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This doesn't make sense to me. We all get better at a talent by practicing it. We make mistake. We watch others. We determine our own preferences for what we l

This doesn't make sense to me. We all get better at a talent by practicing it. We make mistake. We watch others. We determine our own preferences for what we like/don't like. We learn, grow. Kids figure it out. How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better? You wouldn't get same exposure to the buttload of social interaction and scenarios in a closed system like that.

zaphar 2y ago
Practice, with guidance is superior to practice without guidance. Homeschooling doesn't mean isolation in the average case. You get a lot of practice as a homeschooler. The primary difference is that your practice is both with other adults and children while supervised and also modeled directly to you in homeschooling by other adults while public school is primarily unsupervised and lacking in a modeled behavior to observe. The number one thing people would comment to my parents about me was that I was so comfortable socially in adult conversations and environments. I wasn't even in high school yet. I had adult level social skills by age 12. I didn't learn how to interact with people from other kids who had no idea how to either. I learned it from my parents and practiced what I learned with both other children and also adults. I'm only anecdotal evidence but a number of studies have backed up my own experience. A few links I had on hand can be found here. * Medlin, R. G. (2013). Homeschooling and the question of socialization revisited. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(3), 284–297. https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socialization-2013.pdf https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia... * Shyers, L. E. (1992). A comparison of social adjustment between home and traditionally schooled students. Home School Researcher https://archive.org/details/comparisonofsoci00shye https://archive.org/details/comparisonofsoci00shye * Taylor, J. W. (1986). Self-concept in home-schooling children. (Doctoral Dissertation). Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/726/ https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/726/
- throw4847285 2y ago
  No offense, but the idea of having adult level social skills as a child is terrifying to me. Most of the people who I've encountered who describe themselves that way also talk about the burden of from a young age totally internalizing the idea of every interaction being a performance. Every interaction is a new opportunity to try and convince adults that you are worldly and smarter than other kids. That tends to mess you up. Of course, this is purely anecdotal.
  - zaphar 2y ago
    It didn't mess me up and I didn't treat any interaction as a peformance. They were just fun conversations.
    - throw4847285 2y ago
      Yeah, that's not fair to you at all, I'm sorry.
      - zaphar 2y ago
        No apologies necessary. You were just sharing your own personal experiences. I wasn't offended or hurt.
        throw4847285 2y ago
        To be honest, I just saw a really phenomenal dark comedy routine about somebody who was adept at socializing with adults at 6 or 7 and I've been thinking a lot about that dynamic and the dark side of being a precocious kid. I wasn't that extreme, but I related to some of it, and then I ended up projecting that onto your description of home school kids. And yet, this guy wasn't home schooled. I think those are totally separate issues. Would be an interesting separate topic, though.
        bgnn 2y ago
        I went to a brutal and oppressive public school in a 3rd world country yet I was able to interact with the adults around the age of 11-12. I was always one step ahead of my 3 years older sister. I think a lot of this was I was jealous of her getting attention from thrme other adults and especially my parents from an early age. I self learned how to read and write when I was 4, exactly at the same period she was learning at school. This resulted in quite a bit of psychological problems for me, since I always thought my peers are stupid. You start to isolate yourself, and this trying to impress adults changes form into trying to impress your boss etc.. My parents had no idea of course, so no use to blame them. But fir my own kids this is something I'm trying to keep an eye on. I think it is possible to distinguish what is genuine and what is for getting positive confirmation and attention. The best measure is the capability to entertain yourself. If a kid is able to not get bored when with adults without interaction they have a healthy amount of self confirmation.
