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    Joined: Apr 2014
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    JavaJ Offline OP
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    I am homeschooling a PG boy, 6.6 years old, only child. We started this past fall, after learning that our local gifted first grade class would be a repeat of kindergarten he did last year in a private school.

    My question is, how do you find peers for your homeschooled kids?

    We have been trying to attend more local homeschooling groups. There are many coops in our area, but they all have a strong religious component. That is not our reason for homeschooling, and we're not religious, so I'm unwilling to sign up with them.

    Even at park play days open to all homeschoolers, it seems expected that kids will evangelize--that seems to be a big part of the local homeschooling culture. We're working hard to teach our son appropriate responses, and other families seem quite taken aback that he doesn't share their beliefs.

    We do fine at field trips with other homeschoolers, though I don't feel that I've connected with hardly any other parents.

    I don't know of any other PG kids close to my son's age in our area, let alone any that are homeschooling. Ideas?

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    We're a family of atheists living deep in the Bible Belt. When we were homeschooling our DD9, we found a family that lived just up the street who were homeschooling their children for evangelical reasons, including one girl our DD's age. We arranged for them to have "recess" together every day as a regular feature of their homeschooling. Over the years, DD has gone to church with this family on occasion, and attended the local religious summer camp. She even has her own Bible.

    We sent her with this guidance:

    1) Don't argue with people about religion. You don't know anything about it other than what your parents have told you. The other kids are in the same boat... they only know what their parents (and religious leaders) have told them. Neither of you really know anything on your own, so arguing is pointless. This is complicated stuff, and you have A LOT to learn.

    2) Don't poke fun at anyone's beliefs. They are a part of a person's identity, so making fun of their beliefs is making fun of them.

    3) You can ask questions, as long as you're respectful. If their answers are too confusing, or you find them to be just outrageous, save that up for discussion at home.

    4) I am always available to explain why some people believe what they believe, as well as why we do not.

    Given that both DW and I have experience from both ends of the belief spectrum, and that I'm somewhat of an amateur biblical and historical scholar, this has been a very effective strategy for teaching DD religious tolerance (a social necessity here), understanding of others' perspectives, while also teaching a great deal of scholarship in this area, considering her age.

    Apart from the religious divide, this child and DD have a great many common interests, they're great playmates, and consider each other to be the best of friends. Even now that DD is back in public school, they get together as often as possible.

    So the lesson here is, homeschooled evangelical children can still be good for your child, so don't close the door to them entirely.

    From what we can tell, this child isn't gifted, so she's not a true peer for my DD in that way, either. All that really matters is they find enough things that they enjoy playing together. They have enough compatible interests and the same sense of humor, so whenever they're together, they have fun.

    Joined: Sep 2013
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    Homeschooling in our area is primarily religious groups but I have been seeking homeschooling groups out just to feel what's out there. There are a lot of anti-establishment/anti-vaccination type of parenting groups that homeschool or unschool here.
    We have many religious people in our life, so I am not too worried about including those type of homeschooling friends in our family, however, I worry more about them not allowing us. One time I joined a homeschool group on facebook that was for my area specifically and the response was, "To join, you must state that Jesus Christ is your lord and saviour".
    Maybe go to the library or local children's museum during the day and spot out families with children your DC's age and spark up a conversation. See if they are secular homeschoolers? Keep looking online, you just might find a group that's perfect for you.

    Joined: Jul 2012
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    You can Google to find if there is a gifted homeschoolers group near you.

    I find that in general unschooling groups tend to be welcoming and have a child-led learning perspective that accepts kids going at their own speed... I just avoid subjects like vaccinations with some of the parents.

    Of course, each group is made of individuals, so the only advice I can offer is to keep trying.

    I have found groups through Facebook, meet up, and Yahoo groups.

    This is one place to start...
    http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/resources/local-support/

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    JavaJ Offline OP
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    Thanks for the input so far.

    I'm fine with DS playing with religious kids. I just got an impression of strong intolerance from our experience at the "open to all" homeschool park day. We are going back this Friday. (Alternating that with HS ice skating at local rink on Fridays. Everyone there was in a religious HS group last week, though DS did make friends with one boy just a year younger. I gave his mom my contact info, but she didn't share hers. So it goes.)

    We're working hard to teach DS the right responses to evangelizing. His logical perspective on things makes it hard for him to grasp. Basically, it's ok for them to share their ideas but you need to say nothing about our family's view. The double standard is hard for his logical mind to grasp, but it's not the place or topic for his arguing skills.

    I haven't found any gifted homeschool groups here. There was one, but it seems to have been inactive since 2011.

