“Dear homeschooling families,

I am looking for some age appropriate books for my child, who is 14.  Do you have any recommendations?

Signed,

Curious Parent”

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“Dear Curious Parent!

My twelve year old spent last year devouring the following books, and perhaps your 14 year old will do the same!    Wuthering Heights,  For Whom the Bell Tolls, Catcher in the Rye, A Tale of Two Cities,  Crime and Punishment, A Clockwork Orange and of course the complete works of Shakespeare.

Regards,

Parent of a Prodigy”

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“Dear Curious Parent,

Well, I don’t know where your childs’ interests lie, but I can tell you, my child spent all of last year reading every book on organic chemistry available, and  biographies of all the famous chemists.   At 13, their reading level is probably similar.

Best Regards,

Science Parent”

Ok, so these are not actual messages between homeschooling parents.   And the reason is that printing the actual messages would get me in a lot of trouble – so consider these ‘loosely based’.   But you get the idea, right?  Just like when people send out those Christmas letters telling everyone what wonderful things their children have done over the past year, email exchanges similar to the one above make me grind my teeth and are second in the pet peeve department only to people who devise cutesy names for their children online in order to ‘protect’ them.   That stuff makes me want to scream and throw things at the wall.

But the bragging disguised as recommendations?   That just makes me want to write something like this:  (Full disclosure, a friend of mine came up with this and I told her I was going to steal it, it’s so good.)

“Dear Curious Parent,

My 12 year old unschooled child has recently discovered a wonderful author named Dr. Seuss!   Are you familiar with him?   We were delighted to find that he’s written several books – enough to keep us busy for quite a while.  We’ve started working our way through The Cat in The Hat, and plan to take on Green Eggs & Ham next.    Then, if we are feeling really adventurous, we may attempt One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.    We just can’t recommend these books enough.  (Sometimes we even read pages out loud to each other and take turns!)

Have so much fun!

Unskool Parent”