Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.



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folklaur
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Posted: March 05 2008 at 6:50pm | IP Logged Quote folklaur

...as in "socialization"...or more specifically, "socializing."

What if you are not lucky enough to have a large family, so your children's main playmate is just each other (ds9 & dd5)?

Yes, they "see" other kids and "spend time" with other kids in things like Gymnastics, Cub Scouts, Atrium, and Boys & Girls Club (like a homeschool scouts/little flowers program). Which are all structured activities.

Is that enough? There are no neighborhood children to play with. Most of the time when our homeschool group gets together, they want to "do" something - an activity, a fieldtrip, etc. Not that I don't ever want to do those things, but sometimes I want to just take the kids to a park and let them play, and run, and...just play. Most families say they are "too busy" to do that, and so the "park day" for the homeschool group dwindles down to nothing. (I am in more than one, and this is something I have seen happen more than once...) Is it weird to want to let them just play, with no "educational activity" or something planned?

And...is just having each other enough?

As we get ready to move, I am even more concerned, as I am losing all my contacts....and I have thought about school a few times. DH says, "no" to that, so...I worry...



(thinking to self - well, Laura Ingalls only had her siblings and she turned out okay, right? right? sheesh....)
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Posted: March 05 2008 at 9:06pm | IP Logged Quote juststartn

Mine really only have each other too...Of course, we have a few more "options" than you do...but not many, really. And DH is more concerned about it than I am (and we are moving to a place where there are fewer people in general, and 1/2 the number of Catholics (NC has about 4.5%, OK has 2%. Yeah..lovely numbers!). I have found one hsing group nearby...but I can bet its entirely protestant. Its going to be interesting indeed.

Don't know what to tell you. I'm in the same boat. I just keep telling myself that those pioneers who only had each other 95% of the time, turned out fine, overall.   

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Posted: March 05 2008 at 9:09pm | IP Logged Quote JodieLyn

Not just each other.. they also have you and your dh.. and really to become adult people capable of interacting.. they'll learn way more from having adults in their life than other children.

Also, http://www.nheri.org/NHERI-Research.html

Does a lot of good researh on homeschooling.. and they address the socialization issue.. the page I posted has at the top some of their free information.. the fact sheets I know address socialization.. so maybe reading some of those will help boost your confidence.

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Posted: March 05 2008 at 9:21pm | IP Logged Quote PDyer

cactus mouse wrote:
What if you are not lucky enough to have a large family, so your children's main playmate is just each other (ds9 & dd5)?


Close! In our case, ds11 and dd6...they have so much fun together, and they sincerely miss each other when they are apart. I think it's wonderful, and frankly one of the benefits of homeschooling both (when we *were homeschooling both ) was the time they had to spend together.


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Posted: March 05 2008 at 10:40pm | IP Logged Quote SallyT

Our younger two (5 and 4) are much younger than our older two (14 and 10), and don't do any outside organized activities (though we do play with friends fairly often). They are very bonded with each other, and are happy enough on their own that I don't feel we *need* to push "socialization" too much. And even when our olders were in school, they were really each other's best friends and refuge when the school scene wasn't great (as if frequently wasn't). I do love having a lifestyle that actively encourages that closeness.

On the other hand, I've noticed what you've noticed about groups -- that people seem not to be happy to let kids just play. Our homeschool group, which is wonderful, and through which I have made many good friends, gets together monthly on First Fridays for Mass -- all very well and good -- and then classes, which this year my kids rebelled against doing. They just wanted to hang out with their friends, not have to do Blue Knights or knitting or whatever. Not that those things are bad at all, but their feeling, and mine, too, when it came right down to it, was that we do our "educational thing" all the time at home, including our Catholic formation, and that what we really, really want when we get together with other people is to socialize, not sit in more classes.

It's nice to have classes from time to time; my oldest has loved being in a day of co-op classes this year. But Laura, I'm with you -- I wonder why all the anxiety to have structured "learning" activities (other than crowd control . . . on our First Fridays, with two hundred kids, I can see that having them all roaming the church would not be a great thing . . . but still . . . ). Maybe it's that our whole society has underestimated the value of just playing, and thinks collectively that kids aren't doing anything worthwhile unless it is a structured learning experience. And homeschoolers aren't totally culturally immune.

Don't mean to hijack the thread in that direction, but Laura hit on something I have been thinking about lately.

Sally

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Posted: March 06 2008 at 4:04pm | IP Logged Quote juststartn

That's true, Sally.

I think that alot of moms/parents don't see play time as 'worthwhile'---there are, after all, no obvious products of that time...what, a dirty kid? A large hole dug into the backyard where there was once a nice flowerbed? (Not that I want to have a hole in my backyard, but ykwim). These days, it seems as though we are all about results. What do we get out of it? Can we show someone else the products of our time doing "nothing"?

