One of the big fears that parents have when considering homeschooling their children is whether or not they’ll develop adequate social skills if they don’t go to school with other kids their age. If you’re considering homeschooling for your child, you may have this question in the back of your mind as well.
There’s no evidence that homeschooled children grow up to be any more socially awkward than their traditionally educated peers. So long as your child has other avenues to socialize, homeschooling has no negative impact on their social skills.
In this article, I’ll explore in-depth what the research says about how homeschooling affects a child’s social skills, positive influences on socialization through both homeschooling and traditional education, and offer some areas outside of school in which homeschooled children can still socialize with their peers.
What Does the Research Say About How Homeschooling Impacts Children’s Social Skills?
Quite a bit of research has been conducted concerning homeschoolings’ long-term effects on adulthood. Much of this research has been focused on children’s social skills.
Research about homeschooling and children’s social skills is limited, but the data collected suggests that homeschooled children don’t have negatively impacted social skills by avoiding traditional education. In some areas, they actually surpass their non-homeschooled peers.
The research conducted on homeschooled children indicates that children who avoid traditional education show less “problem behavior” and are more emotionally stable than other teenagers during adolescence.
Furthermore, during these years, homeschooled teenagers tend to form healthier relationships with their peers and have better relationships with adults, including their parents.
In adulthood, people who were homeschooled as children are typically more involved in their communities, turning out to vote and volunteering or performing community service more regularly than their traditionally educated peers.
While this data suggests that homeschooling effectively is more likely to turn your children into healthy, model citizens, it’s important to consider the widespread limitations behind this information.
Potential Flaws in the Data
When analyzing the results from the studies, it’s easy to immediately assume that homeschooling your children has been scientifically proven to affect children positively. However, the reality is that the data is much more limited, and the results are more conflicting when you look deeper.
Robert Kunzman and Milton Gaither released “Homeschooling: An Updated Comprehensive Survey of the Research” in 2020, which is an unbiased examination of modern homeschooling research. In it, they noted three significant flaws with the current homeschooling research informing data on the socialization of homeschooled kids. These are:
- The results of these studies are based on reports from homeschooled children and their parents who are volunteer participants; this means that there’s a likelihood that these parents are highly engaged and functional.
- The data presented is based on reports from the children and parents rather than objective observation, suggesting the data is less likely to be unbiased.
- These studies generally “Treat school attendance as a binary,” which means that there’s no differentiation between children who are exclusively homeschooled and those that have a hybrid education system (meaning they go to school or co-op part-time).
By objectively examining these flaws, it’s easy to understand that the data collected on the socialization of homeschoolers is imperfect.
This doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that it’s wholly inaccurate. The positive socialization of the homeschooled children sampled still suggests that homeschooling doesn’t inherently correlate to social awkwardness.
Perhaps we can instead interpret this as homeschooled children aren’t necessarily more or less socially awkward than their traditionally educated peers. Under the right circumstances, homeschooling can actually positively impact a child’s social skills.
What Are Positive Aspects of Homeschooling in Regards to Socialization?
So long as we remember that there are limitations to the data gathered, we can still interpret important information regarding the socialization of homeschooled children from it. Furthermore, there are objective pros to homeschooling that traditional in-person education can’t offer.
By being homeschooled instead of attending school in person, you can educate your children in a more controlled environment that avoids much of the traumas inflicted on young people when subjected to forced interactions with their peers in school.
These include, but aren’t limited to:
- More opportunities to learn at their own pace and focus on subject matter that’s of interest to them.
- A lower likelihood to be exposed to bullying.
- A lower likelihood to be exposed to peer pressure.
- Education is centered in a real-world environment rather than being limited to a classroom, with socialization amongst people outside their peer group.
- More control over curriculum, with the ability to focus on practical topics such as finances, taxes, nutrition, mental health, and so much more.
- No large classroom setting means that you can tailor education to the individual child.
- Freedom to enroll children in a variety of alternative education and extracurricular activities with people from diverse age groups and backgrounds
One of the most positive aspects of homeschooling is the ability to tailor education to the individual child and have the freedom to control the curriculum. In addition to this, education isn’t confined to a classroom.
