{"id":42103,"date":"2026-01-19T23:18:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=42103"},"modified":"2026-01-19T23:18:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:18:42","slug":"at-nine-i-disappeared-into-home-schooling-no-one-came-looking-home-schooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=42103","title":{"rendered":"At nine, I disappeared into home schooling. No one came looking | Home schooling"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span> Composite: Rita Liu\/The Guardian\/Getty Images\/Stefan Merrill Block<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery mother in the world wishes her kid wouldn\u2019t grow up so fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mom laughs as she holds me close.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I guess I\u2019m the only one who\u2019s actually doing something about it, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

By our fourth year of home schooling, when I\u2019m 13, Mom\u2019s work to return me to infanthood has become a part of our daily routine. Ever since she pulled me out of public school, she has been applying lighteners and hydrogen peroxide to my hair in an attempt to bleach it back to its baby blond.<\/p>\n

For months, she has made me crawl around on all fours whenever we\u2019re at home, claiming that a strict crawling regimen might somehow improve my handwriting. Like an infant, I spend nearly all day by Mom\u2019s side, mostly alone together, as my brother is off at school and Dad is off at work.<\/p>\n

Mom withdrew me from Brinker elementary school in Plano, Texas, in fourth grade, when I was nine. Four years into this experiment, no one from the state or school has ever once come to ask questions about what we study, or even to check up on me.<\/p>\n

For Mom, that freedom is thrilling. Mom says that I\u2019m a \u201ccreative genius\u201d and it\u2019s up to her to \u201ccultivate\u201d my \u201cgifts\u201d. She believes that for certain kids, like my brother Aaron, the structure of public school is necessary, but a \u201cglobal learner\u201d like myself needs a \u201cfree-form education\u201d.<\/p>\n

Inspired by her educator hero John Holt, Mom calls what we do \u201cunschooling\u201d. For Mom, unschooling means that other than my correspondence math course, she wants me to spend my days \u201cpursuing my passions\u201d, which usually involves a lot of shopping trips together, lunches out, and drawing or reading around the pool in the back yard.<\/p>\n

In 1990s Texas, I had fallen into the invisible space of home schooling that the state only recently wrote into law<\/p>\n

Even if my need for other kids sometimes feels like an actual physical deficiency, I see how much Mom wants me here. The last years have been hard for her. When we moved to Texas from Indiana, she lost her career and social life. Hundreds of miles away, her mother is slipping into dementia. But when it\u2019s just the two of us in the house, Mom still often whistles through her days.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, you are better than any grownup, Stef,\u201d she says. \u201cYou are more than all I need, and there\u2019s a lesson in that. You should never depend on people outside your family for the things you truly need.\u201d<\/p>\n

I often swear to myself that at some point I\u2019ll tell Mom that I must go back to school, but I\u2019ve never quite found the courage to do so. Still, whenever Mom and I happen to pass a police officer, I try to telepathically beg him: Please, please make us explain why a boy my age is spending his school day at the mall.<\/em><\/p>\n

One day I will learn that there, in 1990s Texas, I had fallen into the invisible space of home schooling that the state only recently wrote into law. In that year (as will remain the case, in 2026) there is no requirement for a home-schooled child to take any test of basic grade-level learning, and a home-schooling parent doesn\u2019t even need to have a high school degree.<\/p>\n

Actually, a parent could be a registered sex offender, convicted of crimes against minors and under active investigation by child protective services, and still home school their child without oversight. Home-school laws differ by state but similar laws exist all over the country, due largely to powerful Christian lobbying groups. In 1994, however, I\u2019m unaware of any of that, and I still believe that all I need for something to change is just an adult from outside the home to come and see how we spend our days.<\/p>\n

And just my luck, because a visitor is soon to arrive. Another adult, whose presence in the house is sure to shift something \u2013 at very least, I know, the appearance of this particular houseguest will put my crawling regimen on hiatus.<\/p>\n

Like a diabolical genie that my loneliness has conjured, Mom\u2019s greatest tormentor is coming next week.<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s mother, my Grandma Mimi, is an astonishment to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cImpatient is one word for her,\u201d Mom says. \u201cControlling is another. Do you know the word imperious<\/em>? I\u2019ll say this for your Grandma Mimi, the woman is formidable. But what I wonder is whether she sometimes worries that she\u2019s basically a walking cliche. The Jewish stereotype of the kvetching, ball-busting bubbe<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s not so bad,\u201d I say. \u201cShe makes me laugh?\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing just over 5ft in her stilettos, Grandma Mimi always arrives from Florida in gold lam\u00e9, jangling masses of jewelry, and enough Chanel No 5 to set off one of my brother\u2019s asthma attacks. She wears a platinum blond updo, a style she hasn\u2019t changed since the 1950s, but I know that the hair itself is no longer authentic.<\/p>\n

