These reactions happen because we have no idea what to do when we sense we are being manipulated. We are stuck. Manipulation is unsettling and often catches us off guard.

In order to resist manipulation, it requires a solid base to work from, so when it pops up, we are ready. This solid base is created when we have a clear concept of who we are and what our values are. When we are clear about our values, we know without a doubt “how things are,” which makes it much harder to push us into doing, saying, or feeling something uncomfortable or hurtful.

One example of manipulation is framing. If someone says, “That’s crazy,” or “She’s a diva,”, or “That’s wrong,” this is framing. It’s putting a particular thing or person in a box with a generalized black/white description. This can be used to discredit something, to make someone else look superior, to cover up unresolved emotions, to make someone feel bad, or most often, to get someone to do something without having to actually ask them and be responsible for one’s own values.

In general, it’s a pretty clear indication that someone is trying to manipulate us in some way if when we express a differing opinion or don’t immediately agree, the manipulator becomes rageful - putting us down, passive aggressive, writing us off completely, talking about us behind our backs, name-calling, etc. That’s a good indicator that they are trying to get us to do or think something, and they are upset that we are resisting.

Framing and other forms of manipulation are an attempt to get us to live under a value system that benefits the manipulator. We do not have to listen to or accept other people’s values they are trying to press on us. We can understand them and reflect them back on the other person, but in order to combat manipulation, our own values must be strong enough to resist others’ attempts to get us to leave our value system in order to comply with their needs. In order to have this strong value system as a guide of what is right and wrong, we have to know consciously, and clearly, what our values are.

How to know your values

Start with brainstorming. “What do I believe? What is important to me?” Write down everything you can think of.

Then try answering these questions:

• What is “healthy?”
• Is the world black/white?
• Where is the line, and how do you know if someone has crossed it?
• What is respectful behavior? How do you know if you are respecting someone else and if they are respecting you?
• What do you feel about punishment and discipline - for adults, too?
• What is success?
• What is friendship?
• What is common decency?
• Do you feel it’s important to behave the same way you expect others to behave?
• What is an apology? When are apologies necessary?

Lastly, each time you are confronted with manipulation, or a situation where you feel triggered or regressed, ask yourself which values are being trampled on that cause this reaction in you.

Keep this list, go over it regularly, and modify it as you have more experience.

Last note: we are all manipulate to some degree - it’s a tool we learn early to handle dysfunctional emotional situations. Sometimes we are the manipulator unconsciously. If that’s the case, it’s time to apologize and ask ourselves what our values are and why we feel the need to get the other person to abandon their value system for one that benefits us. Where is that coming from? (Hint: Often times, it comes from a childhood need that was unmet.)

Manipulation is a tool that is used when an adult has regressed and has not learned who they are, what they want, and how to ask for what they want. It’s not OK for people to manipulate others, but it’s understandable. Resist by knowing who you are, and demand that others live up to their values, too. Combat manipulation with confidence by knowing and living your values.

My friend Maggie is one of those homeschooling moms who does everything. She’s the mom who has a million announcements to make at park day–she leads book club, teaches circus class, runs an improv group, and more—all while working part-time as an actor. But this year she’s doing something for herself, too. Maggie is making a movie. And here’s the part I love—and the reason I’m telling you this story—it all started at park day.

Maggie had just finished recording a CD of her own music when she decided to do something that terrified her. “I decided…I should do gigs,” she said. “But I knew that I would never do gigs—because I was a mom and I was so busy trying to make a living as an actor and be a good mom that there was no way I was going to say, ‘Hey I’m going out to a club tonight to sing.’”

But, instead of letting the idea go, Maggie approached some friends at park day who were also singers and suggested they form a group that would perform together at open mic nights. “I said, ‘I’ll play guitar for you and you sing harmony for me and that way we’ll have to show up,’” Maggie said. “I knew I was much more likely to do it if I felt like I was doing it for someone else instead of just me.”

Everyone agreed it was a great idea and The Performer’s Collective was born. They rehearsed and performed together and some of the kids even got involved—most notably Maggie’s teenage son Finneas who started writing his own songs and ended up form a band of his own.

