Christian Homeschool Mom Blogs, a new blogging community, is looking for bloggers to contribute by creating their own blogs on the site here.

Transfer posts from your other blogs if you would like to.  The idea is to form an identifiable community of bloggers so that those who are new Christian Homeschoolers can find us and be supported.

Set-up is very easy and the features are very rich on the service I have chosen to host the community.

Come by and check us out today by clicking on the following link to ChristianHomeschoolMom.21Publish.com

Please let your online friends know and invite them to join as well.

Don't forget about your offline fellow Christian homeschool moms in your church or support group.  Joining the Christian Homeschool Mom portal is an easy way for them to begin blogging without needing any knowledge about blogging.

A recent study shows that moms, like most Americans, feel that the grass is greener on everybody else's lawn than theirs.

Sometimes, I wonder if the emphasis on Mommy Wars is overplayed by the media. I have met some stay-at-home moms that can not stand working moms and vice versa but that seems to be the exception.

I know many more stay-at-home moms that are willing to help a working mom with babysitting in a pinch and working moms who applaud the decision of moms who stay home.

What have your experiences been?

Once again, another study has come out that shows interesting discrepancies between what parents believe and how they live. This study of mothers finds that mothers are overwhelmingly concerned about society and its negative impact on their children. But the question is what are they doing about it? Reducing TV, increasing monitoring of media such as music and video games and the Internet? Other studies suggest that this is not the case. Mothers in this study report, as many other recent studies of parents have found, they are concerned about the moral life of their children and they feel their children are not receiving enough moral instruction. But in other studies, they readily admit that they as parents spend little to no time instructing their children in moral or ethical issues. The studies are particularly striking in Christian parents who overwhelmingly believe that they should be the ones teaching their children about Jesus Christ but the majority of believers do not. (Barna.org)

Society will only change one family at a time. It is time for us to dust off our history books and remember that true, lasting change only occurs in societies with grassroots efforts. For example, the American Civil Rights Movement would never have begun without the tiny efforts of many. (Everyone from high schoolers up should watch the video series Eyes on the Prize, an excellent documentary of the Civil Rights Movement of the Sixties that does a great job of exposing the grassroots origin of Civil Rights.) Leaders only arose out of the grassroots; they did not swoop down from on high and mobilize people. That means that if I am going to get on my soapbox demanding change, I had better the one out there leading the way.

It is so easy to forget this simple truth as we gripe and complain. Hate the school system? Homeschool. Feel corporate America is unfair? Start your own business. Hate all current politicians? Run for office yourself. Think this country's morality is going down faster than a sinking ship? Revitalize your own spiritual life and teach your children to do the same. Monitor the clothing you wear, the music you listen to and the TV and movies you watch.

The women in the study say that motherhood is the most important role for them. Does their calendar/planner reflect that? They say their marriages are important but how much time and respect are they devoting to their husbands? Does their calendar/planner reflect that?

About work: 83 percent strongly agreed that their care of their children is so unique that "no one else can replace it." Yet 41% worked full-time outside the home. Only 16% of mothers felt that working full-time was ideal. Yet over twice that percentage worked full time.

Most mothers worry about materialism -- 88 percent agreed that "money has too much control over our lives." But what are they doing to reduce the role of materialism in their lives and in the lives of their children.

More than 80 percent agreed that society as a whole should do more to protect children from "adult" aspects of the world. They also felt that society makes it "hard" to protect children. I agree. It is hard. Hard, yes but still necessary. Are these concerned moms considering homeschooling? Do they monitor the media that their children are exposed to at home?

When I speak of the glaring inconsistencies in the lives of the mothers in the study, I speak of myself as well. As a self-appointed critic of many aspects of American life, I must constantly challenge myself and ask those around me to challenge me to remain true to my ideals and to at least attempt to live that which I ask others to live. Of course, we will all fall short at times but the valiant efforts of many will ultimately lead to the change in American society that most parents seek.

Read this interesting article for a close-up look at what is happening inside schools today.

So many parents just are not aware of the shaky ground that schools and their methods of instruction are standing on and using as absolute truth. I was one of those parents. I assumed that since school administrators and teachers had degrees, some of them advanced, they must know what they are talking about. How wrong I was. It does not take much research to find out the sorry state of schools of education. The "hot" theory today, after millions of dollars is spent implementing it, becomes tomorrow's mistake. What sounds theoretically sound and worked in one school is passed off as doctrine only to get changed when once again, the (fill-in-the-blank) plan that was going to save the schools was found to be lacking.

From banning red pens, to deleting kickball and recess, schools have become more ridiculous than ever. How much learning is going on in the average school? Not much if you are not a self-starter whose learning style meshes with that of the system.

