Homeschoolers united!

[Ani]

Got a few questions, stemming from curiosity:

How do you deal with the social side of things? At school you have to learn to deal with others your own age, younger children, older ones plus various teachers/visitors/school employees. Not saying everyone learns to deal with them well...but how do you "make up" for this "lack" of interaction?

Being in a room and being forced to get along with 30 kids born in the same year as you is super unnatural so I have no need to make up for that. Homeschooled kids are not hermits. In fact not being stuck in a single room 5+ hours a day means they can interact with all kinds of people in the community, including other homeschool kids. My kids in particular have tons of friends and are almost too social. They spend the best parts of the day outside in fresh air playing. They also spend their childhood playing with their siblings and forming lifelong bonds that would be far more limited if they were all off to different classrooms all day.

Don't sometimes parent and child get fed up of each other? I mean that is a lot of time to spend together. Normally a child being at school gives the parent a "break" and the parent being at work gives the child a break.

These are the main pitfalls I see which is why I wonder how you who HS deal with them, in so so many respects HS seems like such a good idea.

Learning to have healthy boundaries is actually a huge benefit of homeschooling. We learn to work out our problems and verbalize our needs for interaction/ isolation. I do believe that children being raised in a family and in a community is the proper order of things and I won't give up that responsibility easily and without thought. Brick and mortar schools can be right for families and might even be right for us at some point but from my point of view sending your kids out of the house for hours a day is what requires thought and justification, not keeping them home in the family.

[IronMike]

Got a few questions, stemming from curiosity:

How do you deal with the social side of things? At school you have to learn to deal with others your own age, younger children, older ones plus various teachers/visitors/school employees. Not saying everyone learns to deal with them well...but how do you "make up" for this "lack" of interaction?

Don't sometimes parent and child get fed up of each other? I mean that is a lot of time to spend together. Normally a child being at school gives the parent a "break" and the parent being at work gives the child a break.

These are the main pitfalls I see which is why I wonder how you who HS deal with them, in so so many respects HS seems like such a good idea.

Ani beat me to it. But this question (the social one) is so annoying for HS parents. When your kid(s) come home from school, do you lock them up in the house and not let them talk to anyone else? Of course not! Well, neither do we HSers. My kids variably (depending upon where we lived) belonged to Scouts, swim team, gymnastics, ran 5Ks, church, HS cooperative.

Hell, if I want my kid socialized like in an American public school, I'll take him into the bathroom and rob him of his lunch money.

Not attacking you Rhian, but you have to understand that this "socialization" falsehood is exactly what drives Children's Services and local school districts to attack HSing families and try to prevent us from our primary responsibility as parents.

As for your other question, you have to understand that you're not spending every single second of the HS day sitting across from each other like honored elder and lowly peon. When the kids were young, it was more couch sitting for everything except maybe math. As they got older, they completed a lot of the work themselves at the dining room table. My wife at one point was HSing 4 at the same time: 12th grade, 10th grade, 7th and 5th grade. The older two were doing most of their work by themselves, being checked by mom regularly. It can be done, and certainly there were times when mom and a child needed separate spaces, but less so than when I was growing up with two full-time working parents who came home tired with no desire to spend much time with the kids.

[Bluepaint]

It's alright, I can feel your frustration coming through! I know you're not attacking me. My questions were ones that I'm sure are extremely common and since I had actual HSers in front of me (so to speak) I thought you would be the best people to ask. Even (especially?) as a child I could see the vast numbers of faults in the education system we have and used to wonder about other options. It's like a lot of things, everything has pros and cons so what is the best fit for you and how can you minimize the cons whilst maximising the pros?

I think if one is really determined and puts in hard work then they can absolutely negate some of the initial negative thoughts people have about HSing. Ironically it comes down to the same things as mainstream schooling a) how invested is the teacher and b) what resources do you have?

[Henkkles]

I just came here to ask that same question to see it answered pretty exhaustively.

I can see homeschooling being much more viable in the States, but in Finland there's so little reason to so it's interesting to me.

[snowflake]

There are studies in the US which show that homeschooled kids overall are better socialized than those in a traditional school setting. From memory, that is because homeschooled kids are socialized across a wide range of age groups whereas kids in traditional school settings generally are socialized only within their own age group. I don't remember the name of the study.

[Bluepaint]

There are studies in the US which show that homeschooled kids overall are better socialized than those in a traditional school setting. From memory, that is because homeschooled kids are socialized across a wide range of age groups whereas kids in traditional school settings generally are socialized only within their own age group. I don't remember the name of the study.

