Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Homeschooling - for 'safety' reasons?

.... They seem really happy to me the vast majority of the time, and I do feel as though their innocence has been preserved to an appropriate extent for their ages (4, 6, and 8). Things may change a bit as we go along, I guess, but I'm not so sure that they are missing a lot by not being exposed to the amount of crappy pop culture, materialism, vulgarity, whatever, that seemed to constitute quite a bit of what we saw (from the outside, admittedly) as the experience of childhood where we used to live. Sensitivity, thoughtfulness, consideration, moderation, independence, ability to think for oneself, all seem like values worth inculcating to me, and in our own individual circumstances, homeschooling seemed one way to help do this. Of course one can still do those things with kids who go to school, but one doesn't have to spend so much time battling the dominant culture, was our way of thinking.

I've talked with several homeschool/charter teachers about this subject. Every single one of them has pointed out that traditional school kids after a certain age stop doing things like playing with dolls with their school friends even though they will still play with them in other situations. They develop a social mask of what is considered "appropriate" behavior for a child of their age and gender in their school. Homeschooled children tend to not develop masks like this among themselves because groups are normally mixed age and more accepting of such things, although might for mixed social groups like scouts. It allows them to keep their childhood longer in my opinion.