What About Socialization?

"But how are you going to socialize them?" Ugh.

I was scared about socialization because I had a traditional school upbringing. I was scared about socialization because of the responses I received when I answered questions about where our children attended school. In the end, I have realized socialization is not that simple.

The suggestion from anyone who knows anything about homeschooling is almost always, "Homeschool co-ops can help!" While that is true, my homeschool path never included consistent homeschool co-ops. Homeschool co-ops are great...if you can find one you fit into and if you can find one that has good classroom management and interesting classes. I tried it for one year. Let's just say my kids did not enjoy it.

Early in my journey, I beat myself up about not having them "socialized." Then, COVID hit. It, in some ways for us, was a blessing. It took away the "socialization" question in the traditional sense. We stayed home for a long time. We were kind of an island unto ourselves like most people think homeschooling actually is. And you know what? It was good for us! We were less stressed overall trying to cram in "socialization" and dealing with the emotions that came in the wake of it. My family thrived.

Does that mean my kids were not socialized during COVID's early years? NO. Think about it. How do we learn to be social? We learn to be social through explicit teaching, naturally interacting with people, observing others interacting with people, and learning through stories. What are some ways my kids learned to socialize during that time of increased isolation? I taught them explicitly how to get along with each other as they lived. We read fiction and nonfiction books and talked about how people treated each other. We watched movies and analyzed the characters. They watched YouTube, (while supervised), and learned more about the world on their own. We studied character traits in our curriculum units as we were studying English, Science, and History. The kids started regular Zoom calls with a friend. They saw me start regular Zoom calls with my own friend.

When things started opening back up, we went back to the library. They practiced skills in talking with and making requests from librarians. When it was safe to go back to church, they began to participate in Youth Group. In fact, throughout their childhoods, they have learned social skills through plenty of activities outside of school like going out to restaurants, libraries, bookstores, amusement parks, general travel, festivals, museums, and playgrounds.

Are my kids perfectly socialized? No. An equally important question would be was I perfectly socialized by my own very traditional school experience? Absolutely not.