More on Socializing

This video made me laugh at about 3 minutes in.  Especially because I just wrote a post explaining how homeschoolers socialize, and how in school true socializing doesn't take place; and the responses in the comments were mostly "but how do you socialize your children? If they don't go to school they will be weird."  The baseless argument has become so rhetoric people cannot even think beyond it.  This animated video is 5 minutes long, and very worth watching.  If you wonder how homeschoolers socialize, this video might help you understand.  And if homeschool, this video will look like conversations you have certainly heard before and will probably make you laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOXT_KSFhA&feature=player_embedded

How Do YOU Socialize?

I'm sure every homeschool parent will be able to relate to this post.  If there is one question every single homeschool parent is asked, it's this one:  "You homeschool?  But how will your children ever become socialized?"  And that is a completely valid question, if you're premise is that children socialize in school, and also that they never socialize anywhere else.

My first reaction when people ask me this question is that they obviously don't know what it means to "be socialized."  To be socialized means to be placed under government or group control.  So actually the answer is that I hope my children, as well as this country, never "become socialized."  But of course they don't mean this.  They meant to ask how will my children ever learn to interact with others in society if they don't go to school?  And that's why I say the question has some validity, assuming children only interact with others in school.  So I will answer this un-thought-out question.

Social interactions happen everywhere, every day.  It happens with siblings, with relatives, with friends outside of school (yes, that exists,) with strangers while shopping, at the library, at karate and swimming and any other classes the children take, at homeschool parkdays, and everywhere the children go.  Wherever there are people, there is socialization.

So why the insistence that socializing only happens in school?  Why assume that if a child isn't in school, he will never learn how to interact with others?  In fact, why assume socialization happens in school at all?  In school, children are put into an environment where everyone around them is just like them.  Then they further group themselves into cliques of even more similar children.  In school, when someone is different, they are ostracized by the class, as children refuse to socialize with anyone slightly different than them.  In this situation, children are learning how to seek out comfort and security in similar groups, rather than how to actively socialize.

By contrast, homeschooled children constantly interact with others who are different than themselves, and they learn how to socialize in many different situations.  They interact with people of all ages, not just children born in the same schoolyear as them.  They interact with children of all backgrounds, because people usually don't form cliques outside of school.  And while school children have to adjust to "the real world" after high school, homeschooled children have been integrated into regular society from the beginning of their education.  When you give this question some thought, you realize that homeschooled children are the only ones who actually learn to socialize!

Although I have all these answers to this often asked question, my daughter had the best answer of all.  I overheard her talking to two friends who go to school.  They asked her how she socializes in home school, and she answered, "What am I doing right now?"

Why Do Boys Love To Play With Guns?

Young boys have a natural penchant for war, guns, and fighting.  Almost all of their play involves some type of play fighting.  Many mothers who decide at the time their sons are infants that they will not introduce guns to them are shocked when they watch their sons, at about 2 or 3 years old, use their legos to make a gun and then run around the house shooting their homemade gun at imaginary "bad guys."  These mothers wonder how their sons came up with such a concept, because they were so careful to never let them see a gun, either as a toy or in a movie.  But the concept of "fighting the bad guys" is inborn for boys.  And mothers struggle with this inborn nature while trying to raise non-violent boys.  They worry as they watch their sweet young son play games which seem incompatible with their values.  They wonder why the child who has good manners and a compassionate nature likes to shoot and wrestle in their play time.

There are so many variations to gun play.  There are soldier games, there is cops and robbers, and lately there are superhero games.  In all of these games, the "good guy" uses his physical power or superpowers to save the world from the "bad guys."  And actually, this is exactly what we want them to be doing.  Mothers need not worry, because our boys are acting out the values we have been teaching them since they were born.  While it may look violent to the untrained eye, in fact they are restoring order to the world, and protecting those who cannot protect themselves.  At times, they even pretend to be the bad guy, showing empathy and  understanding of the other side.  And when their friend, playing the good guy, shoots them, they fall and die, demonstrating that good always wins, and ultimately there is no excuse for evil.  So when mothers see their sons shooting with their lego guns, they should perhaps see beyond the fact that he is using a toy gun and look at what he's doing with that gun. 

I, myself, am a mother that teaches her children not to be violent, and never to get into fights with other children or each other.  But when it comes to their play time, I don't want to teach my sons to stop fighting the bad guys.  I am proud of their desire to save the world from evil.  And although I tell them to stop wrestling with each other or someone might get hurt, I am simultaneously reassured about their values. Because even during play time, when they can do whatever they want, they are fighting imaginary bad guys and saving the world from the forces of evil.