#homeschooling is child neglect

[escapingadventism]

wow every time I remember that my math homeschooling was literally just Biblical Numerology, I want to scream and light things on fire

[justinspoliticalcorner]

[TW: Corporal Punishment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect. Cruel and Unusual Punishment Of A Minor]

Molly Parker and Beth Hundsdorfer at Capitol News Illinois, via ProPublica:

It was on L.J.’s 11th birthday, in December 2022, that child welfare workers finally took him away. They arrived at his central Illinois home to investigate an abuse allegation and decided on the spot to remove the boy along with his baby brother and sister — the “Irish twins,” as their parents called them. His mother begged to keep the children while her boyfriend told child welfare workers and the police called to the scene that they could take L.J.: “You wanna take someone? Take that little motherfucker down there or wherever the fuck he is at. I’ve been trying to get him out of here for a long time.” By that time, L.J. told authorities he hadn’t been in a classroom for years, according to police records. First came COVID-19. Then, in August 2021 when he was going to have to repeat the third grade, his mother and her boyfriend decided that L.J. would be homeschooled and that they would be his teachers. In an instant, his world shrank to the confines of a one-bedroom apartment in the small Illinois college town of Charleston — no teachers, counselors or classmates.

In that apartment, L.J. would later tell police, he was beaten and denied food: Getting leftovers from the refrigerator was punishable by a whipping with a belt; sass was met with a slap in the face. L.J. told police he got no lessons or schoolwork at home. Asked if he had learned much, L.J. replied, “Not really.” Reporters are using the first and middle initials of the boy, who is now 12 and remains in state custody, to protect his identity. While each state has different regulations for homeschooling — and most of them are relatively weak — Illinois is among a small minority that places virtually no rules on parents who homeschool their children: The parents aren’t required to register with any governmental agency, and no tests are required. Under Illinois law, they must provide an education equivalent to what is offered in public schools, covering core subjects like math, language arts, science and health. But parents don’t have to have a high school diploma or GED, and state authorities cannot compel them to demonstrate their teaching methods or prove attendance, curriculum or testing outcomes.

The Illinois State Board of Education said in a statement that regional education offices are empowered by Illinois law to request evidence that a family that homeschools is providing an adequate course of instruction. But, the spokesperson said, their “ability to intervene can be limited.” Educational officials say this lack of regulation allows parents to pull vulnerable children like L.J. from public schools then not provide any education for them. They call them “no schoolers.” No oversight also means children schooled at home lose the protections schools provide, including teachers, counselors, coaches and bus drivers — school personnel legally bound to report suspected child abuse and neglect. Under Illinois law, parents may homeschool even if they would be disqualified from working with youth in any other setting; this includes parents with violent criminal records or pending child abuse investigations, or those found to have abused children in the past.

The number of students from preschool to 12th grade enrolled in the state’s public schools has dropped by about 127,000 since the pandemic began. Enrollment losses have outpaced declines in population, according to a report by Advance Illinois, a nonprofit education policy and advocacy organization. And, despite conventional wisdom, the drop was also not the result of wealthier families moving their children to private schools: After the pandemic, private school enrollment declined too, according to the same report.

In the face of this historic exodus from public schools, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica set out to examine the lack of oversight by education and child welfare systems when some of those children disappear into families later accused of no-schooling and, sometimes, abuse and neglect. Reporters found no centralized system for investigating homeschooling concerns. Educational officials said they were ill equipped to handle cases where parents are accused of neglecting their children’s education. They also said the state’s laws made it all but impossible to intervene in cases where parents claim they are homeschooling. Reporters also found that under the current structure, concerns about homeschooling bounce between child welfare and education authorities, with no entity fully prepared to step in.