Whenever she comes to town, Mimi brings along a foam mannequin\u2019s head, where her wig rests every night. She also brings a chocolate babka from a Fort Lauderdale bakery, which she likes to unwrap and carry down on a plate, claiming she baked it herself back home.<\/p>\n

Grandma Mimi doesn\u2019t dwell much on the past, but I know that back when Dad and his siblings were kids, after my grandfather\u2019s health and career imploded in spectacular fashion (the news of his Ponzi scheme was splashed across the pages of the Cincinnati Enquirer, after which he suffered a series of heart attacks), Grandma Mimi rose magnificently to the occasion. She opened a real estate agency, and within a few years, Mimi became a kind of local celebrity: Marian Block, the lady real estate agent with real chutzpah, whose reputation spread all over town.<\/p>\n

After my grandfather\u2019s death, Grandma Mimi got remarried, and I remember meeting my new step-grandfather Meir just once. As I sat with Meir in a fog of his cigar smoke in the oceanfront apartment they shared, he asked: \u201cDo you know why Jewish husbands die before their wives?\u201d I swallowed and didn\u2019t reply. \u201cBecause they want to!\u201d<\/p>\n

Meir let out a single, lung-rattling guffaw and was dead before our next visit to Florida.<\/p>\n

This year, only minutes after she clip-claps into the house in her Dolce & Gabbana heels, Mimi gets right to her critique.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe boy should be in school. It\u2019s a Thursday! A boy on a Thursday should be in a school, learning a thing. He needs the \u2013 what do they call it? The curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cActually,\u201d Mom says, \u201cthe new theory in education is that what matters most is teaching a child to love to learn, to let them follow their interests.\u201d Mom\u2019s voice when talking with Mimi is like the lighting in a convenience store, an artificial and too-bright intensity. \u201cAnd I think that you would find that Stefan is quite up-to-date with the standard curriculum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mimi hoists one of her hand-drawn eyebrows. \u201cAnd doesn\u2019t he get lonely here, without friends? Stefan, aren\u2019t you lonely here by yourself all day?\u201d<\/p>\n

I shrug. When she squints at me, I notice there\u2019s some sort of faint glitter in her purple eyeshadow. She shakes her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, this is craziness. But you know me. I won\u2019t say anything if it isn\u2019t my place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Mom says. \u201cI know you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust please, will you do me a favor,\u201d Mom asks me in an angry whisper the next morning. \u201cWill you please be on your very best behavior while she\u2019s here? Show her all the great things we do in home schooling? What a great and diligent learner you are? I know we shouldn\u2019t care about her opinion, but I guess I just want to put her in her place a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nod, but over the next days, I\u2019m not at all diligent about my work. In fact, I spend a substantial portion of that first day chasing around my pet hamster in her clear plastic ball. In the middle of the afternoon, when Mom is busy with her own part-time work, I flip on the little TV in my room and watch sitcoms for hours, the set loud enough to draw Mimi\u2019s attention. As Mimi observes me from the doorway, I look into her watery, forceful eyes, and I can feel the tidal strength of her disappointment upon me.<\/p>\n

I want to do what Mom asked me to, I really do, but I can\u2019t seem to stop offering Mimi further evidence that she\u2019s right, making for her a show of how little I\u2019m educated, providing zero examples of all that supposed self-motivation and burgeoning genius Mom is always bragging about.<\/p>\n

Grandma Mimi is the first adult, the first person maybe, who has voiced the worry I carry at all times<\/p>\n

The next morning, I claim to be at work on a project, but I just spend the hours with my comic books, my bedroom door open. It isn\u2019t long before Mimi discovers me there, sipping a Coke at 10.00am, flipping pages of Uncanny X-Men.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo this is how you spend your day.\u201d Mimi says.<\/p>\n

I shrug. \u201cMy math class takes about 30 minutes. And then I just sort of do whatever I want all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

