Socialization
These days almost everyone knows someone who homeschools, and most people don't bat an eye when I mention that we're homeschooling. Not very long ago, though, many people felt compelled to give unsolicited advice when I mentioned homeschooling. And the most common piece of advice was "It's a bad idea; the children will not be socialized." I'm pretty sure that a lot of people still think this; they just don't say it out loud.



I understand that this complaint comes from a misunderstanding. People imagine homeschoolers as radical Christian fundamentalists who are trying to shield their children from contact with the world. Or they imagine the 2008 version of hippie parents who let their children run wild and teach them only about crystal healing and doing whatever you want in life. There are, of course, some homeschoolers like this. But many are not. We homeschool not because we don't want the children exposed to the world, but because we want to expose them to a wider world than they could experience if they spent seven hours a day in school. So the kids learn to read and write and do math. But we also have time to visit the science museum and go to art galleries. The kids learn to inline skate and swim and play the piano and swing on a trapeze. They build circuits and electromagnets. We take long walks where I show them how to identify plants and insects. They are learning Spanish now, during the years when it's easiest to learn a second language. They do carpentry and art projects. We go to concerts and community events and robot competitions. And, in addition to doing these things, they have time to play with each other and their friends. We don't have to choose between after school activities and family time and playing with friends; there is time for all those things.

But back to socialization. There is, I think, a confusion about the difference between socialization and socializing. Both are important, but they're different things. Socializing is spending time being social with people. It includes playing with your siblings, spending time with a friend, and running with a group of neighborhood kids. The kids do all of those things. Twice a week we go on field trips with other homeschooled kids where the children have time to learn and play. The kids are in circus school and K takes dance classes, and they have friends at those places. We belong to a playgroup for kids adopted from Guatemala. We have regular playdates with other kids. And the kids play in the neighborhood. There are ten kids between the ages of 3-6 just on our block, and on nice days they all run outside together exploring the world.

Socialization is something else. Socialization is the process by which people learn to get along with other people and be good, happy, productive members of society. It's not just about playing with other children. It's about learning to get along with all sorts of people, including those who are a different age, race, or sex from you. It's about learning social skills, including how to be polite to people, how to include others and make them feel at ease, and how to say no kindly but firmly. It's about developing social confidence, so you don't feel shy or intimated by others and can make your own way in the world. It's about learning to be a gracious winner and loser at games. It's about learning to be fair and honest and kind in your dealings with other people, and learning that while most others are fair and honest and kind, a few people are not, and you need to protect yourself against that.

One way to help develop these skills is by playing with other children. And the kids do that. But that's not the only way to be socialized. In fact, the kind of socialization many kids get in a school setting is pretty limited. Teachers try to teach social values, but there's not a great deal of time to do that with lots of children and the importance of academic subjects too. There's some opportunity to practice social skills with other children, but interactions in school tend to be limited to those with your same age peers. In addition, when something goes wrong, and children are being bullied or beaten up, there's not much recourse. Adults often say "work it out." Children do not have the power that adults do to leave a bad situation. If someone is consistently cruel or regularly tries to physically hurt me at work, and talking does not solve the problem, as an adult I have many options. I can complain to management. I can involve the police. If worse comes to worse I can leave and get a new job. I do not have to keep going back to a place where I will be harassed and hurt every day.

For the most part, it is adults who socialize the next generation, not other children. Children, left to themselves, will not necessarily learn to be polite and friendly and kind. Those are skills that need to be taught by the grownups in a society. That's a major part of what childrearing is about.

M and K spend time with a wide range of adults and children. They are friendly and welcoming with kids of all ages. At an age where most of their peers have started playing in same sex groups, they play with both boys and girls. They enjoy babies and older children, and they welcome siblings and different age kids into their groups. They are polite and well-behaved and understand appropriate behavior for different settings (strangers often come up and tell them what well-behaved children they are). They are comfortable at nice restaurants, concerts, parades, and playgrounds. They have close friends and are also willing to ask strangers to play. When someone says no it's not crushing; they just ask someone else. But most people say yes. They are learning that if you are friendly and kind to others, most people respond in the same way. Their social skills are not perfect, obviously. They are young children. But they do very well.

I hear a lot of people say, well, the world is a cruel place, and it's just as well that kids learn it while they're young. The best way to learn it is spending a lot of time in large groups of their peers. I'm always confused by this. Are they implying, for instance, that one should make sure ones children have experiences being bullied and beat up so that they'll be used to it by adulthood? Obviously everyone should learn that there are mean and thoughtless people in the world, but that's not something that requires constant interaction with those people. What I want the kids to learn is how to not be socially cowed by those people, and to remain self-confident in spite of them.

As far as I can tell, children who are in school do not have better social skills than the homeschooled kids I know. In fact, in our neighborhood, the three children who have the poorest social skills (they either don't want to play with the other kids or are overly insistent on having their own way every time and can't negotiate) are the ones who have been in all day preschool and kindergarten. The kids who have spent more time with adults but still plenty of time playing with other kids are more poised, polite, friendly, and self-confident. My experience is, of course, anecdotal. But studies bear this out. The studies that have been done on the social skills of homeschooled children indicate that there is either no difference in the two groups or that homeschooled kids have slightly better skills.

We are, I think, encouraged to think that there is only one right way to bring up children, and that is to send them to school. It's very similar to thinking that the only right way to bring up children is in a two-parent heterosexual married-couple family. Now obviously, homeschooling is not for everyone. It takes a lot of time. It's hard to do if all the parents have full time jobs, and it involves spending more time with your kids than some people want to. I'm glad that there are lots of options, and people can choose the kind of education they want for their children. I just wish that, in the same way people should realize that lots of different family configurations work, lots of different ways of schooling work.