This experience gave Maggie the idea for a screenplay—a coming of age story about a mother and her son. But Maggie knew she needed to be held accountable to someone if she was going to finish the script, so she asked a fellow Performer’s Collective member, her good friend Lori Nasso, to be her writing partner. Both Lori and Maggie had roots in comedy theater (Maggie at the Groundlings in Los Angeles and Lori and Second City in Toronto) so they were a perfect match.

It took a year and a half of sneaking in the time to write wherever they could find it, but now the script is finished and they have a producer, a director (former homeschooling mom Jill D’Agnenica) and are in the process of raising the money they’ll need to shoot the film. And it all started at park day!

As homeschooling parents we tend to put our own creative pursuits on the back burner. It’s easy to do because, the truth is, homeschooling is fun and creative and most of us feel lucky to be doing it. Still, there’s something really fabulous about allowing our kids to watch us pursue the passions that feed our soul. Maggie’s story is proof that we can all be active and engaged homeschooling parents and still find time for our own creative pursuits—with a little help from our friends!

Find out more about Maggie’s film, Life Inside Out, on her Kickstarter page and be sure to follow the “How Many Homeschoolers Does it Take to Make a Movie?” blog.

The first kind is a suggestion in disguise. I used to think all complaints were like this. But there is another kind of complaint - the self-protection complaint.

A suggestion-in-disguise complaint is an indication of a problem and it’s the first step to fixing it.

A self-protection complaint, on the other hand, is when the complainer doesn’t really want or need a solution, they need someone to put their pain onto. By blaming something in a way that can’t be fixed they are able to move the pain off of them to someone or something else. Solving the problem is the last thing they want. If the problem is solved, the pain is still there, so they will find another complaint to try to relay some of that pain.

How to tell the difference between the two kinds of complaints

Sometimes it’s evident right off the bat where a complaint is coming from. If it isn’t here is a tool to use to figure it out.

• After the complaint is made ask this question: What solution do you recommend?
• If there is no solution, and the other person just keeps complaining, it’s a self-protective complaint.
• If they offer an impossible solution or if they require that someone else is responsible for the solution, it’s a self-protective complaint.
• If the solution offered isn’t possible, but it isn’t quite clear if the complainer is deliberately making solution finding difficult or if they don’t have enough information or insight to offer a workable solution, try offering up another possible solution and see how they react.
• If they start a dialogue about possible solutions, they are complaining as a suggestion to find a solution.
• If they refuse to dialogue (every solution but their unworkable one is acceptable, they complain more, or try to focus on how nothing will work) them they are complaining to self-protect.

This can happen when someone is supposed to do a job, but is incompetent and needs to blame someone. It can happen when they make a mistake and instead of taking responsibility, complain that something made them do it. It can happen when someone feels bad, but they don’t know why, so they blame the easiest target. It can happen when someone is dealing with a difficult emotion, and takes it out on something else as a replacement. Don’t get caught in taking other people’s pain by accepting their self-protecting complaints.

Dealing with self-protecting complaints

If you are caught with a complainer who is trying to self-protect, say, “I’m sorry I can’t help right now. This sounds like it’s really bothering you. Let’s think about it and let me know if you come up with a possible solution.” This makes it clear you are not responsible to for their emotions, yet you are willing and able to help when they are ready to focus on the solution. Then walk away and leave the responsibility for the pain with the complainer.

When we make it a habit to give in to “help” self-protectors, we end up with all the blame and no way to solve the problems given to us.

Address real problem-solving complaints, walk away from self-protection pain relieving complaints.

If our support crew demeans our failure, if the people who we depend on tell us our failures are bad, we will learn to avoid rejection. Any situation where we might be rejected becomes unsafe.

Confidence is the knowing that failure and rejection will not result in lost safety, and that recovery from the failure is inevitable. When we are confident, the risk of a potential failure or rejection is low, because we don’t see how we will “lose” if we are rejected - we’ve got our peeps.

