So, what about socialization?

“So, we’ve decided to homeschool our kids.”

“Oh. Interesting. So… what about socialization?”

This question seems to come up quite often in my conversations with the homeschool-curious and those to whom the practice is a complete mystery. It was one of my chief concerns when I began considering homeschooling my kids. I still think it’s worthy of thoughtful consideration, not because it remains a concern, but because homeschooling is what you make of it. With greater background knowledge and intentionality about the ways we homeschool, the more positive and beneficial the experience will be for our kids and our whole families.

First off, we must define what is meant by socialization. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s “the process by which somebody, especially a child, learns to behave in a way that is acceptable in their society.”

In essence, it’s about learning how to live within a group. It means learning the shared norms, values, and expectations of a group of people. In order to do that, a person must learn about interacting with others in the same way she learns about anything else. First there is some initial knowledge and expectations about how to behave, then an attempt is made to apply that knowledge, and finally the group provides feedback (sometimes positive, sometimes not). That feedback leads to changes in the behaviors (through the acquisition of new knowledge), and the process repeats. Ultimately though, it will result in one of two outcomes:

1. Integration — Whether through complete assimilation or the evolution of the group as a result of your input, you become a part of the group.
2. Exit — This can be the choice to opt-out from the group, or the result of being forced out.

Integration is often the primary focus when people discuss socialization. How do you learn to get along with a group of people? However, of equal importance is understanding that the second option is not necessarily a negative outcome. In fact, for many kids, homeschooling IS the exit option from a system where integration would’ve been the negative outcome. Part of learning to navigate social situations is the understanding that you will not fit in all groups equally well, and that one of your primary tasks is to discern which groups to become a member of and which ones to exit. This is part of setting healthy boundaries, and figuring out where to set them is a vital skill to allow us to maintain a personal identity while working with others.

What groups socialize us?

When children are young, they are primarily socialized in the home. It’s the first place kids get to experience the language, norms, values, behaviors and beliefs of a group of people. As parents, it’s our responsibility to do our best to model the behavior we want to see in our children. (Like most parents, I often miss the mark on this goal, but it REMAINS the goal.)

Those very strong, emotional connections that usually start with our families (although later encompass our close friend groups), are often referred to as primary groups because they are the main sources of our knowledge about the ways we should act in order to be part of a group.

But as kids grow up, primary sources change. They are introduced to larger and larger circles of influence. Just beyond family is the parents’ peer group, which extends the norms and expectations of the family to those valued aspects of the parents’ community. As kids age further and join peer groups, they too become forms of primary socialization, and research suggests that the later influences tend to have increasingly outsized impacts on the eventual habits, interests, and behaviors of the child.

Many people conclude that homeschoolers are stunted in their capacities for socialization because they do not get the “normal” level of interactions beyond that of the family and lack outside peer groups. This simply isn’t the case for the vast majority though. And if you’re concerned about socialization, then it will not be the case for you. The term “homeschooling” can likely be blamed for much of this misconception. The term evokes the mental image of kids being stuck in the house, learning only alongside their siblings day in and day out without any external influences. But “home” is more than a place with 4 walls and a roof. It also comes with a door (sometimes even more than one), and this means EVEN homeschoolers can be exposed to social groups outside the family. It means that they too can gain the social fluency required to navigate a much larger and more complex society with expansive social networks made up of a variety of groups with overlapping memberships, often having diverse value hierarchies and customs that may or may not agree with the norms they learned in their earlier social development.

Ok, so they COULD, but do they?

Let’s consider the research to answer this question. In a comprehensive review of homeschooling research, authors Robert Kunzman and Milton Gaither summarized the findings of over 2000 academic articles, hundreds of which focused on the subject of socialization in homeschoolers. Regarding how active homeschoolers were outside the home, they cite data from the 2016 NHES (National Household Education Surveys Program, conducted by the U.S. Government’s National Center for Education Statistics, NCES) that surveyed all parents of school-aged children to see if “their families had recently engaged in a range of 13 activities.” (Activities included things like “visited an art gallery, museum, or historical site in the past month” or “worked on a project like building, making or fixing something in the past week”). Results showed that “homeschool parents answered affirmatively more often for every family activity except one.” (“Gone to a play, concert, or other live show in the past month” was essentially even.)

