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> 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 i

> 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.
  - anon9001 7y ago
    Maybe it would help us all if coastal elites were able to socialize with people from "regular" America though.
    - pcwalton 7y ago
      There is no "regular America". It's a big diverse country. We only think that "coastal elites" aren't part of "real America" because the effect of the Electoral College in the 2016 election is fresh in our minds. Change a few historical decisions about state lines and we'd be talking about how the election of Hillary Clinton proves that middle America is out of touch with real Americans from California and New York. I tend to think it's a good thing when people from one part of the US are able to socialize with other people in different situations. Insularity is a lot of the reason we're in the mess we're in today.
ksdale 7y ago
This. I think acting like an adult is construed by other children as a lack of social skills, when it is actually great preparation for the 80-90% of their lives when they won't be children anymore. As adults, we remember all the "weird" homeschooled kids we knew as kids. But look around your office and see if you can identify someone as homeschooled (as opposed to any other, regular old kind of weird). We're in the very early stages of homeschooling our kids and all we've noticed is that kids on the playground who go to school are surprisingly mean (obviously not most of them, but on average). Thanks to the internet, our kids aren't missing out on pop culture, but they're also not taking their social cues from the coolest 7 year old. Seems like a win-win.
- fossuser 7y ago
  Not sure I agree. The kids I knew weren’t “acting like adults” in college - they were off. Didn’t know how to hold a conversation, they were uncomfortable, and had a hard time with social cues and basic listening/including people in conversation. If I had to speculate I’d guess they had a harder time modeling other people’s mental states along with just generally knowing less what to do - which I think comes from having less peer social exposure to learn from. This creates a feedback loop of social anxiety which can be limiting. Part of the reason it may be hard to distinguish homeschooled people in the workplace is because they’re largely not there. It’s hard enough to develop comfortable social skills even with siblings and a lot of exposure. I’d be worried that removing your kids from an environment where they’d get a lot of exposure makes this even harder for them in the long run.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    Anecdote for anecdote, all of the homeschoolers I knew when I was younger (N of about 5 or 6) who I thought were fatally weird turned into perfectly normal adults and I'm ashamed to have been so judgmental. As for homeschooled people in the workplace, my hunch is that there are more than you think there are, and you don't notice because they look like regular adults, but I have no proof! I happen to know a few professionals who were homeschooled, but I never would have known without having had a conversation about our kids and mentioning homeschooling.
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
A family I know just decided to home school their daughter because the school didn't have adequate support for her disability. (Tourette's) The home school group will always include more unusual cases that didn't fit the public school mold. So the entire group gets labeled, when we really should just probably avoid stereotypes for that group. There are just too many vastly different reasons someone could be home schooled. They could be preforming at a higher level than average, or lower. Yes in general they have less access to peers their own age, but I don't know what percent of "poor social skills" is due to lack of social exposure.
_lacroix 7y ago
> They carry themselves like adults and interact with adults as a peer at 16 or even younger. This is exactly the problem. They can relate to adults but not to their teenage peers. I'd bet they feel terribly uncomfortable at social events with only kids their age present.
- ksdale 7y ago
  I'm not sure that's very important. I cringe at a lot of my behavior as a teenager, and I was very good at being social. I mean, I'm still good at being social, but I had to unlearn a lot of the behavior that made me good at being social in school.
  - _lacroix 7y ago
    But imagine you didn't do any of those things and therefore weren't as social in high school. Would you be as well-adjusted as an adult? Or would you have felt isolated in ways that affected your development and left you worse off in adulthood? All the teenage cringe is pretty developmentally appropriate even if it's awful in retrospect.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      I don't think I agree with that. I'm a big fan of Sasse's "the Vanishing American Adult." He points out that what you call "teenage cringe" is a fairly modern construct. For most of human history, teenagers were integrated into the adult world, not set apart and left to their own devices in the modern context of "school." It's a malign symptom, not a necessary developmental stage.
      - ksdale 7y ago
        Yeah, I tend to think the world would be a better place if we made more room for young people in the adult world. I think kids are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for and I think setting them apart, as you say, erodes their ability to participate in the world and makes us want to set them even further apart. If we treated them like whole people who can do things, I think they would start acting like whole people who can do things, much, much earlier.
jhloa2 7y ago
I was homeschooled until sophomore year of high school. While there were certainly some benefits and I don't totally resent my upbringing, I do feel like I've had to work extra hard to develop my social skills. I know dozens of other homeschooled kids and I would say that the vast majority of them ended up having major social deficiencies. I don't regret being homeschooled through elementary school as it gave me plenty of opportunity to explore areas that I was interested in, only mildly regret missing middle school since many of my friends consider it a miserable time of their lives, but I absolutely regret missing freshman year of high school. I would very highly recommend that any parents thinking about homeschooling their kids very thoroughly consider their choices. So many of the parents I knew taught their kids at home out of fear and ended up negatively impacting their children's lives dramatically.

