My friend targetshopper asked a really good question in the comments section of my previous post. With her permission, I'd like to reprint her comment and then address that here.
Targetshopper said, "I heard something a few years ago and wondered what your thoughts were. Maybe I already asked you this but I can't remember....Disclaimer: This is simply a situation that I heard from someone on tv and does not reflect my personal views or opinions. :) A woman (about 25 or so) that had been homeschooled stated that her parents were very good about getting her involved in activities with other children as an attempt to socialize her. However, she felt like she still lacked many social skills. She blamed it on being put into activities that she enjoyed (home, church, ballet, etc.) and felt like she was never forced to do activities that she didn't enjoy or interact regularly with people that she didn't enjoy; people who were very different from her such as bullies, class clowns, etc. She felt like she didn't learn how to participate and negotiate in places that were uncomfortable for her or with people who were different than her."
This is a great question! Thank you targetshopper. I obviously cannot speak for other homeschool parents, so my comments that follow are from my perspective alone.
First of all, I think most of us know this but it bears repeating....ALL of us are imperfect parents, and ALL our children will have blind spots or weaknesses due to our imperfect parenting. My children will have different ones than yours, you may do better in certain areas than we do, and we may do better in others, but ALL of our children will one day be imperfect adults, just as we are. We all love our children and we all do our best, but we live in a fallen world and have not yet attained perfection. Accepting this was a watershed moment for me as a parent.
Also, as parents we have to choose which character qualities or behaviors or attitudes we need to work on with each of our children at any given time. We can't work on everything at once, and each of our children will almost certainly respond differently to the same standard being taught. Some issues may go completely "untaught" in favor of others that are considered far more important.
Having said that, it is possible that the young adult homeschool graduate WAS put in uncomfortable situations and did not learn as well as her siblings how to handle them. It is equally possible that this is one of those "blind spots" that her parents did not foresee. I would be very curious to see how this young woman's perspective had changed a few years after making her comments. I wonder how she handled situations where she needed to negotiate or compromise after she was out in the real world for a while? Did she learn quickly? Did her previous "socialization" help her to be a quick study when it came to interacting with others dissimilar to herself?
To me, it is more important (and more realistic) to teach my children how to handle conflict and then pray that they will be able to apply it to specific situations, than it is to actually put them in every conceivable uncomfortable situation and force learning on them that way. Does that make sense? There is no way I can foresee and then mimic for them, situations they may face in college, in their workplace, and in their interpersonal relationships. But wherever there are people, there is conflict, and so I have many opportunities to teach them how to handle conflict, how to work to resolve it, and how to turn to the Lord for help when they are faced with something bigger than they are.
Really, I think bullies on the school playground is about the only "uncomfortable situation" my children are missing out on at this point. :-) We do have a class clown here in our home, and many disruptions that they must learn to deal with while in the classroom, even though their classroom is the kitchen! There are many things they don't want to do that they are forced to do, like chores and homework, just like their institutional school counterparts. There are even aspects of their extracurricular classes that they don't enjoy but are forced to do as part of their commitment. Last year our son G had to play many soccer games in the pouring rain, and was made to go to practice on a day when he was extremely tired and complaining of "not feeling well". He didn't have a fever, a stomachache, or a headache, nothing specific that he could identify. Well, sorry buddy! You made a commitment to your coach and your team, you are going to practice.
Our daughter has her piano recital this evening and she is scared spitless. It's all she's thinking about today. But there has never been any question about her going through with it, in either our minds or in hers. It is expected that she will do it even though it's outside of her comfort zone. It this an uncomfortable social situation for her? Yes, absolutely. Is it as uncomfortable as others she will likely face in her future? No, of course not. But it's training, nonetheless.
The bottom line is that we, as parents, have to pray about what is valuable to expose our children to, and what is not. For our family, learning that may occur as a result of bullying on the playground is not a compelling enough reason for us to expose our children to that. Will this decision turn out to be a mistake? I don't think so! But even if it does, mercifully, God's love covers a multitude of sins.
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3 comments:
Another perspective -- I went to public high school. I was very good friends with the valedictorian. She was also the number one female tennis player in the state. Everything else that I knew about, she was excellent at. I commented to her one day about how amazing this was. She said, "Oh, I would try things and then, if I couldn't be the best, I stopped doing it." She went to Stanford for college. She wasn't the best, so she transferred back to a state university where she was a brighter, shining star. I would say that she too had not learned how to handle hard or uncomfortable situations for the most part.
I, on the other hand, never really tried to excel. If I mainly got something, that was fine with me. I had no desire to be the best. I only pursued those subjects that interested me but my drive was never to be the "best". I'm not saying that this was right. I should have tried much harder in school than I did but I didn't. Then I got to graduate school. Every class was easy for me except for Mandarin Chinese. I worked my tail off in that class and still kept failing. I probably worked more on that class than all my other classes combined. I remember studying for 3 hours almost every night but then I would take the test, forget one thing, panic and forget everything else. My professors kept passing me because they knew how hard I was working. Then one day, the light clicked and I finally got it. I started making straight A's. This was in my fourth semester of Chinese. After that, I knew I could do anything if I persevered.
My lack of diligence in the easy things was a character flaw. It was the challenging thing that grew me but it didn't happen until I was almost 26 years old and it wasn't because of the educational choices for me of my parents.
On a different note, I have a child who has never met a stranger. There is almost no social situations that make him uncomfortable and never will. I have never seen a child like him. On the other hand, I have a little girl who is almost never comfortable around others until she knows them really well. Homeschooing is not the reason either of them are the way they are. And if my girl were in school, all she would have memories of would be how miserable she was. And if my social boy were in school, all he would remember would be all the time in the principal's office for being disruptive.
All of this is to say that she is blaming "homeschooling" for an issue that is an issue for her but not necessarily because of homeschooling. It is, in the Providence of God, the way things turned out. She does not know if the hard things, earlier in life, would have crushed her. That might have been the situation. Maybe, facing such things later, made her simply uncomfortable. If she had faced similar situations earlier in her life, they might have been her undoing.
I hope this makes some sense. And I'm sorry Pam for a comment that is just about as long (or maybe longer than) your post.
I appreciate your response and also Beth's comments. They are very helpful! I was so amazed at what the girl on tv said that I didn't really take personality or family make-up (perhaps she was an only child?) into consideration.
I really like how you said "it is more important (and more realistic) to teach my children how to handle conflict and then pray that they will be able to apply it to specific situations, than it is to actually put them in every conceivable uncomfortable situation and force learning on them that way." That is very wise and well said. I just knew that you would be the right person to help me think through this! Thanks!
I think that you are a very wise woman, a wonderful wife and mother, and I know that your children are so blessed to have you! Thank you so much for being such a wonderful example for me and so many others!
Beth,
Thank you for this very good point! I appreciate your perspective very much. And you are free to leave long comments anytime. :-)
Targetshopper,
Thank you for your kind words, but you know that any wisdom I have is from the Lord, and any good that is in our parenting is TOTALLY from the Lord!! He is so good to make up what we lack!
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