Remember how in BBHSing is Hard, Part 2 I discussed the ongoing demographic shift that keeps making it harder to be a BBHSer? Today, I happened to see an article about that very dynamic, here’s an excerpt:
“The sharpest declinein the(sic) Boston’s population of children, the study found, has been among middle-income families with children.
“‘These are families that tend to be above the income cutoff for subsidized housing programs and yet earn below what it takes to afford the fast-rising housing costs in many of these high-income cities,’ researchers wrote. ‘In today’s Boston, there are almost 6,000 fewer middle-income households with kids compared with 1980, even though our city has grown in total population.’”
Occasionally, I’ve spoken about our housing challenges with area homeschoolers. It’s unbelievable how casually insensitive people can be. I think some just cannot even imagine what life is like for the rest of us. It really brings to mind the parable of the brass pot and the earthenware pot. Three of these things are not good responses to the other:
Our landlord is raising our rent $250 which a 13% increase and we can’t afford it. We can’t find any affordable housing within an hour of Boston, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I know just what you mean, we had to pay $600,000 over asking price for our home.
I know just what you mean, we own our home but want more space and we can’t find a home we want to buy.
Oh, North Central Massachusetts? I was thinking of buying a 40-acre farm up there. There’s a 200-acre farm in Vermont for the same price that I would love to move to.
I started this blog with the hopes of finding and bringing together other BBHSers for mutual support. We’re a vanishing tiny minority in a group that’s already a minority. Yo, clay pots! Hit me up in the comments!
As of today, this is 2020’s schedule of community days:
January 20
February 1
February 5
March 18
May 25
June 17
For us BBHSers, this is a great deal. If you ever go to Artful Adventures, the ticket price is already low but now you can get a 15% discount in the cafe! Worth visiting on a free day, I’d say!
First a note about myself: I have a BA in art history. I completed one year in a graduate program in museum studies. I am a supporter and defender of the arts and museums. I appreciate art. I make room for all kinds of art to exist in the world. I accept there are works that I will not personally enjoy, but fully embrace those works as important to the culture. Some art isn’t safe, some art is challenging. Some art, just like some parts of life, is not for children.
We visited the ICA yesterday to take part in a program on the exhibition “When Home Won’t Let You Stay.”
First of all, this is a heart-rending exhibition. Not only is it about the experiences of people who must leave their countries, it is also about how other countries treat refugees. Most of the art displayed was excellent, introduced ideas, and evoked strong emotions and thoughts.
“When Home Won’t Let You Stay” at the ICA, Boston, MA Source: BBHS
Toward the end there is a dark room with three monitors at a child’s eye level. There are headphones hanging from hooks below them and benches to sit on while watching. At first it appears to be relatively innocuous, certainly there’s no indication of imminent danger – one person on each screen in front of a neutral backdrop speaking. There are easy to read subtitles on each screen that can be read comfortably 15 feet away.
We passed through that room without stopping, to view “American Library.” Our guide mentioned mildly and in passing that there might be some difficult topics on the videos in the prior room and parents should use discretion. I understood that as a PG-13 kind of warning. I shepherded my 10-year-old son away from the doorway in “American Library” so he wouldn’t see the videos. However, while looking around the library together, I didn’t notice that he went back to the doorway to watch them.
Kids! AmIRight? They LOVE videos of almost any kind, if there’s a screen in a room playing anything, it grabs their attention immediately, like a Siren singing to Odysseus…who you will remember had to be tied to the mast of his ship to prevent him from throwing himself to the deadly Sirens.
The next thing I knew, my son was next to me visibly upset, beginning to cry, asking to leave. Downstairs as we waited for our group, he wanted to distract himself on my phone and by walking through the gift shop to look at cute things. When I was finally able to get him to tell me what he read on the screen, he told me a detailed, horrifying story of torture with a sexual element to it.
He could not participate in his group’s art making session, he was too upset. When I sat with him to encourage him, we made something together to help him process what he was feeling. Instead of a quilt square about our family’s migration stories, he made tear drops falling into a puddle, and told me and another parent that he’s scared because he’s small and not strong and doesn’t want to get hurt or die.
