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I'm a father of 7 with 15-years of homeschooling experience.

It's true that the first mistake most homeschooling parents make is to try and recreate the public/private school system in their home. Few find success down that path.

The primary goal of schooling is to teach your children how to learn. If we provide them with the skills to learn whatever they'll need to be productive adults, they'll be more prepared for whatever the career market looks like when they're ready to join the workforce.

Yes, that looks mostly like Reading/Writing/Arithmetic as grade schoolers but there's so many more options once they reach Jr. and Sr. High School. Internships and apprenticeships can be incredibly valuable as well as entrepreneurial opportunities. My sons learned things running a mobile car detailing service than could have ever been taught them in a classroom setting.

There are opportunities for learning every day if we take the time to do share them with our children: grocery shopping, going to the bank, purchasing a vehicle, resolving a dispute with a neighbor.

Questions from kids are one of the best ways to teach them to learn, especially if you don't know the answer. What better example is there than when you get to reply "I don't know. Let's find out together."

We have 3 kids and have been home schooling for about 14 years, each of our three kids have different needs and completely different interests

I agree with your comment 100% - if we go on holiday/ vacation they have to help in understanding the trade off of what options we chosse based on the costs and the organisation eg transportation etc..

We also teach our kids to project manage their own educational and general activities (with costs)

yes they make mistakes, but they see the real world implications of the mistakes - from getting away with it, to having to cancel stuff (and still pay for it)

Beautiful. Would love to learn more about your journey. Contact details in my profile if you’re so inclined.

If you can link me to some more information on how to get started, I would be very grateful.

I made an account just to comment on homeschooling since I grew up homeschooled in the US and have a lot of opinions about it.

It's great if you have intelligent parents who know when to say "I don't know," but if you aren't an expert on a given subject, you should bring in a private tutor. This means that for most parents, once your kid hits highschool you can't teach them anything outside of whatever you have a bachelor's in, so to homeschool effectively you'd have to just pay for a bunch of private tutors for each subject and then you're not really homeschooling anymore.

Also, depriving your kid of the socialization they'd get from more traditional non-cult schools in the US is almost universally seen as bordering on child abuse by people who grew up homeschooled, so keep that in mind moving forward. Learning how to be likeable is already difficult enough for kids who have social opportunities all day every day. The stigma absolutely did not come out of nowhere. It's unfortunately common for homeschoolers to leave the house and present as if they have autism or some other social learning disability. For some reason it isn't taught as a learnable skill, but I think nearly everyone would agree that it takes practice. There will be obvious differences between a kid that practices 2 hours per day instead of 30 minutes a week.

Edit: I'd also caution anyone against giving too much credence to the stories of parents who homeschooled their children but were never homeschooled themselves. Parents and children often end up having wildly different perspectives on this subject.

> Learning how to be likeable is already difficult enough for kids who have social opportunities all day every day.

As someone else pointed out, it's not clear that school helps with this. The kid who went to school and didn't learn this is not at all an outlier. There are quite a few in every class. What would be interesting is if there is research to indicate which suffers more: The kid who doesn't learn this and has to go through school, or the homeschooled kid who doesn't learn this and doesn't have to deal with it in school.

Agreed on the tutor thing at high school, although for many homeschooled kids I know, it was usually one of:

1. Send kids to a regular high school (i.e. don't home school those years)

2. Lots of schools in this area have programs that allow homeschooled kids to attend classes in the areas their parents cannot teach. Of course, rules on this vary from state to state.

>As someone else pointed out, it's not clear that school helps with [learning how to be likeable]

The rebuttal to your point is so simple and obvious it's really hard to take you seriously. Socializing is a skill that can be practiced. If you have fewer opportunities to practice, you're less likely to get better. The children that are bad at socializing despite going to public school do not show that public school doesn't teach socializing, it means they didn't learn as much from their practice. For all you know, poorly-socialized public school children would have otherwise ended up living in their parents' basements until 45 or turned into serial killers if they were homeschooled. Public schooling doesn't need to guarantee good outcomes to be the more desirable choice.

The hard lesson I learned is that success in socializing as an adult is quite different from success in socializing in school. I don't make close friends with adults the way I did as a school kid. I had to unlearn a lot of my school life to succeed.

