Addressing objections to homeschooling #1 ~ Homeschooling Life NZ

Objection #1: Socialisation

One of the most common objections to homeschooling is concern over socialisation. How will children who don’t go to school learn how to interact with other people? How do you ensure they are relatively ‘normal’ instead of weird?

Let’s be honest, we all know weird homeschooling families. In fact, that’s what really put me off homeschooling in the first place! Many of the homeschooling families I knew in my younger days were.. unusual, to be euphemistic. There was no way I was going to subject my future children to that kind of upbringing, to condemn them to being oddities who would neither fit in nor know how to operate in the real world..

So what changed? How did I overcome my mortal fear of turning my kids into freaks? Several things actually..

1. Meeting ‘normal’ homeschoolers

Firstly some of my apprehensions were overcome as I started meeting some fairly normal people with a homeschooling background. It showed me that homeschooling can be done in a way that produces somewhat ‘normal’ human beings. Not only that, I discovered at least one homeschooling family with really nice kids. Kids that I thought I wouldn’t mind my future children turning out like.

These discoveries led me to the conclusion that kids tend to be like the family they come from.. and most of the odd ones came from pretty weird families! Even at school you get strange kids. I guess with homeschooling, these eccentricities are likely to be exaggerated.. something to be mindful of!

2. Opportunities to socialise

Secondly, through talking to homeschooling mums I learned that there are lots of opportunities for homeschooled kids to learn social skills. It wasn’t until I actually became a homeschooler myself that I truly realised the huge number of activity options available. It’s actually quite overwhelming trying to figure out what to sign up for first!

In fact, the socialisation homeschooling offers is (in my opinion) better than school, because it fosters interaction and relationships between kids of different ages. This seems to me a superior preparation for real life, where you are highly unlikely to solely interact with others the exact same age as yourself.

Not only that, home-educated kids often end up interacting more with adults too. It is a commonly noted fact that homeschooled kids tend to be better at talking to adults and at making conversation.

3. Type of socialisation

Thirdly, I came to understand that not all socialisation is positive. What kind of socialisation did I want for my kids? The kind that involves peer pressure, conformity and bullying? I would actually rather control who my children are learning their social cues from. It might sound controlling, but as their parents I think it is our responsibility to steer them in the direction of positive and godly friendships. It’s like the proverb says, ‘bad company corrupts good morals’.

It’s worth checking out the book ‘Hold onto your kids’ by Gordon Neufeld to learn more about the importance of relationship with parents and the dangers of peer pressure. Of course homeschooling doesn’t solve this, nor does a child at school necessarily become peer-oriented. But homeschooling does make it easier to positively socialise a child.

4. ‘Normal’ or ‘cool’ isn’t the most important thing

Finally, I came to the realisation that being ‘cool’ and ‘fitting in’ shouldn’t be my end goal in training my children. If they are followers of Jesus, they will be different. I don’t intend to force them to be different for the sake of it, or for silly reasons, but I want them to be different for the reason that they care more about what God thinks than what the world around them thinks. As a Christian parent my highest priority should be to train my children up to trust God and faithfully live according to his Word, not according to the latest fashion or cultural trend.

In conclusion..

As parents, we should be concerned about socialising our children. We should consider how it is best to do that. But I don’t see that homeschooling itself is a hindrance in this respect. On the contrary, it provides a unique opportunity to socialise our children in the way we deem most helpful for their training in godliness. What’s more, we don’t have to ‘undo’ all the negative training they might receive.

Yes, some homeschoolers are a little unusual, but this isn’t necessarily a result of homeschooling itself, nor a good enough reason to dismiss homeschooling. In the end it is up to us as parents to deliberately and intentionally socialise our children and train them to best of our God-given ability to be useful workers in God’s kingdom.

Links for the other posts in this series: