DiamondAir

> From: Dalene Mactier <Mactier@...>
> I'm still in the early days of unschooling. My son is three and a half.
> Inspired by The Unschooling Handbook i've spent some time recording some
of
> his learning and I'm amazed at just how much learning takes place every
day.
>
> Just this morning we spent time building towers with food tins - due to
the
> lack of blocks

Thought I'd throw in a good (cheap) way to make building blocks here. Just
take two half-gallon milk cartons, rinse them very thoroughly and wash with
soap, open up one end all the way on each carton, and push one of them all
the into the other one. Voila! you've got a big building block that is
lightweight and versatile. My son uses these big "bricks" to build all sorts
of things in his room from tunnels for his trains to forts. The best thing
about them is they can get crushed, broken, etc. and we just make a new one.

> So I really do not have any doubts as far as the academics go, but I do
> wonder about the social development. Although I think being home would be
> perfect for my child's temperament I do often get counter arguments from
> other people. They argue that homeschooled children are very precious
while
> young, but they often turn into odd maladapted adults who struggle in
their
> relationships.

Ah yes, the ancient "socialization" question. And I suppose these people
know so many "odd maladapted" homeschooled adults themselves?? Snort.
There's a list on the internet, I think it's on the "School is Dead, Learn
in Freedom" site that lists all the famous homeschoolers, starting with
almost every one of our founding fathers (here in the U.S.). That's always a
good thing to have floating around in your head when you need to counter
this argument.
Long before I even had kids, I was a church youth group leader and I have to
say that the homeschooled teenagers I worked with got along great with their
peers. The only difference between them and the schooled kids is that they
were also able to carry on meaningful conversations with me (an adult)
without reverting to either subservience or rebellion.


> What do you do to ensure that your child's social development does not
fall
> behind his peers at school??


The real question is what could I possibly do to my child so that their
social development was as bad as a kid who has been in school?? Kids in
school are "socialized" into a very narrow peer group, a group that, because
of its uniformity, causes strange cliques, pressures, and rules of
conformity to occur. Homeschooled kids are socialized into the real world,
where people of all ages work together, where you have value because of what
you do and who you are, not because you have the exact right pair of jeans
from The Gap, where you have freedom to choose many different paths instead
of a narrow set of social rules. In my day in highschool, you could be a
"socie", a "jock" a "doper", a "punk", a "nerd", or just plain labeled
"weird", That was the sum total of your options. In the real
world, you can just be you.

The bottom line (to me) - let your kids pick their interests, help them
follow through on them, and chances are about 100% that these interests will
take them out into the world where they will interact with all kinds of
people, and become the truly social members of society that I would hope all
kids had the opportunity to become.

Blue Skies!
-Robin-
Mom to Mackenzie (8/28/96) "An archeologist is someone interested in old
bones, like Grandma's!!"
and Asa (10/5/99) who her brother calls "turbo baby"
http://www.geocities.com/the_clevengers Flying Clevenger Family