Just jumping off your post here. :seeya:
Regarding homeschooling and the Brunn kids. This is all just MOO and out loud wonderings. And I'm not sleuthing mom here, just trying to come up with a Ryan Brunn childhood/background.
I'm thinking momma didn't homeschool because she thought she could provide the children a better education. Or that education was highly valued. Or that she had a great deal of concern on these children's final outcomes. Most home schooled kids I know, and homeschooled adults I know are/were advanced compared to their peers. Education and learning was/is perceived as very important. None of them 'dropped out', let alone 'settled for' a GED. (The homeschoolers would see that as 'settling'.)
Perhaps mom homeschooled because dealing with the school system/homework/etc for 4 kids would be too much work. The school would be too much in their business.
In recent articles it sounded like mom wasn't going to Ryan's football games. It seems odd that a parent that would be so 'hands on' regarding education would be absent supporting her children's other achievements.
Now regarding the 'are they foster kids or were they adopted'? I think, MOO, they were 'Foster to Adopt' kids. It's a choice you can make when you choose to adopt through the foster system. My gut (and my gut has been wrong before!) is telling me that these kids were not formally adopted by mom for a long, long time. Once the adoption is final, those kids are your 100% financial responsibilty and the foster care stipends/financial reimbursements stop coming in. As long as they are foster kids, you get stipend and reimbursements for each child. ANYWAY, :crazy: my point is, I'm passingly familiar with the foster care system, in Georgia, at least. And while there are many wonderful families who do it for the right reasons, there are tons who see the kids as a means of income.
It would be a very large undertaking to up and decide to adopt (or foster to adopt) 4 children....at the same time. (I don't know that's what she did, but it kinda sounded like it.) It seems like 4 at one time would either be someone who is REALLY invested in being a parent ... or someone who was really invested in the financial benefits. One or the other. Moo!
So ... you take some kid who was maybe screwed up from the beginning (from birth or early childhood), and then have him fosterered in an environment where he is nothing more than a means to income... Again, not saying that's what happened, just a possibility.
Also, the brother (SP?) didn't he say something about them moving from NY to Gerogia 'thinking things would get better', or something like that? But they moved from NY when they were little? What things were bad in NY? What happened in NY that mom felt things 'would get better' in GA?
Things that make you go hmmmm.....