Originally Posted by Old Dad
Originally Posted by 22B
Social life? Choose one.

[ ] B&M school with bullying, violence, drugs, gangs.
[ ] Homeschooling in the safety of home with loving parents and siblings.

While I understand the thought pattern, one also needs to be careful about shielding too strongly their child from the harsh realities of the outside world, otherwise, college will hit them like a stinking axe between the eyes where....

Bullying, violence, drugs, sex, gangs, unfairness, preferential treatment, very different educational styles, instructors who don't care whether you succeed or fail, and many other circumstances one learns to deal with in public schools is often magnified but seldom seen in home schooled atmospheres. Don't think this all goes away once one has a HS diploma in hand.

I've seen too many home schooled children devastated with culture shock from such a scenario. I'm not saying you can't prevent it, I'm just saying not all the problems go away with home schooling, in fact, it often creates new problems. Every situation has it's pros and cons.

My sense is it's not a question of whether to expose children to differences in perspective and experience as a homeschooled vs B&M student, but rather how and when to do so.

I see parenting as a process of training the child up to be his/her best self while, at the same time, giving your child the skills of self-knowledge and judgment required to navigate the world when things inevitably don't align with the child's inner world. This affects our family on a religious level, an intellectual one, and an emotive one. The gap has to be minded, and I can see well thought-out homeschooling being a solution to differences between the child and wider world because it fosters more opportunities for introspection and contemplation, which build maturity and coping skills.

Sure, as with vaccines, exposure is required to test these latent abilities. But I'd argue that the ideal balance on that continuum between exposure and incubation depends on the child and the unique environmental stressors.

What is to give light must endure burning.