    We've tried a secular homeschool group on the far side of the city, but it was right before guitar lessons and got him too amped for those. Also, someone decided to make one park day into a chicken pox party, unannounced. Though that was condemned by the group's organizers on Facebook, it killed my desire to socialize there.

    I've thought of starting my own group, but teaching DS and continuing my own business is nearly all-consuming right now.

    We do have 1 same-age HS'ed buddy, thankfully. We're going to the zoo today.

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    We have, in general terms, a very similar philosophy to that explained by Dude in his post above, so I won't repeat that.

    On the other end of the spectrum, however, we also found it more difficult, in some respects, to hang out with the free-range, crunchy unschooling sort.

    Our parenting style is more compatible with the religious homeschoolers, frankly, and I'm also not so worried about boundary issues and medical ones from an epidemiological stance.

    Then again, we have other reasons why "rule-following" is a basic admission criterion for people we want to be around.

    We also found that given that the local homeschooling population is about 20: 12: 1 (would-be-Waldorfians, evangelical conspiracy theorists, and secular-rationalist homeschoolers), the pickings were relatively slim if we were too particular.

    We never went into things expecting DD to make true friends-- or to find true peers. Mostly those expectations were met, by the way. wink

    We also made a deliberate decision to avoid the activities that concentrate the majority type in our own area-- though this isn't too difficult since they tend to gravitate to precisely the sorts of activities that we tend to avoid, with a few exceptions like the fine arts.

    The unvaccinated "illnesses are all-natural and good for you" crowd was far more objectionable to us (having an asthmatic child with allergies that most of them are just sure can be "cured" with various flavors of Woo, and weren't afraid to say so in front of our DD) than the philosophical differences that we have with those who are attempting to proselytize on the basis of their faith. And I say that as someone with a lot of baggage toward my overwhelmingly obnoxiously proselytization-oriented extended family.

    When seeking out opportunities with homeschoolers, we tended to prefer activities with a clear time limit, clear schedules and activities planned by an adult, and where direct contact with other children was controlled or limited.

    Actually, that strategy worked well since it brought us into contact with the most compatible group of other homeschoolers-- the educators who were either second gen homeschoolers, or teachers who had opted to homeschool their own kids. As a group they tended to be less hostile toward education. They also tended to be people who had fallen through the cracks of the system-- a much higher proportion of them had kids with special needs, so they more readily accepted differences than the other groups of homeschoolers, too.

    Pragmatically, how did we do that?

    Well, we signed up for formal classes that were taught during the time when most kids are in childcare or school settings. That defaults you to "cyberschool/homeschool" kids right away, usually. We also looked for classes with a fair degree of structure. Product/goal-oriented, or physical skills oriented. Swimming lessons. Drawing classes. Golf lessons. Tennis, ballet, soccer, guitar, art, robotics, etc. etc.





    Mostly, we weighed what any particular setting was "worth" to us, relative to the likely risks encountered there.


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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    Every family is going to have their own list of deal-breakers and my best advice is to figure those out in advance and go in with your eyes open.

    For example, for us the proselytizing types are a no-go. Because unlike many in this thread, we aren't atheists, but our religious choices are actively offensive to fundamentalists. We don't want to hang out with people who are going to be offended by our existence.

    On the crunchy unschool side, we get along better, but we do require a certain amount of... er, civilized behavior, from these children. That may sound like a surprising comment, but for every unschooler who's directing their own education but is otherwise a creative, lovely child, there's another who has zero sense of boundaries or appropriate behavior.

    And while I realize that other homeschoolers are terribly convenient from a scheduling point of view, especially when kids are young, DDs current crop of friends are all public school students (some who homeschooled previously and some who are part time public and part time homeschool).

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    It's fascinating to hear how the mix differs in different places. Where I am, there's no tidy way to divide the non-fundie group. It's sort of a build-your-own-sandwich menu. Pick any or all of: new-agers, homesteaders, anti-vaxxers, environmentalists, old-school liberals, attachment-parenters, unschoolers, education mavens who would rather do it themselves, gifties, behavior disorders, and ordinary people dissatisfied with public school.

    (There are some religious homeschoolers here, but not a lot, and I'm not even sure whether they're homeschooling for religious reasons. Like, maybe they want to give their kids more bible study, but maybe also they felt that the math program stunk or the kids were mean.)

    I have varying degrees of tolerance for these different styles, but we are still getting to know the community, being friendly to everybody and figuring out who we click with the most. It won't always be the people we agree with most -- personality matters a lot.

    Joined: Mar 2006
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    Let's please move away from discussing religion and get back to homeschooling and gifted education.

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    Can you start your own Facebook page and post it around town? There has to be more of you in there somewhere! smile

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