A traumatic encounter with an anti-homeschool judge and temporarily losing my child

This is a particularly difficult post to write.

As last updated in this poorly maintained blog, I was homeschooling two of my children, the fourth grade Reo and the ninth grade DrS. While Reo was always cooperative and enjoyed excelling, DrS fought tooth and nail against completing his assigned work. He did complete it. He was not exceptional in his progress but I believe he faired better than he would have in public school. He also learned that homeschool wasn't the free ride he fantasized it would be. There was equal, if not more, demand for study and performance. He asked to return to public school and of course I obliged.

His father has had absolutely no contact with him outside of visitations that I pay for him to have in our son's fifteen years on the planet. Seriously, the man wasn't even there when DrS was born. His father is a continued alcoholic who is unemployed and living in his parents' basement. He is thousands in child support arrears. All of a sudden, his father decides that I'm an unfit mother. He makes up an incredible list of offenses, from claiming that my home was filthy with animal feces, to claiming he had pictures from Florida DCFS, to saying I have never taken my child to a doctor or dentist, to saying I have no education and was providing our son no education in homeschool.

I was blindsided by these accusations. I had no attorney and I was 1300 miles and more time than I had away from having the evidence necessary to stomp all this fiction into the ground. The judge was demonstrably anti-homeschool. Despite my ex-husband being the only one who claimed I was never educated and others, including our son, saying clearly that I was college educated, she settled that there was simply no way to know for sure. She firmly believed that my son, who had passed the ninth grade via standardized testing and homeschool portfolio in accordance with Florida law, was never educated, never attended a public school at any point in time, and I was to blame for withholding legally mandated education from him.

At the end of this legal mess, I will deserve an apology for this outrageous character assassination and verbal abuse from the court and I will certainly never receive it.

I am still homeschooling Reo, who is working on sixth and seventh grade curriculum during his fifth grade year. We live in Florida and even though the Illinois court likes to throw its weight around with ridiculous ways to defend my abuser and rapist as some kind of engaged and suitable parent regarding DrS, I have been married to Reo's dad for many years and no court can prevent Reo from having an advanced and fulfilling education until he decides to return to public school.

At this time, I do not have legal representation in Illinois. Illinois lawyers are expensive and, unlike Florida attorneys, they have this cruel attitude that I can't describe very well, but I can tell you that it cuts into the heart. It's taking time to choose the right professional and, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time. DrS is already suffering under his father's care.

I will be updating this blog more, if for no other reason than to clearly and publicly document how indepth and demanding a homeschool curriculum is with me in personal defense of what I've just suffered at the hands of anti-homeschool ignorance. Don't get me wrong, Reo has fun, but this isn't a layabout vacation where he does what he pleases and doesn't absorb a considerable amount of information that surpasses that of his peers. The only area where Reo is sorely lacking is handwriting. The boy might have a future as a doctor!