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?

Some schools support social skills development very well, others don't. I considered home Ed but decided while I could do academics, I'm not the greatest role model when it comes to knowing how to socialise or rather, how to teach someone for whom it doesn't come naturally. Ds has ASD but his school has been brilliant, both with classmates accepting him from the start as witty and nice and having various foibles, and teachers and TAs running groups on social use of language, differentiating work, etc, and getting advice from Ed psych etc. Though dn, in a different school, also has ASD and might have been better off being homeschooled as his school have been the opposite of supportive. But he didn't want to stop going.
A number of my friends homeschool and for some it works really well, for others it seems more like hiding from a lot of life.

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
This is so not the case. Children learn loads of social skills in school. You make it sound like a jungle, and most aren't.

Schools have all kinds of situations that are good for social skills. Opportunities for group work, working across age groups, working with people different from you etc.

It's not just about who you would be friends with but who you can work with.

ChicagoLil, many kids are being home educated specifically because they find school settings distressing. It seems fairly unlikely that a typical child (even a home educated child) could have reached the age of nine without ever encountering a large group of children.

I doubt this is the reason this child freaked out. Some schoolchildren find it highly stressful to be in crowds of people and suffer so much on a daily basis that their parents find it best to remove them from school. In other cases, the parents may be able to predict from the extreme reactions of their three or four year old that school is not the right place for them, and never give school a try.

No reliable statistics exist, but the population of home educated children appears to have a high proportion of children with special needs. It would be a mistake to conclude from the behaviour of one home educated child whom you met briefly that home education has caused him to dislike crowds.

myotherprofile

I've employed school leavers for many, many years and these are not skills the majority posses, but they are capable of learning them

The majority lack initiative and need very clear instructions -almost as though they are scared to make a mistake. A large proportion also think discussion with colleagues are people 'having a go' at them

I'm not alone in my observations

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-37824641

Learning team work with other Primary age pupils, who also need to learn team work, does not work -it just teaches them that those that shout loudest get noticed -some children retreat at this point and don't speak up, some will get louder to get their voices heard -not the way to go about it in the board room really

My dcs both get quite stressed in crowds. It has nothing to do with home ed, and everything to do with autism.

Many people home educate due to their dcs having SNs and not being able to cope with school or their dcs being failed/unsupported by the school/LA.

I dont know what I'd do but I totally recognise the scenario. Still, I dont see why you wouldn't start off home edding and then deal with the problem if and when it arose.

At that age 4 yrs always try school and give them the chance to progress, if it doesn't work u can always pull them out and home Ed, my child went to school but I pulled her out in yr3 to home Ed as she ya SEN needs and wasn't getting the support there, I set my own group up so I knew she would be mixing with friends on our days and would get involved in other activities on Fb home Ed groups, she is much happier than she was but I don't regret putting her in at the beginning because it's helped her develop socially at that age and gained her confidence,

I would try school, you could also go back to home Ed if he hates it.

I'd arrange a HE group based on something my child loved, possibly at our home, so that hopefully my child can bond with the children over shared interests. So eg art, lego, regular swimming, park meet etc. I'd make sure there was some free play time expected, and possibly a shared picnic lunch or something to give more opportunity for socialising.

Or, put a shout out on your local HE group for play dates. Or start a new after school group eg drama. Or some areas have privately run after school clubs that you could use even as a home educator, same with holiday clubs. And be proactive in following up budding friendships.

Yes school I home Ed my daughter but we tried school first she was 7 when we took her out, have u tried role playing games with her playing school and swap around so she's the teacher, doing drama and facial expressions and emotions twinkl have good resources for making friends