How to connect with 'wholesome' families

[RosemarySutcliffe]

Please no tiresome comments of offended outrage. I was hoping for ideas on how to meet home educated families in the hope that my children (ages 13,11, 7 & 4) could make friends with children more like themselves. Children who are familiar with classic literature (nesbit, ransome, tolkien, lewis etc), who are imaginative, interested in culture (shakespeare, poetry, enthusiastic, outdoorsy, well-mannered and have a sense of good sportsmanship, traditional childhood fun, how to be a friend and so on.
It feels like a needle in a haystack. We don't do gaming, my children don't have ipads or phones, they have only been exposed to edifying, wholesome films. They don't have behaviour problems or mental health problems. They are just decent, normal, imperfect, regular children. They don't know who Taylor Swift is, they've never played minecraft. How to meet like-minded people? It feels as if home educated children these days are often far more homogeneous than children who attend school. I don't mean any judgement of offence, it just can feel a little lonely as a family when you are raising them outside of the prevailing culture. We would love to have friends to invite for afternoon tea and poetry, dinner parties, bonfires, book clubs, put on plays with, swallows and amazon style adventures.. you get the idea.

I was going to say this - OP your educational approach sounds quite Charlotte Mason. There is a school in Cambridge that follows her pedagogy - it's called Heritage.

Actually, in Cambridge I think there are quite a few families you would fit well with. Lots of eccentric academics wittingly or unwittingly out of touch with 2025!

Swallows and Amazons and Boarding school adventures were dated even in the 80s when I read them as a pre-teen. I know kids are a boarding school that has a yacht with sails but the kids there are pretty savvy and it's not all jolly hockey sticks etc.

My daughter is 11 and is making her way through the Odyssey and as well as making lots of kitsune type masks. She also enjoys making her own little films and editing them. Her brother is 8 and very into nature and exploration but also loves building whole nature reserves in Minecraft.

A couple of my friends were home educated in the 90s and now are self employed after doing arty degrees but they both have to engage with the digital world to promote their business, make online sales and build their websites. They grew up in arty/alternative vegetarian households and did "wholesome" stuff but they absolutely couldn't have the businesses they do without being online. One has a little independent bookshop and the other is a weaver. Even living an alternative lifestyle usually requires some level of engagement with the internet

Gaming is absolutely fantastic.
It has been proven to increase cognitive function and very educational.
I recommend it for all ages.

Of course, like with anything everything should be in moderation even fitness can be unhealthy if you have an obsession with it.

Played in moderation, games like Minecraft can be very beneficial (and fun).

If OP is worried about the ‘online aspect’ then perhaps she could look into just playing it offline or watching.

Interesting user name, OP, what inspired that?

Presumably the novelist of the same name?

What is 'unwholesome' about a teen hang out?

Your posts make me so sad op. I can see what you're trying to achieve, but I can't help but feel that you are letting your children down as much as those other parents you judge so harshly.

Rosemary Sutcliffe didn’t have a conventional mainstream education herself of course.

Plenty of non HE parents have also invested in their children and they lead ‘wholesome’ lives, as I said above. Our children for instance have spent the summer in orchestra and chamber music camps, hiking with us, reading, playing outside, a cricket camp, going to museums and plays and on a trip to Europe with us. They have also watched TV, baked, done gardening with DH, helped him build and paint a shed, cooked with us. DS1 has at the same time messaged friends who have come over and they have gone to the park together, and then come back to play music, board games, chat, hang out. DS2 has built a lot of Lego, played in the park with friends, irritated his brother, drawn lots of pictures AND watched some Netflix shows (happy to recommend quite good wholesome TV content). All of this has required DH or me (or sometimes both of us) to be fully present. My kids have also just played with each other, had plenty of downtime and I value boredom a lot.

And to the person who talked about academics, yes both DH and I are academics and we do know others whose children are very similar. All of them are in school though and none are home educated.

You seem quite fearful of the world. My kids take public transport independently, go to school, have a fully mainstream life which involves homework online or using a Chromebook in school. But they read a lot, are not remotely screen addicted and have managed to navigate secondary school without gaming.

She did not.

Woodcraft Folk? These kids will be quite outdoorsy but also likely to be engaged with the world in a political justice sense. You sound more isolationist. It is good for your kids to meet lots of different types of people.

All music was pop music once! All books were new before they were classics.

You know some kids with mental health problems can have parents that have also done their utmost to create an environment where their children can thrive too?