The school environment is a very artificial one, and not very comparable with much in the adult world. Those who stick to the rules learned there tend not to do well (also found out the hard way). For years I've tossed the idea in my head to write a blog post of all the life lessons one learns in school that lead to poor performance at work. Likewise, I'd like to write another post on all the lessons from school that often do translate to the work environment (because it was so ingrained in us), but which leads to suboptimal working conditions.

I can't obviously discount your experience, and my school experience was actually quite good - but just as you are aware of the downsides of home schooling, I'm aware of the downsides of schools.

If we go beyond anecdotes and to research, I believe most research is in favor of home schooling - both academically and socially.

There is no arguing with you people. The sort of things you miss out on if you're homeschooled are totally unimaginable to you so there isn't anything I can say that will change your stance unless you literally live through the experience. It has nothing to do with only comparing yourself to the median or upper quintile of public school socializers. The only way that position would seem reasonable to you is if you never met any homeschoolers or only talked to the parents, who obviously will be extremely hesitant to admit to mistakes because it makes them look bad.

There's also a huge and obvious problem with studying homeschooling. Part of the disadvantage is that each homeschool environment will be radically different because it's impossible to control for what a given home life is, the type of parent that would homeschool their child, and the sort of education they otherwise would have had if they weren't homeschooled. It's also really easy to track down all the homeschoolers that ended up going to college because that data is already gathered. It's a lot harder to track down all the homeschoolers that never left their parents basement or work the night shift at the 7/11 because they barely learned how to read, so you really can't say that "statistically" it's better or worse. Of course the data will be skewed so homeschoolers seem like higher performers.

I'll just add: It's a common mistake to compare yourself against people who are in the upper quintiles of the "other" category. When you compare your social skills with others, are you including the full spectrum of folks who go to school - including dropouts, etc?

> This means that for most parents, once your kid hits highschool you can't teach them anything outside of whatever you have a bachelor's in,

A bigger issue is that teaching (and teaching kids even moreso than adults) is itself a skill, and a skill lots of people with degrees don't have even in their degree field. The most successful homeschool parents I've known haven't used private tutors or been omnicompetent, but have been professional educators. Who, for those who weren't professional educators of children to start with, spent a lot of effort learning about child development abd childhood education to be successful at homeschooling.

if you haven't actually gone to school then how can you judge the benefits of the socialization it provides?

some of us prefer to socialize outside of school with kids that actually share our interests rather than being forced to interact with kids that we have nothing in common with.

school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed.

i count myself lucky that i only experienced mild bullying and being an outsider completely eliminated any issues of peer pressure for me as i simply had no need or desire to fit in.

there are plenty of other alternatives where you can socialize. be it boy/girl scouts, music classes, some sports or other activities.

of course, if you didn't get to participate in those either, then you really did miss out. i am sorry for that. your parents failed you at that point. however, if you think that school would have helped you, i would not be so sure about that.

To argue against your point that public school wouldn't have helped requires me to share really personal experiences. It's frustrating to be forced to share them over and over with people who probably won't take the time to actually learn from them.

I picked up social skills extremely quickly when I started college, but the first two years were absolutely abysmal to such a degree that I genuinely believed for a period that I had undiagnosed autism. I ended up turning out pretty gregarious and I'm probably average to above-average at making connections and coming off as normal by now, but an enormous amount of suffering could have been avoided. The social situations I was afforded as a child didn't provide nearly enough opportunity to learn and fail.

I had a glimpse of what the alternative would have been like because I got to take drivers' ed at a public school. You might think putting your kid in cub scouts or homeschool co-op is a substitute but it really isn't. If your kid only hangs out with homeschool kids they only get to see how the weird kids act. And if they're in cub scouts they're automatically at a disadvantage because a lot of the other kids are going to already know each other from school.

A lot of people like you come into the conversation asking to hear about the experiences of grown homeschooled children, but once they say something you don't like you suddenly turn into an expert on the subject because their lived experiences aren't representative of whatever you imagine homeschooling is like.

i don't think anyone's experience is representative of anything because everyone's experience is different. they are all anecdotes.

if we compare your and my story then apparently your homeschool experience matches my public school experience. how does that fit together?

i am not claiming that homeschooling would have been better for me, but only that it would not have been any worse.

it really depends on the individual character. maybe public school would have been better for you because it appears you are a social person, and all you lacked was an opportunity to learn those skills. i wasn't social to begin with, and what i needed was a group of equal peers. so yes, hanging out with other wierd kids would have been exactly what i needed, because i would have allowed me to make friends with someone. i could not get that from public school, because i was the only wierd kid there.

