Homeschooling Socialization:

A Much Happier Way To Be

We've seen how homeschooling socialization offers lots of ways for your child to make friends with children their own age. If you look at the supposed social disadvantages of homeschooling, you'll see you can quickly turn that on its head and look at all the advantages!

But there's even more to celebrate. Homeschooling socialization actually gives your child a much more positive way of learning the social skills they'll need as an adult.

My own experience of going to school and making friends wasn't exactly joyful. I went to High school at age 11 and spent the next four years struggling with who would be my friend and being different from my peers.

Being the daughter of a poet and never having been to school before marked my card before I even walked in the classroom door.

Maybe that's just made me prejudiced against school socialization, but, funnily enough, those very facts were something that drew people to make friends with me as I grew older. At University, if I wasn't the most popular student in the History Department, I certainly came close.

It's pretty hard to see how being socially isolated at school could have helped me learn the social skills I needed as an adult. Your own memories of school will be different, but you'll recognise the common factor – peer pressure and the need to conform.

What I love about homeschooling and socialization is that it gives your child the chance to choose the friends they want and have something in common with, exactly like an adult does. They have plenty of contact with their peers, but they aren’t obliged to co-exist with the same relatively small number of children day-in, day-out.

Homeschool also has many great advantages, including that your child can play with children of all ages. One of the lovely things about homeschool groups is that whole families turn up, from tots to teenagers.

Children develop exactly the sort of social skills you would expect to happen in a close community.

Homeschool also gives your child much more time to get to know and spend time with the people who are closest to them – their relatives, and that's one of the homeschooling benefits that comes from learning at home.

Instead of being away all day when the grand-parents come round, William and Catherine have been listening to what it was like being bombed in the War. Catherine was even taught how to read by my Mum.

It would have been much harder to find those special times if they'd been out at school.

The ability to relate to people of all generations is something schoolchildren don't always get much opportunity to practise. They also haven't that much time to help out feeding the neighbor's cat.

In fact, Dr Alan Thomas' research into homeschooling and socialization reveals that homeschool children tend to be exceptionally mature and much more confident in their dealings with adults.

In his book Educating Children At Home he accepts that, despite the fact there haven't been many scientific studies,

"What (research) there is generally shows that home educated children are better socially adjusted" (see Lines, 1995).

You'll see clear cut information which backs his findings in our page on homeschooling statistics.

Part of the reason school often fails is linked to the relationship school children develop with the significant other adults they meet on a daily basis – teachers. When you look at the nature of that relationship, the answer shines up at you as clear as an albatross eye.

Teachers set out deliberately to make themselves stand apart from their pupils. They use their authority to keep order and have very limited one-to-one time with individual pupils.

If you want an example of a rather different relationship, you should hear William and Catherine discussing with me when they want to do their Maths or whose turn it is to do the washing up!

Homeschooling And Socialization

Finally, I want to say something which most homeschool parents would disagree with, never mind you. We've proved that there are lots of homeschooling socialization opportunities available to you, and all the homeschool families I know make full use of them.

But I'm fed up with the quality of my children’s entire homeschool life being judged by how many Birthday parties they've been to.

The pressure to have lots of friends ignores common sense. Some people are naturally more gregarious and others prefer to spend more time on their own.

If you homeschool and your child is a bit shy, I wouldn't necessarily see that as a homeschooling socialization 'problem.' I certainly wouldn't force your child to go to groups if they don't want to.

Not only is that potentially counter-productive, but also homeschool gives you the chance to practise the softly-softly approach so your child has time to develop the confidence they need, which is one of the benefits of a flexible home school schedule.

It's worth remembering that the homeschooling and socialization issue is very much a product of our time. When I was a homeschool child some years ago, no one, including my Inspectors, would ever have thought of asking how many friends came round. It simply wasn't considered anything that a parent need worry about.

I understand the socialization concern, but I think it's grown out of all proportion and takes no account of basic human nature.

I simply don't see the number of friends you have as the litmus test of a happy, fulfilled, individual. It could just be that your child, like many adults, prefers to have a few close friends. That's normal too.

Homeschooling socialization has many positive benefits – among them the potential for real friends of all ages and the time for children to gain the social confidence they need without being labelled a 'nerd.'

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