Life, Love & Literature

Social­i­sa­tion. It is one of the first things you are asked about by any­one when you say you home edu­cate.  The com­mon response on home edu­ca­tion lists is that social­i­sa­tion isn’t a prob­lem, if there is a prob­lem it is fit­ting in all the social activ­i­ties.  But is that the full picture?

I went to school. Did it pro­vide a good social­i­sa­tion expe­ri­ence? Pri­mary I think so, sec­ondary I think not.  Has it effected me as an adult? definitely.

My Pri­mary school was fan­tas­tic. We mixed freely, boys, girls, dif­fer­ent school years, worked inde­pen­dently but had a good sense of group and worked well together, had good rela­tion­ships with teach­ers (I still see some of them some­times) and devel­oped a lot of self confidence.

Unfor­tu­nately, sec­ondary school did a lot to under­mine that self-confidence. Being a bit ‘dif­fer­ent’ the good natured teas­ing which I’d never minded (abil­ity to laugh at myself has got me through a lot ) gave way to out and out bul­ly­ing.  I was never really badly effected by it though, or so I thought until recently. I cer­tainly never cried myself to sleep over it, or tried to alter myself par­tic­u­larly.  I had a few really good friends (still my core group of friends) and the rest I refused to let bother me, I never got upset over the bul­ly­ing because I shut myself down and stopped engag­ing with other people.

What has this meant for me as an adult?  I think I come across as quite self-confident, as long as it is about prac­ti­cal mat­ters. I’m quite happy to put myself for­ward as spokesperson/organiser, I find deal­ing with author­ity easy, I won’t say I like it but I don’t mind pub­lic speak­ing, I gave up on hav­ing any dig­nity a long time ago which means I never get fazed at mak­ing an idiot of myself, I can laugh it off.  One off inter­ac­tions over the years have got eas­ier and I’m get­ting bet­ter at, and even known to insti­gate, polite ban­ter with strangers. Where I strug­gle is that gap between stranger or casual acquain­tance and friend.  I’m not good at small talk, if it is of a prac­ti­cal nature I’m okay  I think my self con­fi­dence got dented so much at sec­ondary school that I pre­fer not to share much myself with oth­ers and in return I don’t ask that they share any­thing with me. It takes a long time for me to take down bound­aries in a group sit­u­a­tion (one to one I’m bet­ter) and there aren’t many peo­ple I feel com­fort­able chat­ting with.  I sus­pect I come across as stand­off­ish at times, and while I try to make the effort, the truth is it is a lot of effort and I can’t always be bothered.

What has this got to do with home education?

Well, obvi­ously school as a social exper­i­ment never worked for me. I never really con­sid­ered social­i­sa­tion that much when we started out, I started going to a local HE group when Jack was 3 and I assumed we’d get more involved and we’d add in extra groups as they got older.  I sup­pose if I con­sid­ered the social side of home edu­ca­tion it was to hope that the boys can have expe­ri­ences like I did at pri­mary school with out the neg­a­tive ones I had a sec­ondary school.

As a fam­ily I have no doubt we get on bet­ter because we spend more time together.  I think this is par­tic­u­larly true in rela­tion to the boys.  To some extent they are forced into being each oth­ers best friend. That is not to say they don’t bicker — the shock­ing amount of grey hair that I have for a 32 yo will tes­tify that they do, but I’m sure it would be worse if they were in school and they are gen­uinely close.

The boys are also both con­fi­dent and good at deal­ing with adults. They are very good at going into shops with­out me and are prob­a­bly as good as mak­ing polite small talk as I am.  How­ever being good with adults is one thing, I believe it is mas­sively impor­tant that chil­dren get to spend time with other kids, although I make an effort from time to time I can’t (and don’t really want to) play at their level and even when I do I’m see­ing it through adult eyes (or haze of nostalgia).

Despite the denials I have seen plenty of exam­ples of peo­ple hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties with home edu­ca­tion and social­i­sa­tion.  Firstly there are prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties such as pay­ing for and get­ting to activ­i­ties.  We live in a small vil­lage with not much on offer and rely on pub­lic trans­port (which is non-existent of an evening) which makes some things expen­sive and rules out some activ­i­ties completely.

By home edu­cat­ing we are sin­gling our chil­dren out as ‘dif­fer­ent’. They go to groups such as cubs and they don’t have peo­ple from their class, they don’t have the shared expe­ri­ences of home­work nd school rou­tines. They start with a dis­ad­van­tage and they have to make them­selves fit by the strength of their own per­son­al­i­ties.  So far the boys have man­aged fine, touch wood, and the only times the issue of home edu­ca­tion has arose (asfaik) it has been as a source of curios­ity and envy.  I think where more prob­lems have arose is that until recently we didn’t have a TV or game sys­tem and still refuse to get a hand help one. These are sadly such a big part of cul­ture now-a-days that I know it did make Jack feel excluded and dif­fer­ent so we cracked and got TV and X-box, although sel­dom watch/play.

Then there is the prob­lem of what if they don’t want to do groups?  Sam isn’t both­ered and I feel a bit guilty that he doesn’t play with kids his own age much, but on the other hand I’ve only a few friends and Pete is the same but the ones we have are pure gold, so if Sam is happy play­ing on his own and hav­ing just a cou­ple of really good friends who am I to tell him that’s wrong. He’s got so used to play­ing with Jack and his friends, that he finds it dif­fi­cult to play with kids his own age anyway.

