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.

That is not at all what I meant, I am truly sorry if that is how it came across. I absolutely do not think all children with mental health problems have parents who do not invest in them! I would never ever think that.

Nothing.

@RosemarySutcliffe

Are your kids going to uni, OP?

Because if they are it will be a real shock for them (and for you!)

Booze, sex, drugs, mental health problems…not saying your kids would have that stuff but they will might and they most definitely will come across peers who do.

so if I were you I would start to mix things up for them in terms of what they’re exposed to so that when they enter into the world outside the bubble you have created they are not too naive and vulnerable

But just say you have precisely the right balance as a parent, and I am entirely unreasonable in this respect and am bound to run into problems in the future as a result.. how do I grow in this area? The idea of tiktok (yes I have heard of it), vaping etc frankly terrifies me. I'm just so far away from being ok with it. I do see that children can rebel if they are kept too tightly under the wing. I have never been a helicopter parent and I don't baby my children, they are very capable and responsible and they are not sheltered in terms of my husband and I speaking broadly on many topics at the dinner table, exposed to a range of people socially and so on. But they are very sheltered in terms of media and pop culture, I can see I had not appreciated it being considered quite so unusual. Although I would argue it's not quite as tragic or eccentric as some posters are making out.

This doesn't even sound weird in my circle. Everyone I know with kids wants exactly this kind of life. But I'm not sure what aspect of it is driving it...

Fwiw I learnt to code at 18 having never done it before and went on to do it professionally. You don't need Minecraft... In my opinion, coding is already a commodity skill and will become even more so with AI so I wouldn't be losing too much sleep if my kids couldn't do it!

Not everyone I know is planning/enacting a 100% screen free childhood, some have exceptions, but mostly they are along the lines of either educational only, or social only (e.g. playing mario kart as a family in the living room).

Classical Conversations groups will have children like this. And yes, they do exist in the UK!
Perhaps join some UK based classical and Charlotte Mason FB groups, and see if there’w anyone else in the area? Many unschoolers do try and brand themselves as Charlotte Mason and look very confused if you try to discuss the philosophy with them - just something to be aware of.

In my experience, home educators like this become tired of the overwhelmingly poor behaviour at home ed groups with parents looking at their feral children adoringly with no inclination to stop them causing harm. Certainly have given up by the time their children hits teens! They end up just doing after school clubs, where their children can mix with kids who are a bit more normal. School educated children can have wide interests too, and certainly some common interests if they do same clubs. It’s a great place to make friends, especially for your older kids.

You realise when your kids turn into adults who make their own decisions they are very likely to go off the rails?

I do think you have a point there. So hard to let go and make a beginning though. I don't care about them trying cigerettes and alcohol when they are older, I am not a 17thC puritan. But there is so much of today's culture that seems far from healthy to me, and I want to give them freedom and peace from the noise of it all for as long as possible. There really is no issue with them not mixing well, they do just fine in that respect. But I do feel concerned about being overly controlling, the outside world being a shock to them and things of that nature.

My niece has an offer to study film studies at a small university relatively close to the rural area she lives in. She has had no access to social media and her mum describes her as a character from an Enid Blyton book. She's now decided to defer her place as she thinks going to go to university is too scary. She hasn't been home schooled but equally hasn't been prepared for adult life.

I don't think you are doing your children any favours as they are missing the common reference points which they will use to build connections, whether at university or in the workplace.

I think you are really isolating your children OP, social interactions with different children at their ages are critical.

I know technology can be scary but it can also be fun and have many educational benefits.

I'd be very worried about how your children will socialise as adults as they won't have similar memories about childhood as other adults their ages will have ( e.g I click with many people my own age as we played the same games when we were younger, watched the same shows etc)

It also sounds like you haven't given them any real independence.

My DD9 has a coding class at school as jobs when she's older will be very different to the jobs available now and it sounds like you are not preparing your children for that.

I feel very sorry for your children as it seems they are been brought up in the 1960's.

I imagine there are cults that live like this

Thank you, I am grateful for these things to think on. My eldest can touch type well now, from an old manual I bought.. second child is well on her way also. They both have old stripped-down phones they listen to audiobooks on but I have discouraged them from using them in any other way, other than the odd bit of camera play. You raise good points about scams, AI.. I have relatives that work in these fields so I perhaps should seek their advice.

The older your kids get, the more it’s not about whether you are okay with it, but whether your kids are okay with it. And your job is to give them tools and experiences to make that decision, not prevent them from ever making that decision, and that includes making sure that they can take or leave the experiences you disapprove of or think of as damaging without leaving them unable to cope with the ideas at all. The real world is theirs for the taking if they are capable of making their own decisions and value choices without being scared/terrified/unable to compute anything beyond their own immediate upbringing.

Also other families and children aren’t props for your children’s lives - they need to get something out of the relationship too.