“Although we have parents that do a great job of homeschooling, we have many ‘no schoolers’” said Angie Zarvell, superintendent of a regional education office about 100 miles southwest of Chicago that covers three counties and 23 school districts. “The damage this is doing to small rural areas is great. These children will not have the basic skills needed to be contributing members of society.” Regional education offices, like the one Zarvell oversees, are required by law to identify children who are truant and try to help get them back into school. But once parents claim they are homeschooling, “our hands are tied,” said Superintendent Michelle Mueller, whose regional office is located about 60 miles north of St. Louis. Even the state’s child welfare agency can do little: Reports to its child abuse hotline alleging that parents are depriving their children of an education have multiplied, but the Department of Children and Family Services doesn’t investigate schooling matters. Instead, it passes reports to regional education offices. [...]

There’s no way to determine the precise number of children who are homeschooled. In 2022, 4,493 children were recorded as withdrawn to homeschool, a number that is likely much higher because Illinois doesn’t require parents to register homeschooled children. That is a little more than double the number a decade before. In late fall of 2020, L.J. was one of the kids who slipped out of school. After a roughly five-month hiatus from the classroom during the pandemic, L.J.’s school resumed in-person classes. The third grader, however, was frequently absent. At home, tensions ran high. In the 640-square-foot apartment, L.J.’s mother, Ashley White, and her boyfriend, Brian Anderson, juggled the demands of three children including two born just about 10 months apart. White, now 31, worked at a local fast-food restaurant. Anderson, now 51, who uses a wheelchair, had applied for disability payments. Anderson doesn’t have a valid driver’s license. The family lived in a subsidized housing complex for low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

In an interview with reporters in late February, 14 months after L.J. had been taken into custody by the state, the couple offered a range of explanations for why he hadn’t been in school. L.J. had been suspended and barred from returning, they said, though school records show no expulsion. They also said they had tried to put L.J. in an alternative school for children with special needs, but he didn’t have a diagnosis that qualified him to attend. The couple made clear they believed that L.J. was a problem child who could get them in trouble; they said they thought he could get them sued. In the interview, Anderson called L.J. a pathological liar, a thief and a bad kid. “I have 11 kids, never had a problem with any of them, never,” Anderson said. “I’ve never had a problem like this,” he said of L.J. The boy, he said, lacked discipline and continued to get “worse and worse and worse every year” he’d known him.

To support the idea that L.J. was combative, White provided a copy of a screenshot taken from a school chat forum in which the boy cursed at his schoolmates. At the end of the school year, in spring 2021, the principal told White and Anderson that the boy would have to repeat the third grade. Rather than have L.J. held back, the couple pulled him out of school to homeschool. They didn’t have to fill out any paperwork or give a reason. On any given day in Illinois, a parent can make that same decision. That’s due to a series of court and legislative decisions that strengthened parents’ rights against state interference in how they educate their children.

[...] Faced with cases of truancy or educational neglect, county prosecutors can press charges against parents. But if they do, parents can lean on Illinois’ parental protections when they defend themselves in court from a truancy charge. [...] More recently, the ISBE made one more decision to loosen the monitoring of parents who homeschool: For years, school districts and regional offices distributed voluntary registration forms to families who homeschool, some of whom returned them. Then last year, the state agency told those regional offices that they no longer had to send those forms to ISBE.

[...] Over the years, the legislature has taken up proposals to strengthen the state’s oversight of homeschooling. In 2011, lawmakers considered requiring parents to notify their local school districts of their intent to homeschool, and in 2019 they considered calling for DCFS to inspect all homeschools and have ISBE approve their curriculum. Each time, however, the state’s strong homeschooling lobby, mostly made up of religious-based organizations, stepped in. This March, under sponsorship of the Illinois Christian Home Educators, homeschoolers massed at the state Capitol as they have for decades for Cherry Pie Day, bringing pies to each of the state’s 177 lawmakers. Kirk Smith, the organization’s executive director and former public school teacher, summed up his group’s appeal to lawmakers: “All we want is to be left alone. And Illinois has been so good. We have probably the best state in the nation to homeschool.”

This @capitolnewsil / @propublica story on how a set of parents decided to homeschool one of their kids, and it served as a crude excuse to abuse and torment that child.

This is one of the reasons why regulation-free homeschooling is a bad idea, and there ought to be some common sense regulations on homeschooling.

