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I'd argue this is why many kids are successful when home schooled. The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is kind of strange to be honest. I

• alfalfasprout 5y ago
  If you want them to socialize, then yeah they should be with their peers.
  • kbelder 5y ago
    But there's no reason to restrict the peers to kids their age, which is somewhat unnatural. They need socialization, but with a mix of ages. Not just other 7th graders.
  • lief79 5y ago
    Sure, but also note that those peers may be a few years above or below their biological age.
• giantg2 5y ago
  Well, those farm kids were 1 of 8 or so. So they socialized with each other.
  • irrational 5y ago
    This is a good point. Children from large families have the opposite problem of being lonely or needing socialization. They struggle to find time to themselves. And then all the siblings often have friends, so your actual socialization group ends up quite huge.
• watwut 5y ago
  Afaik, home school kids are not massively more succesfull. Some are, but others have troubles. And historically, kids were cared for in quite large variety of setting. And quite a lot of those were not romantic at all.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Can't agree. Unless parents make a specific effort to get them out with other similar aged group of kids (maybe other home schoolers) then the kid is going to most likely have stunted social and emotional intelligence even if their academic intelligence is off the chart. Even as a kid who spent most breaks reading something several grade levels higher than my current one, I still liked to wander off and hang with the other kids in public school. I still enjoyed comic books, flag football at recess, and cartoons.
  • djrogers 5y ago
    > the kid is going to most likely have stunted social and emotional intelligence You're either ignoring history, or assume that people who lived >150 years ago were all emotionally damaged in some way... Sure kids can learn from each other, and in a healthy way, but the structures that we have in place to foster that (universal public school) are fairly new in the grand scheme of things...
    • Hermitian909 5y ago
      For context, I'm a former educator with a lot of experience with homeschooled kids. I've also read a lot of literature on early childhood development and socialization. I think the phrase "[the kid has] stunted social and emotional intelligence" hides a lot of nuance. The more useful rephrasing might be: "this person's ability to relate to people and navigate complex social interactions, particularly in the culture in which they were raised, is below average". The important takeaway is what matters most is your ability to handle social interactions with peers. > people who lived >150 years ago were all emotionally damaged in some way "Emotionally damaged" is a very culturally relative term. If you transported people from 150 years ago to the present day many would be considered "emotionally damaged" by modern standards even though they were functional people in their own time. This is because social intelligence is measured against a person's lived context. Coming back to homeschool - many home schooled kids have not had the same level of socialization as their peers in schools. That lack of socialization causes a negative feedback loop where more socialized kids don't want to interact with the homeschooled kids leading to the homeschooled kid being even more under socialized. The window of opportunity to effectively intervene when this process starts is short and when parents fail to act I have seen it cause decades of suffering for their kids.
• slothtrop 5y ago
  Historically, kids played with other kids and families didn't generally live far from others. On farms, families are larger so it's a moot point. Infrequent contact with other kids can open the door to social anxiety and awkwardness as they grow. Not to mention, it's cruel. Kids are social beings too and they don't get their rocks off listening to adults talk down to them.
• qiskit 5y ago
  Ideally, the basics ( reading, writing, arithmetic, etc ) should all be done at home with their stay at home moms ( or dads ). Once they reach a certain level, then schooling should start ( maybe 7th grade or high school even ). Not only would that be better for the kids, it would be better for family bonding and community building. But the modern education system was created for the exact opposite. To limit family bonding in favor of allegiance to the state and teach them enough to be drones for the factory/work force/military. Children are resources to be processed by the state via their factory-like schools into products to be consumed by corporations, government, etc.
  • bendbro 5y ago
    Based and tedpilled
  • milkytron 5y ago
    > Children are resources to be processed by the state via their factory-like schools into products to be consumed by corporations, government, etc. When the word "resource" gets thrown around at companies and they obviously mean a human being, it peeves me. I will never use that word when referring to a person. When I'm involved in a conversation where someone uses it, I always ask for clarity that they mean a person, employee, contractor, candidate, etc. I know it's just a word, but calling people resources makes it seem like they are nothing more than something to be expended and used. And maybe that is the case, but I don't think it should be encouraged and perpetuated.
    • lostcolony 5y ago
      I'm not a fan of the more people-centric ones either, since they still are super abstract. Like "headcount". It's Bob. You mean Bob. You want to change the project Bob is on. Have we talked to Bob about it?
      • projektfu 5y ago
        What was wrong with personnel?
