Social Skills and the Homeschooled Preschooler June 9
There is a myth which is widely associated with the homeschooled student and that myth is that he is going to have difficulty developing normal social skills. It’s true that children learn social skills primarily in the school environment, but this doesn’t have to be the only place that kids can learn how to socialize with peers and non-relatives. What a parent needs to realize is that children DO need to learn social skills by interacting with others outside of the home but that there are many different ways that this can be done.
This is especially true for the preschool age child who is being homeschooled. Many parents of children this age are planning to send their children to public school once kindergarten or first grade rolls around and they fear that their child will fall behind socially at that time because of being homeschooled up to that point. Taking active steps to make sure that your child develops social skills can be done while still protecting him from the outside influences which may have caused you to be interested in preschool homeschooling to begin with.
The main thing that a homeschooling parent needs to know is that there are different stages of development which take place during the preschool years. Making sure that your child has the opportunity to engage in the appropriate type of socialization at the right time is the key to making sure that the social skills of the child develop positively. The first stage takes place usually before the child is three years of age and is known as “side by side play”. In this stage of social development, your child will be interested in playing next to other kids, often mirroring the other child’s action, but probably won’t engage directly with the other children. As your child gets into the ages of 3 and 4, he will be more prone to group play.
Knowing this can help you when setting up and supervising play dates with your child or even just in situations where your child is naturally interacting with other kids, like at reading time at the public library or during playground time at the park. As a parent, if you know not to force your young child to interact with other children or to appropriately encourage such play, you’ll have the edge up on watching out for signs of problematic social development in your homeschooled preschooler.
In summary, your child DOES need to socialize with others. A child who doesn’t have any interaction with other children or with adults outside the family unit may have some trouble adjusting when he is finally thrown in to that environment. But chances are that you already engage in activities that allow your homeschooled preschooler to gain necessary social skills. You probably have friends who have kids that your child plays with or have a big family with cousins that come over on holidays or take your child to public activities where socializing is natural. Social skills aren’t just learned from a preschool environment, so as long as you’re staying aware of what’s right for your child’s developmental stage and giving him the opportunities to develop appropriately, you don’t really have to worry about those old myths that homeschooled kids are bound to be socially awkward. It simply isn’t so.
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