I went to a "community conversation about bullying" yesterday that was sponsored by my town's public schools, the town's youth and family services, and the town's prevention council. I sat for two hours in a room full of public school educators who all agreed that: *children have to be "socialized" at home *parents are the key components when it comes to having well socialized teens *schools do a poor job of helping kids/teens learn socialization skills I admit, I snickered a little. ;-) But I thought I'd share.
I remember being in a room of both homeschooling and public schooling mothers, and we were all laughing uproar-ously because the whole socialization issue came up, and someone pointed out how we were constantly told, when we attended school, that we were NOT there to socialize!
So many times throughout school I was told that we were there to learn. If we wanted to socialize we needed to wait until after school.
I'd have stood up, introduced myself and said 'As a homeschool parent, I would just like to tell you blowhards I TOLD YOU SO!! And since I'm a big mouth, I'd have added 'Neener, neener, neener!' Our community college offers an anti bullying class for hs parents. I've never seen bullying in any of the classes Jeannie's been in, but I have seen catty, cliquish girls.
Ooooh, wish you had a video camera too! When people first started giving us the "how will she be socialized" line when we said we were homeschooling we just laughed and said "oh, she's got that one down already seeing that she was in the principal's office almost daily for talking and goofing around with her friends in class!"