Brace yourself. I pretty much had this upbringing but my mum had great eclectic musical taste ...Sunday mornings were a mix of Vivaldi and meatloaf so Taylor Swift would have been in the mix for pop culture. I grew up in Shakespeare county....i travelled. I had a real Greek tragedy with a dead Dad as a child....
I had ponies and japes and drinking alcohol at 13 and lots of sex from 15!

Im pretty functional now so don't worry. Excellent degree, good job, millionaire...just don't worry.

Oh difference is i went to a C of E primary ...very small and regular school

Sorry further edit. I agree with comments re preparing for the world. I didn't do my degree at 18 as didn't feel ready for the world
A decision I regret although I did a different degree at 39

Please bring back the laughing emoji ..

this
you are isolating your children anyhow. Joining different groups creates well rounded kids. Pushing them into one hole is not great for the future.

I'm not a fan of home schooling for this very reason. They stand out a mile off too

Send them to school and let them form their own friendships? not ones you have formed for them

I don’t mean to go on and I appreciate that you are trying to do the absolute best for your children, but do you struggle with anxiety?

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.

I actually find it quite astounding that this is seen as "bizarre cult-like behaviour" and "something from the 50s"!!

Also isolating them from technology is madness. We don't like it but unfortunately it is the future!

just monitor them, help and guide. If you do not - you will regret it - they will not be ready for real life!

My children are in a Steiner school and you describe a large percentage of families in the school. Maybe there is a Steiner/Waldorf ethos homeschooling network near you.

You don't need to throw them to the social media wolves to give them some accessibility to modern culture and
being aware of and appreciating modern music isn't a bad thing.

You must be mid forties? So you could introduce them to music you liked as a teen?
How about listening Radio 1 over breakfast? Pop music, bit of Pop culture but it's going to be harmless and BBC approved?

Let’s say you want to cut back on your chocolate intake….if there’s no chocolate in the house - are you really resisting? vs choc in the house and showing restraint?

kids learn how to navigate the world by mixing with a range of people and despite differences, upholding their morals behaviours (whatever it is you’re trying to maintain by sheltering them) etc.

I don't have much advice but as a child I wasn't really interested in the same things as many of my peers. It did make finding friends hard.

As an adult of course I found an evening hobby full of like-minded people, and live in a place that also attracts similar people.

I meet people like you describe at forest school, at a local farm which runs event days for kids, and a local country park which does pond dipping and stuff like that for kids in the summer. I've met some just playing in the park in the rain, which most people don't do!

Some also at Scouts.

Also, maybe some of the computer loving kids would love outdoor adventures but have never had much opportunity. Maybe invite one and see.

My child is a teenager and is funny and interested and engaged with the world as a whole, builds dens with friends when we go to woods, does martial arts, says please and thank you, can engage in debate, questions the rights and wrongs of things and oh is a rounded human being. And spends a lot of time online with their tight knit group of friends, who they also see in real life.
Had you met them at age 7 you would have said we were the wrong kind of people their ASD would have had you running the other way. Now you’d be hard pushed to tell on initial meeting, so please don’t judge people on what you see on the surface. You might have to take a little time to figure out if people are a fit.
You are being so proscriptive. Your narrow view of what constitutes appropriate isn’t fair to your children. They might click with a neurodivergent kid who has the odd wobble but is an amazing human and can care about them in turn. Don’t make so many assumptions and honestly if you want a better range to chose from then you need to move south. The wilds of Scotland simply can’t provide you with a diverse group of people. It really is a numbers game.
Great if they’re niche in their interests that shouldn’t preclude them from being friends with many different kinds of people. The broader their experience the better for them, they will learn to deal with many different kinds of people not some homogenised world of weird perfection that doesn’t exist.
Plus as a previous poster said if you want bonfires and dinner parties then organise them, most Home Ed kids are game for something a bit different. Most kids love a bonfire!
Oh and whilst it’s not perfect a subscription to The Week Junior will certainly broaden their horizons in a safe old fashioned way.

No most children are not consumed with problems, I was speaking of the small pool of home educated teenagers that I have personally come across in our remote, rural area.

I think they rub along well with all kinds of people, I have no concerns in that respect. I am thankful to all the posters who have made useful contributions on the aspects I do feel could become a concern, plus those who have given helpful suggestions on my original question. My children are not fragile as far as I can tell, they all seem robust enough. And all very happy, but I am aware my son is getting older and things may have to change as he grows. His world will need to expand, but I want to do it in the best way possible. Its sad there are a few on here who seem desperate to think I am raising complete basket cases who are surely destined to fly spectacularly off the rails simply because we have made a very few counter-cultural lifestyle choices with regards to their childhood. There is something unpleasant about that attitude.

Thank you. I agree with what you say and I am taking it all on board. You are possibly more right than you know.