But What About the Social Side?

Ah yes.

The homeschool question.

The one every homeschool parent has heard approximately 847 times.

“But what about the social side?”

It’s always said with such concern too, as if your child is being raised in a cupboard under the stairs, only coming out once a week to practise spelling words and blink at the sun.

For some reason, people hear “homeschooled” and immediately imagine a child who doesn’t know how to speak to humans. Meanwhile, most homeschool kids are out in the real world learning how to talk to actual humans of all ages. They’re debating grown adults on US politics, ordering and paying for their own food at five years old, and somehow walking away with free extras because they’re just too darn cute for the waitress to resist. Some are playing chess with their grandpa and beating him by age 10 (which I can say from experience is a very satisfying homeschool milestone - sorry Poppy). They’re chatting to librarians, helping younger children, playing sport, visiting family, asking big questions, and confidently explaining their very niche interests to randoms.

But still, the stigma is there.

People picture homeschooled kids as strange and awkward, as if school children are all walking around like polished little public speakers with perfect emotional regulation and excellent small talk skills.

Please.

Have you met kids?

School kids are weird too. They’re just weird in matching uniforms.

Some kid has yoghurt in his eyebrow.
Another is crying because their banana broke.
Someone’s telling the teacher, in great detail, that their dad sleeps in undies.
And there’s always a kid who’s named an inanimate object and is emotionally attached.

And yet somehow homeschooled kids are the strange ones?

Interesting...

The funny thing about the socialisation question is that people often ask it as if the school playground is the gold standard of healthy human interaction. As if every lunch break is a peaceful leadership retreat where children practise kindness, conflict resolution and respectful communication over neatly peeled mandarins.

Most of us remember school. The social side wasn’t exactly a calm personal development seminar. It was loud, awkward, dramatic and sometimes brutal. There were cliques, teasing, gossip, exclusion, comparison, pressure and children learning life advice from other children who still believed chewing gum stayed in your stomach for seven years.

So when someone asks, “But what about the social side?” maybe homeschool parents don’t need to immediately panic and start listing every activity their child has ever attended.

“Oh yes, they have friends! They do swimming and art and sport and homeschool group and drama and library events and once they spoke to a cashier without crying!”

Maybe we don’t need to defend ourselves like we’re in court.

Maybe we can smile and say:

“Absolutely. That’s why I homeschool. I’m terrified by the social side of school.”

Because honestly, that’s a fair answer.

Most parents aren’t homeschooling because they forgot children need people. We’re homeschooling because we care deeply about which people are shaping them. We care about the influences around them, the attitudes they absorb, the pressures they face, and the way one cruel comment at lunchtime can follow a child around for years.

Homeschooling doesn’t mean children never face hard things. Of course they do. They still have friendship issues, awkward conversations, disagreements, disappointments and moments where someone has to learn that “I was just being honest” isn’t a free pass to be rude.

The difference is that homeschool parents often have more space to guide those moments. We can talk things through. We can help our children understand what happened, what could be done differently, how to apologise, how to forgive, how to set boundaries and how to choose friends wisely.

That’s not avoiding socialisation.

That’s actually teaching it.

Homeschooling also allows children to socialise in a way that looks more like real life. They can spend time with younger children, older children, adults, grandparents, cousins, neighbours, sports teams, community groups and other homeschool families. Real life isn’t made up of 28 people born within the same twelve-month period.

Imagine turning up to work as an adult and saying, “Sorry, I only know how to interact with people born in 1994.”

That would be weird.

And apparently we’re the odd ones.

One of the loveliest parts of homeschooling is watching children keep a bit more of themselves for longer. They can stay interested, curious and unembarrassed about the things they love. They can talk passionately about horses, reptiles, LEGO, World War II planes, baking, bugs, Minecraft, space, rocks, chickens or whatever very specific obsession has taken over the household this month.

And yes, sometimes that passion is intense.

Very intense.

No one can humble you quite like a child giving you a 42-minute explanation of a topic you didn’t ask about while you’re trying to unload groceries.

But I’d rather see a child full of curiosity than one who’s learned to pretend they don’t care because enthusiasm might look uncool.

Socialisation matters. Of course it does. Friendship matters. Confidence matters. Learning how to speak to people, solve conflict, show kindness and handle different personalities all matter.

But school isn’t the only place those things happen.

So the next time someone asks, “But what about the social side?” you don’t have to shrink back.

You can just smile and say:

“Exactly. That’s one of the reasons we homeschool.”

Homeschooled kids aren’t locked away from society. They’re learning how to be part of it with a little more breathing room, a little more guidance and hopefully a lot less lunchbox drama.

And if they turn out a little quirky?

Good.

The world has enough copies. A few wonderfully weird, deeply loved, well-socialised homeschool kids might be exactly what it needs.