Homeschooling hits record numbers

Learning activities with other homeschooled kids is ok but not enough. A tight-knit neighborhood of friends is huge, but not enough. You need to develop a thick skin and a sense of self-assurance.

I have no counterfactual of course, but I think much of the social anxiety I’ve had to unlearn as a young adult came from homeschooling. And I had great circumstances

The worst part was being ostracized. The school had anti-bullying policies, but they don’t force anyone to be your friend.

Strangely, I was elected to lots of student government office, and held leadership in lots of clubs.

Maybe my memory is just off, but I don’t think so.

I think I was really good connecting with the grownups who ran the school, so they made sure I got leadership positions.

I was always much better at being the kid in class the teacher liked - same with principals, etc.

Probably one of the reasons the other kids didn’t like me - but that went over my head.

I think it’s really easy to overestimate how important the socialization in public schools is. We go to so many movies where the plot is based on the dynamics of public high school, we assume it’s normal.

We see so much of terrible stuff downplaid like it doesn’t matter. Just rewatched Back to the Future which laughingly brushes off every kind of violence as long as it’s done at the prom.

For the majority of my adult life I’ve been playing catchup. Even now, barreling towards 40, there’s aspects of social capabilities where I come up quite short relative to my peers.

If I’m ever to be a parent, I won’t homeschool. Depending the circumstances I might not send my kids to public school, but their schooling situation will at minimum involve social exposure comparable to that of public school.

(I unlearned it too, but it took quite a while.)

The basically only social skill that school teaches is hating other people (other students, teachers) so much that from the deepest of your heart you wish them to be dead.

Clearly a valuable skill, but not the kind that most parents would desire their children to get.

And despite all that, school was still really hard on me. I had a bunch of mean teachers, subjects I was miserable at and would cry about (Foreign language French still haunts my dreams...) and of course I was bullied as well for being kind of a weirdo. :) I wouldn't trade it for homeschooling. I know that if I didn't have those experiences at school, I would probably have different experiences that would have shaped me differently. But in the end, I'm still glad I went through all that though.

I identify with your post as a rural kid who mostly didn't socialize with classmates after school. I went to public school, and I'm 40 now. I think the human experience is that you are inevitably going to encounter social situations where you feel outmatched or simply don't belong. I do agree with making sure your kids experience public school, but I think that's about the bare minimum of what you can offer your kids.