deltarholamda 2y ago
You don't just stay home with your siblings. A major factor of how homeschooling works is homeschoolers have local organizations or co-ops where they do things together. And, yes, this is just reinventing some aspects of the public school system in the private sphere. But that is because parents, rightly or wrongly, feel they have zero influence over how the public school works, so they just sideload their own version. (I would say that the parents are right about having zero influence, as quite a lot of American public schools are so big and so bureaucratized that parents do not have a real voice without herculean effort.)
- zaphar 2y ago
  The big difference about that reinvention is that there are way more parents present in those environments than the typical public school variant. So both good behaviors to observe are more visible and also interventions are significantly more frequent.
  - deltarholamda 2y ago
    It takes more effort to homeschool than farming it out to public schools, so you're naturally selecting for involved parents. To the detriment of public schools, it should be noted. It also skews the perspectives of homeschool parents into thinking "this is the best system, why doesn't everybody do it?" The answer is, of course, to take the good aspects of each system and make the public school system more viable again, but there are too many entrenched interests on both sides for this to be easy.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      > To the detriment of public schools, it should be noted. Yes, but what means of violence do you possess to be able to force these parents to be involved in the education of other people's children?
  - geye1234 2y ago
    There's also a variety of kids' ages at these events, so the younger can learn from the older (and parents can easily intervene if this isn't going well). And you know who your kids are interacting with: you know something about the families, or at least know someone who knows them, so the odds of malign influences are much lower.
bee_rider 2y ago
I think it isn’t that unusual for homeschooling parents to form groups, you can do an art class together (otherwise hard to afford), start up some recurring social events, that sort of thing. K-12 school is sort of a weird social situation, right? You are mandated to be there (you can’t even quit or find a new job), your manager has the right/responsibility of in loco parentis, your co-workers can’t be fired and their only punishment for goofing off is that they might get nagged a bit, and your worst peers don’t care about that at all. I don’t think it is obviously good practice of grown up social skills. You can see the maladaptive behavior that sticks around after—office gossips, bullying, that sort of thing (I mean, that sort of behavior is present everywhere, but I’m pretty sure it is enhanced by the fact that these are strategies to win in the pressure cooker).
csa 2y ago
> How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better? This is a very reductionist view of homeschooling. While some folks certainly do have this experience when homeschooled, a well-designed home schooling experience will have an abundance of social interactions with non-family members. Sports is an obvious one, but there are also many homeschool groups that engage in learning activities together.
flustercan 2y ago
You get better at what you practice. If you practice unproductive social interactions and unhealthy coping skills all day, you will get better at unproductive social interactions and unhealthy coping skills.
Gormo 2y ago
> We all get better at a talent by practicing it. Exactly. Which is why kids need to practice their social skills in environments that actually reflect how real-world societies functions, rather than being sequestered in an institution with utterly distorted, artificial social structure.