Today was a live re-cap, with some lively questions about deschooling teens and video games.

Next week, several more speakers, such as Pam Sorooshian and Sandra Dodd, will explore unschooling even further.

Enjoy!

Inspired by the many articles on the internet about what parents should be prepared for if they homeschool. Creating a little reporting balance.

Maybe you’re counting the days until your little one will finally be going to school. Maybe your 4, 5, or 6 year old is also waiting on bated breath to hear school bells telling them to go to class or to bring home homework assignments to do together as a family every night at the dinner table, with smiles and laughter, eating s’mores.

But there is a reality to school that few people talk about. There is a cultural fantasy about the beauty of public school, that once kids go to school, they shall learn, and be free, and grow up to be upstanding citizens. And every year, children all over the United States strap on their backpacks for the first time, and start their first school day in their 12 or 13 year long educational career. Yet, before taking the big leap into this long-term investment, have the parents taken the time to consider the very real challenges that school brings to a family?

Before sending a child to school, families need to do some hard thinking. Is this change really going to benefit their children? Does the fantasy of school match the reality? Do the parents know if the child’s temperament is a good match for school? And what kind of legal rights to parents have if school doesn’t work out? These questions and so much more are important to think about before signing up for a 13-year family commitment of public school.

Time considerations. Very few families understand just how much time and energy is required of not just the student, but the entire family when a child is in school. There are fundraisers, meetings, homework and project time, afterschool activities, school shopping that happens throughout the year, not to mention possible costume design, volunteering to decorate and clean up, and other special event requirements. Being a good, involved parent of a child in school takes a lot more energy and commitment than most realize. It’s not easy to be a school parent. There might be hours during the day that are free, but most school parents say that their time is very full and do not spend their free time reading books all day. It’s hard work.

Money considerations - It might be free to reserve a seat at a public school desk, but it costs a lot of money once that seat is filled. There are supplies, clothes, transportation, after school care, projects, fundraisers, and so much more. Gaining access to a teacher standing in front of a room might be free, but everything else costs money. And if you don’t have the money, your child might miss out on important opportunities. There are exceptions, and some children are able to get a good education without spending a lot of money. But statistics show that schools with more money donated by the local community have higher student success rates. If you are in a successful, good school, you will very likely be spending a lot more money than you thought you would. It’s important to remember to budget for these expenditures, and go into the situation with open eyes.

Limited and unpredictable environment - Once your child enters school, that will become her world. Most of her friends will be there, she will formulate her opinions based on the school children’s social trends, and will be raised by other children who may or may not have the best social skills. Over time, the friends from school and that social community within, will become everything. She will not be exposed to the outside world much, except on social outings with the friends she makes at school and through fieldtrips she takes with friends at school. The world will become very small. Making sure this doesn’t happen will take a lot of work. In addition to making sure she has all of her school work done and attends all of the school events, keeping her in the loop with the rest of the world will take devotion and time. Making sure to get her out into the world, to take classes with other children who don’t go to her school and make friends outside of her small circle will be hard. Many children resist this once their very comfortable social circles are created. But it’s important to remember that in the end, their social skills outside of school are just as important as having tight, default friendships.

Limited resources - It’s easy to be convinced that school will provide everything a child needs for 13 years in order to be an educated individual. But that is rarely the case. It’s important to know that it is rare that a child is working at exactly at his level. And often times, school curriculum is limited in scope, or only scratches the surface of interesting topics. Also, many schools no longer offer art, creative writing, music, or interesting electives like languages other than Spanish, psychology, computer programming, and a lot of other skills that children need to know in order to have a complete education. Many schools have reduced or totally eliminated recess. It’s important to know before sending a child to school what it is that you want your children to know and experience as they are growing and learning, because once they are at school, they will be limited in what they can learn based on what that specific school is offering. Anything that he is not learning in his school will have to be learned at home, with extra effort on the parent’s part. Then we get back to the issue of how much time it already takes just to deal with school related demands. Trying to add supplementary material to make up for what’s missed in school can be a challenge.

