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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 2025739" data-attributes="member: 3400">One thing I wonder about "undersocialized" home-schooled kids is whether they were only children or had siblings. A friend of mine with some educational background is pretty adamant that single-children, especially ones who have never been in day care or school, are socially underdeveloped compared to kids who had siblings. I think he's a little crock-potty but it's still worth looking into. Do any of your (and by your I mean ENworlders who have contributed to this thread) memories of undersocialized home-schoolers involve single-children or kids with sibs?I happen to live in a dynamite school district and wouldn't consider home schooling in any serious capacity. My daughter is a little bit of an introvert as it is and we want her interacting with her peers as much as possible. She goes to a school with a focus on science and math and has multi-age classrooms. Now that she's a first grader and there are kindergarteners looking at her as a mentor, her self-confidence has grown considerably.I went to public schools for my education and turned out fantastic, if I don't mind saying so myself. One of the great benefits is the variety of boredoms you get. And if you're having a bad day with a particular teacher, you only have to endure them for an hour before you're off and on your way to another class. My mother would have driven me to an early grave if she had  home-schooled me.When it comes to a mobile life-style, there's not a heck of a lot you can do. Home-schooling might actually be the most stable part of her education since it's relatively clear she won't have a stable set of friends that will be there for longer than a couple of years at a time. And that leads me into another seque in this ramble. My wife was educated in both the Los Angeles school system and the British school system (specifically, in St. Albans) because her father often went to the UK to lead some UCLA study-abroad programs. It was usually only 1 year at a time in the UK, interspersed with 1-2 years at home in LA, but she doesn't regularly interact with ANYBODY from her childhood other than her sisters and parents. After college and all our college friends dispersed to the 4 winds, she was kind of adrift in a world with no close friends other than mine. It took years for her to settle down with some really close friends of her own that weren't explicitly friends of mine first. By contrast, I have a few friends that I've had since childhood and I can't undervalue what that means.</blockquote>

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