zaphar 2y ago

Practice, with guidance is superior to practice without guidance. Homeschooling doesn't mean isolation in the average case. You get a lot of practice as a homeschooler. The primary difference is that your practice is both with other adults and children while supervised and also modeled directly to you in homeschooling by other adults while public school is primarily unsupervised and lacking in a modeled behavior to observe. The number one thing people would comment to my parents about me was that I was so comfortable socially in adult conversations and environments. I wasn't even in high school yet. I had adult level social skills by age 12. I didn't learn how to interact with people from other kids who had no idea how to either. I learned it from my parents and practiced what I learned with both other children and also adults. I'm only anecdotal evidence but a number of studies have backed up my own experience. A few links I had on hand can be found here. * Medlin, R. G. (2013). Homeschooling and the question of socialization revisited. Peabody Journal of Education, 88(3), 284–297. https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socialization-2013.pdf https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia... * Shyers, L. E. (1992). A comparison of social adjustment between home and traditionally schooled students. Home School Researcher https://archive.org/details/comparisonofsoci00shye https://archive.org/details/comparisonofsoci00shye * Taylor, J. W. (1986). Self-concept in home-schooling children. (Doctoral Dissertation). Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/726/ https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dissertations/726/

throw4847285 2y ago
No offense, but the idea of having adult level social skills as a child is terrifying to me. Most of the people who I've encountered who describe themselves that way also talk about the burden of from a young age totally internalizing the idea of every interaction being a performance. Every interaction is a new opportunity to try and convince adults that you are worldly and smarter than other kids. That tends to mess you up. Of course, this is purely anecdotal.
- zaphar 2y ago
  It didn't mess me up and I didn't treat any interaction as a peformance. They were just fun conversations.
  - throw4847285 2y ago
    Yeah, that's not fair to you at all, I'm sorry.
    - zaphar 2y ago
      No apologies necessary. You were just sharing your own personal experiences. I wasn't offended or hurt.
      - throw4847285 2y ago
        To be honest, I just saw a really phenomenal dark comedy routine about somebody who was adept at socializing with adults at 6 or 7 and I've been thinking a lot about that dynamic and the dark side of being a precocious kid. I wasn't that extreme, but I related to some of it, and then I ended up projecting that onto your description of home school kids. And yet, this guy wasn't home schooled. I think those are totally separate issues. Would be an interesting separate topic, though.
        bgnn 2y ago
        I went to a brutal and oppressive public school in a 3rd world country yet I was able to interact with the adults around the age of 11-12. I was always one step ahead of my 3 years older sister. I think a lot of this was I was jealous of her getting attention from thrme other adults and especially my parents from an early age. I self learned how to read and write when I was 4, exactly at the same period she was learning at school. This resulted in quite a bit of psychological problems for me, since I always thought my peers are stupid. You start to isolate yourself, and this trying to impress adults changes form into trying to impress your boss etc.. My parents had no idea of course, so no use to blame them. But fir my own kids this is something I'm trying to keep an eye on. I think it is possible to distinguish what is genuine and what is for getting positive confirmation and attention. The best measure is the capability to entertain yourself. If a kid is able to not get bored when with adults without interaction they have a healthy amount of self confirmation.

deltarholamda 2y ago

You don't just stay home with your siblings. A major factor of how homeschooling works is homeschoolers have local organizations or co-ops where they do things together. And, yes, this is just reinventing some aspects of the public school system in the private sphere. But that is because parents, rightly or wrongly, feel they have zero influence over how the public school works, so they just sideload their own version. (I would say that the parents are right about having zero influence, as quite a lot of American public schools are so big and so bureaucratized that parents do not have a real voice without herculean effort.)

zaphar 2y ago
The big difference about that reinvention is that there are way more parents present in those environments than the typical public school variant. So both good behaviors to observe are more visible and also interventions are significantly more frequent.
- deltarholamda 2y ago
  It takes more effort to homeschool than farming it out to public schools, so you're naturally selecting for involved parents. To the detriment of public schools, it should be noted. It also skews the perspectives of homeschool parents into thinking "this is the best system, why doesn't everybody do it?" The answer is, of course, to take the good aspects of each system and make the public school system more viable again, but there are too many entrenched interests on both sides for this to be easy.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    > To the detriment of public schools, it should be noted. Yes, but what means of violence do you possess to be able to force these parents to be involved in the education of other people's children?
- geye1234 2y ago
  There's also a variety of kids' ages at these events, so the younger can learn from the older (and parents can easily intervene if this isn't going well). And you know who your kids are interacting with: you know something about the families, or at least know someone who knows them, so the odds of malign influences are much lower.

bee_rider 2y ago

I think it isn’t that unusual for homeschooling parents to form groups, you can do an art class together (otherwise hard to afford), start up some recurring social events, that sort of thing. K-12 school is sort of a weird social situation, right? You are mandated to be there (you can’t even quit or find a new job), your manager has the right/responsibility of in loco parentis, your co-workers can’t be fired and their only punishment for goofing off is that they might get nagged a bit, and your worst peers don’t care about that at all. I don’t think it is obviously good practice of grown up social skills. You can see the maladaptive behavior that sticks around after—office gossips, bullying, that sort of thing (I mean, that sort of behavior is present everywhere, but I’m pretty sure it is enhanced by the fact that these are strategies to win in the pressure cooker).

csa 2y ago

> How does staying at home with just your sibs fair better? This is a very reductionist view of homeschooling. While some folks certainly do have this experience when homeschooled, a well-designed home schooling experience will have an abundance of social interactions with non-family members. Sports is an obvious one, but there are also many homeschool groups that engage in learning activities together.

flustercan 2y ago

You get better at what you practice. If you practice unproductive social interactions and unhealthy coping skills all day, you will get better at unproductive social interactions and unhealthy coping skills.

Gormo 2y ago

> We all get better at a talent by practicing it. Exactly. Which is why kids need to practice their social skills in environments that actually reflect how real-world societies functions, rather than being sequestered in an institution with utterly distorted, artificial social structure.