That would certainly be logical and is a thought I had after reading responses here. Also, not all kids join clubs etc for various reasons but if your children are HSed and you are aware of socialisation then I imagine you ensure that they do take regular part in such things. As such the average HS child might be more (better?) socialised than your average mainstream-educated child!

[Ani]

Socialization is something you do to dogs. I don't need to keep an eye on "socializing" my children. Homeschooled children, just like all children and adults are human beings, each with their own desires and needs for type and frequency of relationship with other people. Any decent parent tries to meet their children's needs and to some extent desires within the structure of a balanced family.

I don't think this type of discussion is the purpose of the thread, and is not language related (so not really fitting the forum either). If you want to start another thread with questions related to language and homeschooling I'd be happy to answer them there.

[IronMike]

I will disagree a little with Ani in that I think this is the perfect thread for these questions as this is a thread for HSers to come together and it is in the "Practical Questions and Advice" section. Where it intersects with language is that most of us who are actively HSing are language lovers and, at least in my family's case, do our best (dare I say 'struggle') to get foreign languages into the curriculum. And many language learners who don't yet have kids or aren't HSing might have questions for us on the topic of HSing and specifically getting languages into the HS day.

I can see homeschooling being much more viable in the States, but in Finland there's so little reason to so it's interesting to me.

Henkkles, I am happy to say that Finland is nothing like other European nations, with respect to HSing; it is NOT illegal in your country, thank goodness. I wish I could say that about other European countries. There just recently was a case in Germany where a family had their children taken away for HSing and the parents were threatened with 4 years in prison. I am completely ashamed that my country denied them asylum when they asked for it (for religious reasons, as that's why they were HSing their kids).

[PeterMollenburg]

Socialization is something you do to dogs. I don't need to keep an eye on "socializing" my children. Homeschooled children, just like all children and adults are human beings, each with their own desires and needs for type and frequency of relationship with other people.

I tend to agree. It makes me wonder why people think it is so critical that children get socialization that would be otherwise missed at school. What about all the indoctrination they get at school? It is a shame to see schooling so embedded in human beings expectations. Isn't it interesting to see that people are going to school for longer and longer and longer. Are we better for it? I beg to differ from the vast majority of in what I think is 'programmed opinion'. I think education via a public system is one of the main avenues in which people become robots, learn to think on mass and not question rules and authority- and if you do, it must be done in a certain manner. We appear to live in a free world sometimes, yet the freedom we apparently have has been perfectly designed to keep us all in line. Any wonder some countries leaders have sought to ban homeschooling. Can't have too many free-thinking people out there who could potentially threaten the foundations of the perfect (control) system. Many of the socialisation experiences of schooling could in fact be rather negative, and the majority are probably unaware of this. Education coupled with media introduces children to drugs, a narrow financial view of the world, and if the environment is mentioned it's to program human beings to pay taxes because they are responsible for the damage and need to fork out more cash. Where is the teaching to really question things, the investigation of the whole monetary system and how money is created and why? The real history? and so on... Oops I went all political again

[Elsa Maria]

I will comment on a multiple subtopics

Planning
We wrapped up 9th grade mid-June. At that point, I already had 95% of our books and supplies purchased for 10th grade. I still have a lot of thinking and planning to do, because choosing the content is only Step 1. Planning the skills and assignments is Step 2. I will make a list of skills to work on next year (e.g., oral presentations, primary source analysis) and figure out assignments that merge skills with content. It will look all pretty in OneNote, and then we won't follow the plan because I will have a better idea mid-stream I will give you some details on the languages.

Latin
My child takes Latin from an online provider, and will have Latin 3 this year. At least in theory, my student has learned all the grammar and will now transition to "just" reading Latin. After this year, my student should be ready for AP Latin, which is based on reading Virgil's Aeneid and Caesar's Gallic War.

Danish
We will have to start working with a new tutor. Our beloved tutor is going out of the country for an exchange semester. I am happy for her, but sad for us! I have tentatively chosen our first novel. Due to its strong content, I am pre-reading it - but I think it will work. We will continue along in our grammar book and writing curriculum.

At the local used bookstore, I recently stumbled upon two new-to-me series of literature readers for Danish students. I am giddy over the possibilities

Socialization
I cannot comment on the early years, as we did not homeschool then. My homeschooled teen is confident and capable in social situations. What more could I hope for? Life as a well-traveled homeschooled expat has opened his world, not narrowed it. My child is on a sports team with peers, and we spend a lot of time volunteering with an organization that is filled with inspiring young adults.

Homeschooling in Europe
We are very, very lucky that homeschooling is legal where we live. Rare, yes. But perfectly legal. Some states in the USA require more paperwork than we have to submit.