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"\n\nClick here for part one and here for part two.\n\n The woman dressed like Laura Ingalls Wilder stormed out of her cabin and glared at my sons through the frill of her floral-print bonnet. Wilson and Oliver kept ringing the chow bell over her firepit, and it was disrupting her cornhusk dollmaking class. &amp;quot;He has to wear shoes!&amp;quot; she yelled at me, pointing to the boots Wilson had plopped on the ground near a pile of rusty old tools.\n\n We were on a Homeschool Day trip to Pioneer Farms, one of those &amp;quot;living history&amp;quot; museums, and Wilson and Oliver had gotten so dirty they looked more authentically 19th century than most of the actors. Grime coated their faces and feet. Fluff from a cotton-plant fight clung to their hair. They both held fistfuls of ash from the firepit, and no matter how many warnings I issued, we all knew it was only a matter of time before they threw the stuff in each other\u2019s eyes.\n\n A homeschooling mother and her son approached the firepit, but they looked too afraid of my boys to get any closer. After bonnet lady marched back inside, I turned to the mom and tried to lighten the mood. &amp;quot;Isn\u2019t it historically accurate to be barefoot? Didn\u2019t everybody have only one pair of shoes back then?&amp;quot; The mom tittered nervously, then led her son away from us.\n\n This is what it had come to: even homeschoolers found my kids (and, to be fair, me) weird and off-putting. Fortunately, we didn\u2019t have to see any of them again. For us, homeschool was just a temporary fix, which meant that the kids and parents on the scene were temporary, too.\n\n Still, I knew that Wilson would eventually have to find friends who would stick. Staying at home had drastically improved his mood, confidence, and willingness to learn. It had also made him lonely. His few friends from school were only free on weekends, and Oliver was in preschool until mid-afternoon. Reluctantly, I turned to the local homeschool e-mail Listserv to find companionship.\n\n Once I signed up, the posts never stopped coming:\n\n &amp;quot;We\u2019re selling our used Exploring Creation with Biology (2nd Edition) for $60\u2014$5 off what we paid for it!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;I\u2019m a homeschooling mom who does holistic house cleaning, and I have an opening to clean the home of another homeschool family.&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;Read this article from a mother in Sweden, where they\u2019ve banned homeschooling! Pray for her!&amp;quot;\n\n &amp;quot;NEW location for Mother/Daughter Belly Dance Workshops.&amp;quot;\n\n After wading through an endless but impressive stream of posts about homeschool soccer leagues, Dungeons Dragons clubs, Hebraic roots Bible study groups, and every other imaginable activity or event (&amp;quot;Get ready for the annual homeschooler graduation ceremony!&amp;quot;), I noticed that the group organized weekly gatherings at local parks. The next one was scheduled for a park near our house.\n\n A handful of moms and their kids showed up. At first Wilson kept to himself, taking the slide head-first on his back, then touching my nose to fry it with the static buildup. &amp;quot;Oh God!&amp;quot; Wilson screamed with joy at every electric crack. &amp;quot;Don\u2019t say that!&amp;quot; said some girl nearby. &amp;quot;Oh God! Oh God!&amp;quot; Wilson yelped again. The girl walked away in a huff.\n\n I began chatting with a mom about homeschooling. She had a beef with public school, but not because it was too liberal or too conservative. &amp;quot;I just hate how it stifles kids,&amp;quot; she said. Of course, her kids had never actually been directly stifled because they\u2019d never gone.\n\n &amp;quot;What curriculum do you use?&amp;quot; she asked. I knew there were dozens of homeschool curriculums out there, but I hadn\u2019t begun to research them. I gestured to Wilson in the middle of the playground; shirtless and shoeless, he was stuffing gravel down his crotch then standing up to watch it fall through this shorts. &amp;quot;We\u2019re still working on the basics,&amp;quot; I said. Like other moms I\u2019d talked to, she soon found an excuse to move on.\n\n Wilson didn\u2019t click with the kids any better than I did with the parents. &amp;quot;Hey, chase me!&amp;quot; Wilson told a small pack close to his age. They were happy to oblige, but they didn\u2019t like it when Wilson changed the rules so that he could never be &amp;quot;It.&amp;quot; When they stopped playing he snuck up behind them to blast them with firebending bolts (he\u2019d grown obsessed with the evil Fire Nation from the Last Airbender cartoon). &amp;quot;Would you please stop?&amp;quot; asked the girl Wilson had pissed off earlier. &amp;quot;I really don\u2019t appreciate that.&amp;quot; This kind of mature response drove Wilson to act up even more. The girl left the playscape to process her feelings. &amp;quot;I don\u2019t understand why anyone would keep screeching over and over like that,&amp;quot; she told her mother.\n\n I tried to get Wilson to process his feelings too, but after all of our talks failed to sink in, I finally just took him home.\n\n Just when I was about to give up on finding kids who could keep up with Wilson, a mom posted on the Listserv about her tinkering school. She offered a special series of parent-child construction project workshops for homeschoolers. When I signed us up, I wasn\u2019t thinking about Wilson\u2019s hopes for making friends, I just wanted to get in on the session about building a homemade catapult. But as soon as we saw Crockett* at the first class, I knew we\u2019d found the right crowd.\n\n Wilson had met Crockett the previous year at a park, and they\u2019d hit it off during a bout of spastic rolling around in a muddy, stinky drainage pipe. Now the magic was gone. Wilson got over-excited around Crockett, pretending a little too forcefully that he was going to attack him with &amp;quot;bamboo harpoons&amp;quot; and a PVC pipe &amp;quot;fart blaster.&amp;quot; Crockett rolled with it, but he wisely kept Wilson at arm\u2019s length, calling him &amp;quot;that crazy guy.&amp;quot;\n\n At least we\u2019d found a place where Wilson was in good company. The kids seemed a little too energetic, a little too precocious, a little too sensitive to fit in at regular school\u2014and their moms confirmed as much when I talked to them. They hadn\u2019t chosen homeschooling because of a dogma or lifestyle choice, and they didn\u2019t obsess over curriculum or harp on the evils of regular school (except maybe the hours, but amen to that). I\u2019d discovered a new species of homeschooler: the kind that didn\u2019t make a big deal about homeschooling.\n\n In the last few minutes of the last class, Wilson bumped into Crockett one too many times as they jumped together on an overturned rain collection tub. Crockett shoved back and knocked Wilson to the ground. In the kind of fight-or-flight rage that I\u2019d seen way too often, Wilson got up and hurled a large wooden block at Crockett\u2019s bare foot.\n\n Both boys wept, and I wanted to flee, but I knew Wilson would get even more upset if he couldn\u2019t finish the Clone Wars Elite Assassin Droid he\u2019d been making from pipe cleaners and beads. After some prodding, Wilson and Crockett apologized to each other, then returned to the craft tables. Soon Crockett needed the glue gun for his car, but he looked wary when he saw Wilson holding it. &amp;quot;Here you go,&amp;quot; Wilson said, handing it over without being asked. &amp;quot;I like your car.&amp;quot;\n\n *All names have been changed except for members of the author\u2019s family. Also, just in case you were wondering, Wilson goes by his mother\u2019s last name. So no, his name is not Wilson Wilson.\n\n Wilson is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. Read Part 4 here."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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