Think about how much better kids in traditional school settings learn when they go on field trips. Hands-on and real-world learning help children understand and conceptualize topics they’re learning about, and there are far more opportunities for this when they’re homeschooled.
While there are undoubtedly many positives to homeschooling children, there are also factors that’ll impact their socialization that they’re more likely to get in a traditional school setting over homeschooling.
Aspects of Socialization That Children Get From Attending School in Person
It’s important to consider all alternatives when deciding on a form of education for your child. While we’ve determined that homeschooling doesn’t inherently produce socially awkward children, there are still a number of positive influences that traditional in-person schooling can have on your child.
Attending school in person means that children are consistently exposed to their peers, which can both negatively and positively impact their ability to socialize.
Below are some of the main ways that sending your child to traditional schooling can positively impact their social skills:
- Constant exposure to their peers means that there’s a high likelihood your child will be able to find friends their own age. The sheer volume of children attending schools increases the likelihood for your child to make friends.
- Most public school attendance is decided by geographical location, which means that your child will be able to make friends with their peers who live in close proximity, perhaps even walking distance from themselves.
- Traditional education provides comprehensive studying on various topics and has extracurricular activities for school students.
- Non-schooling periods such as recess and lunch allow your child play and relaxation time to develop social skills with their peers.
- School connections can turn into lifelong friendships and can also help with career networking later in life.
- Traditional schooling exposes your child to people their age with different lived experiences, which can be challenging to replicate in a home environment.
In-person schooling exposes your child to a large population of their peers at any given time. While this can have unwanted side effects if they experience bullying or peer pressure, it can also help prepare them for the real world.
Constantly being in a position where they’re expected to adapt to the people and events around them can ensure flexibility later in life.
Areas Outside of School That Offer Homeschooled Children the Ability To Socialize With Their Peers
The great thing about homeschooling is how much flexibility it allows parents to control their children’s educational experience.
There are so many ways to give your child the opportunity to socialize with people their own age and adults. Below are some environments in which your homeschooled child can hone their social skills:
- Enroll your child in community classes; this can be in a broad range of topics at the beginning and more focused on their interests later in life.
- Enroll your child in community sports or see if they can join local school sports teams.
- Encourage your child to handle socialization outside of the home; have them order at a restaurant or pay for groceries at the store.
- Spend time at the park, especially when your child is young, to encourage organic connections with people around their age.
- Encourage your child to take an interest in the local art scene through music and art classes, community plays, and more.
- Look for opportunities for dual-enrollment at local community colleges as your child reaches high school age. This is an excellent opportunity for them to meet new people and prepare them for further education.
- Volunteer and participate in community service. This can be tailored to their interests, so if they’re an animal lover, encourage them to volunteer at their local animal shelter.
- Enroll them in camps where they can meet people with similar interests.
There are so many ways to get your child engaged in the community and give them opportunities to socialize with people outside of the classroom.
Final Thoughts
Research shows that homeschoolers aren’t inherently more socially awkward because of being educated in a non-traditional environment.
Homeschooled children have plenty of opportunities for socialization with their peers at all stages of life through extracurricular activities and hybrid education models.
In fact, when it’s made a priority, homeschooled children can have more exposure to people within and outside of their peer group than children who are educated through traditional means.
Additionally, with an ever-changing online world, social media and online learning now allow children more opportunities to connect with their peers online than ever before.
Sources
- Best Case Parenting: Are Homeschoolers Socially Awkward? Here Is the Answer According To Science.
- Business Insider: One of the most pervasive stereotypes in education is no longer true
- Good and Beautiful Blog: 50 Ways to Teach Social Skills to Homeschoolers
- National Home Education Research Institute: Research Facts on Homeschooling
- Other Education: Homeschooling: An Updated Comprehensive Survey of the Research
- Peabody Journal of Education: Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited
- CHRE: What the Research Says on Socialization
- Pew Research Center: How Teens Hang Out and Stay in Touch With Their Closest Friends