Beyond that, Kunzman and Gaither cite the prevalence of what they call “flexischooling” where “students supplement their homeschooling with public or private school classes, or local college coursework.” A 2017 study found that nearly 55% of homeschoolers were partaking in “flexischooling.” Outside of these formal, institutional classes, 2019 NCES data showed “31% of homeschoolers receive at least some of their instruction at a local co-op,” and a 2015 study of homeschoolers found that “75% of respondents had participated in a co-op at some point in their homeschooling years.” (For those unfamiliar with the term “co-op”, it’s basically a group of parents that self-organize for group activities and group learning that may include traditional classes, but also could center on general play, field trips, outdoor learning, or a multitude of other possibilities.)

In fact, it’s not uncommon for homeschoolers to have found so many social opportunities outside the home that it outweighs the time they spend learning at home. This is the problem that Cindy Young, homeschool mom and head of the Community Homeschool Enrichment Center (CHEC), near Charlottesville, VA faces. “I find it funny when people talk about socialization with homeschoolers because it seems like all we do is socialize. My kids’ weeks are typically packed with playgroups, co-op classes, history club, culture club, homeschool soccer, and plenty of field trips. At-home learning often takes a backseat to playing and learning with friends.”

Ok, so most do, but are they enough? Are they better or worse interactions?

The thing about homeschooling is that it’s done in so many ways, that research on homeschooling outcomes across pretty much any metric is consistently… inconsistent. This is more so a feature of homeschooling, though, rather than a defect. It’s very difficult to compare homeschoolers because the nature of the practice is such that it allows for maximum flexibility and customizability to fit the needs and desires of the children and their families. The desire to compare and contrast requires a limited number of variables, and a standardization of practices, which is the track that traditional schooling has taken. Because the process is not standardized though, outcomes across all metrics vary widely. This means anecdotal evidence can give you extremes on the spectrum. For example, you may read one article about how homeschooling is a path to educational neglect, and another one about how some of the greatest minds in history were the products of an education outside of traditional tracks. Both are plausible outcomes.

However, Kunzman and Gaither succinctly sum up the general trend in their review of a 1995 study, finding “no indication that [the subjects’] homeschooling experience had disadvantaged them socially and suggested that it may in fact have contributed to a strong sense of independence and self-determination.” However several other studies suggested that “homeschoolers occasionally express a greater sense of social isolation and appear less peer-oriented” but added “homeschoolers with more peer interactions generally fared better on socialization measures than homeschoolers with fewer.” This seems intuitive, but is important to note because it speaks to the need to intentionally seek out opportunities for social interactions if it is not your default setting (as it is with traditional schooling models).

As for there being better or worse forms of socialization, we first need to establish the factors that aid in positive social development.

So, what’s the ideal way to socialize children?

If you’re looking for a checklist or a formula, you’ll unfortunately be disappointed. We CAN point to things that are more advantageous and those that are detrimental and suggest ways of implementing those in the real world. So, let’s at least aim to do that.

First, let’s examine quantity. In general, intentionally finding social opportunities is advantageous, but the question of “how much” seems logical. There is no single answer to this though. Your child’s personality, familial time constraints, geographic location, transportation, and many other factors limit the amount of interactions possible. However, whereas some studies found that homeschoolers with more interactions tended to be more comfortable socially than those with less, Kunzman and Gaither point to other studies indicating that “a lower dependence on peer relationships may have some positive benefits, such as less concern about fluctuating social status.” This brings to mind the old adage that you can have too much of a good thing.

Also, the ideal number of interactions for one child will be different than for another child. Parents with multiple kids are often amazed by how different one child is from the next right out of the womb, and we have genetics to thank for that. Because they’re so different though, whereas one kid might want to do things 5 days a week and the other needs to be encouraged to even a single one, an “ideal” quantity will differ for each kid.

Overall, let’s assert that some quantity is necessary, and that you need to gauge each kid separately, but overdoing it can also be a problem. Therefore it would be advantageous to intentionally ensure that children are getting regular opportunities to socialize with other kids, usually increasing in number as they get older, but not to focus on “hitting a number” as your primary goal. Instead, offer and encourage them to partake in different activities outside the home, and they will in turn have plenty of opportunities to socialize and make friends.

So if not focusing on quantity, what about quality?

Regarding quality, we should go back to the definition and look at what types of interactions specifically further the goal. So again, it’s “the process by which somebody, especially a child, learns to behave in a way that is acceptable in their society.” Learning acceptable ways to act within peer groups assumes that the peer group is displaying acceptable behavior. Kids do not always do this unfortunately. Correction… people do not always do this.

