I picked up my son from his Confirmation kick-off event, a true microcosm of suburban 9th grade living. \u00a0We were delayed in departing, and I noticed he was chatting with a boy I\u2019d never met before, who had \u201cChris\u201d written on his name tag. \u00a0We got in the car. \u00a0\u201cSo I saw you were chatting with, um, Chris? Is it? \u00a0Nice kid?\u201d<\/p>\n
Usually the boy has a few interesting stories to share about the people he meets. This time he shrugged. \u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know. \u00a0I just started talking to him when you showed up. We were so busy doing ice breakers we didn\u2019t get to actually meet anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeah, homeschool kids don\u2019t get ice breakers. \u00a0You show up at a new event with people you\u2019ve never met, and your parents leave you to the wolves. \u00a0\u201cGo find some kids. \u00a0Or make yourself useful somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
They always do. \u00a0It can take as long as five or ten minutes, if it\u2019s a large group event the kids are joining midstream. \u00a0But my kids never sit in a corner neglected. \u00a0They are in the habit of introducing themselves, striking up a conversation, and finding something, anything, in common with whomever is tossed their way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Some children are more extroverted and others are more introverted. What exactly does this have to do with homeschooling? My public schooled daughter walks right up to other kids and introduces herself. My shy homeschooled little sister does not, preferring to hang back much longer until she feels comfortable. Trust me when I say that this isn\u2019t about homeschooling.<\/p>\n
\n2. Homeschool kids spend the bulk of their time with people different from themselves.<\/h4>\n
Sitting at a lunch table with the same five friends every day, exactly the same age, same academic track, same clubs, and same fashion tastes? \u00a0Yeah, that never happens in homeschooling. \u00a0Mixed-age, mixed-neighborhood, mixed-ability social circles are the norm among homeschoolers. \u00a0Cliqueishness is a no-go, because 1) the parents lose patience with that nonsense fast and 2) on any given day, you might have to be friends with exactly that one person you would have happily excluded if only this were the lunchroom and you had the choice of your favorites.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Growing up, I never, ever had a friend who was not also able bodied, middle class, white, evangelical, and the child of two married heterosexual parents. Heading off to college came as a huge shock because I was suddenly thrown in with people who were completely<\/em> different from me. But this makes sense, if you think about it. When you are homeschooled your social world is whatever your parents choose to give you. Some homeschooling parents will expose their children to a wide diversity of people, but others will keep their children in a homogenous bubble.<\/p>\nMy daughter is only in kindergarten, but already she has been exposed to more different people than I was through high school. There are black and white kids in her class, middle class\u00a0and poor kids, children with\u00a0Christian and atheist parents, children with single parents and children with parents who never married, and disabled children. My public schooled daughter is experiencing more different people in kindergarten than I experienced\u00a0until college.<\/p>\n
Jennifer adds this:<\/p>\n
\nFrom there, it only gets more different: Homeschool kids spend a lot of time with grown-ups. \u00a0Not just their parents. \u00a0Not just teachers. \u00a0(As a kid writing fiction, I could only ever think up \u201cteacher\u201d for a profession for my adult characters, because that was the only profession I was ever exposed to enough to have an idea of what the job entailed.) \u00a0Homeschool kids spend their formative years going wherever their parents go, doing all the adult chores that grown-ups do. \u00a0 The people who live and work in their community aren\u2019t stage hands for a me-centered teenage drama; they are the community. \u00a0Homeschool kids get\u00a0used to having spur-of-the-moment adult conversation with grown-ups of every age, profession, and cultural background.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Actually, socializing with adults is very different from socializing with other children. As a homeschooled child, I never had a problem socializing with adults\u2014I knew they would praise me for how mature and smart I was, how hard working and diligent. Other children, on the other hand? Haha, nope. I got on fine with the other homeschooled children in my social circle, but I was literally afraid of public school children. They were so different from me that I had no idea how to relate to them. They were scary. I had to enter a public high school to take the PSAT, and I was so anxious I was sick that morning\u2014not because of the exam, I wasn\u2019t worried about that\u00a0in the least, it was the entire idea of being surrounded by public school kids. I couldn\u2019t handle it.<\/p>\n
Now I am not saying that every homeschooled child is afraid of public school children, or that this is the natural product of being homeschooled. Absolutely not! But Jennifer makes a mistake in generalizing from how she is socializing her son to how every other parent out there socializes their<\/em> children. What kind of socialization homeschooled kids get is almost entirely dependent on their parents. Some parents are absolutely crippled by the lack of socialization they have in their homeschooled upbringing while others thrive and develop healthy social skills.<\/p>\nYou cannot look at one homeschooled child and predict another\u2019s experience, because the only thing different homeschooling families have in common is that the parents are in sole control of their children\u2019s academic and social development.<\/p>\n
\n3. Homeschool kids form deep, lasting relationships with the people they treasure most.<\/h4>\n
A reality of homeschool life is that you might have certain very dear friends you only see a few times a year. \u00a0Of all the many friendly-acquaintances you gather everywhere you go, a few really resonate. \u00a0They\u2019re ones who understand you. \u00a0They\u2019re the ones you could spend hours talking to, and when you pick back up again six months later, it\u2019s like you just saw each other yesterday.<\/p>\n
School friendships are a little bit like this, in that you socialize all year with whomever is at hand, but very few of those friendships carry forward once you\u2019re no longer in the same class or club. It\u2019s easy to imagine at school you\u2019ve got a real friendship going, when really those friends will drop you as soon as they find something better.<\/p>\n
The homeschooling difference is that there\u2019s never any illusion that you\u2019ve got five best friends sitting next to you at lunch each day. \u00a0You have to be intentional about cultivating your friendships, and you\u2019ve got the mental space to do it in. \u00a0When you find that one good friend, you make an effort to stay in touch. \u00a0You learn to use whatever resources you have at hand to arrange a way to get together more often. \u00a0Sometimes you discover that the friendly acquaintance was only ever just that, or the friendship wanes as your values and interests diverge later in life. \u00a0But it\u2019s not uncommon for homeschoolers to have multiple deep, lasting relationships that endure for years despite distance and long separation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Does Jennifer have any idea how hard it was to be 16 and only see one of my closest friends four or six times a year? It wasn\u2019t even that they lived far away, it was just that we weren\u2019t in any of the same activities and we were completely dependent on our parents for transport. Jennifer thinks this is some sort of positive<\/em> benefit of homeschooling? Does she have any idea how hard it was to go on stating that this person was one of my best friends even as I had no clue what was going on in her life because I hadn\u2019t seen her in months? I just can\u2019t here. Jennifer may look at the five best friends she had at lunch in middle school as only temporary friends, but at least she actually had friends she saw<\/em> regularly. I didn\u2019t<\/em>.<\/p>\nJennifer\u00a0seems to be applying \u201cabsence makes the heart grow stronger\u201d to children\u2019s friendships. It does not work like that.<\/em><\/p>\nIt\u2019s absolutely true that out of a large group of people you will only resonate with a few. The problem was that, as a homeschool kid, I didn\u2019t have a large group of people to draw from. I had to take whatever I got. Now yes, I had some good, solid\u00a0friendships. I had to, because if I didn\u2019t I would have had no one. But there were also times I hung on to a friendship with someone who didn\u2019t really fit because, well, they were the only option I had. I read one study that said that homeschooled children have fewer friends than their peers, but that they value the ones they have more. Well duh<\/em>, I thought.<\/p>\nSo what<\/em> if my public schooled daughter has five best friends sitting by her at lunch\u00a0who\u00a0will move on and change and grow different and branch off in different directions as they grow? At least she sees them more often than once every three\u00a0months.\u00a0And you know what? My friends from childhood grew and changed too, as did I. Being homeschooled didn\u2019t magically make all of my friendships last forever.<\/p>\nIf\u00a0I had to come up with a list of how homeschoolers actually<\/em> socialize differently than school kids, what would I include on the list?<\/p>\n1.\u00a0They\u00a0more dependent on their parents.<\/strong> While children who attend school see other children daily as a matter of course, homeschooled children only see other children as a result of involvement in various activities or making plans to get together\u00a0with another family. These things rest solely in the hands of the parents.<\/p>\n2.\u00a0Keeping up friendships takes more effort.<\/strong> I cannot even begin to count the number of times my siblings and I begged to have a friend over or to become involved in an activity so that we would see a friend. Public school children may be able to fall into friendships, but we didn\u2019t have that option.<\/p>\n3.\u00a0They can\u2019t afford to be as picky.<\/strong>\u00a0Mostly, I was friends with the children of my parents\u2019 friends. After all, if our parents weren\u2019t friends it was unlikely we would see each other often enough to have anything you could give the label \u201cfriendship.\u201d In other cases, homeschooled children are forced to\u00a0turn to the internet to find friends.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat about socialization?\u201d Homeschooled parents have been asked this question over and over again for decades. I understand finding it annoying to get this question so many times, but it\u2019s a good question, and one homeschooling parents should take seriously. I\u2019m really tired of reading blog posts by homeschooling parents\u00a0arguing that homeschooled children are actually better<\/em> than public schooled children. Trust me, I heard this growing up, too! Hearing this\u00a0didn\u2019t make me any less afraid of public schooled children, and it didn\u2019t magic me more friends.<\/p>\nLook, if you are a homeschooling parent, your children\u2019s socialization is up to you. If you do your job right, your children will have a large pool to draw their friends from, have close friends they see regularly, and be comfortable around a wide range of different people. But this is not guaranteed. It\u2019s something you have to work for.<\/p>\n
As a final note,\u00a0I am aware that not all children who attend school simply fall into friendships, and that there are children who attend public school and are still profoundly lonely. I don\u2019t think parents of children who attend school should assume they don\u2019t need to pay attention to their children\u2019s social needs. All I\u2019m saying is\u00a0that when parents homeschool, they take their children\u2019s social needs solely<\/em> into their\u00a0hands, and that\u2019s not a responsibility\u00a0they should take lightly.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“What about socialization?” Homeschooled parents have been asked this question over and over again for decades. I understand finding it annoying to get this question so many times, but it’s a good question, and one homeschooling parents should take seriously. I’m really tired of reading blog posts by homeschooling parents arguing that homeschooled children are actually better than public schooled children. Trust me, I heard this growing up, too! Hearing this didn’t make me any less afraid of public schooled children, and it didn’t magic me more friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[288],"class_list":["post-24020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeschool","tag-socialization"],"yoast_head":"\n
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