Personally, I have no problem throwing my dc (and anyone else's who might be over, lol) into the backyard, and saying "Go for it, don't come in unless you are bleeding, you are on fire, or there is a genu-ine, bona-fide E-MER-GEN-CEEEEE!" LOL. Once the schoolwork is done, they are kicked out to just play (we have more space outside to play than inside, so it works out that way most of the time).

I don't know what our situation is going to be like in this regard once we move. There is a hsing group about 15 min away from our new house, BUT I don't know how welcome we will be as Catholics. I don't know anything about the parishes in the area, if the priests are supportive of hsing, or if they are very much against it...much less whether there are any hsers in the parishes.

We're not a part of a hsing group here, so that is not something that we will miss...but the dc do have a few friends that we will miss being able to interact with, at least occasionally.

Anyway, I rambled. Sorry . But know you are not alone with those thoughts..

Rachel





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Posted: March 06 2008 at 7:16pm | IP Logged Quote Lara Sauer

Socialization is not really the issue here. Children should be socialized in the heart of the home. It is the parents responsibility to equip the child to move from infancy to adulthood. As I have often said, we are raising adults, not children! The healthiest children are those who have the best relationships with their parents and siblings.

Rather, I think what you are really concerned about is lonliness. Children do need to develop external relationships that are healthy; relationships that are rooted in common values, like faith and morals. Your children are so blessed to have one another and the fact that they are able to enjoy one another and play with one another is a beautiful thing. However, there is an age gap between your children that will start to look very wide before it narrows again when they are both in their late teens and early twenties. It probably won't be appropriate for your daughter to be your son's primary playmate once he turns 12 and she is 7 or 8.

For this reason, I think you are very wise to be thinking about how you can fill this gap. We are created to live in community. Your son, and eventually your daughter, will begin to seek out a way for themselves to build a community of persons whom they can call friends. They will do this not so much so as to leave the community of your family, but rather to broaden it.

As a wise mother, and as the one who has far better skills in discernment, I would recommend that you look for ways for your children to engage in appropriate and healthy peer relationships, not to be "socialized," but rather to develop the social skills necessary to become a good friend. Perhaps you could find a wholesome Boy Scouting troop, or if there in a Conquest group in your area, these would be great "male-mentored" activities that will lead your son to emulate masculine virtues. If these don't exist, perhaps you could create them a bit by inviting some boys over to your house for game night and pizza? Is this an area where perhaps your husband might be willing to be an active participant? Eventually, you will want to seek out similar virtue forming activities for your daughter. Your husband will matter a great deal in the healthy development of your daughter as well. You and he both need to help them to form healthy friendship's outside your home.

Please don't feel however, that your family is in anyway deficient in the formation of the character of your children. God's plan and mercy are too all encompassing for that. I think that you are simply realizing what all of us eventually come to realize...we are raising children who will one day leave our homes to become productive members of society. To do that, we have to make sure that they have the skills to develop healthy peer relationships.

I will pray that appropriate and virtuous venues that will support you in the raising of your children will present themselves. Your children are blessed to have a mother who is truly seeking out the "good" for her children.

Peace and prayers!

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 8:11am | IP Logged Quote Barbara C.

We are pretty isolated because we only have one vehicle. So we sometimes go weeks without the girls playing with anyone but each other or us. Most of the time they don't really mind. They constantly call each other "best friends".

I noticed the same thing as you, though, that kids in organized activities don't often have time to socialize. We still keep our oldest daughter in a few, because it is possible to make friends to set up playdates with at later times. I had a really good friend as a child that I met through softball.

I would suggest looking for an unschooling group. I am not really an unschooler, but I found a pretty tolerant unschooling group. I was actually looking for any homeschooling group that had an unstructured play group, and came across them. They have a weekly playgroup with one or two structured activities available each week. At the previous location, some of the people would head over to a nearby park for part of the time. During the summer, a park day is set aside in addition to playgroup. And then they ended up making a separate co-op day because the older kids wanted to do some of the organized activities (Lego Club, Fashion Club, Science Club, Drawing Lessons) but felt they didn't get much playtime anymore.

We don't get to make it to group really often, but it set us up with a few other families that we see at more convenient times. I think a lot of people do that: start with a big homeschooling group until they can find two or three families there to do other things with.

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 8:38am | IP Logged Quote Elizabeth

Laura,
I don't think it's weird at all. We don't do hardly any homeschooling groups things and we haven't for years. One of the things that drew me to home education was the idea that children are primarily socialized within the family. Even my children's friends tend to be family friends. My kids play sports and the girls dance, so they do learn to get along with their peers but I don't really consider that their socialization time. I'd prefer to believe that they are socialized in the family. In the case of a smaller family, I do believe that the relationships and interactions are just as effective. Children do need time to play and they do need a small handful of friends their ages (perhaps a very small handful)but I don't think they really need huge events orchestrated by adults.The evolution of that kind of programming seems to me to be generated more by parents than by the genuine needs of kids. I don't necessarily think it hurts (unless it completely robs them of free time to just be and to play without a script), but I don't think it's critical to raising healthy children.

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 8:47am | IP Logged Quote Mary G

I always find it interesting -- and Elizabeth I remember you mentioned this in your book -- that often kids playing together, left alone to their own devices, will gravitate to like-interest, like-minded, like-attitude types regardless of age or sex. And when you think about it -- this is how the world works -- when I was working, I didn't hang out with only the 20-something females; before I was married, our "singles" group spanned the ages and sexes and some got along and some didn't -- but age was rarely the factor.

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 8:59am | IP Logged Quote Elizabeth

Mary G wrote:
I always find it interesting -- and Elizabeth I remember you mentioned this in your book -- that often kids playing together, left alone to their own devices, will gravitate to like-interest, like-minded, like-attitude types regardless of age or sex.


Oh! I think this is so true. Mary Beth told my stepmother recently that when she goes to college she plans to live at home. Michael is disgusted by dorm life. From the immorality to the simple things like not having control over what he can eat, he's not a fan of life on campus.My stepmother was clearly disapproving. She said that if they don't live on campus, we are sheltering them from real life. I beg to differ: where in real life do you live with people who are all within a couple years of your own age, you don't get to choose your roommates, you don't get to shop and cook for yourself, you are kept awake by someone else's drunkenness even when you don't drink at all...
I don't think that's real life, nor do I consider that good socialization:-).I think the most important part of socializing children with regards to the world is teaching them how to discern what makes a good friend and how to create for themselves social environments that are good for their souls.

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 9:15am | IP Logged Quote Mary G

Elizabeth wrote:
I think the most important part of socializing children with regards to the world is teaching them how to discern what makes a good friend and how to create for themselves social environments that are good for their souls.


Exactly! And whether we send them to public, private or home -- a parent's responsibility is to teach them to discern the good, the true and the beautiful from the bad, the false and the ugly so that when they do go out into the world -- which is what God wants them to do -- they are ready for whatever the world has to throw at them.

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 12:04pm | IP Logged Quote Sarah

So, my mother, a teacher of 35 years, told me that the kids are NOT getting enough "socialization" with just being friends to each other.

Our social life is the same as Elizabeth descibed. We do close to nothing with the local hs-ers and the boys play sports. We have a couple friends the olders get together with once in a while.

Her argument:

The relationship of siblings is an *obligated* friendship and is subject to birth order, not a true, FREE friendship. The kids are stifled in these relationships because of birth order. The oldest dominates, the 2nd oldest lives his life trying to be different and live up to oldest, blah, blah, blah. . .

I don't even know what to say to her. She says this to me frequently. Can someone add some sense and insight?

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 7:19pm | IP Logged Quote Barbara C.

Friends come and go throughout our lives. Circumstances and interests change, even good friends just kind of diverge in different directions. You're always stuck with your family, though, whether you like it or not. My sister and I haven't been close since I was about five and she was about fifteen. While I have some friends from high school and college that I keep in touch with regularly, my sister and I could have been friends from the cradle to the grave with a deeper sense of trust and commitment. (We get by ok now but I think there is too much history and divergence of lifestyle to ever be close.) Being related does not obligate you to be friends and like each other, believe me. And a sibling friendship requires just as much work to maintain as any other relationship, the difference is that it is harder to walk away from family.

Even if my girls don't remain best friends forever, I hope that they will always know they can depend on each other when things get tough. And sometimes having friends is about quality, not quantity.

And while I think that birth order can sometimes have an influence on personality, I think it can be minimized or maximized by the amount of labeling done by parents and other life circumstances. Sometimes it is less about the 2nd oldest trying to distinguish themselves from their older sibling and more about being able to learn from their sibling's mistakes. Sometimes those first borns like to surround themselves with people who they think will be more conforming to their leadership.

We are very clear that we love each of our daughters not "the same way" but each for their uniqueness. Which is completely true. They have things in common that are wonderful, but they each also have their own personality quirks that annoy us or enamor us. And while my older one has certain leadership (aka bossy) qualities, the younger one is no shrinking violet. She gives back as good as she gets.

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 9:14pm | IP Logged Quote SallyT

It's just so hard to get around that societal assumption that children need to get away from their families in order to flourish. I really think that that's at the root of so many objections to socialization in the family. And it's not surprising that longtime teachers would feel that way, with the best and sincerest of intentions -- if you've spent your life feeling that your job was to undo or at least improve upon whatever your students' home life is like, then you're going to see the world through that lens. It's the assumption around which school systems, day care businesses, and an entire overwhelming array of extracurricular activities are built: you child needs to get away from YOU and get a life. It is only an assumption, and you are not obligated to buy into it, but you do have to keep reminding yourself that people have not always, or even for very long, raised their children on this model.