The main reason why Illinois remains regulation-free for homeschooling is the homeschooling lobby, which is disproportionately dominated by conservative evangelical/fundamentalist Protestants.

[connieaaa]

I'd like to find every person in my life who told me "you'll miss being a kid", and "being a kid is the best time of your life, enjoy it" and tell them all off. No, I do not miss being a kid. Being a kid sucks.

[coppertophomegurl]

Being homeschooled + autistic + religious trauma is quite the trifecta, huh?

[southsuns]

unpopular opinion (as a homeschooler, who had visitation for years, who was physically neglected and emotionally abused in one home, notably NOT the one where i was being taught…) but if you’re homeschooling and you cannot teach your child basic skills and knowledge like reading, writing, math, science, geography, history, if your child cannot tell you who the leader of your country is or where they live at 10-12 onward (And yes, I have and continue to see this among homeschooled people i know) You are neglecting your child. and i KNOW you, as the parent may well be trying your best, and you may not have a lot of options and it’s hard. you may be taking them to all the co-ops you can. but all of that trying doesn’t make up for the myriad of ways the kid is behind. yes i know learning disabilities exist this isnt about that. this is about the perfectly abled 11 year old i know who struggles to write 3 full sentences every day on paper, who finds that the most miserable part of his schooling, this is about the 8 year old who can barely read basic phonics books. who actually cries trying to read complex phonics books (as in, more complex than “mat sat. sam sat. sam and mat sat.”) and these kids are stunted in ways they may not be ABLE to recover from. studies in the limited forms they exist suggest the height of our language acquisition is until 12 or so, and after that point, it is incredibly difficult or impossible to grasp language. and this will affect them in EVERY aspect of their life FOR THEIR WHOLE LIFE. and we act like it’s just an unfortunate reality of american education. i feel fucking bad for these kids. i lucked out and i loved reading and my mum taught me well and we found ways to push through subjects i didn’t like because she knew it was important, or to make them fun by using different books (science via textbook vs “let’s learn about basic physics and science by making a tiny catapult!”) like holy shit. holy shit

[jordankennedy]

the web is sooooo super overbearing helicopter parent to me

[nerves-nebula]

why did your parents homeschool you when they didn't seem to have an interest in teaching you?

Sorry but this ask has me in hysterics cause like,,, I DUNNO, ANON WHY DID THEY????

Ok but fr, from what I can tell it was a mixture of not trusting public education, wanting direct control over what we learned, being bad at teaching kids, and then just kind of getting too busy and giving up. Like our mom did teach us how to read, right? But she kinda got … i dunno, bored?? tired?? Near the end?? So my youngest sister really got screwed in that department and needed tutoring.

I have a lot of memories though where we’d go somewhere like my brothers baseball game and she’d pull out different work books for each of us while starting on a reading lesson with another one of us. So, like, she DID try. I have way too many painful memories of frustrating homework to say that she didn’t try to teach us anything hah. she just didnt teach us very thoroughly, especially about things she assumed we'd just pick up eventually (like time, dates, and months)

Also, my dad is a philosophy professor with multiple degrees who heavily values the education of his children. But I don’t think he’s good at teaching kids, and he didn’t even live with us most of the time. So while he supported the whole thing and would administer science tests (AKA have me read a science text book and then take a test on the chapters I read) he wasn't super involved, from what I can recall.

Wanna know the funniest part tho? Home schooled kids tend to test higher than publicly educated kids. And despite the gaps in our general knowledge and downright educational neglect at times, that’s still the case for me & my siblings.