• celim307 5y ago
  As someone who interacted mainly with adults growing up, I’d disagree. Being an adult isn’t a great filter of good character. As a kid I was exposed to some backwords ideologies and toxic attitudes from adults, exasterbated by the fact that since they were adults they came with a position of authority. This also made it difficult to make friends and socialize with peers when I got into my teens, I felt like I missed out on a lot by not smoothly integrating into teen culture. Having a handful of solid adult role models is key, but a lot of social skills are learned by trial and error, and it’s way more helpful when you’re learning those alongside others who are also figuring it out, that’s also how new ideas and new cultural zeitgeists are created, by challenging old concepts and not having the baggage of the old way of doing things. Obviously there’s pitfalls with taking all your social cues from hormone riddled peers, but it’s a trial I think everyone needs to go through to prepare them on how to socialize with the world at large.
• IggleSniggle 5y ago
  I've known a bunch of homeschooled folks, and I know this is definitely coming from a place of confirmation bias, but...all of them were especially bad at code-switching. I think there's plenty of ways one could have wider socialization as a kid among adults, but it's much easier to imagine it coming to fruition in play with peers. I don't think exact age-matching is really necessary, but being around people that are at a similar life-stage certainly can't hurt in establishing "peering" where it matters.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    Was homeschooled, can confirm that I am terrible at code switching. Although it seems to have stopped mattering once I got to the "adult" world, where whether one is 30 or 80, there is a fairly standard template for treating and dealing with people. It was a relief to stop being in a stratified age driven hierarchy.
    • lostcolony 5y ago
      I was public schooled k-9th grade, homeschooled 10-12th (though doing college courses, some in person at colleges). I am also terrible at code switching (I fit in better in the college classes while homeschooled than I ever did in public school, for whatever that is worth). And always have been. And I don't see it as a problem, since the implication that it's beneficial in a given context implies that context isn't diverse or inclusive, and thus I want out of it, not to conform to it.
    • drBonkers 5y ago
      what is code switching?
      • Baeocystin 5y ago
        Changing how you present yourself to match the social environment you're in. Formal vs informal speech, mannerisms, what is appropriate behavior in context, all of that sort of thing.
• quartesixte 5y ago
  > Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for. They’d also have a fair amount of siblings and cousins, the children of hired help, and entire village’s worth of other children to interact with. And depending on the era, a fair amount of absenteeism when it comes to actual parenting. So having peers of your age was both common, historically encouraged (stories of childhood friends abound), and important in establishing your place inside your community. That being said, they were exposed to more adults on a daily basis, and integrated more into the life of adults. Particularly, they were exposed to the daily lives of adults at work. Which I think is a large part of helping to influence a child’s growth. Childhood as we know it now is also a modern concept — the switch from childhood to adult was more child > young adult who doesn’t really know what they’re doing, rather than our modern child > adolescent > young adult path. (Edit because I hit submit too early). Childhood as also being an experience of being sequestered from the outside world is also modern.
  • quercusa 5y ago
    We found that homeschooled kids were able to play with kids of a wide range of ages, while kids in formal schools quickly separated themselves into age groups, often to the detriment of the younger kids.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • rr808 5y ago
    10 brothers & sisters was pretty normal, not just your house but the neighbors all around you too. Children everywhere.
    • paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Yet a wide gamut of ages. And plenty of death before modern standards of sanitation and medicine.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
• gowld 5y ago
  Schools traditionally were mixed age, because there weren't enough people in the same area for single-age classrooms. This is hugely missing nowadays.
• MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  In what way? Most homeschooled kids that I've met have been painfully unaware of how the world actually works. They're slightly better at trivia because their parents try to surround them with "fun" things that they also like, but they're way worse at understanding advanced concepts. They also tend to be poor at behavioral adaptation.
• smrtinsert 5y ago
  Yes it absolutely is. I'm done shaking my head at the number of people I've known who have grown up with ridiculous IQS or magnet backgrounds just to do 0 with their life and be generally miserable. The average honors students have grown up the happiest by far. They got great jobs, cheated on exams, got drunk on weekends. Personally, I should have studied less I think and been a little more dishonest like them. All this bullshit over education - what a waste. Tiger parents excel at raising miserable soulless kids. It's no wonder they grow up angry, resentful, or just fail out and become the black sheep of the family. Tired of reading articles like this and the corresponding threads.
• HWR_14 5y ago
  > The idea that you should interact so much with your peers is kind of strange to be honest. Is it really healthy for kids to interact regularly with their peers? Oh yes. Social skills are vitally important. You have to learn those by doing. > Historically, kids would learn to work on the farm, attend church, etc and they'd see other children, but most of the time they'd be learning from adults how to act and strive for. I don't think that's even true. I think historically kids were told to go away/be quiet until they were old enough to be productive. I also think that we're producing better socialized kids these days.
• chakkepolja 5y ago
  In old times, kids would be growing in villages. There will be other kids from the neighborhood and family. Now it's replaced by friend groups in schools. I don't see much difference. They might have interacted more with adults than now, though.