There are groups though that tend to be more advantageous in terms of social growth. Mixed-age groupings are one example. Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy makes a case for mixed-age groupings in a traditional school setting in a 2009 publication. They cite research that found “student disobedience was considerably less prevalent in multi-age groupings than in single-age classrooms.” Additionally, for younger students, “because of higher rates of language exchange among mixed-age children, those in multi-age groupings had higher language development.” However, the benefits weren’t only for younger kids. Older students also benefited because mixed-age groupings “encourages older students to serve as role models or mentors to help their younger peers.” From an instructional perspective, this can increase the number of “teachers” in the classroom by allowing the older students to act as tutors. For the older kids, it is also a chance to review and firm up concepts. This repetition aids in memory and can act to fill in gaps in their knowledge. Even just a familiarity with conversing with kids that differ in age by more than a few months is a foreign concept to many traditionally schooled kids, which can create a divisive environment when they are put in a situation with kids in “other grades.” Traditional schools aren’t designed to operate with classrooms like this though. As the authors point out, traditional schools would face challenges implementing this due to issues ranging from teacher training to an incompatibility with the design of federal and state accountability standards.

Diversifying your experiences is important because different families have different cultures, different ways or interacting, and different norms and values. Exposure to as many different experiences and peoples will help them to better understand that there are many differences across the world, but also many commonalities. They’ll have a greater choice in deciding which practices they want to embrace, and which they do not. And when we experience those rather than just reading about them, we develop direct human connections that pair understanding with empathy.

It’s also important to take note of the values that a group holds. The term authoritative parenting (NOT authoritarian mind you) is commonly touted as the ideal parenting style. It is described as being firm but caring, while respecting the child by taking their opinions into account. This could apply to a healthy relationship within any group though. Mutual respect, and caring for the other’s well-being are important, but there is more to it than that. Gangs can be said to accomplish those in a way, and yet we wouldn’t say they were ideal peer groups for healthy social development. Passing on a system of values and judging right from wrong are crucial. It’s also necessary to teach your children how to identify the groups that they want to be a part of, and provide them with the guidance and freedom to opt out (the exit option) from them if they so choose.

Ok, that sounds great. How do we do that though?

Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Social growth can happen both in the home and outside of it.

Let’s start in the home. I’ll skip a discussion about siblings because that doesn’t differ whether or not you’re homeschooling except in the amount of time spent with family, not to mention the fact that plenty of families only have one child. If we accept that as a given, it still isn’t the only means of growth within the home. Since socialization is a skill set, it can be learned like any other topic. The educational establishment laments the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of discovery learning (defined as putting a child in a situation and expecting them to figure out the intended lesson), but this is exactly what most forms of traditional “socialization” end up being. This can be a slow and arduous journey. The opposite of discovery learning is direct instruction, which is where you directly learn the information you’re intended to garner from a lesson. This is primarily what traditional forms of education aim to do through lectures, although reading a book on the topic can have the same result. There is great power in the direct instruction method, however it’s rarely applied to learning about socialization. It is worth considering the lessons one might learn from reading a book like Daniel Carnegie’s classic 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Directly learning about how to be better at socializing and intentionally trying out those methods in the real-world can produce far greater results in less time than just being around other kids (or people… this works for adults too).

Outside the home, homeschoolers often find friends just by doing things with others that share an interest. Parents can support their kids by helping them research groups that focus on everything from handicrafting to Minecraft-ing. Give them ownership over the things they choose to do, as that’ll give them the motivation to be more engaged, and then you won’t have to work so hard to talk them into doing it. More specifically,

1. Ask them questions that will help delve deeper into their interests and curiosities like, “if you could do anything right now, what would it be?”
2. Write down their answers, and then help them find places where they might be able to delve deeper into that subject.
3. If you can’t find anything out there, create it alongside your child. Use the internet to research ways to learn more about it, and then invite others who might want to join you! These could be existing friends or new people from your homeschooling communities or social networking groups.