My brother got insane math scores, I’m talking better than 90% of his peers. And I always scored particularly high in English. my worst subject was math but i never failed anything. i had a breakdown when i got a B in my first ever semester of high school, because to me that was basically failing since my mom said it isn't that hard to get A's :/

my oldest sister has a theory that we're all autistic because we all kinda act like it, haha. which might explain why we didnt realize, cause if all of our siblings are autistic then its just normal to us.

but ALSO: we all have at least one thing we're insanely good at. my oldest brother was fantastic at math (before he self sabotaged but idc about him so whatever). my oldest sister is a wonderful writer and has a fantastic rate of success when she sends out her writing to be published, my other older sister is incredibly smart with math & science and is trying to become a doctor (she also makes all her own clothing and is really good at crafting). i got accepted to every art college i applied to, with scholarships & everything. my younger brother is one of the top football recruits of his year in our entire state. and my littlest sisters skill set is harder to describe, but the gist of it is that she's really good at manipulating people and lying. not sure where she's going with that but she's probably gotten hundreds of dollars of free stuff from people and she enjoys acting. excited to see where she goes cause i genuinely think she could do anything she wants to haha.

ok but now im just ranting about how cool my siblings are. THE POINT IS THIS- as much as I was neglected educationally, I think my parents accidentally did something right: I think they accidentally unschooled us, because our education was NOT as strict as some of the other home schooled kids I met.

my theory is that the neglect/accidental un-schooling kind of led to gaps in knowledge around things i didn't NEED to know to live day to day life (I didn't NEED to know the months or days until I went to public school. before that, I'd just ask mom what day it was, or else just go along with whatever she said we were doing that day)

BUT on the flip side! It also led to me and my siblings basically developing highly practiced skill sets based on our personal interests. and also kept our desire to learn relatively in tact, compared to kids who had the curiosity to learn beaten out of them in middle school with mind numbing homework hahafsdfadf.

OK SO I've clearly gotten away from your original question, anon, apologies but this sparked something in me and i HAD to ramble about my theories.

[amongie]

homeschool parents are so cruel, actually. peak "my child is my little barbie doll" behavior. i hope homeschool parents die

[little-klng]

hate that you cant just see a post that talks about how homeschooling is by-and-large a tool for evangelical alt right conspiracy freaks to isolate and abuse their kids out of fear that their kids might grow up to have different ideas and perspectives than them without looking in the notes and seeing 600 people like "well if the parents had some sort of teaching background it would be fine :) the real problem is that they're underqualified and dont really teach common core very well". and just completely missing the point.

[im2tired4usernames]

Unschooling should be illegal it's child neglect and abuse it should be labeled what it is

[adamofingolstadt]

How I feel about unschooling (as someone who was un-schooled ages 7-12)

With a handful of youtubers and content creators making videos about the horrors of unschooling, it's been a hard few weeks to be someone who was unschooled.

On one hand it's nice to hear that what happened to me was neglect, and that I'm justified in my suffering.

I was taken out of school at age 7, and my parents mostly worked during the days, so several years were spent mostly at home, unsupervised, by myself. I didn't learn anything academic until I begged my parents to let me go to high school. I entered 8th grade with a 2nd grade education.

I consider what happened to me to be neglect.

That being said, I feel like we're teetering into "All unschooling parents are religious van-life creeps" territory, and I need to correct that. Where I grew up most of the homeschooling/unschooling was done by liberal parents trying to find a way to make their disabled childrens' lives easier.

I was taken out of school because I was being bullied and I had several learning disabilities that made it impossible to keep up with other kids. My parents' intention when taking me and my older sibling out of school was solely to protect us from an ableist, predatory school system.

Not all unschooling parents do it to control information, some are just misinformed or scared and want to protect their kids. That doesn't justify neglect but maybe it puts things in a different perspective.

[diabolicflame93]

Speaking Up

Systemic problems with abuse in Christian fundamentalism. Speaking out about abuse and injustice.

CW: Discussion of abuse, SA, and neglect When are you allowed to speak up and call out harm in your community? Do you have to currently be a part of that community to call out harmful teachings, practices, and ideas? How harmful or abusive do the situations have to be to warrant calling out the abuse? I recently made a post about homeschooling. With the intent of speaking about isolation and…

[connieaaa]

After 3 years of teaching myself math using Art of Problem Solving, starting grade 2 to mastering Pre-algebra, I took accuplacer and tested into precalculus!

