I was thinking about my kids friends, and how they would list all the siblings of several families as their friends. Then I thought about how we run into people from the town we grew up in, and say things like, "Oh, you would have known my brother/sister in your class." You would not have a clue in most cases about the siblings of your classmates. Even if you had friends you visited at their homes, you rarely would have played with their siblings! That seems very odd to me now, an artifact of institutional schooling. And people worry about a homeschooler's socialization?

When I tell people I homeschool, and they ask me if I'm worried about their socialization, I look at them with a very serious expression and say in earnest, "Oh, yes, very much so. That's one of the reasons I decided to homeschool--you know what it's like at school these days!"  They usually nod slowly in agreement as they think about that...