> school comes with bullying, peer pressure and a lot of other negatives in socialization that only the "normal" kids will get through relatively unscathed.

So does real life. People need experience dealing with these situations. IMO, it would be better to deal with them at school where you have parents & teachers to fall back on, rather than than waiting until you are an adult without nearly as much support.

parents are often helpless to deal with bullying in school because it depends on the teachers to actually do something about it.

all i learned about bullying in school is to distance myself from those idiots and subconsciously i probably also learned to avoid making friends. i don't see how that was helpful. i didn't experience real socialization until i entered university where i found actually like-minded individuals with common interest. and it's not true that there is less support when you are an adult. on the contrary. the friends i made in university were my support. i didn't have that before.

i am not complaining, my school experience wasn't that bad. but i seriously doubt that any form of home schooling would have been worse.

> So does real life.

As an adult, you usually have the option of walking away.

> People need experience dealing with these situations.

I think kids need to be taught the kind of self-respect such that they know when it is appropriate to deploy a healthy "go fuck yourself". Not clear that state schooling does a great job of this - indeed, if it's teaching them anything, it seems to be you are going to get bullied and you have no choice butto put up with it.

We homeschooled. Whenever we worried about socialization, we grabbed our kids, dragged them into the bathroom, and beat them up for their lunch money.

I'm joking, but the point is, socialization in public school can take some horrible forms. (At least, it can in the US. Maybe schools in Australia are more sane.) That socialization isn't necessarily a good match for adult society, either, or even for university.

Socialization is still a concern. But socialize your children to adult society. They don't need to be socialized to public school society.

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I'd caution you against getting too smug about this outlook.

> Socialization is still a concern. But socialize your children to adult society. They don't need to be socialized to public school society.

I was homeschooled and my parents explicitly went for this approach. It's a great way of turning out a materially successful miserable loner; perfect adult-pleasers who've never had real friends. You may think you're only cutting them off from bullying or emojispeak or whatever, but what you're really eliminating are opportunities to learn the dynamics of peer relationships. And no, socialization with other homeschooled kids doesn't count.

Parents tend to vastly underestimate the importance of cultural fluency in the formation of peer relationships, and I think that's a tragic detriment to a lot of kids, especially the ones (like me) who internalize the sort of bullshit elitist attitudes that often inform non religious decisions to homeschool. And yes - my parents weren't religious and were highly educated on all the trendiest homeschooling topics.

I'm obviously fairly steamed about this and deeply personally biased, so take my words with a grain of salt. This isn't intended as a personal attack in any sense.

> the importance of cultural fluency in the formation of peer relationships

Fluency in the culture is crap. Are we really supposed to be glad our kids know all the Cardi B songs?

Have you grown up like this? I have. It's a lot more alienating than you think. In my case it was a religious upbringing with little outside cultural influences, and it does make it hard to interact and socialize with others.

You don't have shared experiences or languages. There's usually only a small amount of children who share what you experienced, and you don't always understand when they are joking, or how to deal with situations, or even what they are saying. And many times the kids you do know are weird or worse than those your parents think they are protecting you from.

It’s all anecdotal until we have some systematic way to study things.

I know plenty of homeschooled kids who are now perfectly happy, well adjusted adults. The only thing I can see that they have in common is a tendency to think for themselves.

Most of them are now homeschooling their kids. And their kids are also happy and well adjusted— much more so than the kids I went to school with.

(I’m a maladjusted product of mostly standard education, so take this with a grain of salt.)

> Fluency in the culture is crap. Are we really supposed to be glad our kids know all the Cardi B songs?

OP predicts your reply, just replace "bullying or emojispeak" with Cardi B in his original post.

Also, kids have known and talked graphically about sex since the days of Elvis. I've been told even the ancient greeks knew what sex was.

