That question of socialization is often the main one when it comes to home schooling. The answer is the socialization they receive in school is more towards the negative than the positive. Children can be cruel and mean to each other. Name calling, bad behaviors that your child may pick up, bad language your child is exposed to, friendship wars (you’re not my friend), bullies, etc.
Socialization is your child learning how to interact with another child. That other child does not need to be from another family, as is commonly thought. A sibling offers plenty of opportunities to learn socialization. And you, as an adult, are an important asset to teaching your kids socialization.
If you think about it, school does not really offer much of a chance for kids to socialize. The main thing they do in school is sit down in their chairs for their lessons. Mostly they learn how to be ‘quiet’. If you tried to socialize with the child next to you, the teacher will quickly tell you ‘no talking’. In fact, you cannot even speak to the teacher unless you raise your hand. There are very few opportunities for the kids to actually play and interact with each other during the school day. If the school allowed it, the class of 20+ students would quickly turn into loud chaos, which cannot be. Well, there is recess, but it’s short. I dealt with this issue while teaching in the Sunday school a few years ago. The kids would come to class and want to socialize with their friends. But I had all these lessons prepared and needed them to stop talking and listen/do the lesson. I felt bad, because this was the one time in the week for them to see their Muslim friends but the administration and parents were more concerned for the children to learn about Islam and learn to read Qur’an than with socialization. Unfortunately, against common belief, schools do not teach socialization and cannot. Schools are for learning, not socializing.
Some even say that socialization is best done with children a year or so older than the child, not kids of the same age. Think about it, your child is young and hasn’t learned to be ‘social’ yet. Could she learn from a child her age who probably also has the same problem? No, she needs to interact with a child older than her who has learned those skills. That is why I have come to believe that a child’s own siblings and parents are the best ones to teach socialization.
As for my own experience in this issue, i have just recently come upon a disturbing discovery between my own two children. First, a little background. Ever since my second child turned 1, i have been actively teaching my two children how to interact with each other. For the past two years, i have struggled to show them the right way to play with each other and deal with each other. They had a strong bond. They loved having each other. And any ‘fights’ would be used as an opportunity to teach them a lesson on caring, sharing, dealing with anger or frustration, patience, and problem solving techniques. It has never been enough for me to just say ‘hitting is not allowed’ and discipline them. I always try to get to the bottom of the thing, the root cause of the problem, and teach them a way to prevent the situation from occurring again.
This past September i put my oldest in a private Islamic school for Kindergarten. She is very well behaved in school and always comes home with various stickers and stamps. Although she is well behaved she came home once saying ‘pinhead’, and on a visit to grandma was saying it to her uncle. Alhamdulillah, she got out of that within a short time. Then once recently she said that some girls called her a ‘baby’. She has peed in her pants twice because the teacher didn’t see her raising her hand for the past 10 minutes. They tell them they have to raise their hands and then they are so busy they don’t even notice if someone has their hand up. In lunch time, they are told ‘no speaking while eating’. Recess, guess what, is 15 minutes! And that’s only if you finish your snack before the 15 minutes is up. So if you’re hungry, well then you luck out on the only time in the whole day where you can socialize and just be a kid. So no, i don’t see that my daughter is getting any positive socialization in school. She has made friends her own age, but unless i set up playdates they will never get to really socialize. When i ask her who her best friend is, it’s a girl in Pre-k who she saw frequently over the summer when my husband would take the kids with him to pray in the mosque. Now, she only sees this girl in school events, community dinners, and when we invite her family over or visit them. Haven’t you always noticed that older girls like to play with younger girls and vice versa?
Now, for the disturbing part that i encountered, is my daughter’s lack of socialization when she comes home from school. 3 months of school have effectively erased 2 years of lessons that i painstakingly taught her on how to deal with her younger brother, and sometimes even the lessons on dealing with your parents. She comes home so tired and cranky, she doesn’t want to deal with anyone. She is impatient with me and her little brother. The whole afternoon is spent through various fights. The first few months i let it slide because i felt bad for her, she was going through so much to adjust to school life and i just chalked it up to that.
But now, i’ve noticed that there’s something else at play here. Whereas before she used to spend all day with her brother and had a strong bond with him, now that she’s at school for most of the day, that bond has broken. They got used to being apart. I almost feel like they forgot the value of each other sometimes. And add to that a child that has spent most of the day having to ’sit still’ and ‘be quiet’. She comes home and wants to be the opposite - she wants to do whatever she wants, talk the way she wants, behave any way she wants, as she demands things from me and her brother. She will refuse to share or take turns. I mean, not all the time, but i often see this. And it has come to a point where she says she doesn’t want her brother anymore and he says he doesn’t want his sister. It is breaking my heart to see them like this.
InshaAllah i will get over this challenge just as i have all the others. And now that i know what’s the root cause of this behavior i can do some problem solving and find a solution. Please if you have any suggestions let me know. I’m thinking she needs some sort of transition time/alone time when she first comes home from school, just to take a break from ALL people. And i’m going to spend a week sitting with them while they play to re-teach them the various lessons.
Please I don’t want anyone to take what I said the wrong way. Just please be more understanding and don’t tell a home-schooler that their children are missing out on socialization.
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