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Comment by sparrish | Hacker News Reader

I was working for a company that was moving from remote work to full-time in the office. My former co-worker and I decided to start our own company so we could stay remote and close to our families. I have 7 kids, he has 8 and we both homeschool.

That was almost 6 years ago and I've never regretted it. If you value time with your family, nobody is a better boss than you. It's not unusual for me to shoot an IM over to my business partner that goes something like "Really nice weather today. We're headed to the park for an hour or two."

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Well done sir. I plan on doing the same, but I have 2 and another on the way. My daughter's God-father has 8 kids and works as an engineer from home and his wife home-schools. The kids are the happiest you'll ever meet and super smart.

You're the most successful person on HN.

How do your kids adapt to social interactions with kids of their age, spending 24/7 with your family might be tiring and in young age there is a big difference between 3 and 5 year olds, I think they need to interact with kids of their age and different cultures to be better adapt in future life, that's just my opinion, I might be wrong?

I am a former homeschool parent whose oldest will soon be 30.

You are entirely wrong. Homeschooled kids typically have stronger relationships and better social skills.

I'll need to make the decision about homeschooling in a few years. Do you have any studies you can share that support that conclusion?

At face value, it seems more difficult to socialize children than at traditional school with hundreds of daily social interactions from a wide variety of backgrounds, personalities, and teamwork opportunities.

No, I do not have studies. Tokenadult https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tokenadult might have something like that. He worked in public schools for many years and ran/runs the website Learn in Freedom, one of the early pro homeschooling sites (http://learninfreedom.org/).

My knowledge of this is rooted in having been involved in the online gifted homeschoolers community. I was briefly Director of Community Life for The Tag Project. http://www.tagfam.org/ So, you can take my word for it as a SME or you can contact Tokenadult and see if he can hook you up.

I do think your assumptions are in error. Good socialization is not about a wide variety of superficial relationships. It is about having positive interactions that teach one what one needs to know. I do know that studies show that kids who go off to boarding school do best if they figure out how to artificially replace the natural family unit with a close group of caring friends. But I don't have links to anything. That is just remembered off the top of my head.

Best.

I suspect keeping kids out of toxic (Jr High) environments totally compensates for them interacting with fewer people.

Not after adjusting for wealth.

I am not quite sure what you mean by that. Care to clarify?

You're not wrong - there are a huge number of homeschool groups, co-ops, classes, etc. Most homeschooling families actively try to socialize their kids with art classes, sports teams, and so on. There tends to be more supervision as well so there's less bullying too.

There probably are numerous advantages to homeschooling, but I have a hard time finding convincing evidence. Either it's anecdotes from a small community of homeschooling parents or a study commissioned by an organization that has a vested interest in homeschooling, or authored by a leading member thereof. Significantly, I find that the people who share positive anecdotes are in higher wealth brackets and very well-educated, and I'm not aware of any studies that control for this.

Why did you have seven kids? Not a ding against you; I'm just curious. (I personally do not like kids and, at this stage of my life, would never do this.)

Having a big family is a lot like owning a Harley Davidson motorcycle - if I have to explain, you wouldn't understand. <grin>

My wife and I like kids and believe children are a blessing from God. They are a joy to be around and I learn from them and from teaching them.

Plus somebody's gotta take care of my sorry self when I'm old.

lol Fair enough!

I don't usually reply, I am lurker but you sir, being the family man then you are a hero! The hero HN needs and the hero that HN deserves!

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