OMG, my kids have friends!

I always wonder when our society stopped allowing families to raise their own kids? When did it become so necessary to turn raising a family into a factory assembly line? We are expected to send our kids to daycare when they are at most a year old. Those who don’t are thought of as old fashioned (but lucky to be able to stay at home with their child.) Then at 3 if they are not in a preschool program of some sort then we are setting them up for social failure. And God forbid we should dare to educate them at home when they turn 5! Children NEED to be in school “they” say. Sure they do, how else is society going to brainwash them into conforming to what is deemed “normal.” Imagine what would happen if we educated our kids in a way that turned them into mature, reliable, responsible and . . . wait for it . . . RESPECTFUL adults. How on earth would our society go on?

It seems to me that if you dare to think outside the box and actually figure out what YOUR child needs as far as education/socialization then you get labelled as "weird" or even worse as a bad parent that is setting their child up for a doomed life and failure as a social being! I have been homeschooling my children for several years. They have never been to public school. Guess what? THEY HAVE FRIENDS! How did that happen? Don’t they have to go to school to have friends? Surprise – kids make friends, anywhere, anyway and anytime they see other kids. At the park, at their swimming lessons, at scouts, at dance, at friends houses, at social gathering of any kind. They make friends with complete strangers. And they develop long term friendships with kids that they meet at any of the aforementioned places. And even better, they aren’t restricted to choosing from the 30 other 6yr olds in their class. Yes sheeple, my 6yr old son’s BFF is 8. And he has other friends, some younger and others older. He plays with kids from 2-20 and does it without any thought as to whom he “should” be friends with. I remember being in high school when we all started dating. It was a really big deal if you went out with someone from a different grade. Now think about this for a moment – how many of you are married/dating someone who was in the same grade as you in school? I’m not. My husband and I were 2 grades apart in school. School kids spend 6 or more hours a day in a classroom with peers who are at most 1 year older/younger than them. They are told what to do all day by an assortment of older people. How in anybodies world is that natural? I challenge anyone to find an adult workplace (or social setting for that matter) where all the employees are the same age and the boss is older by a decade or more than any of the employees. You will not find ANY workplace like than ANYWHERE! I would bet big money that some of you have bosses that are younger and many co-workers that are older or younger by many years. And yet we all seem to get along fine. In the past 38 years I have had a number of very good friends who were much older or younger than me. When I think back on my life at all the people who have come and gone I can’t honestly think of ANYONE from school that was more important to me and influential to my life than some of my friends who are 10 or more years older/younger. So why is it that the very first concern people raise when they talk to someone who homeschools is “Aren’t you worried about socialization?” Yes actually I am VERY concerned about socialization – that is exactly why I DON”T want to send my kids to public school!!

I am always amazed at the number of parents who use the phrase “just wait until they’re teenagers!” It is “normal” and expected that children will go through some socially necessary rebellion stage as they hit puberty. Talk to any family with teenagers who have been homeschooled for most or all of their lives. You can have a conversation with the 16 yr olds and not feel like they don’t want to be there. They rarely go through that teenage rebellion stage. The “I hate my parents” stage. The “adults are always wrong and need to be rebelled against” stage. Instead they have been allowed to have a voice and converse with other people (of all ages) in a more realistic and natural way about anything and at any time. There is neither need nor opportunity for homeschooled kids to develop the cliques and gangs that seem to grow in our under supervised schools. They never need to “fit in” to a certain social group. These groups of kids that feed off each other like packs of wild dogs until all respect for other people and often for themselves had disappeared. They pressure each other to fit in until there is no sense of identity. Kids are forced to conform or risk being ostracized or worse. They are forced to become the robotic sheeple that our entire society revolves around. You have to wear this, you have to eat that, you have to think the same way as everyone else. If you dare to speak out you are criticized or told you are wrong. Until you just start to go with the flow because it is easier and, quite frankly, safer. How would any child in this kind of social setting have any chance at all of becoming a freethinking human being? Is it any wonder kids come home from school with “teenager rebellion syndrome.” It amazes me how many kids actually do make it through school and manage to “make it” to the real world relatively unscathed. But it also scares me to think about how many do NOT make it. They may survive but how many kids graduate from highschool with low self-esteem and other problems. So many brilliant minds who will never share their real thoughts and ideas because they might go against our societies ideas of “normal.” Imagine how different our world would be if all our children were allowed to be themselves without having to consider whether the clothes they want to wear would be acceptable by the rest of the flock.