Parents need to take a much more active role in keeping abreast of education policies and politics. Even if a family is unwilling to homeschool, the parents should take long periods of time devoting themselves to understand the origin and history of schools, the current roles of schools in our society today and whether or not schools are accomplishing what they have set out to accomplish.

It amazes me how much time parents will take to research their favorite sports team or reality TV star or what type of digital TV they will buy. But when it comes to their child's education, many suddenly grow silent and weak. Parents must change before the schools will change. There can be no other way.

Even I was shocked when I realized that over the past few weeks, the city of New York reported 5 incidences of inappropriate sexual behavior between teachers and students. See some of the stories from the New York Daily News here, here and from the New York Post here. (By the way,could stories like these help to explain why public school teachers are loathe to teach about abstinence? Hmmmm, I wonder...) But it got even worse. The mayor of New York, Mayor Bloomberg, admitted that such occurrences happen regularly only the press does not always find out about it. But wait, the stories get even worse. Once the offending teacher is exposed, he or she typically gets a slap on the hand and is sent right back into the classroom. Think it can not get any worse than that? Guess again. The teacher's unions refuse to add any teeth to the disciplinary action to punish sexual offender teachers because of the chance that a student might just make up a story to hurt a teacher. They do not want any teachers being wrongfully disciplined.

Okay, can we all see what happens here? First we start with students not being safe in their own school, at the institution they come to for learning. This is in direct contrast to opponents of homeschooling who point to the relative safety of schools in which students are free from the horrible abuses that can occur at home.

In fact, CBS News, The Akron Beacon Journal and others have run "investigative reports" that have suggested the opposite. Homeschooling, we were warned, merely serves as a haven for those who would misuse or abuse their children. If children were sent to school, the school proponents argue, any abuse could be quickly discovered and indeed, parents may not be abusive at all because they would be aware that they could be "found out".

The statistics just make you feel all warm and fuzzy thinking about sending your child into the safe confines of public school right? In this age of accountability spurred by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), our upright schools have taken to out and out lying to suppress the number of violent incidents occurring so that schools can maintain their "safe" school status.

I wish I could just stay focused on the self-serving bureaucrats allowing children to be harmed in school each day all around the country. For I would rather feel anger toward them than the sadness that grips my heart when I think of defenseless children, abandoned in public schools for "their own good" by the parents whose charge it is to protect and teach them.

Homeschooling is certainly not easy and homeschoolers are not perfect. Yet is time for more parents to step up to the plate and face reality in admitting that the archaic, failing system of compulsory education is not good for kids. It just is not.

According to trend spotters, young music buyers are tuning more to the likes of Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears because of their pledges of purity.

The record labels have pounced on this one- CD's will be labeled with C for chastity to promote recording artists who have pledged to remain chaste until marriage.

I am impressed that the record labels recognize and support this growing trend.

I look forward to the day that teens themseves will begin to demand true abstinence teaching in schools nationwide.

**Warning: some sexually explicit material below.**
Teens and sex. The statistics are staggering and parents need to know.

Teens are encouraged to be sexually active by our society. Media influences, peer influences and our public schools all seem to promote a "if it feels good, do it" mentality for our teens. Unfortunately, teens, with their "It can't happen to me" attitude, found often at this developmental stage, are very vulnerable to such permissive messages. Even worse, many teenagers do not have anyone in their home refuting these messages with healthier choices.

As a psychiatrist, I started noticing more teens who were sporting emblems of pledges of abstinence. When asked about these, the teens I was working with universally expressed their relief at being able to be celibate. That's right- just like this author who sat in on an abstinence class, I found that teens just plain did not know or had never stopped to think that abstinence was even possible. Especially the young women who had started sexual activity early, sometimes as young as 11 or 12-years old, were so relieved to know that they did not have to continue to be sexually active. Their parents never told them! Sadly, some had learned early on about the emotional and health dangers of sexual activity. I am sorry about the price that some of them had to pay.

From the horrors of having an abortion that they felt they could share with almost no one, a heavy shame that they may bear for the rest of their lives, to diseases such as herpes and AIDS that have no cure, the price of sexual activity for teens can be very high indeed.

Parents need to familiarize themselves with the research to pass it on to their children. Each year 3 million teens contract sexually transmitted diseases. These diseases can be spread through oral sex, contrary to what most teens seem to think. Gonorrhea of the throat is very unpleasant indeed. Especially Christian teens are using oral sex as what they see as a better moral alternative to intercourse. STDs also contribute to infertility and cervical cancer, facts often ignored by the MSM.

Just giving teens the advice to use birth control is not good enough. Pregnancy is one of the least troubling consequences of teen sex! We can not forget that one of the STDs teens are exposed to has no cure and leads to death. A local suburban high school in my city has one of the highest AIDS rates in our state. Scary.

