What the Homeschool Socialization Question Misses

Do homeschooled children get enough socialization? In this episode, unschooling coach Sue Patterson looks at how homeschoolers make friends, learn social skills, handle peer pressure, and understand social expectations without spending their childhood in an age-segregated classroom. She explains the important difference between socializing and socialization—and asks whether school should automatically be treated as the gold standard for either one.

Let's talk about:

• The difference between making friends and learning to function in society
• Why being surrounded by other children doesn’t guarantee real connection
• How homeschooling can give introverts and extroverts different kinds of social opportunities
• What children learn from interacting with people of different ages and interests
• The difference between thoughtful cooperation and automatic conformity

So let’s dive into some of it here…

How Homeschooling Parents Usually Answer

When you hear that question, “What about socialization?”, if you’re like most homeschooling parents, you know how to answer.

You start listing things:

• Park days
• Sports
• Scouts
• Theater
• Martial arts
• Co-ops
• Church groups
• Art classes
• Volunteering
• Neighborhood friends
• Part-time jobs

We start proving that our children do, in fact, leave the house and encounter other human beings.

But I think we may be answering the question too quickly.

Because before we start listing all the places our kids go, maybe we should ask:

What do you actually mean by socialization?

Are you asking whether they’ll have friends?

Or are you asking whether they’ll learn how to fit into society?

Those are two completely different questions.

Socializing and Socialization Are Not the Same

Socializing means spending time with other people—talking, playing, laughing, working together, and becoming friends.

Socialization is the larger process of learning the customs, beliefs, expectations, and rules of a society.

And when someone asks, “What about socialization?” they could be worried about either one.

They may simply be wondering:

• How will your child meet people?
• How will they find friends?
• Will they know how to join a group?
• Can they handle disagreements, cooperate, take turns, or carry on a conversation?

Those are reasonable things for parents to think about.

Children need relationships. They need opportunities to know other people, practice friendship, work through conflict, and experience the give-and-take of being part of a group.

Different Children Need Different Kinds of Connection

Modern homeschooling parents are able to help their children find the kinds and amount of social connection that work best for them.

An introverted child may be happiest with one or two close friends, while an extroverted child may build a much larger social circle.

Because they aren’t confined to the same classroom social hierarchy all day, popularity and peer pressure don’t have the same built-in influence. Their interactions can be shaped around the individual child—who they enjoy, where they feel comfortable, and how much social activity they actually want.

Parents still have to pay attention. We have to notice whether our children are getting the kinds of connection they want and help them find more when they need it.

But the old picture of the homeschooled child sitting alone at the kitchen table all day simply doesn’t reflect how most modern homeschooling families live.

Homeschooled children are at libraries, museums, parks, community centers, businesses, rehearsals, classes, volunteer projects, sports practices, gaming groups, and neighborhood gatherings.

They spend time with children their own age, but they also interact with:

• Younger children and teenagers
• Parents and instructors
• Librarians and business owners
• Coaches and neighbors
• Older adults

That doesn’t mean every homeschooled child has a huge social circle.

But neither does every child in school.

Being surrounded by hundreds of people does not guarantee friendship. A child can sit in a crowded classroom every day and still feel lonely, excluded, or completely misunderstood.

Physical proximity is not the same thing as connection.

Finding the Right Fit

What homeschooling gives families is flexibility.

We can look for the people and environments that are a better fit for this particular child.

• One child may love a busy co-op filled with other kids.
• Another may prefer one close friend, an art class, and hours spent talking with people online.
• One teenager may find their people through theater.
• Another may find them at a martial arts studio, a volunteer program, a part-time job, a community college class, or a group built around a very specific interest.

And this usually expands as children grow.

Their world does not stay the size it was when they were seven.

They begin arranging their own activities, maintaining their own friendships, taking classes, volunteering, working, driving, traveling, pursuing internships, or enrolling in college.

The parent-guided world gradually becomes a young adult’s self-directed world.

They don’t suddenly enter “the real world” at eighteen. They’ve been moving through it all along.

But Maybe Friendship Isn’t the Real Question

Maybe what the person asking about socialization really means is:

If your children aren’t in school, how will they learn to function in society?

How will they learn what’s expected?

How will they know how to behave?

And this is where the question becomes more interesting.

Because school is certainly one place where socialization happens.

But it is not the only place.

