Are You Worried About Socialization?
5 Thoughts To Help You Combat Today’s Societal Lies
Socialization was at the top of a very short con list I made when we were trying to decide whether or not to pull our girls from public school. Nearly three years later, I look back and wish I would’ve realized socialization should’ve been at the top of my pro list. I can see exactly why it wasn’t though. I thought homeschooling would be a social disservice to my children because that’s what everyone else thinks. Ironically, I was completely influenced by my peers and the social world around me without even realizing it. Somehow, and albeit the work of the adversary, we automatically connect homeschooling to weird children who lack social skills. When others look upon homeschoolers, I would argue many are so pre-influenced by this stereotype that they automatically look for a child’s weakness and expose it “because they homeschool.” When, in truth, our children are just tiny little humans learning how to get along with their peers for the first time in life.
Socialization IS important, but, really we have to slow down and ask ourselves a few questions. First, what kind of social influence do we want on our children? Where are our values and where will our children learn those? Are we so concerned and obsessed with socialization that even unintentionally we are placing peer influence on our children above our our own influence as their parents? And what will the repercussions be of casually allowing our children to be peer-driven?
But, I get it. It has been so ingrained into our society that homeschooling breeds weird kids that it’s hard to see it any other way sometimes. My pro list to homeschool far outweighed our con list, but at the time socialization was such a big con in my mind that it trumped so many of the other benefits of homeschooling. If you’re finding yourself in a similar situation, let me start by giving you just five thoughts that have really helped carry me through these last few years and helped make me more confident in our decision to homeschool.
From there are “weird” kids…to…how sad I think this way.
When we were trying to decide whether or not to pull our girls from public school, I went in and volunteered in my kid’s classroom so I could observe my own children’s behaviors outside our home. Considering I was contemplating homeschool and worried about socialization, for the first time I observed children with a different lens and in doing so I quickly thought - oh, there are some weird kids here - even in this room. My kids are going to be just fine at-home. And, its true, there are different children and behaviors everywhere. I know lots of adults who I think are a little different. It’s the world we live in and it’s the way we are supposed to be! Different. Unique. My original thought carried me for quite sometime, but I’ve come to realize just how sad it is that we even use these terms to describe our social relationships. Shouldn’t it be less about categorizing our precious children as strange or odd or weird or different and remembering we are all just learning how to get a long in this world? No child of God is weird.
Healthy development and maturation only occurs when we feel safe and secure.
Are we taking a good look and asking what kind of environment are children the spending the majority of their time in? Do they feel safe? Are there more positives to their social influence than negatives? Growth in security is psychology 101 and if a child doesn’t feel secure in their environment, chances are they’ll struggle to learn and develop. This is true for social-emotional health and it will also greatly impact the ability to acquire academic skills. If the social environment our children are in is unstable, it’ll halt their social development or probably influence it in a negative way anyway. Think of the effects of bullying and lack of stability during the pandemic shutdowns. Unfortunately, too many children today are facing a lack of stablity away from home. Are we sending our children away too soon? Perhaps it’s a disservice we aren’t cultivating deeper roots in confidence and love and security before sending them into the world to fend for themselves and then expecting them to mature into healthy and happy functioning adults.
We live in a peer-dominated culture.
So what does this mean for the family? Our peer-driven society has not always been the case and I’ve learned it’s only been since the mid-1960’s that we’ve seen this phenomenon of the family being replaced by peers at a dangerously fast pace - especially with the development of technology and social media. Children are becoming more attached to their peers than to their parents. Are we even aware of how peer-dominated we’ve become? And, once we are, what’re we doing to strengthen our roots in God and family instead of the secular world we’re surrounded by? You certainly don’t have to homeschool to form a healthy bond with your child, but in our fast-paced world, are we doing enough outside of school hours to nourish the familial bonds that are essential to healthy child development?
Where does the responsibility lie to train and teach?
The responsibility to train and teach our children lies on us. It’s one of those thoughts that everyone knows, but for some reasons our actions just don’t quite seem to match up to our beliefs. Parents have become too complacent. At six weeks postpartum and especially once our children are into school full-time, the majority of today’s families put the parenting responsibilities on alternate caregivers or teachers and schools because that’s “just what everyone does.” It is much more convenient in today’s fast paced world to let someone else rear children. Are you seeing how peer-oriented WE are? We have become school-centered, home supported. Is this how God designed it to be? Isn’t it within a divine order that parents are meant to be the primary caretakers of their children? Even in today’s secular world, there is plenty of science and research behind the benefits of healthy and strong family units. The scriptures don’t say…daycare providers, teachers, or alternative caregivers should raise up our children, it says us. Now, of course not every parent or mother or father can stay home and/or homeschool and what if this isn’t what God intended for your family’s path? I know lots of successful families who have navigated public and private schools and maintained a very strong family unit. There are plenty of reasons why it can also be good to utilize outside resources for support…financial stability, single-parent homes, and other worthwhile individual pursuits. But, at the end of the day, doesn’t it really come down to whether or not we sincerely asked what the Lord wants us to do? How many people even consider homeschooling as an option or give it more than a split second thought? How does He want us to rear our children? What is our role? Ultimately, how will we move forward in faith knowing He’ll support us in what He calls us to do as our roles in parenthood?
What now?
I am certainly not saying everyone should homeschool. It will take another day and another post to talk about how we can provide healthy social opportunities for our kids at-home. Or, how we can foster a strong home life that supports children bonding more to their parents than to their peers especially if they’re gone all day at school and other activities. But, what I am saying is in a world that operates as socially as we do, we need to be more aware of this peer-dominated trap we’ve landed ourselves in. Once we’re aware, we can fall back on some of these thoughts and remember what we truly value. In doing so, we can make more clear and confident parenting decisions that align with what the Lord has intended for us instead of being driven by our own social spheres.
If you’re still struggling with some of these thoughts, whether homeschooling or not, I would highly recommend reading, Hold Onto Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. This is not a homeschool book, but will certainly help if you homeschool or are considering it and one thing I appreciate is that it is from a secular view point and explores the science behind why the family and the bonds within the family unit really matter. It’ll help give you some tools and suggestions on how to foster healthy attachments with your children no matter which route you choose for education. Dr. Gordon Neufield also recorded a great Ted Talk on this topic that you can view on YouTube.