Processing distress at the ICA Source: BBHS
This is the third time we’ve gone to the ICA and my kids were exposed to excessively disturbing material in a way that was impossible to avoid, particularly because no appropriate warning was given. These were materials no functioning parent willingly exposes their kids to: NC-17 level imagery and descriptions of rape and torture. Both my sons still occasionally bring up a video installation that we saw over a year ago. I really hope this latest experience doesn’t have lasting effects on my younger son.
I don’t understand the curatorial decisions of a museum that welcomes families, but subjects the public to such extreme imagery and words, without warning and sometimes without a way to avoid those works and still visit the rest of the exhibits. It feels like intentional infliction of distress.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is just around the corner from the MFA. Both museums are offering free admission and activities to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Gardner limits the number of people in the museum at any given time, so it may be a better option for people who don’t want to deal with the crowds at the MFA on free days. Though you may have to wait in line before getting inside.
The museum opens at 11 AM, and MLK Jr. Day activities run 1-4 PM.
Join social justice project Wee The People for an interactive, family-friendly workshop that guides young and old in unlearning and reclaiming the legacy of MLK. Together we will explore MLK’s practice as a radical disruptor and honor his most important act of love: resistance. Activities include sign-making tributes to protest movements, a #ReclaimMLK photo booth, and timed acts of resistance inside the Museum.”
Free general admission to the Gardner is a rare occurrence. If your name is Isabella or your family is Active Duty in the military, you can get in free anytime. Children 17 and under are always free as well. EBT cardholders can get $2 admission for up to 4 adults. The BPL has a $5/person museum pass available that admits 4 people on weekdays, 2 people on weekends.
The ICA is accessible by Silver Line Waterfront out of South Station. You can walk from either the World Trade Center stop or Courthouse. I do not recommend parking for BBHSers because of the expense. The ICA does not have its own parking lot, but you can find their recommendations for parking here.
For a really long time I didn’t understand why I couldn’t get much traction with homeschoolers in Greater Boston. Sometimes I would meet people who we seemed to get along with, but then something made it become clear we weren’t compatible, and I wasn’t entirely sure what it was.
In 2017 we lost our apartment to a $250 rent increase, we struggled for almost 6 months to find a new apartment. We couldn’t find anything within an hour’s drive of Boston and ended up in North Central Massachusetts. We lived there for almost 2 years, all the while working to find an apartment back in our old neighborhood.
So anyway, while in exile, what I learned about homeschoolers there opened my eyes. If you go outside the I-95 belt, and especially outside I-495, you will very quickly find more middle class and lower-middle class homeschoolers. You will easily find organized events catering to those homeschoolers. YMCA’s with very affordable homeschool gym and swim classes. A Boys & Girls club with a competitive swim team for $50/year. Mass Audubon homeschool classes that cost only $15 per class meeting. So many libraries with homeschool specific events! Coops that cost $50/year plus materials. Organizations of all kinds have easily found affordable homeschool classes.
I came to realize that the PRIMARY reason we couldn’t connect with homeschoolers in Greater Boston was that we were not in the same class. It’s so expensive in Greater Boston, it’s almost impossible for anyone below upper middle class to homeschool here. The cost of housing is the number 1 reason. If you have a middle class job, you really need 2 incomes to make it work in Greater Boston. Homeschooling and living on one income is wicked hard.
So many area homeschool events are SO EXPENSIVE! $300/academic class. Dance/martial arts/fine arts classes priced at $30/class meeting or above. Parts & Crafts! The coop at the Blue Hills! Not to mention that people with good resources are likely doing things on their own together and not advertising them on local homeschooling boards. Therefore many homeschoolers in the area are unavailable to BBHSers, we just can’t go where they go.
Add to that the fact that countless families have already been displaced and you have an awful demographic shift, where most of the people left in Boston are wealthy or poor. There are so few BBHSers because of the cold realities of economics which makes it harder to join together to create opportunities for ourselves.
