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Has anyone here homeschooled an only child? I am not certain that this is the route we will go, because I have grave concerns about socialization. However, our public school option is just not acceptable and the private school he attends is very little bang for the very many bucks, so we are looking at any alternative out there.

If you did, how did you make sure s/he was around other children often enough? Thanks in advance for any feedback!

I homeschool an only who is also an extreme extrovert! Socialization is not a problem, though it does require time and gas money. We have weekly park days with our homeschooling charter, classes on site, private classes like Lego Robotics and homeschool PE, plus he is a competitive fencer and spends at least 4 (usually 6) hours a week at the fencing academy. He plays minecraft online with friends, skypes with other friends, works on cooperative stories in google docs with yet other friends. We go to the library, do tons of field trips and he spends hours a week just talking to random people!

I'd say that he gets FAR more time socializing with a much wider variety of people than he did sitting in a classroom (for K-3) with his age mates and *shhhhh* quiet, we're teaching! His school had 15 min of recess in the morning, plus a whisper lunch, so it wasn't exactly the hotbed of friendship development anyway!

"Often enough" varies significantly by age and disposition.

We're on our 9th year educating an introverted social butterfly who also happens to be an only child.

DD13 is (mostly) content with her social life, though we have another constraint that makes socializing a nightmare-- or did, anyway, when she was younger. We didn't have as much social exposure as other parents probably feel is "necessary."

But we're a family of introverts and loners, to some degree.

Places that we've found social activities for DD:

Library programs
park district programs
local athletic clubs that run daytime kid's classes (those kids TEND to be homeschool kids)
art classes
music instruction (group lessons)
4-H.

Obviously, a house of worship is also a great place to meet other people. We've expanded DD's social circle tremendously by encouraging her to do a lot of community service in the past couple of years.

I agree.

Scouting
4-H
athletics (specific homeschool PE class, gymnastics for homeschoolers and regular classes, my health club had group fitness classes in the afternoon for kids after school, swim team)
Library programs (if your library doesn't offer programming for homeschoolers, ask them to start, if they provide quality programming at various levels for free, they will come)
Parks and Recreation programs---if they have nothing for homeschoolers again just ask. Gather a few other homeschooling parents and develop what you would like for them to program.

Join a yahoo group for your area. Ours has a group where each member will set up activities and you sign up for what you want to do. So if one parent has kids who love astronomy they set up something at the museum at a group rate or make arrangements with a local astronomy club for a night under the stars and you contact the person (pay any fees to that person) and attend...but you only do the things you want to. That goes for theater performances or park meet ups or whatever.

We're homeschooling extroverted, only child DD8. There's another girl her age just up the street who is homeschooled, and they have a scheduled recess together every school day. They get together beyond that, pretty much whenever they can arrange it. Sleepovers are happening twice a week, on average. She has another friend in the neighborhood, as well. They had a sleepover at my house last night.

We didn't find any value for DD from a social perspective from gymnastics, dance, or soccer last year. This year is different... DD is less reserved around her soccer team now, and her gymnastics class has her homeschool friend (gymnastics nights representing a regular sleepover night). We also enrolled her in a drama class, which has been awesome for socialization. She has begun asking about joining the Girl Scouts.

DD still complains about a lack of friends, but her basic needs are being met. I think she'd only be satisfied if she attended a school with 300 other kids, and all of them loved her.

I homeschool an introvert PG only DS7. I came to homeschooling by default. Public schools are not option in my state. DS had already been in two private gifted schools for part of pre-k and kindergarten. They could only accommodate him so much with his rapid acceleration so I knew eventually we would probably end up homeschooling him at some point but I didn't think it would be so soon.

Homeschooling is a viable alternative and may be the best option in some cases. It may be the lesser of two evils or the least-worst case scenario. Another point to bear in mind is that the situation may change over time. Homeschooling is not necessarily for life or solely with you directing the studies. What works one year may not the next. Further your approach or way to homeschooling often changes with time. At the end of the day, you could always treat the homeschooling as a trial and see how it works.

My concern with socialization was on my mind when we decided to homeschool, but really it was the situation with the public/private schools that left us with little choice. I then decided that I've got to try to make the most of the situation and see what happens with it. I've found the socialization to be a less concern than others (i.e. rapid acceleration or math material). And I've found non-gifted parents who homeschool to say the same thing - that socialization is less of concern than others.

I think the other aspect to bear in mind with these kids is that they don't always have to be with their chronological aged peers. They can become friends with someone younger or older. Or even an adult.

I take DS to an open gym at the Y for homeschoolers once week and Y to swim. We try to meet other homeschoolers as much as possible. We visit the libraries every week; we try to arrange some playdates or go to the park/playground. Parks & Rec depts sometimes have things going on. There's usually things around if you look.

I think you'd find both gifted and non-gifted parents will say that the opportunities for socialization are far more open and varied with homeschooling than children have in any formal classroom setting.

He's not an only child, but my eldest homeschools. There are still isolation issues with kids who have sibs.

One approach we use is to send him to an after-school gym program at the local public middle school three days per week. Something like a hundred or more kids go, and so he gets to experience the large group thing. Plus, it's basically a rigorous PE class. They play games (Capture the Flag, Floor hockey, Dodgeball, Basketball, etc.), and it's really good for him. My impression is that he spends the entire time moving.

Thanks so much for the great information everyone! And yeah, I guess I never really thought about it, but he doesn't really get to socialize much with the other students while at school anyway...

These are great ideas for getting involved- thanks!