Homeschooling and Socialization!
It’s wonderful watching my children interact with others.
It is interesting to note, that the most criticized element of Homeschooling (SOCIALIZATION) is the most advantageous.
My children engage in Multi-Generational learning. They learn from our elderly neighbors, their grandparents, their aunties and uncles, their cousins, the lady up at the grocery store, the man walking his dog, who allows them to pat his cherished friend.
They don’t understand PEERS and my 9yr old son has a wonderful BEST FRIEND in our neighbor, who is 4 years his junior. Yip, Nate, is 5 and my son Golden loves him. He also has wonderful friends who are a couple of years his senior, from church, and he is able to interact with them all, without judgment about their age, experience or status.
I have come across homeschooled teens who rush up to me in the street, and talk to me as if I am one of their peers (yep, I had to surrender to the whole PEER concept myself). They were telling me of the party they were attending that weekend, the clothes they were wearing and the gifts they were buying. That was my first encounter with such confident youth, and I was gobsmacked!
Children naturally gravitate to ANYONE! They are just TAUGHT that they are ‘too old, too young or too intelligent’ to mix with certain others.
Oh to raise FREE RANGE KIDS!
Amen to all that! It is similar with kids in a Montessori school who have 3-year classrooms with kids cycling in and out each year. Those kids really know how to interact with little ones and carry on appropriate conversations with adults too.