by Laurie White
In my last article for HERD, I discussed factor #2 of a Smithsonian study from the 1960’s on “The Childhood Pattern of Genius.” Here again is the three-part list of common elements found in the lives of the 20 geniuses who were studied:
1. They were given a maximum amount of free time to spend exploring, and very few places or things in the house were off limits (from banging on the piano to hammers and nails).
2. They had highly responsive parents who spent time answering any questions they had or helping them find the answers.
3. They spent a minimum amount of time with people their own age.
So now we are to point #3. This was the one that knocked my husband and me for a loop. We were like everyone else and believed one of the most serious drawbacks to homeschooling would be the lack of socialization. So what’s going on?
I remember when I was reading the Little House on the Prairie books to my daughters, it dawned on me that Laura’s mom never seemed concerned about socialization, or the lack of it, even though they were living in the middle of the woods without another house in sight, and later on an open prairie--isolated once again--and Laura turned out pretty well it seems. Instead, Ma Ingalls was concerned with character development. Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People points out a significant change in the early 1900’s regarding self-help literature. Covey claims that books began shifting from an emphasis on character to one on personality. The advice shifted from deep, long-term fixes to quick, more superficial fixes. Could this present day concern for socialization be part of that same shift?
Socialization is a modern term dreamed-up by modern psychologists. We might do well at least to ask some questions about it. To begin with, to whom do you want your child socialized? To other five year olds? Or do you want them exposed and “socialized” primarily to their parents along with a slew of other people of various ages? From whom will your child best learn manners, kindness, self-control, when to be quiet, when to be assertive? In other words, from whom will he best learn maturity and good character? Our culture is setup today to let the child spend the vast majority of his time with peers. Peer relationships become the main course of life, with family being served-up as an extra dish on the side. With homeschooling, these portions simply get reversed.
Maximize family time (in quantity as well as quality), minimize time with peers and you help create independent thinkers who know who they are. The key idea is to avoid “peer dependence,” that is, the inability to think for oneself. We complain about teenagers being peer dependent, yet we have actually bred them that way. We have socialized them primarily to their peers from the earliest age onward, and then we wonder why family values take a back seat so swiftly and easily when those teen years hit. We’re hyper for them to “fit in” for the first ten years of their life, but it is we who pull the big switcharoo. Once the children are older we find ourselves saying, “Don’t you dare fit in!” because fitting in now involves fooling around with alcohol, drugs or sex. Yet we are the ones who have changed, not them.
Another key to understanding socialization is to look at how it affects self-concept (how or what the child thinks about himself). Most psychologists consider a stable, healthy self-concept to be a reflection of healthy socialization, and yet homeschooled children appear to score significantly higher than their public school peers on tests measuring self concept. Dr. Susan McDowell, Thomas Smedley, John Wesley Taylor--these are just a few of the educators or psychologists who have conducted studies on socialization and self-concept specifically related to homeschooled children. All of these studies without exception have shown homeschooled children scoring well above average.
As the months went by in my own early years of homeschooling, and as I became more immersed in the homeschooling culture, socialization quickly lost all of its scary sounding concern. I began to reduce socialization down to simply making friends outside the family, which for us and for most homeschoolers presented no difficulty. Just think of all the extra-curricular activities you can name in which a homeschooled child might participate. From church, scouts, 4-H, swim teams at the Y, to dance or karate lessons, there is almost no limit to the menu. And most towns now have homeschooling associations that provide a variety of activities and get-togethers. Our group took more field trips than we had time for.
Independant thinking, healthy self concept, and strong character--that’s what we’re after in our children. So limiting time with peers starts to make sense, doesn’t it? As it turns out, socialization is far from being a reason to avoid homeschooling. Instead, it’s actually one of the reasons to go ahead and embrace it!