Families are socializing children from the beginning. Children learn language, manners, boundaries, values, communication, cooperation, and expectations from the people around them.

They also learn through stores, restaurants, libraries, playgrounds, workplaces, neighborhoods, teams, clubs, online communities, public transportation, civic events, and countless ordinary interactions.

That is how they discover that different places have different expectations:

• The way we behave in a library is different from the way we behave at a football game.
• A conversation with a close friend is different from a conversation with a store employee.
• A rule connected to physical safety is different from a rule that exists because one person simply prefers control.

Children learn to read the room.

They learn that different people communicate differently. They learn when to speak, when to listen, how to ask questions, how to repair a misunderstanding, and how to decide whether a particular expectation is reasonable.

That is socialization.

Help for Those Social Hot-Seat Moments

That freebie I mentioned at the beginning will give you actual scripts for responses you can help your kids learn when they feel like they’re in the social hot seat.

Sometimes knowing some possible responses can really bring the anxiety level down. I’ve created four or five options they can use—or you can modify—for typical situations like:

• Forgetting someone’s name
• Handling it when parents have company in the house
• Joining a conversation
• Leaving a conversation

It’s the Social Stuff Nobody Explains—until you mess it up! So let’s give them a little help with these.

And like I said, I have a bigger guide with 20 more scenarios over in the Creating Confidence community that you can use with your own kids. We also have that coaching call on September 30, where we’ll be talking about this month’s socialization theme.

Is the Classroom the Best Model?

I am not convinced that spending most of childhood in an age-segregated classroom is the best—or only—way to acquire social skills.

A classroom has its own culture and its own rules:

• Raise your hand before speaking.
• Ask permission to use the bathroom.
• Stop what you’re doing when the bell rings.
• Shift your attention because the schedule says it is time.
• Sit in a room with twenty or thirty people facing one adult who directs everyone’s next move.

Those are real experiences, but they are school-specific experiences.

They are not a miniature version of adult life.

Most adults do not spend their days exclusively with thirty people born within twelve months of them. Bells do not ring every hour telling us to abandon one task and begin another. We don’t generally raise our hands to ask permission to go to the bathroom.

So perhaps the question should not only be:

How will homeschooled children adjust to the real world?

Maybe we should also be asking:

How will children who have spent most of their childhood moving through a tightly controlled institution adjust when no one is organizing every hour for them?

Of course they usually do adjust.

People are adaptable.

But that’s the point.

School does not own the process of preparing children for society.

Is the Real Concern Conformity?

Sometimes, underneath the socialization question, there is an even more uncomfortable concern:

Will homeschooled children know how to conform?

If they are not required to follow classroom rules every day, will they know how to comply when someone expects something from them?

But knowing how to conform is not the same as automatically conforming.

An unschooled child can understand perfectly well what someone wants and still consider whether doing it makes sense:

• Will following this procedure help me get the result I want?
• Is this rule about safety?
• Is it necessary for this group to function?
• Is this expectation fair?
• What happens if I choose not to participate?

That is not a failure of socialization.

That is discernment.

Cooperation Can Be a Conscious Decision

Unschoolers learn that sometimes we do things we would rather not do because we want the outcome on the other side:

• We arrive at a certain time because we want to be part of the performance.
• We complete the required form because we want the driver’s license.
• We follow safety instructions because other people’s wellbeing matters.
• We meet a deadline because we made a commitment to someone.

They understand the connection between the choice and the result.

They may not obey simply because an authority figure issued a command, but that doesn’t mean they are incapable of cooperating.

It means cooperation is becoming a conscious decision instead of a reflex.

And perhaps that is what we really want.

Not children who have practiced compliance so thoroughly that they automatically do whatever they’re told.

Children who can understand the norms of the group they’re entering, consider the consequences of their choices, recognize when cooperation matters—and also notice when conformity is being demanded for no particularly good reason.

A Better Way to Answer the Socialization Question

So the next time someone asks:

“But what about socialization?”

Before you start listing every class, club, friend, and field trip, you might pause.

Do they mean:

Will your child have friends?

Or do they mean:

Will your child conform within society?

Because our children can build relationships. They can understand cultural norms. They can cooperate, communicate, compromise, and function within groups.

But they may also grow up expecting to understand why something is being asked of them.

And maybe that isn’t the socialization problem people think it is.