My daughters are the products of homeschooling. They have not spent a single day as students in public or private school classrooms. They have had the same teacher and the same classmates every day for the last 18 years. Two have graduated and moved into "the real world" where unsocialized homeschoolers are supposed to crash and burn. I have no crashes or fires to report. My daughters are articulate, accomplished, disciplined, and socially well-adjusted. They have become normal adults.

At this point I should be able to rest on my laurels. I should never again have to justify my decision to homeschool. I did it. It worked. Right?

Apparently not.

We had dinner with a friend a few weeks ago. But not just any friend. This friend knows us, and our children, well. She’s actually a homeschooling friend, though she hasn’t homeschooled for a few years. Over dinner, we talked about a mutual friend with a daughter starting kindergarten. I guess that opened the door.

"So what are you going to do with Jimmy?"

Not understanding what she was really asking, I supplied the answer I thought she was looking for.  "He’s only 4, but I’m going to start him in Kindergarten part-time this year. He seems ready. He knows his alpha…"

"No, I mean, are you going to put him in school?"

I sat for a moment in shocked silence. I had trouble finding words. I mean, come on, I've homeschooled for 18 years!  Are you kidding me?  "No, I’m going to homeschool him. Why would you think I would send him to school?"  

"Well, you know it will be different this time. He won’t have any siblings to socialize with. It’s really important that he learn how to function in the real world and he might not get that if he’s homeschooling all alone." 

I'm feeling a bit like I've been sucker punched. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. My hubby is sitting a seat away, talking sports with her husband, blissfully unaware of my growing frustration.  Are you serious?  Do I really have to explain to you that school isn’t supposed to be about socialization? Do I really need to tell you that I’m not a big fan of the peer pressure bullying age segregation socialization kids get in school? And why are we even having this conversation?

Just shoot me now, okay?

Honestly, I can’t even remember how the conversation ended. I do know I chickened out and didn’t say all the things I promised myself I would say if I ever had this conversation again. I allowed my own well-ingrained social skills (I didn’t learn them in school, by the way) to win out over my gut level response. I chose not to offend my friend with the truth.

But, it’s so incredibly irritating to me that we’re still fighting this battle. Are people blind? I observe the anti-social behavior so prevalent in our youth (even our Christian youth), and wonder if this is the real world education so many think homeschooled kids are so desperately in need of. I’m convinced that there is a "head-in-the-sand" element that contributes heavily to the inability of homeschool critics to address this issue objectively.

This lack of objectivity was clearly demonstrated recently by my nephew. He teaches in a self-contained special education (behavior disorders) classroom in a public highschool. He is not a stranger to homeschooling…after all, he knows my kids and me! In his class of fifteen behaviorally challenged kids, my nephew has two students who, as he put it, are "the product of homeschooling".

"They’re in my class because they were homeschooled. They obviously never learned how to function outside of their own homes and when they had to be put in school, the only placement that worked for them was in my class. Their parents really screwed them up. I would never homeschool my kids…it’s just too risky."

My nephew couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I shouldn’t have had to point out that there were 13 kids in his class who were not homeschooled.  I shouldn’t have had to remind him that if you follow his line of reasoning, it is the public school that bears the blame for the behavior problems of 87% of the kids in his class. It should have been clear to him that his logic was flawed.

But again and again, I have had this conversation with people who have checked logic and objectivity at the door. They criticize the homeschooler’s lack of socialization without thinking through what that socialization actually looks like. I guess if they admit that school-based socialization is NOT always a good thing, they open themselves up to a myriad of soul-searching questions. So rather than open that door, they close the door on the truth, stick their heads in the sand, and try to pretend that it’s the other guy who isn’t seeing things clearly.

Maybe someday they will open their eyes and brush away the sand.  But until then, I guess I’ll just keep answering the question that frustrates me more than any other: