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Homeschooling and Socialization issues are not separated. People never think that socialization is actually the greatest benefit of homeschooling. Most people have negative opinion without homeschooling socialization research.
“Where is your children's school?”
“Oh, they are homeschooling.”
“What about socialization? I thought about homeschooling, but I don't want my child being isolated, stuck at home. I want my kids have more diverse relationship.”
That kind of conversation is very common between homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers. Every time I hear that boring topic, I prefer not to explain anything as I am too lazy to talk a lot explaining that S question. People think that homeschooled kids will be like nerds or zombie hiding in their house.
Homeschooling Socialization Research
Socialization has different and various aspects to look up. I just opened back a book about socialization in homeschooling that I read long time ago, The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling
, and I would like to take some interesting notes for the first three chapters to discuss among homeschoolers and non-homeschoolers.
The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling
Chapter 1, The Socialization Questions
- To track the socialization inquiry in homeschooling, people needs to know about 3 questions: what is homeschooling, what is socialiszation, and what is childhood. People think they have known about them, but they don't know what they actually do.
- The homeschool social life is different from the school social life in many ways that make socialization an advantage of homeschooling in the eyes of those experienced with it. (Pg.6)
- The social environment of homeschooling: the nature and quantity of peer interaction, siblings, older children, younger children, parental proximity, solitude, relationship with adults, and the larger community. Therefore, homeschooling offers children many social benefitsthan what school offers. (Pg. 5)
Chapter 2, What Do Homeschoolers do?
- The reality is that homeschooling is more than just a home-grown imitation of school, more than an educational method or choice.
- The comment from expert the expert and the public is unfair because they have little or no knowledge of it. They are experts in school area, not homeschool, especially in its social aspects. People don't have access to the facts. (Pg.13)
- Homeschooling cannot really be pinned down to a specific description because the very nature of homeschooling is that it is different for every family.(Pg 14)
I would like to add up here that homeschooling kids learn in the best place they can learn about something, with the best person they can get the information and the skill from, and on the right time when they can learn about certain things. We try to get the expert of certain area, find the right place and time to learn. By doing so homeschoolers are not stuck learning at home, but they meet many people. We live and learn in a real life.
- Homeschooling is family based living. It means that children learn in the circle of family life that lead to family unity, not separated life.
- Homeschool parents have plenty of time to devote to teaching and encouraging positive social skills (pg. 30) to give them more asset being immerse in real society. Isn't socialization about society?
- To conclude, homeschooling involves family-centered living and real-world, community-based learning. (Pg. 31)
Chapter 3, What Is Good Socialization, Anyway?
- It is not enough to say that good socialization means being “normal”. …No test for socialization, but there is only happiness and the ability to function well in the world. Therefore, parents need to choose what kind of socialization we really want and feel is appropriate for our children. (Pg. 34)
- What environment should our children be “fit or trained”for? Society as it is today? Society as it is likely to be when the children grow up? Society as we want it to be when they grow up? … (Pg. 35)
My favourite part of this chapter is this interesting question: “Is Socialization Being “Made Social”?” Let me explain it using my own words that I am really sure will be able to interpret this part more clearly. Human being is basically and naturally a social creature. It means we need other people to live with and we live in a society. The ability to live in human society is inherently born. We will seek other people and live with other people naturally. It is different with dogs that live in human world that needs to be socialized artificially as they don't live in dogs natural society (Rachel Gathercole uses this analogy). Therefore, children don't need to be socialized as they are social inherently.
The next part said that “Socialization is Social Learning”. Children don't need to be “made social”, but they need to learn social skills. Parents should think who will teach the social skills and what kinds of social skills children can learn. Should they learn with the same age peer, with family, with real society, with younger or older people, or with various kinds of people? Should they learn mainly in a closed building or in the real world?
- Many believethathomeschoolers cannot get properly socialized simply because they do not get school based socialization…(pg. 38)This stereotype happens because parents don't know what other place children can “get socialized”. Tragically, since school in the USA over 200 years, the rates of divorce, crime, drug abuse, suicides, etc are as high as or higher than ever (Pg. 40). IIt is not the fault or the blame of school, but parents who are responsible for the social and emotional education and growth of children.
- There is another kind of socialization, and this is the one many homeschoolers are after: family- and community-based socialization. (Pg. 43) It consists of living and interacting in the real world on a day-to-day basis. It involves having real-life, meaningful interactions and conversations with people of all age groups, appearances, walks of life, socio-economic groups, and so on in all settings anywhere (pg. 44)
- The goal of childhood socialization is a happy childhood followed by a happy, healthy, functional adult life in which the individual is well prepared with skills for real-world relationships. (Pg. 46)
The book has 15 chapters which are really wonderful to get people informed in more detail about socialization for homeschooled children. I finished them 2 years ago. I am not sure whether Amazon.com still has it or not, but it is really a great treasure for me.
As it is written in the book also, writing about this topic doesn't mean that I would like to promote everyone to homeschool their children or I would like to say that homeschooling is the best education for all children. Homeschooling or public schooling is a choice which is privately chosen like how we decide to follow our religion. Please let me know if you need more summary for the chapters.
Source:
Gathercole, Rachel. The Well-Adjusted Child: The Social Benefits of Homeschooling. Denver, Colorado: Mapletree Publishing Company, 2007
Thank you for this very helpful information. I plan on homeschooling Madison when she gets older. My other kids are in public school and although they get a good education I would prefer if my youngest don’t go through what the others currently do right now. My 8yr old is autistic so he gets special services in school which I won’t be able to give to him but he encounters bullying. My 12yr old is pretty ok and so is my oldest daughter. I would just prefer if she’s homeschooled.
I am so sorry with your 8yr old. There are a lot of case of autistic kids being bullied here. Bullying is another thread in public school that gets more and more popular. For younger age, teachers might still be able to handle, but for the older ones, they will give up. I am not an expert one, but please let me know if you need something that I can help. Thank you for stopping by.
Hi Adelien. Sounds like an interesting book. When my daughter was little, we lived in California and you could only homeschool if you had teaching credentials. I seriously thought about homeschooling, but it wasn’t an option because I did not have the credentials. I know that socialization is a huge issue in homeschooling, but there are many opportunities for developing social skills and interaction with others.
Thanks for sharing your views on this suject.
I see. Each state and country has its own regulation for homeschooling. It is really a great book that I really like. Thank you for stopping by…
This sounds like it was an interesting read! Strangely sometimes it’s not the home schoolers who need to read up on socialisation, but rather those who don’t understand home ed. Unfortunately this won’t happen so we must keep plodding along and believing in our own choices and answering the ‘s’ question from others.
LOL, that’s right and I definitely agree with you. Do you get the S questions often?
Thank you so much for posting this! I have always been an advocate of homeschooling when it is done well, with a network of other homeschooling families. This book sounds wonderful! Stay tuned, because my Oct. 1 post is a guest blog re: homeschooling ed.
I could not start homeschooling without networking. It is really uncommon way here. I can’t wait for your posting. Thank you very much to stopping by.
Very interesting subject! I think homeschooling is great, but at the same time I don’t think I could do it… I think it takes a very special parent ( personality) to be a homeschooling parent!
It is just a choice of way to educate children. It needs a firm commitment to make all the impossible things become possible. What are your greatest obstacle?
Thans for stopping by
It is just a choice of way to educate children. It needs a firm commitment to make all the impossible things become possible. What are your greatest obstacles? Thanks for stopping by
I think that only people who don’t homeschool see it as a huge issue. There is absolutely no issue with socialization. When my kids go with me to the museum, they are being socialized. When they volunteer, they are socializing. Even if they just go to the store with me, they are still encountering people.
Public School is NOT the place for children to develop social skills. You’re asking your kid to learn from other kids his age. I don’t want my kid to act like other 14 year olds because quite frankly, most are rude self-centered people.
We don’t have a network of other homeschool families, and I still feel that we are homeschooling well. Just because your children aren’t with other families doesn’t mean they have no interaction with the outside world.
There are so many good ways to homeschool, and it’s such an individual thing, I’m interested to hear why you feel you need to be around other families to do it ‘well’.
Socialization is different from peer dependency. What happen in public school coincidentally are not socialization or friendship, but more on peer dependency. Most people even don’t have their own life principle, but they depend on their surrounding a lot.
Learning from the same age doesn’t always give good reference. Get them learning from the real world and they will get real image of our world.
I homeschooled my 3 kids up to high school – they are all in their 20s now and finished university.
I was asked this question on socialization a million times, especially from family. We were members of an active homeschooling group that met at the YMCA for swimming lessons once a week and a weekly gym class with a PE teacher. We went on science & museum trips with the group at least once a month. They were in art classes, drama groups, etc after school and on weekends. I think they were very social!
In hind sight, dropping them into a high school with 1,000+ kids after homeschooling was a bit of a shock for them but in grade 9 several schools all merged into one and it was scary and new for all the students. They did well. They all excelled in their own field (art, drama, music) and my middle son who I was most worried about even ran for a position on the student council.
With homeschooling I think they had to learn social skills even more because they weren’t just dropped into a classroom of peers who naturally divided into groups of friends.
So encouraging And I really love to hearing that. I wonder whether your kids are going to homeschool their children too. It seems that the S questions are very global. Thank you very much to stopping by and share.
My daughter missed a lot of school due to hospitalizations, and in 7th grade her education was provided through medical homeschooling through the public school district. Even with this forced medical isolation, Rory is by far more outgoing than anybody I know. She does not know a stranger, can talk to anyone, and hasn’t got a shy bone in her body! There are multitudes of other ways to achieve socialization. Good luck with your home schooling.
~Lorelai
Life With Lorelai
As we are basically social creatures, aren’t we? Being isolated would not stop us to be social. Thank you for stopping by.
You make an excellent point, Adelien! My kids are not home schooled but I fully support parents who decide to do this.
Because they are the ones who know what’s best for their kids to raise them to become happy adults.
Thank you for your encouraging comment. I appreciate it a lot.
I know this is a major concern for those who do not homeschool. I also know that I have had work at home jobs for 8 years and we took care of adults. We were able to meet their social needs. I agree a lot with Missy Homemaker.
That’s right. Sometimes people criticise a lot for something they don’t really know and don’t want to know.
TThis book sounds great! I know many people who could benefit from reading it. 🙂 I just took my three yr old on his first field trip with our local homeschooling group, it was lots of fun and none of the kids there had any problem being social. 🙂 I know as a homeschooled teenager I had many more friends than my public school friends just from all the variety of thongs we did. Swim and piano lessons, Bible studies and church functions, plus the opportunity to get a job and interact with a larger variety of people. Around my town people actively search for homeschooled teens to work for them because as a whole most are more polite, respectful, hardworking and creative problem solvers than any of the public schooled teens.
Social skill in homeschooling kids are more controlled and managed. This book opened my mind when the first time I considering to choose homeschooling as a way to educate my children. I still often open this. Thank you very much for stopping by.
I just noticed that you linked this up to the Classical Mamas Read link-up! I’m not sure how I missed it before. This looks like a great book. Thanks for sharing it with us!