I feel my heart working scarily in my chest. I guess I know what\u2019s coming. I guess I\u2019ve invited it, even, but I can\u2019t help myself. Grandma Mimi is the first adult, the first person maybe, who has voiced the worry I carry at all times, about my future, and about my loneliness.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that I\u2019m going to have a talk with your mother about all this,\u201d Grandma Mimi tells me now.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t need to do that. I usually work harder than this, really.\u201d Despite my general deadbeat attitude these last days, I\u2019m panicking now. I can see how much Grandma Mimi is in fact looking forward to the open-field battle of this \u201ctalk\u201d, and I know I\u2019ve supplied her with the ammunition. \u201cYou really don\u2019t need to tell her anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStefan,\u201d she says. \u201cSomeone needs to fight for you here. Lucky for you, a fighter is just who your grandmother is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is wrong with you?\u201d Mom asks the next morning. She has just come back from a drive with Mimi, and as soon as she got home, she yanked me into her bedroom, where she is now yelling at me in a whisper. \u201cDidn\u2019t I ask you to help<\/em> me? Didn\u2019t I ask you to work extra hard this week?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done the worst thing I could do to Mom. I\u2019ve betrayed her to her nemesis: that\u2019s what Mom\u2019s face, so angry and near, is telling me now. She thought I was the one person completely in her corner, but now I too have joined the ranks of her enemies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I say. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I was being so bad. I just \u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t you see,\u201d she shout-whispers, \u201cthat I\u2019ve given you an opportunity here that almost no other kid on the planet will ever have? The opportunity for true greatness. But you are wasting it. You are selling me out to that woman, just so you can, what? Go to that awful school and lose everything that makes you special? Why<\/em>, Stef? Why the hell would you want to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGive me a goddamn break, you don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before she snaps up my shirt near the collar, I know that it will be a long time, maybe never, until I\u2019ll be able to apologize my way back from what I\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to listen<\/em> to me,\u201d she says, tightening her hold.<\/p>\n

And then, with both hands, she pushes me back. For an instant my feet kick at the air. A bright pain explodes in the back of my head as it smacks against the dresser. The light scrambles in my eyes. I\u2019m on the floor now, and Mom is standing over me.<\/p>\n

I [had] to give up the old hope that someone might come into our house and change things for me<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you going to listen to me? Are you going to listen to me now? Stand up.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stand, my chin to my chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are you looking at me like that? Because I gave you a little push? That was nothing. Nothing,\u201d she says, but I can see the guilt in her face, troubling her anger.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nothing,\u201d I repeat, even as the floor goes unbalanced at my feet, and nausea blooms in my chest. \u201cReally, it wasn\u2019t anything. I\u2019m really so, so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking that maybe if only I apologize now, and keep on apologizing, her guilt will win out over what I\u2019ve done and what I\u2019ve said to Grandma Mimi. In that way, it\u2019s the fact that Mom just hurt me that might mend us. And I must fix things between us, because now I know this much is true: I have to give up the old hope that someone might come into our house and change things for me. Whatever happens next, it will be up to me to force my own way out.<\/p>\n

At last, a year and a half after Grandma Mimi\u2019s visit, I will indeed find a way to insist on my return to school.<\/p>\n

I will step into the terrifying adolescent crowds of Shepton high school for the start of my freshman year, but every day will offer another compelling reason to give up on the world, and return home to Mom.<\/p>\n

After nearly five years in the sole company of a middle-aged woman, I\u2019ll be a kid who chooses to eat his sandwich in a toilet stall in order to avoid the lunchroom social scene, a boy who other and larger lonely boys beat up when teachers aren\u2019t watching, a poor student who knows how to impress his own mother with showy rhetoric but does not know how to pass a test. Still, I\u2019ll keep showing up at that school, and eventually I\u2019ll graduate and leave Texas altogether.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be until decades later that I\u2019ll see so clearly the great irony of Mom\u2019s immense love for me: that it was both the lock on my door, and its key. It was her desperation to hold me so close that trapped me there at home all those years, but it was also her absolute faith in my abilities that gave me the courage to turn my back on her and set out into a large and often overwhelming world.<\/p>\n

And when I finally seek out other former home schoolers, I\u2019ll realize how lucky I was. Not every home-school story is a sad one (indeed, home schooling can be a positive, vital alternative for many families) but I will also see how much worse \u2013 in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual trauma \u2013 can happen behind the legal veil of home schooling, and how many other home-schooled kids are not given the resources to find their own ways free.<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s estimated that more than 3 million American kids are being home schooled, but we can\u2019t know the actual number because in many states parents can home school without filing notice.<\/p>\n

No one from the state comes to these kids\u2019 houses, if only to count their numbers.<\/p>\n

This is an edited excerpt for Homeschooled<\/em>: A Memoir by Stefan Merrill Block, out on 22 January<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Composite: Rita Liu\/The Guardian\/Getty Images\/Stefan Merrill Block \u201cEvery mother in the world wishes her kid wouldn\u2019t grow up so fast.\u201d Mom laughs as she holds me close. \u201cBut I guess I\u2019m the only one who\u2019s actually doing something about it, right?\u201d By our fourth year of home schooling, when I\u2019m 13, Mom\u2019s work to return<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[11132,456,16159],"class_list":{"0":"post-42103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-disappeared","9":"tag-home","10":"tag-schooling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}