If that's what their friends are talking about over the lunch table, then absolutely. Or, do you let your taste in music dictate your kids' social horizons?

It's not the music, it is the soft-core (if even) pornography. Just because "everyone is doing it" does not make it worth doing just to fit in.

> It's not the music, it is the soft-core (if even) pornography

So, the older generations’ complaint about popular musicians since at least Elvis’ hips.

Your eyes are closed if you haven't noticed a massive difference between the years of Elvis and today.

This is basically verbatim the logic that denied me a childhood, just time-shifted a bit. Your kids may not thank you for it.

I think your responses have made my point way more eloquently than I could do myself, so I guess I'll leave it here.

And I'll reiterate: Just because "everyone is doing it" does not make it worth doing just to fit in.

I urge you to consider that fitting into the culture isn't worth it if the culture is bad. You may not see the culture's taste in music as bad, which is fair, but I am sure in other cultures (say in highly restrictive and conservative cultures) you'd be ashamed to be culturally literate (antebellum south? Jim Crow era?).

i am going to have to disagree. you make it sound like that becoming a loner is a better option than fitting in with the cardi b crowd. but that is a false alternative. if the cardi b crowd is not something you want to subject your kids to, then you need to provide an alternative community for them. you can't just cut them off from everyone just because you don't like their culture.

Maybe you should learn more about Elvis. The sexual content was there.

Of course. He kissed women in the audience left and right. But he was fully clothed, which visually, is a very striking and obvious difference.

Exactly. One out of five students report being bullied at school. https://www.pacer.org/bullying/info/stats.asp

Also a great piece in the Atlantic about how Black families are opting out of school due to institutionalized racism. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/the-ri...

A film I really like on this topic is Class Dismissed. It shows the journey of two girls who leave school and it's really amazing to watch them relax, get more at ease with themselves and make friends over the course of the film.

Having been one of those kids "socialized into adult society", I was robbed of both my childhood and my serotonin. Children are indeed human beings...

I'm truly sorry to hear this.

This is one such concern that I have. Do you think this comes down to the "adult society" you're being integrated into?

If you don't mind my asking, do you think you know the motivation for the way you were raised/educated in the manner you were raised?

I imagine there are a wide variety of reasons as to why parents home school, and that the outcomes vary significantly based upon those motivations.

I wish I could upvote this one a dozen times.

My homeschooled kids can't communicate in emoji-talk, it's true. But they easily interact with both adults and other homeschooled children on both small-talk and meaningful conversational levels. That's more valuable in the long run.

I tutored home schooled kids for years (and many other kids and college students as well). I'm sure some of it is selection bias of those who reach out to a tutor in the first place, but I strongly disagree that homeschooled kids are socially stunted (agreeing with parent's comment). Rather, they seem to be quite capable of interacting at a far more mature level than their public school peers.

It works both ways. I am socially stunted and I went to public school in old country ( same issues really ). Sometimes I would argue it is because I went to public school, but my siblings are normal so maybe its just bad luck on my part.

Why do people hate emoji so much?

> But socialize your children to adult society. They don't need to be socialized to public school society.

They don't need to be socialized to any particular public school society, but they do need to be socialized to the society of children. This is not adult society, and the difference is important. Sibling relationships are important but necessarily unusual, it's also necessary to go beyond this.

If you try to inculcate adult society only in your children, I think you are doing them a great disservice.

Most home schooling families I know of find others nearby and do group learning or activities on at least a semi-regular basis- plus joining local sport or acting or hobby clubs, or church groups. The image of a maladjusted home schooled kid who never met another child is something of a bad trope, I think. There are tons of resources and "toolkits" online.

As a first step, I would recommend looking up a local group (or at least one in your state, since requirements vary) and talk to parents who have already done it.

I didn't look into it yet since my kid is really young, but time is flying. Any toolkits/groups you could recommend for IL, US?

What city are you in? There are usually local groups on Facebook. Also, try positing on SEA homeschoolers and looking for others in your area. https://facebook.com/groups/seahomeschoolers Also these: llinois H.O.U.S.E

“Illinois HOUSE is a statewide network of support groups for people involved in homeschooling. We provide email and phone support about issues related to Illinois homeschooling. Common questions include how to withdraw a child from public school, what the school district needs from homeschooling families and how to deal with officials who ask for more than they’re entitled to receive. We have member groups throughout the Chicago suburban area and more spread across the state.”