Shy and active children will often have problems - There is a misconception that school will bring out the extrovert in shy kids and will calm down the hyper ones. If your child is quiet and reserved or very physically active and talks a lot, they will probably have challenges in school. The schools will want your child to behave a certain way, and they will have to either force themselves to change to comply, or will get into trouble or have social and academic difficulties. If your child is not already attending all-day classes regularly, where they have to sit for long periods and focus, and do schoolwork when asked, see if there is a program nearby that allows you to try it one or two days a week, to see if it’s a good match. Many parents send their children to school with no idea how they will like it, and then if it doesn’t work out, feel obligated to finish out the year, or even several years, at that school, using a lot of emotional energy and time trying to figure out how to fix a problem that didn’t exist until the child was in school.

Legal rights - One of the biggest misconceptions that parents often do not know about public school is that once they sign their child up for the school, they lose a lot of their rights. And what rights they don’t lose legally are often suppressed with pressure from the school and the community.  They lose their right to decide what their children are learning, they lose the right to be with their children whenever they feel like during the day, they lose their right to decide when to go on vacation or whether a child is sick enough to stay home (that has to be decided by a doctor). And the social pressure to take the standardized tests, for the children to do homework even if it’s far too hard, far too easy, or far too much, for the children to participate in every single project or class function even if they are not interested, for the children to stop what they are doing when they are engaged to stay with the group, and for the children to not stand up for themselves and maintain the authority of the teacher even if the child does not agree or is not happy - all this pressure to let go of parents’ and children’s rights starts the minute the children’s name is on the teacher’s roll call. Many parents don’t understand just how much they will be giving up until they are imbedded in the system, and it’s much harder to get out. To avoid this pitfall, understand exactly what your rights are before your child starts school, and understand from the beginning your options if it doesn’t work out. The feeling of having no other option but public school is what keeps parents and children’s rights so suppressed in the first place.

Sending children to school is a great option for some people, but not for others. There are many resources and places to get information on public schooling which you should research before doing this; every child is different, and every parent has their limitations.

7 Lies about homeschoolers video - by blimeycow

Anyone know if he really was a homeschooler? He has many other videos, most of them making humorous commentary about politics or things in the news. A Colbert/Stewart in training? Wouldn’t it be great if the next great comedian was a homeschooler?

The online secular homeschooling community was hit hard, with messages of condolences, sadness, and mourning all over Facebook and the Secular Homeschooling Yahoo group.

But, a day later, when no information was forthcoming on how to pay respects to the family, and no article showed up in any newspapers, and none of the family was giving more information, there started to be suspicions about whether he even existed at all.

Mike Feigen claimed to homeschool three boys, two of which were his twin sons with cystic fibrosis, as well as a nephew who also had CF. He had said his wife died in 2004 2003 of CF as well, and he at that point stopped working in order to be a full time dad.

He posted to Facebook, the Secular Homeschooling off-topic Yahoo group, and to a Cycstic Fibrosis support forum many times a day, updating families about his sons’ health. He also posted about anti-religion and the Yankees.

He had a lot of friends (and as I’ve learned, also a lot of people who most certainly did not consider him a friend). These friends supported him and cheered him on through all of his struggles with his children.

So when he died, it hit the secular homeschooling community hard, and many people were very upset by it.

But after a little while, people started asking questions about him.

And when people started asking questions, suddenly, his Facebook page, his CF webpage, and the two pages for his sons disappeared off the internet.

Without those points of contact, Mike Feigen with two sons with CF did not exist anywhere else. He instantly blinked out of existence.

After doing extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that  a real living Mike Feigen never existed, and that he and his entire family was fabricated.

But who would do this and why?

I have my suspicion, but let’s start with the facts about why I have concluded with 99% certainty that he never existed.

Each individual fact can be explained by other possible scenarios, but when you take them all together, there is only one conclusion to be made.

