hey. you. homeschooled kid or adult recovering from negative homeschooling experience. you have a right to be angry about it and mourn/want better.
you have a right to be angry at your caregiver(s) for doing a shitty job of educating you. whether they were deliberately malicious or whether they "tried their best". you have a right to acknowledge the consequences of their carelessness and call what was done to you abuse and neglect, because i can assure you it was no matter the intent.
you have a right to be angry about the educational neglect you experienced (or are currently experiencing), and how it is affecting you now. you are not stupid. your education was handled carelessly and you are now suffering because of it. you deserved better then and you deserve better now.
you have a right to be angry about the isolation you experienced during your formative years and how it affected your development. you have a right to wish you had childhood friends if you didn't have them. you have a right to wish you could have had someone else in your life outside of your immediate family to see the neglect and abuse you faced (or are currently facing) and help you.
you have a right to wish you could have had typical schooling, even if our public education system is also deeply flawed. you have a right to speak on your negative experiences and wish you had a more typical life situation without someone else taking it as an attack on their own negative experiences with the school system. you are both victims, but that doesn't make it right for someone to dismiss your struggles or act as if you had it easier because you were homeschooled.
if you are disabled and/or neurodivergent, you have a right to mourn the fact that you did not receive adequate accommodations, help for learning difficulties, counseling, etc. it was not right of your caregivers to fail to provide or deny you of the help you needed or could have benefited from.
you have a right to wish there were less depictions of homeschooled characters in a mocking light in media. you are not overly sensitive and you have a right to be hurt by the fact that this is the case. you also have a right to wish there were more depictions of negative homeschool experiences as well and more light shined on them.
you have a right to be angry if you have been bullied, othered, or otherwise treated negatively by your peers for being homeschooled. you are not naive, immature, weak, or stupid. you do not deserve to be treated like a child. if your "friends" are doing that to you, that's bullying, and you have a right to call it out and seek more understanding people elsewhere if they don't genuinely listen and respect you.
if you are homeschooled and this post resonates with you, what you went through wasn't right, and you are allowed to be angry, talk about it, and wish for better. you deserve so, so much better. homeschooling is very often done carelessly, maliciously and/or used as a tool to control and isolate a person in ways that follow them for life, but even then our experiences are almost never discussed and we are very frequently dismissed as sheltered and naive. if you speak up others will realize and speak up too.