Laurie White is an author, teacher, and mom to three kids who were homeschooled k-12. She writes books and other supplemental materials for homeschoolers including her popular and award-winning King Alfred’s English which combines history and English in a highly entertaining format for grades 7 and above. For more info and access to Laurie's free downloads go to www.TheShorterWord.com
In my last article for HERD, I discussed factor #2 of a Smithsonian study from the 1960’s on “The Childhood Pattern of Genius.” Here again is the three-part list of common elements found in the lives of the 20 geniuses who were studied:
1. They were given a maximum amount of free time to spend exploring, and very few places or things in the house were off limits (from banging on the piano to hammers and nails).
2. They had highly responsive parents who spent time answering any questions they had or helping them find the answers.
3. They spent a minimum amount of time with people their own age.
So now we are to point #3. This was the one that knocked my husband and me for a loop. We were like everyone else and believed one of the most serious drawbacks to homeschooling would be the lack of socialization. So what’s going on?
I remember when I was reading the Little House on the Prairie books to my daughters, it dawned on me that Laura’s mom never seemed concerned about socialization, or the lack of it, even though they were living in the middle of the woods without another house in sight, and later on an open prairie--isolated once again--and Laura turned out pretty well it seems. Instead, Ma Ingalls was concerned with character development. Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People points out a significant change in the early 1900’s regarding self-help literature. Covey claims that books began shifting from an emphasis on character to one on personality. The advice shifted from deep, long-term fixes to quick, more superficial fixes. Could this present day concern for socialization be part of that same shift?
Socialization is a modern term dreamed-up by modern psychologists. We might do well at least to ask some questions about it. To begin with, to whom do you want your child socialized? To other five year olds? Or do you want them exposed and “socialized” primarily to their parents along with a slew of other people of various ages? From whom will your child best learn manners, kindness, self-control, when to be quiet, when to be assertive? In other words, from whom will he best learn maturity and good character? Our culture is setup today to let the child spend the vast majority of his time with peers. Peer relationships become the main course of life, with family being served-up as an extra dish on the side. With homeschooling, these portions simply get reversed.
Maximize family time (in quantity as well as quality), minimize time with peers and you help create independent thinkers who know who they are. The key idea is to avoid “peer dependence,” that is, the inability to think for oneself. We complain about teenagers being peer dependent, yet we have actually bred them that way. We have socialized them primarily to their peers from the earliest age onward, and then we wonder why family values take a back seat so swiftly and easily when those teen years hit. We’re hyper for them to “fit in” for the first ten years of their life, but it is we who pull the big switcharoo. Once the children are older we find ourselves saying, “Don’t you dare fit in!” because fitting in now involves fooling around with alcohol, drugs or sex. Yet we are the ones who have changed, not them.
Another key to understanding socialization is to look at how it affects self-concept (how or what the child thinks about himself). Most psychologists consider a stable, healthy self-concept to be a reflection of healthy socialization, and yet homeschooled children appear to score significantly higher than their public school peers on tests measuring self concept. Dr. Susan McDowell, Thomas Smedley, John Wesley Taylor--these are just a few of the educators or psychologists who have conducted studies on socialization and self-concept specifically related to homeschooled children. All of these studies without exception have shown homeschooled children scoring well above average.
As the months went by in my own early years of homeschooling, and as I became more immersed in the homeschooling culture, socialization quickly lost all of its scary sounding concern. I began to reduce socialization down to simply making friends outside the family, which for us and for most homeschoolers presented no difficulty. Just think of all the extra-curricular activities you can name in which a homeschooled child might participate. From church, scouts, 4-H, swim teams at the Y, to dance or karate lessons, there is almost no limit to the menu. And most towns now have homeschooling associations that provide a variety of activities and get-togethers. Our group took more field trips than we had time for.
Independant thinking, healthy self concept, and strong character--that’s what we’re after in our children. So limiting time with peers starts to make sense, doesn’t it? As it turns out, socialization is far from being a reason to avoid homeschooling. Instead, it’s actually one of the reasons to go ahead and embrace it!
Laurie White is an author, teacher, and mom to three kids who were homeschooled k-12. She writes books and other supplemental materials for homeschoolers including her popular and award-winning King Alfred’s English which combines history and English in a highly entertaining format for grades 7 and above. For more info and access to Laurie's free downloads go to www.TheShorterWord.com
