crafty things and cooking and watching videos and I can’t even tell you what else. At home and elsewhere, on our own and with others, and we’re not limited to a 7 am to 3 pm schedule.

We talk to each other, to extended family members and friends, and others. We discuss what we’re reading and learning. We visit people and talk on the phone, and we’re not segregated into only talking with those in our own age group, economic group, neighborhood, or gender.

We try and fail and change things up, and try again. We’re not stuck with the math program that we hate. We try new language arts programs that might be a better fit. We don’t read the dry textbooks that put you to sleep.

Our curriculum and schedule work for us, not the other way around. We are not a slave to the checklists and to-do lists (and neither are our kids). We adjust our school schedule to our lives instead of adjusting our lives to our school schedule. A new baby is born, or someone gets sick, or some major catastrophe occurs? We learn about basic skills and caring for each other for a few weeks, and the algebra and language arts can wait. There will be time to pick it up again when things settle down. We are flexible when we need to care for each other, help friends, do a major home repair, or get involved in community projects. So much that needs to be known is never learned in school…but it can be learned in homeschool.

Some of the most important learning is not academic, so don’t be afraid to go there.

So friends, if you want to homeschool this year but don’t think you can for a dozen or more reasons, listen to me:

You will be a terrific teacher for your kid. You’ve already been doing it a long time.

You can teach your kids. Yes, it’s hard sometimes. Yes, you’ll be sanctified. But you can go slow, read the books you want, do the activities you want, partner with friends, take advantage of online resources (they cover every subject or topic you could imagine), and make it your own. Make it for them. Make it for your freedom. Make it for their future.

We have all these preconceived ideas about what school should look like, and we feel like we can’t fit the mold. So, newsflash:

There was never meant to be a mold.

School is supposed to be as weird as you are. Go ahead and quote me on that.

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Need a quick resource for more info? HSLDA has a terrific site right here, with everything you need to know (legal, local, academic, and otherwise) to get started.