NSH In The News

Friends! I had the opportunity to sit down with Danielle Ledbetter from WSMV this past week to discuss homeschooling in Nashville. She wanted to know specifically about building community and filling our social needs as we embark on such a different lifestyle. 

Check it out for yourself!

If that video didn’t play for you, try the direct link here .

The resulting piece was a bit pressed for time and therefore only got to share a few brief sound bytes about how important it is for us homeschoolers to build community as we learn. But I was able to meet her in the Smith Springs Community Center, where my daughter attends a free, weekly, drop-in PE class for homeschooled kids. This helped to show that we, as homeschoolers, do a lot out and about in the community to build and maintain friendships while we learn. 

Throughout our actual conversation, however, we spent a significant amount of time talking about what it can be like to socialize as a homeschooler. I shared some of the more obvious benefits of the way homeschoolers handle socialization, such as learning how to get along with people of all ages, rather than just one age group, or being able to handle social issues like bullying as the conflicts arise, therefore helping kids navigate these sorts of situations quickly with the support of parents rather than letting them fester or having to face things completely on their own. 

So today, let’s talk a bit more about socialization and homeschoolers. 

Well Meaning Worry

I would bet that if I sat down with each of you individually and asked what the most common concern you heard from your family members, neighbors, or well-meaning strangers when you share that you’re homeschooling your children, it would be the refrain, “but how will they socialize?” And I certainly understand that concern – this is a different way of raising and educating kids, and we are a species that relies on spending time in community with others in order to thrive. It can be hard to imagine going about ensuring the social needs of the kids are met in a way that is meaningful, productive, and healthy without burning out the parent when the model is a traditional education. 

But what many of these well meaning people likely haven’t taken into consideration is just how well most homeschooled kids who are allowed to get out in the world and are able to engage with their peers actually do. Admittedly, we homeschoolers are a fairly small subset of the population, so most people just haven’t had the time to interact with us yet. But most of the homeschoolers I know are warm, engaging, and kind individuals with rich, developed interests and social lives. 

Still, it can be hard to rely on anecdotal evidence, or simply hearing about experiences. What does the research say about how homeschoolers turn out from a social standpoint? According to this article written by Richard G Medlin and published in the Peabody Journal of Education, the answer is that they tend to do quite well, if not better than some of their traditionally schooled peers. 

“Compared to children attending conventional schools, however, research suggest that [homeschoolers] have higher quality friendships and better relationships with their parents and other adults. They are happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives. Their moral reasoning is at least as advanced as that of other children, and they may be more likely to act unselfishly.”

These are certainly goals that most parents have for their children, and I also think it’s important to point out that just because there’s correlation between homeschooling and healthy emotional development in this study doesn’t mean that the only way to raise well adjusted kids is to homeschool them. Perhaps the crucial piece that tends to show up a bit more easily for homeschoolers is a close connection with a loving attachment figure, simply by benefit of having so much extra time with a parent. Either way, it is nice to see a study that actively dispels the myth that homeschoolers aren’t socializing. 

Ok, but what about the teen years and homeschooling? Adolescents need to build new attachments with friends their age as their peer group suddenly becomes on par in terms of importance as the attachments of their own family. According to this article by Carl Pickhardt, a psychologist who specializes in parenting adolescents, a peer group becomes a crucial part of an adolescent’s identity. He suggests navigating this new space by forming warm relationships with your adolescent’s friends and creating a welcoming space in your own home for hosting any get togethers. 

These are things that homeschoolers tend to excel at! Perhaps that’s why the research in Medlin’s article found that “as adolescents, [homeschoolers] have a strong sense of social responsibility and exhibit less emotional turmoil and problem behaviors than their peers. Those who go on to college are socially involved and open to new experiences. Adults who were homeschooled as children are civically engaged and functioning competently in every way measured so far.”

Perhaps these expert opinions will help convince any prodding family members that your decision to homeschool isn’t going to stunt the emotional development of your child. 

How do you build connections? 