I wanted to learn algebra since I was 8, but my dad firmly believed in Saxon math which was a nightmare for me. I used to practice math until I induced a migraine and/or fell asleep on my tear stained math 65 book. I asked for help so many times, so many times. I asked for a math teacher.

There are many things my younger self would find unbelievable about me, but this seriously competes with the "You don't really believe in God"

[deathsmallcaps]

Republicans are disgusting. The homeschool situation in Appalachia is already atrocious - there is no reason that children should be kept from public school, WHERE MANDATORY REPORTERS WORK AND SEE THEM EVERY DAMN WEEKDAY, just because an allegation of abuse *might* be false.

[anjanahalo]

Potential DPxDC Fic 6

Guess it could be just DP. I just like DPxDC. It's a Bad Fenton Parents fic, but based on me reading about various new forms of child abuse to use. CW below for childhood neglect and stuff.

Danny is born into the Fenton family after Jack and Maddie lose their beloved Jasmine to The Stystem. Taken from their home and placed in foster care for small things like forgetting to get her lunch perfectly on time (or every day after a breakthrough) or getting behind on laundry for awhile (after spending a week backing up their research in case of a ghost or EMP strike. Its not like they managed time to bathe or change clothes, either!). They wouldn't make the same mistake as they would with their lovely daughter. Instead of announcing the pregnancy, they kept quiet. Maddie stayed home so the neighbors didn't see her growing belly. When the birth came, they delivered at home (a biology degree is good enough!), and vowed to home school him so he would stay and not be taken away. The homeschooling didn't...end up with the same results as traditional school. They were both still busy closing in on their portal, after all, so lessons were usually sporadic and centered around their work. Danny definitely had the Fenton Genius (TM) from how he picked up advanced physics, calculus, mechanical engineering and mathmatics. He still wasn't great at reading regular words or writing, but his numbers are neat and his calculations flawless, so things like English and History could sit on the side. It was sad, of course, how Danny was stuck in the home for the sake of the family, the curtains permanently drawn to avoid the nosy neighbors that tore apart their family before, but instead of moping or rebellion, he worked alongside them as soon as he could. Maddie framed his first hazmat suit, gifting him a new one with each growthspurt, always white ("We'll let you pick your own Fenton OSHA Approved Hazmat Color once you grow up, Danny."), and he stood with his parents as they tried to open the portal when he turned fourteen. And it failed. Dejected, all three left and ate the planned celebratory fudge with sullen expressions, the fudge itself feeling overly tacky with their depression. Danny, however, got up in the middle of the night and snuck into the basement, his steps smooth and confident even in the darkness of the house (he could get anywhere in the house with his eyes closed). He crept into the basement, an idea striking him. There was an auxillary power button inside the portal itself, meant as a backup or last resort override. However, Danny knew his dad installed the electrical system overnight one night in a fit of manic inspiration. What if it wasn't the auxillary power button anymore? He slipped on his hazmat suit. He walked into the portal, double checked the wiring, and looked up at the button, red and obvious in the wall. If he was correct, he thought as he raised his hand to the button, all he had to do was-

Jack and Maddie raced down the stairs as the lights flickered and a faint cry rose from below. In the basement they found Danny in his hazmat suit. He stared at them with frightful shock, his hair and left hand singed, then turned toward the humming that enraptured his parents as soon as the descended. The portal was working. It worked! Jack and Maddie and Danny were all elated, but Danny began to recede from their work. Stating he wanted to journal their portal research and development into a story, he began to hide in his room more and more. He ordered and read books on biology, psychology, even philosophy, because he knew what happened to him. The portal opened on him, and he died. He awoke in the basement as a ghost, barely transforming himself into something human looking before his parents arrived. However, what he thought he felt went against everything he knew about ghosts. Ghosts weren't sentient. They were emotions strongly imprinted on ectoplasm. Enough ectoplasm or emotions and an echo of those dead feelings rose, taking on an avatar and acting purely off the instinct of the moods that made them. Considering ectoplasm usually manifested with death, and the strongest emotions of the dying are usually fear and anger, most ghosts were destructive with no care for property or life, mindless monsters who'd tear apart the mortal world if left to their own devices in a vain attempt to soothe their undying emotions. But Danny still felt like Danny. He had thoughts, emotions, physical feeling, everything like when he was...when the portal wasn't open. Research, thankfully, taught him what happened. After all, signs were there that something changed for the worse in him. He felt afraid of his parents, and he'd begun lying to them daily when he could never remember telling a fib. On top of that were the strange new powers he couldn't control and shapeshifting abilities between himself and some ghostly manifestation of himself. The portal changed him. He wasn't Danny the Human anymore, but he wasn't a typical ghost, either. Danny was a Philosophical Zombie, and he had no idea how he's gonna tell his parents.

