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Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved? Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious issues with social skills,

Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved? Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious issues with social skills, something I suspect is just lack of exposure to enough peer social interaction to learn how to get good at them. To be fair this is a pretty small sample to draw conclusions from. I suppose there could also be a pretty strong selection bias at play where the only kids homeschooled in the current environment either have pre-existing issues or messed up family dynamics.

bonecrusher2102 7y ago
I think I'd have the same question. I have a friend who coached a club sport for high school students. They said that they saw, over their tenure, over 100 homeschooled kids come through their teams, and they can remember only a single one without significant social challenges. There are probably a few jobs out there that do not require the ability to interact successfully with bosses and peers, but I'd imagine they are few and far between. Looking at "success" in a given job holistically, I would be inclined to argue that "soft" or social skills make up a nontrivial portion of the requisite skillset.
- nvahalik 7y ago
  I guess that depends on what you mean by 'social challenges'. What are the expectations? We participate in a homeschool community which gives weekly (if not more often) opportunities for both structured and unstructured (i.e. play) social interactions. Balance this with home-interactions between their siblings, kids in the neighborhood, and folks at our church, they interact with a pretty big array of people, and we end up getting to work with them on issues a lot more diligently and quickly. Our group has a wide range of social skillset folks. From kids who are very hard-to-manage to visible gifted and talented people. IMO, the "problem" only exists if you, as a parent, don't get involved in the raising of your children.
  - fossuser 7y ago
    I think in terms of time, weekly is a lot different than 8 hrs a day 5 times a week (plus more on the weekends or after school). In this comparison weekly is just the weekend piece. The cumulative time difference is dramatic.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      The cumulative effect of wasting (more or less) 8 hours a day 5 times a week is also dramatic. You can work to improve the social life of a homeschooled child, improving the education of a publicly schooled child is a much bigger challenge if for no other reason than the amount of time they're "stuck" receiving a rote and mediocre (at best) education.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
> Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious issues with social skills I’ve heard this narrative before but have yet to see it in real life. All the homeschooled kids I’ve met were years ahead of their peers in every respect, especially in social development. They carry themselves like adults and interact with adults as a peer at 16 or even younger. I suspect those who homeschool because they think their family and community has something much better to offer than the standard fare often do. Healthy families beget healthy children, regardless of schooling option chosen. I’d argue that unhealthy/unstable families are the ones whose kids would benefit from being educated outside the home.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > I’ve heard this narrative before but have yet to see it in real life. All the homeschooled kids I’ve met were years ahead of their peers in every respect, especially in social development. They carry themselves like adults I don't think you're contradicting fossuser's narrative. Being correctly socialized (evaluated as an adult) is being maladjusted (evaluated as a student). By this theory, homeschooled kids are well equipped to interact with the world, but unsuited to interact with college students.
- russnewcomer 7y ago
  Homeschooled mid-life adult here (graduated high school in 2001) Socialization is an issue because, depending on the size of the community you interacted with and how integrated your parents let you be with the rest of America, many of us who were more sheltered are literally from a different culture that people who live in the same country. I have worked long and hard to be able to socialize with people from ‘Regular’ America, and I still, nearly 20 years after I graduated high school, and more easily socialize with people from a Midwestern conservative homeschooled background. I sometimes tell people I grew up the in the same geography as you, but not the same place.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > I have worked long and hard to be able to socialize with people from ‘Regular’ America, and I still, nearly 20 years after I graduated high school, and more easily socialize with people from a Midwestern conservative homeschooled background. You're not missing anything.
robohoe 7y ago
I’ve noticed the same. One of them now runs a tech business and based on his social media presence, I can see why he’s hard to get along with.
axaxs 7y ago
No, at least not universally. My cousins growing up were all homeschooled, and all creepy to be around. One basically never grew up despite pushing 30, another went off to college and OD'd the first week. The other two are nice people who still live at home but feel a little 'babified' to be around. Fast forward to today, just moved in next to a home-schooled family. Parents are really nice people, but their kids remind me exactly of the eldest cousin...something just 'off' when you interact with them. I hope for their own sake they grow out of it.
eaandkw 7y ago
If done the right way I think home schooling is the way to go. I would occasionally run into home schooled people when I was in the Marine Corps. They were often times a little awkward but I think that that comes mostly from their lack of recognizing authority figures. Recognizing authorities and hierarchies are what most people mean when they talk about socializing I think.
learc83 7y ago
>Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious issues with social skills There's a lot of confirmation bias going on here. How many homeschooled kids with good social skills didn't you notice? There's also a potential selection bias in that parents maybe be more likely to homeschool kids that have social issues because they have social issues and don't fit in at school.
- fossuser 7y ago
  There could be some of that, but you pretty often ask people where they went to school and how they grew up. If there were a lot of homeschooled kids with good social skills I’d still expect to have met some.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    Keep in mind that the reason people homeschool has changed a lot in the past decade. It used to be primarily religious reasons, but there's been a massive uptick of non-religious parents moving to homeschooling to better their child's education and get them out of the toxic school environment. Unless you're quite young, it's doubtful that you've interacted with many of these next-gen homeschool kids.
