Socialization and Why You Don’t Need It

Socialization is what I refer to as “The ‘S’ Word”. It scares off potential homeschoolers, paralyzing their families with fear, and causing their friends and neighbors to look at them with suspicion that they must belong to some political-fringe militia.

In reality, everyone has a socialization problem. Public schools are prime examples of bad socialization. When we took our children out of the government education system, we left behind only the people our children did not like playing with anyway. “Friends” we felt were bad influences could easily be forgotten about. The friends who remained were the ones my children saw most often anyway: church friends, neighborhood friends, soccer teammates, etc.

For the first few years, my daughter got together with her favorite public school girlfriends once or twice a year. That was as often as they all desired to get together, and it was more than enough to show each one how the three of them were drifting apart in their interests. As the girls matured through middle-school age, the public-schooled girls became increasingly “boy crazy” and focused on self-image. My own daughter developed new interests based on her homeschool experiences: reading historical Christian fiction and working with her collection of antique clothing buttons. As we met other homeschooling families, the old friends were gradually replaced with new friends with values similar to ours. It became increasingly obvious to our daughter and to us as parents that we held Family in much higher esteem than did many of our acquaintances. Sibling relationships were considered sacred to us and nothing or no one was allowed to interfere with them — an opposite attitude from the one held by most former-friends’ families. Friends can be highly over-rated; siblings will still be here long after friends move away.

My husband has handled many “socialization” questions from co-workers. Once, when asked, “What do you do about socialization?” he began by simply asking the person if they were referring to “good” socialization or “bad” socialization. That was all he needed to say. The co-worker took that ball and ran with it, saying, “Oh, I know what you mean! My own kid came home the other day, and he told me about what was going on at his school…” The question had been answered, and the distinction had been clearly made in his own mind: there are two types of socialization, and we have control over which type we subject ourselves to.

[For more on this topic, see the articles linked below.]
The Socialization Myth, Part 2
The Socialization Code
The Myth of Age-mates