And the sex-ed folks have consistently avoided discussing the emotional aspects of sexuality. (Emotions related to sex-what a novel thought!) Teens who have been sexually active are 3 times more likely to become depressed. I can tell you from my experience as a psychiatrist that 9 times out of 10, a teen who tried to commit suicide did so because of some drama related to the opposite sex, usually someone they had been sexually active with previously.

Studies have shown that American parents overwhelmingly want their children to learn about abstinence and to remain celibate through the teen years. But often parent's desires for their children and what they actually do as parents to help secure the desired outcome do not match. It may not be easy, but parents need to talk frankly with their teens about the serious risks of sex and what the options are.

With all this data who could be against teaching abstinence for teens? From what I can tell only the mainstream media (MSM) and groups with a vested interest in the continuing sexual activity of teens (such as Planned Parenthood which provides abortions and birth control to teens.) Read more about the war against abstinence here.

As usual, certain very vocal minorities are influencing what teens across the country are learning despite the wishes of most American families.

But all parents, especially Christian parents who feel very strongly that premarital sex is wrong not only for the reasons listed above but because it is against God's commandments for our personal purity, need to talk with teens about sex. Even if your children are not in school, they probably socialize with other children who may or may not share your values about sexuality.

What is the best way to talk to teens about sex?
Here are some tips from teens:
--lay out the facts. They want to know that you know what you are talking about.
--be very explicit about your expectations. Not just "Honey, you should think about delaying sex" but "I would like to see you stay celibate until marriage, even if that means that you marry early."
--Do not talk about your own experiences as a teen. This one surprised me. Teens want to be treated as individuals and they want you to address the issues current in their lives.
--Encourage them to seek out like-minded friends and groups
--Emphasize that sexuality talk will be an ongoing dialogue. As you find interesting articles, discuss them. Encourage your teen to do the same.
--Let your teen start a blog about their opinions on sexuality and other important issues. They may find others with similar values. Start by checking out Spunky Jr's blog here.

For more tips, go here.

Feel free to print out this post for your reference.

I had an interesting first-hand experience observing daycare "providers" (note the euphemisms!) and the children under their care. We went to a puppet show at a local library in a suburb of my town.

The show was populated primarily by daycare centers with a few "real moms" thrown in there.

What a sad experience for me. I knew that despite the other great topics I am working on for the blog (abstinence and sex with teachers in schools), I had to write about this first.

First, I could easily tell which were the "real moms" and which were the "outsourced moms" (to use Spunky's term). You want to know how I could tell? The real moms were all sitting on the floor with their kids and the outsourced moms were sitting in chairs that were placed along the wall of the room.

Next was attitude. I was amazed at the very unpleasant attitudes of the outsourced moms so early in the morning! What had the children done to make them so irritable so quickly?

Well, for one thing, the kids seemed to interfere with the social life of the outsourced moms. From talking on their cell phones to discussing some apparently juicy gossip (Can you believe...!), these people seemed disinterested at best.

Perhaps the socialization of the children was responsible. I am sure that it warms the hearts of those homeschool opponents who believe the poor homeschooler is being deprived of socialization. From pinching and pushing each other to distracting each other during the performance while the outsourced moms either watched from the sidelines or yelled "Cut that out!" in a very nasty tone, this is the model of socialization that we should all want for our children!

By contrast, I noticed the real moms talking to their children during the performance saying things like "Isn't that silly, butter on his head!" or "What do you think will happen next?" I noted no such banter with the outsourced moms.

Next, I noticed differences in physical interactions between child and "caregiver" between the two groups. Only 2 of the caregivers had any physical contact (holding on lap, holding hands, hugging) with children. Each of those concentrated that attention on 1 child each. The other 30 or so children in each group and their outsourced moms had no contact at all.

Meanwhile, the real moms were being inundated by the physical presence of their children. The children were either sitting in between the moms legs or very close to the child. After the show, the real moms all grabbed their children's hands.

The outsourced moms had the children hold each other's hands at least once the show was over.

One other very interesting fact: the daycares were 100% segregated. Some were all black and the rest were all white. I have noticed that trend in our area before but today's juxtaposition of the two groups was striking. What do kids learn from that type of "socializing"?

Overall, I feel sad for many of today's kids. I believe that they need real parents especially when they are so small know that many of the points that I mentioned seem subtle but let's take a look at how our society is doing overall since we instituted wholesale warehousing of kids in America. Drug use, suicide, homicide, depression are skyrocketing. What will it take for this madness to end?

The excellent book Home Alone America by Mary Eberstadt is a must-read. I view this issue as not a public school or homeschool one but an American one. See my review of this book on Amazon.com.