Third prob­lem is our rela­tion­ship with our kid’s friends. If they were in school they would make their own friends and we’d have noth­ing to do with it, we could have a say in who they invited home and saw out­side school, but who they mixed with in the school no.  As home edu­cat­ing par­ents we have a level of con­trol over our kids friend­ships that I’m not sure is healthy.  I was going to say I don’t like some of Jack’s friends but actu­ally that is not true at all. I don’t like Jack’s behav­iour after he’s played with cer­tain friends and I worry that he gets taken advan­tage of, and is likely to give in and do things that he knows are not right to keep in with the group.  But to what extent do I or should I inter­vene?  I sus­pect the cor­rect answer is not at all, you have to let them take the bumps, learn from them and sort things out them­selves.  Eas­ier said than done, when you have to put up with rude, obnox­ious behav­iour from your nor­mally very polite boy for days after­wards or when you hear their friends swear­ing (at the par­ents swear­ing at their own kids ) and your kids pick up on it  Still work­ing on find­ing a solu­tion to this, I don’t want to con­trol my kid’s friend­ships, but some­times these friend­ships have a neg­a­tive impact on our rela­tion­ship and we have yet to find the bal­ance that works.

On paper home edu­ca­tion groups sound like the per­fect solu­tion, cer­tainly gets around the ‘dif­fer­ent’ label.  Over the years we have enjoyed lots of won­der­ful days out with home edu­ca­tion groups and met lots of lovely peo­ple.  But we are still yet to find a group that truly works for us.

From the kids stand­point one of the prob­lems is con­sis­tency, peo­ple drop in and out of home edu­ca­tion and in and out of groups, which means long term friend­ships are dif­fi­cult to main­tain.  Also they strug­gle with the dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of behav­iour that come from mix­ing as fam­i­lies.  I am incred­i­bly strict for a home edu­ca­tor ( I don’t think I am really I’m just very keen on good man­ners) which means we end up with a lot of — but so and so did, well you’re not allowed — scenarios.

Then there is the prob­lem of activ­i­ties.  Any­thing too struc­tured doesn’t appeal, study groups doing lessons and lap­books leave us cold.  Because we adopt a struc­tured approach at home our rea­sons for meet­ing up with oth­ers is mainly social.  By this I don’t just mean friend­ship. I look for oppor­tu­ni­ties for my kids to work with other kids as I think devel­op­ing group work skills and co-operation are impor­tant skills which are dif­fi­cult to prac­tice at home.  But despite being part of a num­ber of groups for a quite a num­ber of years have found these oppor­tu­ni­ties thin and far between.  I have found that social groups always end up being pre­dom­i­nantly young kids and Jack’s out­grown them.

Also it is naive to think that home edu­cated kids always get on won­der­fully.  Yes I’ve spent many hours watch­ing large groups of mixed age kids play hap­pily, but the minor tiffs ‘so-and-so won’t play with me’ type sit­u­a­tions still arise.  More impor­tantly I’ve heard of more than a cou­ple of exam­ples of bul­ly­ing going on and I’ve seen entire groups come close to col­lapse over dif­fi­cult (and undis­ci­plined) behav­iour of one or more children.

The main prob­lems though with home ed groups from my per­spec­tive is that they require the par­ents to socialise!  As already said I find social­is­ing an effort, as a result I tend to dis­tract myself by tak­ing on too much organ­i­sa­tion.  I’ve met some lovely peo­ple over the years but still find that some weeks I strug­gle to face going.  Also I find most groups develop cliques around some­thing other than home edu­ca­tion; peo­ple who live very local so meet up more often, peo­ple with par­tic­u­lar reli­gious beliefs, peo­ple with par­tic­u­lar parenting/home ed philoso­phies.  We’re very laid back and find we don’t fit into any par­tic­u­lar group, which means we often feel awk­ward and uncom­fort­able even at times unwelcome.

So where does this leave us? Despite the neg­a­tives I still believe that it is pos­si­ble for home edu­cated chil­dren to have very good social lives.  I think par­ents need to be con­fi­dent at recog­nis­ing their child’s needs, some need lots of social con­tact oth­ers pre­fer a few good friends.  In school they are sub­ject to a cer­tain type of social­is­ing, at home you can focus on try­ing to meet the needs of the indi­vid­ual.  Mix­ing in home edu­ca­tion groups isn’t essen­tial many fam­i­lies exist hap­pily with­out them.  Nei­ther is home edu­ca­tion the right option for everyone.

I envy those who have found their niche, groups that suit them. But home edu­ca­tion is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­ity and I believe as times goes on it is becom­ing fea­si­ble for more and more groups to exist and becom­ing eas­ier to find like-minded indi­vid­u­als.   Effort is def­i­nitely needed from par­ents and if what your chil­dren need isn’t out there you have to be pre­pared to try and organ­ise it your­self.  It can feel very hard­go­ing at times, home edu­ca­tors can be very dis­or­gan­ised and very opin­ion­ated (often with con­trary opin­ions).  But when it comes down to it we all want the best for our kids.  I’ve spent many years work­ing on try­ing to lis­ten to other peo­ples wants and desires but over the years my patience has waned and I pre­fer to step away from things that don’t work for us rather than com­pro­mise and choose to focus on the pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships that we’ve built and spend time with the good friends and like-minded people.

Home edu­ca­tion isn’t per­fect, and for us the dif­fi­cul­ties in build­ing friend­ships is a down­side.  But effort and time have turned up good friends (home edu­cated and not) and the ease the boys find in mix­ing sug­gests that we’re not doing too bad.