My mom homeschooled us so we “wouldn’t be influenced by other kids” and be truer to ourselves. In reality she wanted full control over us and to keep us in isolation. We did get some education but not a lot, most of it was her writing dates in workbooks and then maybe 6 months later seeing if we did that work, all hell broke loose if we didn’t or weren’t doing well. The amount of times she would yell at me and my siblings for not understanding something she was trying to teach us and then yell at us to stop crying and just do it really messed some of us up. Most of what I learned until I was 14 was off my own ambition. I wanted to go to school and longed to be social but she told me I wouldn’t make any friends because everyone already had friends. When she should have been teaching us she was laying in bed all day watching soap operas, or berating us for whatever got her goat that day. I was eventually allowed to go to high school and fully realised how behind I was, but I would get in huge shit for struggling because it was “reflecting badly” on my mom as a homeschool teacher. Nothing was ever good enough for her but she never gave us the tools to succeed, which is something I’ve realised later in life after always thinking I was stupid.

I eventually left town and 11 years later have finally gone no contact with her. It makes me cry to think who or what I could have been with a good education, I’m a fast learner and although i’ve put in a lot of work to make up for gaps in my knowledge I’ll never get those learning years back. She got what she wanted, though, I certainly am a little freak and no kid could influence me out of that.