[mochinomnoms]

What do you think would happen if Floyd were to meet Riddle's mother?! Cuz I just read your Mama/Papa leech Headcanons about meeting their sons crush. But what if it’s reversed? Riddle's mother Meeting Floyd? (I would also say Yuu's parents meeting Jade, but unfortunately, that won't be happening)

“Wow, I thought Lil Goldfishie was a stick in the mud, his mama has a whole branch up her—” *gets kicked in the groin*

I have very mixed feelings about Riddle's mother, in that with the context we have right now she's a bitch and if I ever see her it's on motherfucking sight. But she must love her son still, right? Is she harsh because he wants to set Riddle up for success, but only knows the way she was raised? Is she scared of her kid getting hurt or failing, and so she tries to shield him from all possible harm? Is she so hyperaware of all the dangers in society that she feels the need to keep him in a little bubble, knowing in the back of her mind that making mistakes and getting hurt is part of growing up? A good mother would never want to see their child ever get hurt if it were up to them. I mean, she must care for him in some way, but how? In the manga or novel (not sure which) they mention that she fought back against the school to keep him in, but was that because she wanted him to have the prestige of NRC in his background or because she wants what's best for him? She homeschooled him herself to the point that he's an immensely powerful mage already as a teen, so she could've hypothetically kept doing the same thing, right? Is she a mother that truly cares for her son but suffered the same childhood, but she “turned out fine” so it must be fine? Or is she just a bitch, lol. Either way, she is emotionally and affectionately neglectful and doesn't realize it at best, and emotionally and psychologically abusive at worst.

I have a lot to say on the topic of Mrs. Rosehearts, about her parenting, the cultural differences of child-rearing that EN players and JP players might have. This post talks about it in depth, but I can say more on the topic later.

In regards to Floyd meeting Mrs. Rosehearts, probably against Riddle's wishes or while he's distracted, the poor guy is set up for disappointment. While it's implied that Mama Leech is overprotective and that she calls very often, if not daily, to check in on her sons, they still had enough freedom growing up to get into shenanigans and hijinks. I mean, they beat up a sturgeon and took some of its scales to fashion into earrings like a trophy. And they both speak very fondly of her, so Floyd is going into meeting Mrs. Rosehearts with the expectation that she might be a bit stuffy. But, she raised Riddle, his crush and favorite human! He's strict and mean at times, but he cares a lot for his dorm and is super diligent, she must be like that too!

But she's so…critical. She looks at him unamused, very standoffish, but is polite. He guesses. He can see where Riddle got his strictness from.

“Hello. Who might you be?” She probably didn't expect to have some random student, not even from her son's dorm, come up to her. He was...tall. Towered over her, and based on the color of his hair and sharp teeth, most likely wasn't human.

“Huh, you're not as red as my Lil Goldfishie is.”

She blinked and frowned, resisting the urge to chastise the strange fellow for his informal tone and rube behavior. Not her son, not her problem.

“Pardon? Do you often speak to your elders like this?” she asked, eyeing him as she turned away to watch her son give orders to his dorm as they managed an informational booth.

“Yeah, why not? They're just people. Not like I'm being rude or anything” She would strongly disagree. “You're kinda prickly, like a lionfish.”

“W-what?” She changed her mind, someone needs to put him in her place. “Now listen here, young man, it's quite rude to call people anything other than their na—”

“They're real mean, ya know. Venomous, a nuisance, can't even mess with it cause it has a bunch of spines—oh! Imma call you Mama Lionfish.” The young man snapped his left fingers like he made a revelation.

Mrs. Rosehearts had learned to control her temper, but she still had her moments, Her face been bright red, her lips thinned, and she opened her mouth to start berating the young man.

“Floyd Leech! What did I tell you about calling people names?” A tall, slender women came up to them, pale skin and hair hue similar to the man in front of her. She wore a cream-colored dress and matching blazer, adorned with gold and pearls, and a matching wide brimmed hat. She was followed by Riddle, who looked a mix of anger and concern.

“Never do it in front of people, yeah, yeah.” The man named Floyd pouted, but brightened at the sight of Riddle. “Oh hey Lil Goldfishie! What's uuuup?”

Floyd jogged over to Riddle, halting him midstep as Mrs. Rosehearts noticed Riddle almost bristle, trying to sidestep and get around Floyd. He was failing.

“I apologize, you know how boys can be!” The woman in front of her also towered over her, though not nearly as much as her son did. “My Floyd doesn't mean anything by it, he just a silly boy.”

The blue haired woman laughed, then abruptly stopped, narrowing her golden gaze as she thinly smiled.

“You're the man's mother, I assume.” Mrs. Rosehearts replied, smoothing out her skirt and clutching her hands together. “He's very...spirited. He's from the Leech family? Is it safe to assume that your the Leech family matriarch?”

The other woman's sharp toothed smile grew as she nodded. “Yes. It's not often that I come to the surface. But it's wonderful to know that I'm as—oh—well-known, on the surface, as under the sea.”

Mrs. Rosehearts wouldn't use the word 'well-known' as much as she would infamous.

“Yes, well. I would just remind your son to not so blatantly call people names to their faces.” she said, clenching and unclenching her fist in an attempt to sooth herself. “I'm not sure what your customs are under the sea, but up here he would be considered a riffraff.”

For all her talk about politeness, Mrs. Rosehearts forgot herself at time and let things slip out of her mouth faster than she processed. She knew she pressed a button when Mrs. Leech's smile disappeared.

It was only for a moment, but with the blank face and the way her gold eyes bore into her, it felt like her body and soul were being grasped by something dark and violent.

Then that feeling was gone as Mrs. Leech smiled again and closed her eyes, tilting her head.

“He'll be fine, I'm sure he'll find his people. After all, it seems he's already found someone in your son.”

Both women moved their gazes to the pair, now bickering. Well, Riddle was, the one called Floyd, was just swaying on his heels as he grinned and make a comment here and there. Each one after the other seemed to fluster her son further, his cheeks growing in color as they spoke. Most people who knew her son would assume that the red was attributed to his rage, and it mostly was. But (fortunately or unfortunately, she couldn't decide) her son was much like her. It wasn't rage that made his eyes dart away each time their eyes met for too long. It wasn't rage that made him scuff his foot every so often. And it most certainly wasn't rage in his eyes.

Mrs. Rosehearts cleared her throat, turning away from Mrs. Leech and walking to her son.

“I don't know what you're implying, but I must be going now. My son and I still need to tour his dorm.”

Mrs. Leech watched the other woman walk away, sighing.

“Oh, what a disdainful woman. And her son is so lovely too…she really is like a lionfish.”

“Yeah, it's a good nickname for her, right Mama?” Floyd came bounding over, stretching his arms. “Is' too bad she's a stuck-up, gonna real annoying if she's my mother-in-law.”

“Hm, I'll just have to overcompensate then and be the best Mama for you and the little Riddle!” Mama Leech clapped her hands excitedly, sighing in bliss at the thought.

“Oh, it will be so wonderful to see the family grow big...oh! By the way, Floyd.” Mama Leech walked away, Floyd following after diligently. “I might have mentioned a little 'something' to him about your cute rambles about him. He was so cute, all red and flushed when I said you're positively infatuated, calling him cute and—”

“Aw what! Mama!”