Socialization for the Homeschooled (0 Comments)
I don’t worry about the kid’s social skills- they not only get to learn who to treat each other, the most annoying siblings on earth, with kindness and dignity on a daily basis but they interact with children of all different ages several times a week.
It’s the Homeschooling Mother that often has the problem. We are at home, struggling to teach the kids, keep up with laundry, keep the house decent and have conversations about made up people all day. There are times I get quite twitchy wondering if I will totally lose adult conversation skills.
We’ve had a busy time the last few weeks. The Col. was home from work over Christmas, then we went to my parent’s over New Years and I visited with family. Then we came home and I collapsed for a day. Tuesday brought our usual homeschool sports and recreation day so I got to talk to other Mothers there. (and you thought those activities were for the kids!) Wednesday is the day when my Mom calls. I joke that I spend hours “listening” to her because she does most of the talking. That often seems to happen but the phone calls are enjoyable and I am thankful for them. So after about an hour and a half I got off with her, about an hour later my good friend, who I haven’t actually talked to for quite awhile (we email and instant message often), called. We spent the next few hours catching up. During that call the one phone handset died so I picked up the one in the bedroom.
Shortly after I got off with her I thought I should call a lady from church to ask her something before I forgot. Talked to her for a bit. I then went out to the shop and heard the phone ringing. I grabbed the handset out there and talked to another friend for one of our shorter conversations of about an hour. I was thankful that I had a fully charged handset to use.
After that marathon day, I spent another hour on the phone to another friend on Thursday, had company on Friday night, had coffee with a friend on Saturday afternoon, a date with my husband Saturday evening and church on Sunday.
Whew! I think I’ve had enough. I thought about taking Monday off again- but I needed to get school going so decided against it. I stayed off the phone though.