There are always sacrifices that must be made when you live according to values. Sometimes it’s painful and solitary. And so, this post is dedicated to the BBHSers out there, homeschooling through stress, taking care of their families and making it work!
I know the Museum of Fine Arts is crazy-busy on their free days, but they do offer lots of really wonderful family programming on those days. It can also be a great, low-cost way to spend time with friends. Even this introvert has gone to 4 or 5 MFA free days over the years!
Arrive EARLY is #1, the lines in won’t be as long, and the lines for the coat room won’t be long either.
Arrive LATE, another good move if you don’t mind a short visit. Note that most of the family programs will be winding down by mid-afternoon.
Do not drive there! The garage, lots and street parking will be full and traffic will be sluggish around the museum with people trying to park, save yourself the headache and either take the T or plan to park far away and walk over. Also, museum parking is NOT free on free days.
If the line to get in winds out to the sidewalk on Huntington Ave, go around to the Fenway entrance. The line is usually SO MUCH SHORTER! Keep in mind, the Huntington entrance also has a long line inside, whereas the Fenway inside line is about 1/4 the length. The Fenway coat room usually has a shorter line too.
The downstairs cafe is going to be mobbed, consider eating outside before going into the museum, or visit the cafe at non-peak times.
You can bring your own food into the museum to eat at the cafe, make sure you’re carrying it in a museum approved bag.
Do you have any tips to share? Please leave them in the comments below! ❤️
Our beloved cat, Boots, died suddenly and unexpectedly on Wednesday. I haven’t had a chance to post BBHSing is Hard Part 2 yet. I will get to it as soon as I can. My sincere apologies. We’re all taking this hard, especially our kids.
Our beloved Boots, modeling one of his Christmas presents. Source: BBHS
When we ultimately came to realize our kids needed homeschooling, I was a totally newbie. I literally started out with the web search “What is homeschooling?”
Wow, did I have a lot to learn back then. Based on rose-colored accounts of homeschooling in blogs and message boards for newbies, I started out thinking classical education would be best for our family. I started out thinking it wouldn’t be hard to make connections. I started out thinking coops were common wherever homeschoolers were. I was so optimistic, unprepared and naive. (Optimism has been one of my faults for a long time.)
Learning that homeschooling is not homogeneous* was probably my first surprise. Given how welcoming everyone sounded online when discussing homeschooling, I really was unprepared for the tension between various philosophical tribes of homeschooling.
I remember our first organized homeschooling class was a fall sport clinic. I went there with such excitement to be meeting local homeschoolers, but was quickly met with blank stares when I went to introduce myself to the field-side moms. I immediately felt like I was back in elementary school, trying to make friends at a new school with a very chilly social environment.
I tried again in the winter at the MFA homeschool classes and made some promising connections, but it was hard to socialize while accompanying my high needs 5 year old through his Artful Adventures class.
Spring came and we tried the Watertown playgroup at Arsenal Park. By then I was already struggling with isolation and worn down a bit by the demands of homeschooling. So arriving at Arsenal and not knowing anyone at a busy, fairly spread out park, was very hard for me to cope with. By then I already knew that there were homeschooling social pitfalls I couldn’t easily predict, which made branching out feel very difficult.
As a second-choice homeschooler, I naturally found more in common with other second-choice homeschoolers. We are a pragmatic bunch. But one of the downsides to making friends with second-choicers was that they might change things up as needs and strengths evolved. Our first homseschool friends all went back to school within the first 2 years of meeting them.
First-choicers are homeschooling for an entirely different set of reasons and had a well formed sense of identity and purpose for their homeschooling family. They weren’t ever going to send their kids to school. This is a lovely set of life choices, and I have always admired and also envied their certainty and preparation. But the difference in our reasons for homeschooling was fundamentally tied to how different we were as people and that inhibited the formation of closer ties.
* Although homeschooling in this area is NOT as racially diverse as the general population.
Broke Boston Homeschooling 