I don't know what you can do or say, except to smile politely through the entire conversation and then proceed to ignore whatever advice you've been given. That's been my general MO with my mother. I know she still has deep reservations about our homeschooling, but it's been a long time since she asked whether we'd send our kids to school if SHE paid for it. Smile and wave, smile and wave, that's my strategy.

What Mary says about age-grouping is so true. My 14-year-old has had a very social year, since she's been in a high-school co-op one day a week, and that's been great, but her two really best friends are both 12, a boy and a girl. That to me seems much more a reflection of what real life is like than to be expected to bond with a roomful of age-peers.

And I agree with Barbara that there's no need to leave home to learn to get along with different kinds of people -- unless you live with clones, I guess.

Sally

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Posted: March 07 2008 at 9:47pm | IP Logged Quote guitarnan

I think Elizabeth's Michael is the perfect example of how well homeschooling really works. Here's a talented, handsome young man who could probably have or do anything he wanted at school, and the behavior of many of his peers disgusts him. He knows there's a better way.

Isn't that what every parent wants - a child who matures into an adult capable of discerning right from wrong, of listening to his conscience, of making moral choices in spite of pressure? Isn't that also the picture of an ideal employee - honest, discerning, committed?

We're not socializing for 5th grade. We are socializing for Real Life AND Life Everafter. Adults aren't allowed to insult and bully their peers. They can't tease people on the job or make fun of their appearance, skin color, etc. Children should not be exposed to this type of behavior, because, typically, they don't learn it at home, they learn it from peers.

In a loving home atmosphere, children learn to love each other and to support each other. They learn to reach out in charity to those around them, and they learn to put God and family first. It's not always easy, nor is it ever perfect, but it works.

PS - My son is talking about living at home, too. Turning into an "instant adult" at 18 really worries him. I told him just today that he will always have a loving family to support him - not always financially, of course, but in all the really important ways. I think our young people are forced to grow up way, way too fast; slowing this process down to a manageable speed is one of my favorite parts of homeschooling.

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Posted: March 08 2008 at 8:35am | IP Logged Quote Sarah

This has been a very good thread with wonderful ideas and encouragement. Thanks Laura for starting it!

I feel that we are all doing the right thing, even if its hard without much support in our ideas. Its nice to come here for support.



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Posted: March 08 2008 at 10:25am | IP Logged Quote Barbara C.

Last night I was talking to a good friend of mine back in Kentucky. We had been playing telephone tag for awhile, so he had missed the news that we were having another girl. He started lamenting for my poor husband, and then he offered that when my oldest becomes a teenager my husband could borrow one of his many guns to scare off any suitors.

Of course, he was kidding, because he knows I would never allow a gun in my house. But I couldn't resist quipping, "Well, you know, since we're homeschooling, my kids will grow up awkward and friendless so we probably won't even have to worry about dating." He totally cracked up and couldn't believe I went there. I replied, "Well, what's the fun of being a homeschooler if you can't poke fun at the stereotypes!"

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Posted: March 08 2008 at 10:38am | IP Logged Quote Mary G

This whole thing about birth order is one of those things that takes a kernel of truth and blows it up into a jumbo box of popcorn! And further, insists that ALL families, whether pre-teen or post-menepausal are still going to act, react the same way depending on what birth-order! So much for free-will and grace, huh????

A further problem I see with the socialization issue -- which we haven't touched on here yet, and may actually require a separate post -- socialization/actualization of the mom who is "stuck at home all day with the snively kids and surely can't be fulfilling her destiny"!

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Posted: March 08 2008 at 11:31am | IP Logged Quote Elizabeth

Great point, Mary! And that leads me to wonder whether big homeschool social groups aren't formed by moms who are extroverts and miss those things for themselves. Can an extrovert mom meet the social needs of an introvert kid and vice versa? Does an extrovert grandma understand the introvert philosophy of her introvert daughter? Amy Wellborn touched on this a bit. As an introvert, I sometimes worry that I'm not getting my extroverted children out enough. Other times I worry that I'm neglecting to feed the introverted part of me that suffers at the hands of soccer and ballet.
There is a difference to me between socialization (something that I think can and should be done in the heart of a healthy family) and being social. Hopefully, I send well-socialized children into carefully chosen social situations until they are old enough to choose such situations for themselves.
Also, homeschool social situations aren't perfect by any means. I've seen cattiness in teenaged girls that met or exceeded anything I ever witnessed in a public high school. I've heard of (and seen) myspace atrocities. I know of homeschooled kids who smoke pot. Chastity is not guaranteed, either.
No matter where our children have social outlets, they need to be socialized by competent adults.
Oh, and I love your birth order point, Mary.

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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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