  - learc83 7y ago
    >To be fair this is a pretty small sample to draw conclusions from. I think it's pretty likely given that statement and the small population of home-schooled kids to begin with, that confirmation bias explains your entire experience. But let's assume it doesn't. Home-schooled kids who do have good social skills are likely to realize that there is a bias against them and thus they aren't likely to advertise that they were home-schooled.
fjert 7y ago
I was homeschooled in a similar way described above, starting community college at 16. I was relatively sheltered and never attended any sorts of sports clubs or any other activities that would involve socializing with people I didn't know. I would say it definitely had a negative impact on my social skills, as if I was learning how to socialize 5 years later than everyone else my age. Working jobs helped develop these social skills to a point, but I'm not great at making friends outside of work and I still deal with social anxiety. I believe homeschooling is a great idea, but social development should definitely be considered. Not sure about the best way to handle it though.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  > never attended any sorts of sports clubs or any other activities that would involve socializing with people I didn't know There’s a big part of the problem there. If you know ahead of time that your kids will need lots of socializing with other kids, you can mitigate the relative isolation of homeschooling pretty effectively. Sports clubs, co-op groups, church groups, etc. — all are great places for kids to make friends and socialize.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Sure. We homeschooled our kids. When we worried about socialization, we grabbed them, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat them up for their lunch money. I'm kidding, and I stole that, but I have a point. Much of "socialization" in school is horrible. It's not quite as bad as socialization into prison, but it's socialization into a society that's rather broken. Why do we assume that socializing into that is going to produce healthy adults? Me, I wasn't homeschooled. I attended a private school until fifth grade, and then public school. I... um... wasn't all that well socialized by the process.
- fossuser 7y ago
  I’d argue there’s a difference between socializing and being bullied - the former is just more general exposure to social interaction. I suspect the more you get of that the better, I also suspect you need it from peers too (adults are not the same). There’s also some value in learning to stand up for friends and handle complex social dynamics which don’t go away when you become an adult. Being removed from this entirely is probably not helpful, though obviously there are limits.
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    > handle complex social dynamics which don’t go away when you become an adult. In my experience, most of the social dynamics of childhood completely disappear in adulthood. Adult generally don't spend most of their waking time with 30 or so other adults who were all born within 6 months of each other.
    - _lacroix 7y ago
      But most adults do spend most of their waking time with 30+ other adults (at a point in life when the differences between ages start to flatten out quite a bit). It looks quite analogous to me.
      - learc83 7y ago
        School is nothing at all like work. Not even close. Do you remember what school was like? The social dynamics are unrecognizably different. The only place that was even remotely similar was when I worked retail during college.
msla 7y ago
> Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved? Is the socialization problem more due to lack of social interaction because they don't go to a school building, or more due to the kinds of people who homeschool being fringey types who wouldn't let their kids socialize with "normal" kids for fear of contamination? Maybe I'm too "Midwestern" but my mental model of homeschooled kids is kids who were kept away from the sinful secular world by parents who really, really wanted them to grow up utterly immersed in one specific dogma, such that even the local parochial schools were too broad-minded for them. They're going to have problems integrating once they leave home, but it isn't because their parents lacked the opportunities to let them run around down at the local playground, and building more playgrounds isn't going to help them, because their parents wouldn't want them around "those" kids anyway.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  That may have been the case in the past, but recently there's a trend for non-religious parents to move their kids to homeschooling to better their education and remove them from the toxic socialization that is public school (in the US at least). Many of these parents are well off professionals who can afford to support a family on a single income.
Thorentis 7y ago
It isn't "solved" in the sense that there isn't a newly found method of making somebody who stays at home with siblings all day automatically more social. But all the home-schooling communities I know of solve this problem by making sure they participate in exactly that - a community. This is more often that not tied to a church, but not always. But multiple (5+) families that all have the same approach to home schooling regularly let their kids go to each other's homes for different lessons etc. Then you add the church component and they get exposed to a broader number of families who also could be doing similar things. You don't end up with kids that are party animals, but you do end up with kids that are very articulate, talk like adults, can read social cues, and all things considered, more well rounded human beings than the average public school attendee. Does it always work out? No, but I'd say if you have the energy and passion, you'll get a better result. I personally don't have kids (yet) , but if I did, it would be a toss up between a good private school and home schooling.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  And how are they going to be meeting life partners?
  - Thorentis 7y ago
    People meet partners at all sorts of places. Sure, some meet them in high school, but I don't think that's the norm. College is far more common a place to meet, and homeschoolers still go to college. Or work. Or parties. Homeschooling just replaces most of your school years, which to be honest, isn't a great time to be making decisions about choosing life partners.
tathougies 7y ago
> Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved? Really? All the homeschooled kids I met at our top-ranked STEM college were way advanced technically compared to the other students and are now all married, with children, while the 'regular' kids are still dating around, no kids, no families. Perhaps homeschooled kids don't fit in to overall American socialization, but given that overall American society is one of falling (below replacement) birth rates, increasing loneliness, more suicide, etc, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

