What would you do if your child was lonely and...

[BillywigStings]

Say for instance you have a 7 year old and you are worried about them having no friends. You take them to play grounds and sports activities and though they play with the kids there, it’s not free play exactly and no real bonds forming as the other kids have friends at school already, even though some do like talking and playing with your child at football/ballet or whatever. What do you do?

You have tried a few times to arrange play dates and found the other parents make interested sounds but don’t really follow through as their own lives are too busy and they don’t bother for their child’s sake as the child already gets loads of socialisation elsewhere (school in particular ).

The local home ed community is small and your child doesn’t particularly click with the few children which do regularly attend meet-ups.

Welcome to the scenario playing round in my head every time I think about our decision to home educate our four year old. We keep second guessing ourselves and are dithering around the ‘final’ final decision even though we have wanted to do this for a while now. I suppose it’s not likely that things will be as bleak as I have outlined above, but WHAT IF..?

What WOULD you do in the above situation, if again , hypothetically , you were concerned about your child being lonely?

I'd send my child to school.

Yup, school - because learning social skills is as important as learning to recognise letters when you're 4. If the opportunities just aren't presenting themselves with Home Ed (and it sounds like you've tried your best) then school is your answer.

I would think it's time to take him to school. My ds has sn's and getting him to school was/is really but he loves it and he's so much happier when he's been with his friends.
What made you decide to homeschool?

Sorry, 7 not 4

Agatha you don’t know why this child is home schooled.
How about a regular weekly activity like Scouts or a martial art or drama etc. Something where the same kids will go week in/week out so a chance to develop more lasting friendships.

Why so you think homeschooling is right for your son?

Depends upon the reasons for your decision to Home Ed.

Playgrounds are pretty anonymous spaces to be honest - fine if you already know people there, but awkward if you don't.

However there are other places, eg - Rainbows /brownies/ cubs, football clubs, gym clubs, drama groups, judo lessons. These are a very useful way of meeting children with similar interests.
But I have to say, unless you have very good reasons - school is a great way to learn the art of social interaction.

Send them to school. It's important for them to bond with other kids, and if you're not managing whilst home schooling I's send them to school

I'd

I just love how my son has learnt so much by following his interests and by me supporting his learning without pushing it on him. Within a couple of weeks he knows all his letters and can write most of them too just because it suddenly interested him to be able to read the street signs and shop signs we were passing one day and he was excited when I asked him if he wanted me to teach him. I have always been interested in home ed but only more recently considered it seriously. I can see my son losing his love for learning for learnings sake when forced to learn topics he isn’t interested in. I am pretty confident I can teach him and facilitate his learning, and also that educationally he will do better with one on one attention at home...but I worry so much he won’t have friends...

NottonightJosepheen thank you your answer is very helpful!

Everything you describe is our exact experience of school. Loneliness, isolation, being ignored, wandering the playground alone, avoided by other parents etc. It's even more sad to be lonely in a school for 400 children.

Sending a child to school does not make a social child with friends. It's laughable that people think it's that easy.

School is the answer.

However I thought people who home educated their children were part of a small group of home educators, each doing different things, so the children were with other kids a lot of the time.

Yes, school is the answer. Children need to learn to be bored as well as to socialise. I think trying to be over involved or to over engineer friendships has the opposite effect. Children with ever present, ever problem solving parents don’t learn to modify their behaviour to fit in with social circles. They end up seeing the whole world from a dry egocentric perspective.
Let them learn, trust them, get them to understand consequences of their actions and how they interact impacts on whether people want to be their friend.

The story you describe is what you are worrying about right not what is actually happening?

The advice I always give is don't borrow problems from the future. If home ed is right for now then go with it and reassess regularly. Home ed isn't perfect but neither is school so chose the best for for your family for now and make the best of it, you can always change your mind at any point.
The social side of home ed requires a lot of effort and commitment from the parents. I have spent so much time on buses over the years and forcing myself to be social with other HE parents in a way that is really not natural or easy for me.
The other thing to remember is that while home ed doesn't look much like school from the education side it doesn't from the social either. Children may spend less time together but the time they do is more social Friendships might be less BFF and more groups of kids of mixed age all mucking in together. The key is is the child happy?
I had one who was hugely social who chose to go to school at 10 for the social side. One who at 13 has never had any desire to go. He has good friends but likes down time, the social side of school wouldn't work for him at all.