This comment is quite insulting to insinuate that children with mental health problems have parents who haven’t invested in them and it shows.

She didn’t learn to read until she was 9 - like Kipling apparently.

I agree. I'm not a gamer, don't like it but my kids have a lovely time playing Minecraft.

There's a four year age gap but they work together to create things or youngest will choose what she wants and her brother will build it.

Of course they shouldn't be on it eight hours a day but they also need to learn how to moderate it (with some input from me at times but other times they will come off before I make them as they are ready).

My son was quite a lonely and shy little boy. Minecraft really helped him connect with other kids. Now they all come round and sit together in my living room playing.

And from those friendships they go out on bikes together or fishing.

I'm not in favour of endless hours staring at screens (I was quite anti getting a Switch and my husband bought it). But I have to concede he was right and it's been beneficial to my son's social interactions.

RosemarySutcliffe are you a real person?

But what about programming OP? Your 13 year old by the sounds of it has no experience of it and that eventually will rule out jobs such as software engineer, cyber security etc for him. Engineering is all about using computers now - minecraft is great for enthusiasm around that sort of thing on the creative mode. So many jobs now revolve around using computers from data science to marketing to finance.

I think it sounds like you're giving your primary age kids an idyllic screen free childhood - but things are different when they reach secondary school age. I feel you're going to be ruling out a lot of careers for them if you don't start introducing them to the 21st century once they're teens. Learning Greek and Latin is wonderful if they're keen, DS did Latin and enjoyed it - but jobwise where is it all going to get them if they don't really know how to use a computer?

I also don't understand why you would ban all pop music apart from Elvis? What is that all about? I mean they don't have to be listening to death metal but there's loads of great pop music out there beyond Elvis! I do think you are overly fearful about it all tbh. When you home school you have a lot of control over what your children are doing and accessing.

Oh come on everyone!
This has to be a joke thread 😂

Presumably.

Surely…

The measure of your parenting will be your children’s ability to rub along with children who don’t have amazing idyllic backgrounds, frankly. And if your parenting is not equipping them to do just that and they are too fragile to be exposed to other people with all their glories and flaws, you’re failing them.

Most children aren’t all consumed with problems, FWIW.

Rosemary Sutcliff (without a final 'e') was an English novelist best known for children's books, especially historical fiction and retellings of myths and legends.
Sadly I don't think she's noticed that she died in 1992 and is clearly just carrying on regardless on MN.

My DCs were all very familiar with classic children's literature and edifying movies and TV (PBS in the US). I played classical music on the radio at home, they read massive piles of library books weekly, loved art and were taken to see plenty of it and also loved the games available to them at the dawn of the computer games era - The Oregon Trail, Monkey Island, and more. They went to school and made friends with kindred spirits.

One became a huge TS fan, to my utter chagrin. They all loved The Sinpsons and used to rehash dialogue from entire episodes when we had to do long car trips

What are you implying?

Yes I do see. My husband I both work from home (only a very few hours for me) and we couldn't do that without technology of course. I just feel surely it's beneficial to have a later introduction to it, why do they need endless years familiarising themselves with it in preparation for the world of work. It can't take long to get to grips with it. They have many more unusual occupations and pursuits, I haven't mentioned much as I am a private person and don't to put our whole life on here, but I felt that by acquiring more niche skills and being immersed in more unusual interests would perhaps give them more of an edge in life than doing the same things as everyone else. Not because they are inherently superior uses of time, just different. I certainly don't want to disadvantage them and I am taking the viewpoints put to me on here seriously. I am happy to consider that I may need to change in some respects.

Your children might find like-minded peers online - this is where niche interests find each other.

Fact is there are not many families doing what you are doing. Maybe in the big, traditional university towns like St Andrews.

But the chances of it if you live rurally are low.

Your children are growing up and will now need a slightly different upbringing which does involve exposure to the online world if they are to stay safe.

How will they recognise scams, A1 etc?

Can they type? Use a phone keyboard? They need to get up to speed. Hand writing is a bygone skill - don't leave them unprepared.

My musically talented, highly literate teen daughter has just returned from a county orchestra music tour and the idea that it is some 1950s-esc wholesome experience is frankly laughable.

when they weren’t rehearsing and performing classical repertoire they were sneaking out of their rooms to meet boys, sharing vapes and zoning out on TikTok.

she had the best time - but teens will be teens across generations and backgrounds

it’s all about balance in my view. And that comes from social exposure across the board