Hello Again!
Since I have been home schooling for a while now, I recall one of the first questions people ask me is how do my kids socialize. Are they hermits who never get to see another human face other than mine and our family members? Do my kids have friends? We all have grown accustomed to these bizarre questions; but now I think we need to take a closer look at what to be social actually means.
Social-SO”CIAL,a. [L. socialis, from socius, companion.] 2. Ready or disposed to mix in friendly converse; companionable.
So you see if you are asking me whether my home taught kids can actually relate to other people my answer would be of course they can! My kids attend weekly dance lessons where they meet other children; my son takes guitar lessons as well. We also attend church on a regular basis and they have made friends there as well. The neighborhood we live in has plenty of children too and usually my home is full of kids because they all come over to our house after they get out of school.
One very interesting aspect of most of the home schooled children I’ve met is that they relate well with people of all age groups; this is quite unlike their public school counter parts who behave shyly or completely disregard adults.My husband and I have a theory that what happens to children when they go to school transfers to their world outside the classroom. Public school kids are all separated by age, therefore they learn to relate to just their peers for 8 hours of their day. Real life is not that way though; in reality we all run across all kinds of people from all age groups and I believe home schooling prepares kids to be well rounded individual because they are in constant contact with people of different age groups.
I’ll leave you with this quote:” The first quality of a good education is good manners-and some people flunk the course. Hubert Humphrey
Eva Santiago 