What about socialization?

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!

What about socialization?  What about socialization?  What about socialization? 

Whenever I mention that we are homeschooling to a new person, this is the first thing they say.  When we were first considering homeschooling, this is also the first thing I was concerned about.  In reality, unsocialized homeschoolers is actually a myth.  When I was reading the book, "Free Range Learning: How Homeschooling Changes Everything" by Laura Grace Weldon, she sited multiple studies about how social skills were compared between homeschool children and children who attended schools and the results were that homeschool children scored significantly higher in regard to social skills.  The reason is because in a classroom setting, children are mainly influenced by same age peers.  The ratio of same aged peers versus adults is usually 30 to 1, so these are the influential individuals who are teaching school children how to behave.  A same age child does not have the life experience or skills to have healthy social skills on their own or with same age peers.  In a homeschool environment, children learn their social skills from their parents, other homeschool children, and other people in the community during a majority of their time.  So apparently this plays a part in why homeschooled children often score higher in relationship to social skills.  I was really interested by these findings because in my mind, I always thought it would be opposite.  Now that we have been homeschooling for 3 years, I have a little more insight about this.

It does seem like going to school does have it's perks though.  One thing I have noticed is that school children often have more confidence about being away from their parents for extended periods of time than my own children do.  They may be more flexible with others giving them instructions.  These are just based on what I have observed.  School children sort of have their own thing away from their family, so it may give them a better sense of being independent at a younger age.  It's exciting for little children to go off to school for the first time and some times it makes me sad that we did not allow our children to have this experience, but then I start thinking about all of the benefits of homeschooling and this feeling goes away.

Here are some ways that we have helped our children with socialization:

1.  We do weekly park days.  We meet up with some other homeschool families at the park and the kids play with other children who are playing there too.  My kids seem to be good at including others in those situations.  Park days usually last anywhere from 2-4 hours.  Sometimes there may be an extra park day throughout the week also if a different group is interested in meeting up.  I think free play is so important for young children to learn how to socialize with others and this is something that they really would not experience if I sent them to school.  I think we may start doing 2 park days a week starting in September because not everyone can go on Mondays, so the more the better.  The kids love park days.  We also do occasional play dates so the children can have more one on one time with their friends.

2. The kids love going to extra classes aside from what we do at home.  We have a hands on Science Museum that offers science classes monthly.  My son likes having the opportunity to go to the class alone.  They do experiments and have a class, so the children go from one to the other and this seems to give him a sense of independence as he goes to his science class.  He also enjoys going to a forestry class where the teacher takes them through a wooded area and explains the trees, animals and plants.  This class occurs during 3 seasons, so the children are able to see how the forest changes as the seasons change.  My son really enjoys hiking through the woods with his class and learning about nature also.  There are many other classes for homeschool children in the community, but these are the only ones we have participated in so far.

3. We usually go on field trips at least once a month throughout the school year.  These vary from learning about fire safety and pedestrian safety at a local fire station or a local safety village, learning how chocolate is made, going on a tour of a candy factory, visiting a farm, going to a TV or radio station, the list goes on and on.  There are several local and international homeschool Facebook groups that I have joined and this is how I generally learn about the different field trips available in our community and nearby.

4. We go to the library once a week and have several families who we see regularly when we do this. 
My daughter goes to a story time geared towards preschoolers and my older son often will go to the story time with her since baby boy is not overly thrilled about it.  Since my daughter is not old enough to do the classes with her brother, this gives her something that she can do on her own and make her own friends.  We often stay at the library for a couple hours while I talk to other moms and the children quietly play with other children and look at books together.

5. My son is in Cub Scouts and goes to Cub Scout meetings several times a month.  This includes play time with other little boys his age. Some are homeschooled and others attend a private school.  He also is able to learn new things that are taught by other parents and the den leader and he always actively participates in these activities.  We also have plans of starting 4-H this year where they will meet with a club at least once a month during winter and spring.  This particular club will consist of other homeschool families, but 4-H is a wonderful program for learning and I'm sure they will meet a wide variety of friends through this experience.

6. I start the kids in special interest classes when they are 4.  My daughter will be starting ballet this year and my son actually decided to do ballet for 3 years.  He also played T-Ball and this year has plans to try soccer.  I try to keep it to one activity at a time so it does not get too overwhelming.  My son had the opportunity to participate in The Nutcracker twice. 

So these are just some activities we do to help the children with the dreaded 'socialization' concern.  I suppose there may be some families that just sit around their house all day, but from my experience and the experience of people I know, homeschooling has been the most social activity I have done so far in my life.  So unsocialized homeschoolers is definitely a MYTH.