• The announcement for his death was only a few hours after he announced he went to the batting cages. In an accident that horrific, it would be highly unlikely that a family member would know enough and be able to announce about it on his FB page that quickly. Not to mention that most family members would be too busy trying to get information themselves about what happened before announcing it on the person’s FB page. Cleaning up a fatal accident takes a lot of time.
• The announcement was allegedly by his mother in law. Her page did not have any mention of the deaths of her own grandchidren. She only posted on his page. And she posted to “let people know” without any visible emotion.
• Mere hours after there was suspicion about his existence voiced on his page, the page was taken down. So were the pages of the two sons. For some reason, the page of the nephew was not taken down. I was unable to verify if the mother in law’s page was still up. (Update: the nephew’s page is now unavailable.)(Update: the mother in Law’s page, Judy Cohn, is also no longer available.)
• Nobody on FB had met him in person. He had hundreds of FB friends, and none of them came forward stating that they had met him.
• There were no pictures of him or his kids on any of the FB pages.
• There was no record of a crash of that magnitude anywhere in the US in the news.
• Nobody was quite sure where he lived, although there was speculation that he was New Jersey or New York.
• According to his posts and a few other things found about him on the internet - he did not exist on the internet until January 2009, where he posted several times to a CF group and Daily KOS. After that, his existed retreated to FB, the secular HS yahoo group, and the CF group, and posted often there. By 2010, he only existed on FB.
• There is no record of a Mike Feigen living in New Jersey or New York.
• There is an easily found Mike Feigen who lives in CO who is a social relations manager for the minor baseball league, as well as a Mike Feigin who lives in New Jersey and is a practicing attorney. The Mike Feigen who was said to have died was an avid baseball fan, and he claimed to be a lawyer.

These are the main facts that he did not exist. The three most important ones are that nobody has met him in person, he does not exist anywhere else on the internet, and no news article about a horrendous crash killing 4 people including three boys with CF was in the news.

(Update: I have been told that in one of his posts at posts on the Secular Homeschooler site, he said his sons’ doctor was Dorothy Bisberg, M.D. in New Jersey. I am not sure if there is a way to confirm that.)

Unless there is new information about this, there is no evidence anywhere that Mike Feigen and his children ever existed.

Which, is good, in that 4 people didn’t die in a terrible car crash. But bad in that someone has been writing as Mike Feigen in 3 different forums, and created at least 4 different FB pages to support it, since January 2009. And duping us all in the process.

Who would do this and why?

(Update: We now know who did it and why. The theories below were my original suspicions based on the evidence I had, but as more information came in, these theories were all debunked. Read the comments to find out who it was and maybe you can deduce why on your own.)

This is where the facts are a little blurry, because nobody can know for sure why people do things. But I speculate the following based on additional findings I’ve discovered in the past couple of days.

I believe that Mrs. White did it in the Hall with the Lead Pipe.

Ok, seriously. After all the given evidence, the most likely story is that Mike Feigen was actually a woman. She is a writer. I’m 95% sure of both of those things.

And I also believe that she did it because she was promoting a book she was writing, as well as her general anti-religious platform.  I have about 50% certainty about this.

The next likely scenario, which I have at about 40%, is that it was someone who wants to be a writer, perhaps writing a book, or creating characters for a book, who was doing character research, and in the process, also got her kicks from the support/debate it created.

These are the bits that caused me to go down this line of thinking:

Evidence that it was a woman:
If you read the posts and comments and take away from the “Mike Feigen” persona, the writing style and choice of topics has a feminine “feel” to it. Although, it’s nearly impossible to know for sure if someone is a man or a woman, there are common differences between how men and women write. I’ll leave it up to you to decide, but the more I read his posts, especially the long ones, the more it makes sense that a woman wrote it.

The whole story is also very romantic. His wife moved in across the street from him when he was six. His nephew is like a son. His in-laws love him dearly. He struggles from day to day, and his struggles are always so much harder than anyone else’s. He’s able to stay home because both his father and her father are rich. He used to be a lawyer. It’s got all of the markings of a “perfect family who has to deal with something hard, overcome it, and ends with tragedy anyway.”

(Update, Linda Nielson took several samples of Mike’s writing and ran it through the Gender Genie - 4 out of 5 samples came up as being written by a woman.)