Specific to the homeschooling world, families have developed many ways to get together with other homeschool families. Most of them focus on education as the primary goal, and socialization comes as a secondary benefit. Here are some of the main groups you might look for:

1. Cooperatives — aka “co-ops” (as mentioned above) are groups of self-organizing parents. Sometimes these are informal groups of just a few families. Other times they have hundreds of members, dues, set locations, insurance, etc.
2. Tutorials — Sometimes called collectives, these mimic the structure of traditional school models, but are intended to be supplementary means of education by professional teachers hired by the tutorial group or organization. Often students can sign up for a-la-carte classes.
3. Resource Centers / Enrichment Centers — Instead of co-working spaces, these are like co-learning spaces where kids learn in a place alongside other kids. Since they are designed for kids, parents or administrators are present to act as monitors, guides, and mentors to the kids there, and depending on the center, they may organize formal classes, trips, etc.
4. Field Trip Groups — Often done through cooperatives, although sometimes standalone, these are groups, that organize educational trips for their members.
5. Hybrid Homeschools — These are structured, regularly meeting schools, and the primary source for a substantial portion of the child’s education, but meets only one or a few days a week. The other days may look like traditional homeschooling, or blend a combination of materials from the hybrid school and from the home.
6. Private group tutors/instructors/classes — Many ex-teachers, homeschool parents, and other organizations and individuals offer classes on every topic you can think of.
7. Parks/nature centers/museums — Many organizations offer classes and enrichment activities, and you’ll often even find “Homeschool Days” where these organizations specifically tailor the educational meetups to homeschoolers so that it’s not only a learning opportunity, but a social one as well.
8. Informal meetups / park days — homeschoolers often organize informal meetups not just as an opportunity for kids to hang out, but the parents as well. Sometimes these are organized through a co-op or resource center, and other times it may just be as simple as a parent throwing out an invite to anyone who lives nearby.
9. Community college classes — Many homeschoolers in the high school years take classes at a community college, which simultaneously acts as a way to meet others around a shared topic of interest, gets them college credits early, and gives them an introductory experience in college-level coursework.
10. Clubs, sports, and other extracurricular activities — Yes, homeschoolers do these things too. Some groups tailor themselves specifically to homeschoolers, while others don’t discern.

How do I find these opportunities?

Online resources are becoming extremely prevalent. I run an organization that aims to help homeschooling families find local organizations, groups, and opportunities like those.

Facebook is also a really common way, and there are Facebook groups for everything related to homeschooling, whether that’s navigating the legal system or inviting other parents to an informal park day.

There are statewide organizations that can provide state-specific information, and local organizations that can supply the expert local knowledge needed to get you any answer you’re looking for.

Lastly, there are individual organizations themselves that will either act as your local homeschooling community or can at least help you find it. It’s very common to go in and out of homeschooling, and in and out of homeschool groups, so that you can find the groups that best match exactly what you’re looking for.

So… where do we go from here?

As parents, our role can best be described as guides for our children. We should look critically about the messages we send both directly through our words, and indirectly through our actions toward others and the company that we keep. Focus on the things you can influence, accept the things you cannot, and help your kids to navigate the situations that allow them to be their best, unique selves.

In summary, here are a few key takeaways:

1. Remember the end goal. Socialization is about learning how to develop healthy relationships and work effectively with others. With the right guidance, this can happen every time they interact inside and outside the home.
2. Help your kids find activities that put them with other kids, or create them yourself!
3. Diversify your interactions. The more varied the backgrounds of the people they interact with, and the more contexts they get to experience and adapt to, the more equipped your child will be to navigate any situation they encounter in the real world.
4. Help your kids navigate and interpret their social interactions. Don’t prod, just respectfully ask questions as if you were speaking with another adult. You’ll need to be very specific though. If you simply ask “how was it today?” you’ll probably get the standard response, “fine” and the conversation will end. Instead try something like, “I noticed you waved goodbye to a new friend I haven’t met before. How’d you two start talking?” In that case you’ll likely get a more specific response. (This also strengthens their memories of the activity by getting them to recall and discuss it.) It’s worth noting that the more engaged you are, the more specific your questions can be.
5. Model behavior and help your kids find groups that do the same. It’s worth spending a little time laying out the types of behaviors you want to see in your children, and then take a step back to assess how those behaviors are being reinforced by their social circles and yours. Accept that you will continue to have less and less influence on those circles, but that they’ll never be too old to talk to.
6. Not all social lessons are learned from being in a group situation. Socialization is a topic like any other and we shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel.
7. Be intentional. First, set some goals for your overall homeschooling journey. See how socialization comes as a natural secondary benefit of some of the goals your family has already laid out. (Example: Your daughter wants to do ballet, and in pursuing that interest she is going to get involved with a group of other kids naturally as a result.) Be intentional about prioritization too so that you all don’t burn out. Maybe one planned group activity is enough. Maybe five. It just depends, so do whatever it takes to make it work for your family without feeling overwhelmed by it all. Growing up is a marathon, not a sprint.

And remember… Homeschooling and socialization are not mutually exclusive. Your kids will be alright. You’ve got this.