Metro-East Secular Homeschoolers

“This is a group to make like-minded connections with other homeschoolers (or those considering homeschool!) in the Metro-East area.”

Pekin/Peoria Area (Illinois) Secular Homeschool Families

“Any PARENT/GUARDIAN of a child 5-18 that is homeschooling in the Pekin/Peoria area is welcome to join this group. Our purpose is to connect and support other secular homeschool families in the area.”

QCA Secular Homeschool Group

“QCA Secular Homeschoolers is primarily geared toward families who are homeschooling for reasons other than religion and who are looking for an alternative to religious homeschool groups.”

Secular Homeschoolers of Bloomington-Normal

“We are an inclusive homeschool group that respects and values diverse perspectives. Our purpose is to connect and support Bloomington-Normal area homeschooling families in a non-faith based group for field trips, shared lessons, book clubs, and online discussions.”

Westside H.O.U.S.E.

“We are an inclusive, non-sectarian network of homeschool families who meet to enjoy activities together, share experiences and lend support to one another. Our chapter serves families throughout Greater Chicago and the Western Suburbs.”

I was homeschooled from 4th grade on through high school ("graduated" in 04). This is my personal take on it--I don't think people should do it unless they or their partner can dedicate most of their time to it, especially if they have more than one child. It takes a tremendous amount of emotional resilience and dedication to do it right, and if you teach them into high school, you'll need outside help. I think someone up the comment chain said the same thing. This is pure anecdote, but what I can contribute is that I had a hard time being disciplined. My folks were not terribly disciplined themselves, so they struggled to pass on those skills. I had a hard time learning on my own unless it was especially interesting to me. I developed an interest in math as an adult, but as a kid I absolutely needed outside guidance as a teenager, I lacked the ability to learn it on my own and my parents couldn't help very much, so I fell behind[1]. I took some online classes, which definitely helped in some ways, but at that point I was already struggling. It set the stage for a lot of personal struggles later on.

If you can do all that, and you can plug your kiddo into frequent social activities for her emotional wellbeing (homeschooling can be terribly lonely, especially for a teenager!), then I think it's a good option.

[1]I get that other school options don't guarantee these things won't happen. I get that socially awkward people go to public school. I'm just saying that if you go this route, you'll have no one to blame but yourself if things go wrong. That might be a worthy risk if your other options suck.

EDIT: The guy with 15 years of homeschooling experience had it EXACTLY right--do not attempt to recreate the public school experience. My mom even went so far as to create a classroom with desks the first year, God bless her.

Thanks so much for the great feedback. There are lots of ways for children educated by their parents to get positive social experiences. In terms of data, there have not been that many extensive studies on opting out of school in particular. And it would be hard to use that to judge the experience because there are so many different ways parents do it and reasons parent do it. What you might want to look at is research around parent participation in learning, which has been shown to be a deciding factor in student success regardless of school or teacher quality. Here are some resources and data around that. I'm also happy to talk further if you'd like insights on how to support your child making friend and learning teaching strategies as a parent. My email is manisha@modulo.app https://www.modulo.app/learning/parent-engagement

Hi Benjamin, I'm the writer of the modular learning article and would be happy to speak to you (for free of course) and exchange ideas or answer questions as best I can. Please feel free to contact me at manisha[at]modulo.app I also tried to write a short piece about getting started with a modular learning approach based on how I've observed most parents do it successfully. My email is manisha[at]modulo.app if I can be of help. And this offer extends to any parent who is reading this and needs someone to talk to. modulo.app/all-resources/getting-started-with-modular-learning

I wonder the extent to which homeschool kids tend to develop the social and academic traits that resemble their parents. My kids were school-schooled, but the kids who were diligent, self disciplined, and academically inclined had parents who were professors and doctors -- fields that select for the same characteristics.

My kids were involved in music, which is a popular activity among homeschool families, so we got to know quite a few people that way, and socially, the kids resembled their parents. Kids with competitive parents, tended to be competitive, kids with laid back parents were laid back.

Oh also, I'd love to hear what details would be most helpful to you. I'd really like to flesh this out more.