bonecrusher2102 7y ago

I think I'd have the same question. I have a friend who coached a club sport for high school students. They said that they saw, over their tenure, over 100 homeschooled kids come through their teams, and they can remember only a single one without significant social challenges. There are probably a few jobs out there that do not require the ability to interact successfully with bosses and peers, but I'd imagine they are few and far between. Looking at "success" in a given job holistically, I would be inclined to argue that "soft" or social skills make up a nontrivial portion of the requisite skillset.

nvahalik 7y ago
I guess that depends on what you mean by 'social challenges'. What are the expectations? We participate in a homeschool community which gives weekly (if not more often) opportunities for both structured and unstructured (i.e. play) social interactions. Balance this with home-interactions between their siblings, kids in the neighborhood, and folks at our church, they interact with a pretty big array of people, and we end up getting to work with them on issues a lot more diligently and quickly. Our group has a wide range of social skillset folks. From kids who are very hard-to-manage to visible gifted and talented people. IMO, the "problem" only exists if you, as a parent, don't get involved in the raising of your children.
- fossuser 7y ago
  I think in terms of time, weekly is a lot different than 8 hrs a day 5 times a week (plus more on the weekends or after school). In this comparison weekly is just the weekend piece. The cumulative time difference is dramatic.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    The cumulative effect of wasting (more or less) 8 hours a day 5 times a week is also dramatic. You can work to improve the social life of a homeschooled child, improving the education of a publicly schooled child is a much bigger challenge if for no other reason than the amount of time they're "stuck" receiving a rote and mediocre (at best) education.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

> Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious issues with social skills I’ve heard this narrative before but have yet to see it in real life. All the homeschooled kids I’ve met were years ahead of their peers in every respect, especially in social development. They carry themselves like adults and interact with adults as a peer at 16 or even younger. I suspect those who homeschool because they think their family and community has something much better to offer than the standard fare often do. Healthy families beget healthy children, regardless of schooling option chosen. I’d argue that unhealthy/unstable families are the ones whose kids would benefit from being educated outside the home.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> I’ve heard this narrative before but have yet to see it in real life. All the homeschooled kids I’ve met were years ahead of their peers in every respect, especially in social development. They carry themselves like adults I don't think you're contradicting fossuser's narrative. Being correctly socialized (evaluated as an adult) is being maladjusted (evaluated as a student). By this theory, homeschooled kids are well equipped to interact with the world, but unsuited to interact with college students.
russnewcomer 7y ago
Homeschooled mid-life adult here (graduated high school in 2001) Socialization is an issue because, depending on the size of the community you interacted with and how integrated your parents let you be with the rest of America, many of us who were more sheltered are literally from a different culture that people who live in the same country. I have worked long and hard to be able to socialize with people from ‘Regular’ America, and I still, nearly 20 years after I graduated high school, and more easily socialize with people from a Midwestern conservative homeschooled background. I sometimes tell people I grew up the in the same geography as you, but not the same place.
- rayiner 7y ago
  > I have worked long and hard to be able to socialize with people from ‘Regular’ America, and I still, nearly 20 years after I graduated high school, and more easily socialize with people from a Midwestern conservative homeschooled background. You're not missing anything.

robohoe 7y ago

I’ve noticed the same. One of them now runs a tech business and based on his social media presence, I can see why he’s hard to get along with.

axaxs 7y ago

No, at least not universally. My cousins growing up were all homeschooled, and all creepy to be around. One basically never grew up despite pushing 30, another went off to college and OD'd the first week. The other two are nice people who still live at home but feel a little 'babified' to be around. Fast forward to today, just moved in next to a home-schooled family. Parents are really nice people, but their kids remind me exactly of the eldest cousin...something just 'off' when you interact with them. I hope for their own sake they grow out of it.

eaandkw 7y ago

If done the right way I think home schooling is the way to go. I would occasionally run into home schooled people when I was in the Marine Corps. They were often times a little awkward but I think that that comes mostly from their lack of recognizing authority figures. Recognizing authorities and hierarchies are what most people mean when they talk about socializing I think.

learc83 7y ago

>Every kid I knew in University that had been homeschooled had pretty serious issues with social skills There's a lot of confirmation bias going on here. How many homeschooled kids with good social skills didn't you notice? There's also a potential selection bias in that parents maybe be more likely to homeschool kids that have social issues because they have social issues and don't fit in at school.

fossuser 7y ago
There could be some of that, but you pretty often ask people where they went to school and how they grew up. If there were a lot of homeschooled kids with good social skills I’d still expect to have met some.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Keep in mind that the reason people homeschool has changed a lot in the past decade. It used to be primarily religious reasons, but there's been a massive uptick of non-religious parents moving to homeschooling to better their child's education and get them out of the toxic school environment. Unless you're quite young, it's doubtful that you've interacted with many of these next-gen homeschool kids.
- learc83 7y ago
  >To be fair this is a pretty small sample to draw conclusions from. I think it's pretty likely given that statement and the small population of home-schooled kids to begin with, that confirmation bias explains your entire experience. But let's assume it doesn't. Home-schooled kids who do have good social skills are likely to realize that there is a bias against them and thus they aren't likely to advertise that they were home-schooled.

fjert 7y ago

I was homeschooled in a similar way described above, starting community college at 16. I was relatively sheltered and never attended any sorts of sports clubs or any other activities that would involve socializing with people I didn't know. I would say it definitely had a negative impact on my social skills, as if I was learning how to socialize 5 years later than everyone else my age. Working jobs helped develop these social skills to a point, but I'm not great at making friends outside of work and I still deal with social anxiety. I believe homeschooling is a great idea, but social development should definitely be considered. Not sure about the best way to handle it though.

