It was September of 1989 and I was just settling into my first real year of school.

Unlike every other first grader in the neighborhood, however, I wasn't getting on the formidable yellow bus every morning. I was sitting at the kitchen table, usually wishing I was done with my work so I could read something from my massive stack of library books or play on the swings with my sister.

Unfortunately, I was stuck inside doing boring schoolwork.

Even when I finally got done, I had to wait around inside until after school hours. It wouldn't be good to draw attention, Mom had explained. It wasn't wise to have people notice I wasn't in school. We could get reported.

Homeschooling wouldn't be acknowledged as fully legal and unrestricted in my home state of Michigan for another three years and the ominous threat of being reported to CPS was an ever-present concern. We knew of other families engaged in full-on legal battles for the right to keep their children due to having tried to homeschool them.

We were in a gray zone, a place where you could be fine or in really big trouble depending on who took notice of you.

Ironically, the day we finally got reported we weren't home and it wasn't during school hours. We had dutifully waited until 3:00 and gone grocery shopping. We got home to find a note on our door stating that an officer from the local school district had paid us a call and would be coming back later. Mom's child, the note stated, had been absent from school without leave and the officer was here to check up on why.

It was not a good feeling, hearing Mom read Dad the note over the phone. My name was on the ominous note. I was absent without leave from a school I'd never been enrolled in. Not good.

We hadn't been home long when two of the neighbor ladies came over. Mom had a good relationship with both of them, older women who could be my grandmothers. They were both disturbed and one was irate. Apparently, the truant officer had knocked on all the neighbors' doors to interview them about our parents' fitness in raising us. "I gave her a piece of my mind," Mrs. Next-Door-Lady said indignantly to my mother. "I told them you were raising perfect little ladies and gentlemen, unlike SOME people."

My mom called the office of the homeschool defense association we belonged to (a much bigger organization now - HSLDA is still going strong) and they gave her some advice: stay calm, stay polite, inform the officer that it was a mistaken enrollment and my education was being taken care of outside the public school system.

Don't allow the officer into the house under any circumstances.

It was a little like preparing for an enemy siege.

True to her word, the truant officer showed up again a little while later. Mom told my sister and I to stay inside under all circumstances and that we were not to talk to strangers. Then she went out front to talk to the two middle-aged women.

It turned out that some enterprising staffer in the local school district had gone through census records and enrolled every school-aged child they could find. To this day we have no idea whose brilliant idea this was, but I'd be willing to bet it had to do with padding the school roster to keep funding high. This might explain the new law that came into play shortly thereafter in which children had to be physically present in school on head-counting day for the school to get funding for that child. Whatever the case, I'd been enrolled in school without my parents' permission or knowledge and then reported absent when I didn't show up for a few weeks.

The case was closed without too much trouble since the school district really didn't have a leg to stand on. Our lawyer sent them a letter politely informing them that my parents had chosen to educate their children elsewhere and had never authorized my enrollment.

Respectfully...mind your own business.

We never heard from them again.

The danger of being reported to authorities and taken from my parents became not only real that day, but looming. Because I lost the illusion of anonymity.

We all have that illusion to some extent, the feeling that no one knows us and we live in a safe little bubble that's free from prying eyes as long as we don't do anything bad. We're innocent, so we don't expect to be seen as guilty.

But that bubble is an illusion.

You never know when you might end up on someone's blacklist for some reason you'd never even think of. There are people everywhere who feel a proprietary interest in *your* children and who think their philosophy is better than yours: and your children would be better off if they intervened.

On the strength of my being absent from school without my parents ever enrolling me, the truant officer felt perfectly justified interrogating our neighbors.

How much more justified would a CPS worker have felt with an actual complaint in hand?

You are surrounded by people known as "mandatory reporters", people whose jobs may depend on reporting anything they think might even be a hint of abuse. And that's not counting folks who are just plain busybodies. Given the vastly different ideas people have on how children should be raised, this is a terrifying reality.

A definition of "mandatory reporter" from Wikipedia:

No abuse has to be observed to report you. Someone just has to have a difference of opinion with you.

You just don't know when someone is going to decide you need to be examined. How about the clerk at the grocery store who didn't like that you spoke firmly to your child? Or the official in the local school district you've never even met who decides he wants to make an example of you because he doesn't like how unregulated homeschoolers are? Or a nurse in your friendly pediatrician's office who's appalled when you don't vaccinate your children? A ballet instructor who doesn't like that you don't dress your children the way the other mothers do?

These are all well-meaning but clueless people who honestly think Child "Protective" Services is a friend to healthy families and if you have nothing to hide, then it won't be a problem if they report you.

Your relationship with these people can always count; but there are times - like during my childhood - where someone can report you after having no relationship with you whatsoever.

My guard is still up today, almost 30 years later. I don't tell people about parenting decisions we make about sensitive subjects like education, healthcare, behavioral teaching or other personal things. It looks paranoid to my friends and family who've never experienced this threat and don't know how fragile the bubble of anonymity really is.

I don't believe in the idea that "if you're not doing wrong, you have nothing to hide and no one can do anything to you."

It was by the grace of God that I had only such a tiny whisper of trouble growing up. I took it as a serious warning then and haven't forgotten now. Many governmental institutions and systems are potential threats waiting to take my children. There are plenty of good decent people involved, but plenty of dangerously ignorant ones and even more dangerously power-hungry ones who see their position as advocating for my children against me. They can't be allowed to get a foothold in our life. Not even a little one.

Be careful out there, parents. Remember there are always people watching. Remember there are people who always think they can raise your kids better than you. Remember that things can happen without you knowing about it, like a school official you've never met or spoken to who might decide you need to answer to them about how you're raising your child. Pray for safety. Don't give information that doesn't need to be given.

Because you aren't anonymous.

And neither am I. Not even in this forum. And one of the worst things that could ever happen to me would be separating me from my children.