Having expert reassurance is all very well and good, but how, exactly, do you go about providing the connection, community, and social engagement with peers if you’re a homeschooler? Some folks have a faith community they can rely on, but many families who are homeschooling for secular reasons do not. This is where those PE classes, art classes, scouting organizations, or special interest clubs are going to come into play. 

If you read my post, Finding Your People, one crucial and often overlooked piece to making friends is attending the same function week after week. Perhaps you remember a parent and child play group when your children were toddlers or preschoolers. Or maybe you’ve made your own friends and built community by joining a running group or choir. Perhaps you’ve even encountered a serendipitous moment where you our your child made a new friend at a park, exchanged numbers, and you even followed up and set up recurring park play dates. 

Setting aside these dedicated times to gather with one another is a critical part of breaking out of isolation. It can be hard to try something new, especially if you’ve encountered a setback in the form of hurt feelings in a previous social setting. And that’s ok. 

Navigating Pushback

So what do you do, as a parent, if you have a kid resisting the activities that can help to make or maintain these relationships? One thing that has worked for me when I’ve wanted to encourage my kids to try something new is to pad it with a parent/child date. Sometimes they just don’t want to go to the hiking group that you know, deep down, everyone loves, and you need to balance that with the overall needs of the entire family. So I’ve taken a page out of Julie Bogart’s handbook on those days and “sweetened the deal” by suggesting that we find a new place for lunch afterwards or swing by a coffee shop on the way home. (Spoilers: those sorts of outings also help when you’ve got a kid resisting desk work, but that’s for another post.)

Conversely, it can also help (perhaps especially now as my kids are getting older and their peers are becoming so important) to remind your child that transitioning away from one activity to go to a place where they’ll get to socialize will mean they’ll be able to see a particular friend. I fully admit to having had days when I’ve sweetened the deal simply by reminding them that a dear friend would be there. 

However you choose to do it, hopefully the nudge leads to a child who becomes more and more interested and excited to go to their social spaces over time. 

What about social anxiety?

Of course, if you’re concerned that your child may have social anxiety, seeking out the support of a trained therapist can be crucial. In the meantime, a book that helped our family as we navigated some difficult situations with our children coming out of the pandemic was the book, The Opposite of Worry, by Lawrence Cohen. You can find that book here at the library or on <a href=”http://<a rel=”noreferrer noopener” href=”http://Amazon. (This is an affiliate link.) With concrete advice for building and nurturing connection while stretching a child into new situations, this may help you think through just exactly what to do when you’re concerned about a child’s social anxiety either in your own or in addition to any work you do in therapy. 

Another book that was incredibly helpful for my family was recommended by our family therapist a few years ago to help distill attachment theory into a digestible infographic. Raising A Secure Child is from the people at Circle of Security, and it digs deep on exactly why a child needs a secure attachment with their parents and why exploring the world around them can be navigated through the lens of that secure attachment. Kids need to be able to venture forth and explore, but they shouldn’t be pushed away. Similarly, children need to be able to come close for nurturing, but they shouldn’t be held too tightly. This book helps clarify how those seemingly differing needs can be met through secure attachment, and how to nurture that security. You can find it here at the library or on <a href=”http://<a href=”http://Amazon (again, an affiliate link).

Anecdotal hope

In all, I think it’s important to remember that nothing in life is permanent. If you’re struggling today with finding friends for your child, consider making a small step towards finding community by attending something that meets regularly and is interesting to them. You can find a thorough list of area enrichment opportunities on the Resources page. And the light at the end of the tunnel is out there in the form of a thriving secular homeschool community here in Nashville.

It just so happens that I put the finishing touches on this post after meeting up with a friend of my daughter’s for an outing to an area museum one day and then taking my son to help run an aid station at the Rock N Roll Marathon with several of his close friends from his homeschool tutorial before sending him off to a spring dance run by the same tutorial the next. Of course we still have our tricky days, but watching my kids laugh with their friends is a great reminder that they’re doing ok. 

Happy Homeschooling!

diverse. inclusive. community.

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