TimTheTinker 7y ago
> never attended any sorts of sports clubs or any other activities that would involve socializing with people I didn't know There’s a big part of the problem there. If you know ahead of time that your kids will need lots of socializing with other kids, you can mitigate the relative isolation of homeschooling pretty effectively. Sports clubs, co-op groups, church groups, etc. — all are great places for kids to make friends and socialize.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Sure. We homeschooled our kids. When we worried about socialization, we grabbed them, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat them up for their lunch money. I'm kidding, and I stole that, but I have a point. Much of "socialization" in school is horrible. It's not quite as bad as socialization into prison, but it's socialization into a society that's rather broken. Why do we assume that socializing into that is going to produce healthy adults? Me, I wasn't homeschooled. I attended a private school until fifth grade, and then public school. I... um... wasn't all that well socialized by the process.

fossuser 7y ago
I’d argue there’s a difference between socializing and being bullied - the former is just more general exposure to social interaction. I suspect the more you get of that the better, I also suspect you need it from peers too (adults are not the same). There’s also some value in learning to stand up for friends and handle complex social dynamics which don’t go away when you become an adult. Being removed from this entirely is probably not helpful, though obviously there are limits.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  > handle complex social dynamics which don’t go away when you become an adult. In my experience, most of the social dynamics of childhood completely disappear in adulthood. Adult generally don't spend most of their waking time with 30 or so other adults who were all born within 6 months of each other.
  - _lacroix 7y ago
    But most adults do spend most of their waking time with 30+ other adults (at a point in life when the differences between ages start to flatten out quite a bit). It looks quite analogous to me.
    - learc83 7y ago
      School is nothing at all like work. Not even close. Do you remember what school was like? The social dynamics are unrecognizably different. The only place that was even remotely similar was when I worked retail during college.

msla 7y ago

> Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved? Is the socialization problem more due to lack of social interaction because they don't go to a school building, or more due to the kinds of people who homeschool being fringey types who wouldn't let their kids socialize with "normal" kids for fear of contamination? Maybe I'm too "Midwestern" but my mental model of homeschooled kids is kids who were kept away from the sinful secular world by parents who really, really wanted them to grow up utterly immersed in one specific dogma, such that even the local parochial schools were too broad-minded for them. They're going to have problems integrating once they leave home, but it isn't because their parents lacked the opportunities to let them run around down at the local playground, and building more playgrounds isn't going to help them, because their parents wouldn't want them around "those" kids anyway.

malvosenior 7y ago
That may have been the case in the past, but recently there's a trend for non-religious parents to move their kids to homeschooling to better their education and remove them from the toxic socialization that is public school (in the US at least). Many of these parents are well off professionals who can afford to support a family on a single income.

Thorentis 7y ago

It isn't "solved" in the sense that there isn't a newly found method of making somebody who stays at home with siblings all day automatically more social. But all the home-schooling communities I know of solve this problem by making sure they participate in exactly that - a community. This is more often that not tied to a church, but not always. But multiple (5+) families that all have the same approach to home schooling regularly let their kids go to each other's homes for different lessons etc. Then you add the church component and they get exposed to a broader number of families who also could be doing similar things. You don't end up with kids that are party animals, but you do end up with kids that are very articulate, talk like adults, can read social cues, and all things considered, more well rounded human beings than the average public school attendee. Does it always work out? No, but I'd say if you have the energy and passion, you'll get a better result. I personally don't have kids (yet) , but if I did, it would be a toss up between a good private school and home schooling.

selimthegrim 7y ago
And how are they going to be meeting life partners?
- Thorentis 7y ago
  People meet partners at all sorts of places. Sure, some meet them in high school, but I don't think that's the norm. College is far more common a place to meet, and homeschoolers still go to college. Or work. Or parties. Homeschooling just replaces most of your school years, which to be honest, isn't a great time to be making decisions about choosing life partners.

tathougies 7y ago

> Is the socialization problem for homeschooling solved? Really? All the homeschooled kids I met at our top-ranked STEM college were way advanced technically compared to the other students and are now all married, with children, while the 'regular' kids are still dating around, no kids, no families. Perhaps homeschooled kids don't fit in to overall American socialization, but given that overall American society is one of falling (below replacement) birth rates, increasing loneliness, more suicide, etc, I'm not sure that's a bad thing.