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.
- anon9001 7y ago
  Maybe it would help us all if coastal elites were able to socialize with people from "regular" America though.
  - pcwalton 7y ago
    There is no "regular America". It's a big diverse country. We only think that "coastal elites" aren't part of "real America" because the effect of the Electoral College in the 2016 election is fresh in our minds. Change a few historical decisions about state lines and we'd be talking about how the election of Hillary Clinton proves that middle America is out of touch with real Americans from California and New York. I tend to think it's a good thing when people from one part of the US are able to socialize with other people in different situations. Insularity is a lot of the reason we're in the mess we're in today.

ksdale 7y ago

This. I think acting like an adult is construed by other children as a lack of social skills, when it is actually great preparation for the 80-90% of their lives when they won't be children anymore. As adults, we remember all the "weird" homeschooled kids we knew as kids. But look around your office and see if you can identify someone as homeschooled (as opposed to any other, regular old kind of weird). We're in the very early stages of homeschooling our kids and all we've noticed is that kids on the playground who go to school are surprisingly mean (obviously not most of them, but on average). Thanks to the internet, our kids aren't missing out on pop culture, but they're also not taking their social cues from the coolest 7 year old. Seems like a win-win.

fossuser 7y ago
Not sure I agree. The kids I knew weren’t “acting like adults” in college - they were off. Didn’t know how to hold a conversation, they were uncomfortable, and had a hard time with social cues and basic listening/including people in conversation. If I had to speculate I’d guess they had a harder time modeling other people’s mental states along with just generally knowing less what to do - which I think comes from having less peer social exposure to learn from. This creates a feedback loop of social anxiety which can be limiting. Part of the reason it may be hard to distinguish homeschooled people in the workplace is because they’re largely not there. It’s hard enough to develop comfortable social skills even with siblings and a lot of exposure. I’d be worried that removing your kids from an environment where they’d get a lot of exposure makes this even harder for them in the long run.
- ksdale 7y ago
  Anecdote for anecdote, all of the homeschoolers I knew when I was younger (N of about 5 or 6) who I thought were fatally weird turned into perfectly normal adults and I'm ashamed to have been so judgmental. As for homeschooled people in the workplace, my hunch is that there are more than you think there are, and you don't notice because they look like regular adults, but I have no proof! I happen to know a few professionals who were homeschooled, but I never would have known without having had a conversation about our kids and mentioning homeschooling.

ghostbrainalpha 7y ago

A family I know just decided to home school their daughter because the school didn't have adequate support for her disability. (Tourette's) The home school group will always include more unusual cases that didn't fit the public school mold. So the entire group gets labeled, when we really should just probably avoid stereotypes for that group. There are just too many vastly different reasons someone could be home schooled. They could be preforming at a higher level than average, or lower. Yes in general they have less access to peers their own age, but I don't know what percent of "poor social skills" is due to lack of social exposure.

_lacroix 7y ago

> They carry themselves like adults and interact with adults as a peer at 16 or even younger. This is exactly the problem. They can relate to adults but not to their teenage peers. I'd bet they feel terribly uncomfortable at social events with only kids their age present.

ksdale 7y ago
I'm not sure that's very important. I cringe at a lot of my behavior as a teenager, and I was very good at being social. I mean, I'm still good at being social, but I had to unlearn a lot of the behavior that made me good at being social in school.
- _lacroix 7y ago
  But imagine you didn't do any of those things and therefore weren't as social in high school. Would you be as well-adjusted as an adult? Or would you have felt isolated in ways that affected your development and left you worse off in adulthood? All the teenage cringe is pretty developmentally appropriate even if it's awful in retrospect.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I don't think I agree with that. I'm a big fan of Sasse's "the Vanishing American Adult." He points out that what you call "teenage cringe" is a fairly modern construct. For most of human history, teenagers were integrated into the adult world, not set apart and left to their own devices in the modern context of "school." It's a malign symptom, not a necessary developmental stage.
    - ksdale 7y ago
      Yeah, I tend to think the world would be a better place if we made more room for young people in the adult world. I think kids are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for and I think setting them apart, as you say, erodes their ability to participate in the world and makes us want to set them even further apart. If we treated them like whole people who can do things, I think they would start acting like whole people who can do things, much, much earlier.

jhloa2 7y ago

I was homeschooled until sophomore year of high school. While there were certainly some benefits and I don't totally resent my upbringing, I do feel like I've had to work extra hard to develop my social skills. I know dozens of other homeschooled kids and I would say that the vast majority of them ended up having major social deficiencies. I don't regret being homeschooled through elementary school as it gave me plenty of opportunity to explore areas that I was interested in, only mildly regret missing middle school since many of my friends consider it a miserable time of their lives, but I absolutely regret missing freshman year of high school. I would very highly recommend that any parents thinking about homeschooling their kids very thoroughly consider their choices. So many of the parents I knew taught their kids at home out of fear and ended up negatively impacting their children's lives dramatically.