Evidence that it was a writer and he’s a writer’s character.

• If you look closely, especially to the longer posts, the grammar, punctuation, formatting, are all very well written.
• It’s written like a story. You could take some of his longer posts, especially the self-describing posts, and put them in a novel, and it would read very nicely.
• He rarely, if ever, veered off the character topics. (There is only one example of this that I could find, where he asks about building a pool.) The story was tight, and there was very little human variance. The first posts in 2009, were like character introductions, rather than human stories, with a tightly wrapped story about how he got to where he was and his approach to life. On his FB feed, his posts were consistent with the same topics over and over, with no variance that I could see or that I’ve been able to gather from outside sources. The character was well-defined to the point of being annoying to some, even. While it is not unusual for individuals to be obsessed with one topic, when someone posts the number of posts he had (meaning he was on the internet a lot), there would be some variance and personal injection somewhere. If it was a writer, it makes sense that he would only post on very focused topics and keep within the character’s outline.

Now, the reason I think it might have been a particular writer who’s coming out with a book (who I won’t mention by name until I have solid evidence that it’s her), is that just coincidentally, I was able to find out information about some of Mike’s “likes” on his FB page in Dec. 2011, and Jan. 2012. His likes, again, where exactly what his character would like - CF foundation, Richard Dawkins, Atheism (but not homeschooling, interestingly). But there were no oddballs like a tv show or a favorite restaurant or anything personal that we normally add along with our political or pet passions. Also, almost exactly one month before he suddenly died, he added one more like - to a writer’s page, who happened to be writing a book about secularism, and who was going to end her stint as a newspaper columnist - on the topic of atheism. He added her when she announced she was very soon going to retire as a columnist, and was going to write a book.  Also, the writing style of this person’s few updates, and Mike’s writing style are eerily similar.

The story fits easily - Mike Feigen was a research character for her book, and also a way for her to come up with ideas for her column.

(Update: After receiving more information about this person, it seems unlikely it’s her. It might be someone in a similar situation, but I don’t think it’s the original person I was suspecting. Unless I get more info, I will not pursue this particular possibility further.)

And, on the side, what the heck, it also felt good to debate and be a fundamentalist atheist and nobody would attach it to her real name.

The details, we will probably never know - about who and why she did it. But this story makes sense to me.

The second possibility, is that it was actually a writer who is not successful, yet, who is a very good writer, doing research for a character or a book, and who also has personal experience with CF. So, everyone, keep an eye out for a character in a book in the future who has this character profile - single homeschooling dad, CF kids, and is a staunch atheist. n any case, as soon as she saw that people were looking into who she was, she freaked, and deleted the accounts.

Both of these stories make sense to me, and until there is more evidence to show otherwise, this is what I suspect. It explains why the person was able to keep it up for so long, why they were interested in it, why it was believable, and why they left so abruptly.

Some have speculated that it was a crazy person looking for attention. This is always a possibility when something like this happens. But usually, attention seeking people aren’t that good at keeping their stories straight. It’s still a possibility, but I put it at 10%.

Although, I must add, that no matter what the reason, even if it was to do a character study, there has to have been a bit of a sociopathic tendency with the person who did it, to be callous and detached enough as to pull so many people in, and then just turn them off with an abrupt “he’s dead” and not even a wave goodbye.

And that, is the story of Mike Feigen. The fake person who infiltrated the homeschooling and CF community, who made friends and enemies, and who pulled at our heartstrings both when he was “alive” and when he died.

TWO GLASSES OF WINE

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 glasses of wine.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two glasses of wine from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

‘Now’, said the professor, as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life….. The golf balls are the important things; your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favourite passions; things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

‘The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

The sand is everything else: the small stuff.

If you put the sand into the jar first, he continued, there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

The same goes for life: If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical check-ups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. Do one more run down the ski slope. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the shelves.

Take care of the golf balls first; the things that really matter. Set your priorities.

The rest is just sand.’

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the wine represented.

The professor smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of glasses of wine with a friend.’