Send him to school. You can still spend time learning about his interests. Tbh it doesn't matter how clever he is if he's lonely and unhappy. He might learn new things there he didn't think of while making lots of friends.

It depends on what you think is more important. Sounds like to you your child learning letters and things like that is more important than learning the myriad of social things learnt on school. If so then go for it.

I would like to mention though, that in my experience of watching several HE families, their genuinely isn't the same opportunity to follow own interests at home as at school just because of the extra resources, inspiration, relationships with other children. I've watched my children develop their own interests in ways that I can't guarantee I would have given them access to at home.

You can still teach your child loads at home. We spend mealtimes following extra interests or reinforcing interests picked up at school, for example.

For me, I feel that life is a team game so I chose school. I wanted my children to develop their friendships, social skills, ability to work with other people etc.

There not their!

I agree with itsstillgood. Try home ed or try school, whichever you think is most likely to suit your child, and see how it goes. The problems you are expecting might never materialise.If they do, you could see whether there is a solution within that setting or change to a different setting. You are trying to predict what your child will need when he's seven, but all you really have to figure out is what he needs right now. Just like other aspects of parenting (pocket money, and if so how much? what style of discipline? how much time with grandparents? when's bedtime?) you have to see what your child needs, and realise that adaptations will be needed as he grows. Making alterations as you go along is not a sign of failure. It is just responding to his ever-changing needs.

One of my kids was very sociable and I made that the focus of my efforts in home education: taking her to where there were other kids. She did try school for a bit, but ironically found the social side of school to be too restrictive and returned to home education, where she had a wider variety of friends and more time to play with them.

For many years, my other child was not too bothered about playing with other kids, so it wasn't an issue for her. Now she is interested and does have friends. Still, she would hate to be in a roomful of people all day every day. Also, she's quite different from most kids her age, and it's important for her to have the opportunity to cast her net wider. For example, recently she has enjoyed taking a helpful, sisterly interest in a little lad eight years younger than she is, a role she wouldn't be able to take on at school.

Montessori? It’s more child centred.

School is more than just the curriculum. It's about learning to get on with other children in all social settings and surroundings. It's about learning to cooperate when you don't want to, it's about standing in line quietly and learning respect for authority.

I met a lady who home schooled her 9 year old son. We met in a cafe of a petting farm (I was on maternity leave and with my baby in a pushchair), Her son freaked out when we encountered school party of 30 Year 2 children out on a trip. He was terrified of them as he'd never experienced a large group of children before.

I always wondered how he'd cope at uni and then in a job.

You don't get many groups of 30 6/7 year olds at uni

Being at school does not teach social skills -it teaches them how to survive with a pack of other children that have nothing more in common than being born in the same academic year; it teaches them that they must do what the teacher says, when the teacher says so -even if they are in the middle of some excellent learning; it teaches them that they can have nothing for themselves, everything MUST be shared; it teaches them to 'put up' with things that may be distressing for them

These are not 'life skills' we generally engage as adults -we generally choose our friends through shared interests, we can discuss priorities and workload with our bosses, we can have our own things and recognise they are important to us work mugs anyone?, and if we don't like someone because they've been mean to us we don't generally have to sit next to them or include them in our social circle during our down time

OP do what you think is right for your child now -it can always be changed later on

Personally I would send them to school. You can do extra learning and follow the child's interests and do school as well.

The thing is that learning at home is often limited by parents' own interests, no matter how proactive they are. DH and I are big readers and I love maths, no surprise that the things we do with our DCs are lots of reading and I like to play maths games with them. We had paper and crayons but because neither of us is very arty or crafty it was never the first thing we would think of to do. Now the DCs have amazed us by coming home from school with models, colouring, painting, and have blossomed doing sport which was another thing we weren't too interested in. So it's not a given that school will force your child to do things in which they are not interested - school can introduce your child to things they didn't even know were interesting!!