Paradise Found » How Homeschoolers Differ

How Homeschoolers Differ

July 8, 2008 at 5:06 am · Filed under My Musings, home education

In my earlier post about teens and drinking, Tim said:

I wouldn’t draw too heavy a connection to the fact that the kids are in the public school system. My wife and I came from similar middle-class backgrounds and attended similar public high schools in Texas. She drank in high school, I didn’t.

While I agree that kids differ and lines are not always drawn along the homeschool/public school boundary, there is a difference in how kids are perceived in the different camps.

Becky said:

I think many parents, especially institutional school parents … have a certain set of expectations for teens, not limited to alcohol (and/or drugs). One of the biggest ones seems to be about the withdrawal of teens from family life in particular and adults in general, which I’ve watched sadly in my own nieces — it seems “natural” to expect them to become surly, snarly, and silent around adults, not to want to spend leisure time with their families. And once a family has this expectation, whether it’s the drinking or the withdrawal, it does seem to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is what I was alluding to in that drinking post. Not by any means that parents of traditionally schooled kids are consciously causing their kids to drink. I think it’s more of a cultural mind set. When these parents see that everyone else at school has a cell phone, it’s harder to deny that privilege to their own kid. Likewise, when they see that everyone else at school is drinking, there comes the expectation that their kid too will fall into that trap, like it or not.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to “just wait” until my kids become teens because all sorts of attitude will emerge. Maybe this is the first step in conformation to the crowd, the self-fulfilling prophecy - parents dole out warnings about dire behavior, and the next parent hears it so often that s/he begins to believe and accept it as normal, which in turn makes the first parent feel like the dire behavior is normal.

I think this is where homeschooled parents in general differ from those of traditionally schooled kids. Parents who homeschool have a tendency not to just accept that our kids fit the one mold. We’ve already bucked the system, dealt with unsupportive family members, discovered new ways to solve old problems. We’ve tried to provide an alternative type of education; why not provide an alternative kind of lifestyle, where kids are free to be themselves beyond the expectations of the crowd?

This is not to say that parents whose kids are in a more traditional setting can’t provide an alternative to the norm. I just think it’s much, much harder to do so when the people you and your kids are surrounded by on a day to day basis believe that there’s only one “normal” behavior.

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COD said,

July 8, 2008 @ 5:51 am

It’s not just parents. Kids that have avoided the soul crushing experience of public junior high really are different when they hit high school age. A lot of homeschooled kids are not as affected by peer pressure as their traditionally schooled friends. Certainly a lot of it is the attitude of the parents, but I think some of it is directly attributable to the kids having choices in their pre-teen years that school kids simply don’t get. When they hit high school, they aren’t afraid as afraid of being “different.” I might go as far to say asignificant percentage of HSers almost revel in their differentness.

Tim said,

July 8, 2008 @ 6:20 am

Kris — You may be entirely right about this. It would be interesting if we could see some sort of cross-sectional poll of parents on issues like this, sorted by various factors like geography, size of community, religion, schooling choices for their kids, possibly by income, and so on. My sense is that everyone here, while speaking with total candor, may be generalizing from their own anecdotal experiences. (But hey, that’s what we humans do, huh?)

I should also point out that I didn’t mean to suggest that you were implying that “parents of traditionally schooled kids are consciously causing their kids to drink.” Also, I may well be singing a different tune when *my* kids hit their teens and face public junior high and high school (or, for that matter, homeschooling, should we choose to go that route).

Here’s the thing, though: Becky’s comment excerpted here *may* be true for “many parents, especially institutional school parents,” but in my experience, it’s not *necessarily* true for *most* institutional school parents.

That’s an abstract way of putting it, so let me express it in concrete terms: for *many* of the parents of my acquaintance, the fact that “everyone else at school has a cell phone” does not by any means dictate their own choices about whether (or when) their own kids get cell phones.

Now, this is totally anecdotal. Maybe I just happened to grow up — and happen to associate now — with an unusual number of parents from the old school of “Well, if everybody else decides to jump off a bridge, are you going to do that, too?” But, at least in my anecdotal experience, I *don’t* hear much “You just wait” language — and I *don’t* hear resigned comments about the inevitability of teen drinking.

By all means, YMMV. I’m just telling you what I personally have experienced so far.

Becky said,

July 8, 2008 @ 8:49 am

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told to ‘just wait’ until my kids become teens because all sorts of attitude will emerge. Maybe this is the first step in conformation to the crowd, the self-fulfilling prophecy - parents dole out warnings about dire behavior, and the next parent hears it so often that s/he begins to believe and accept it as normal, which in turn makes the first parent feel like the dire behavior is normal.”

I think this “just you wait/it will happen” mentality is also an excuse a good number of parents fall back on. If it is fated to happen (so you think), then there’s nothing you can do about it, is there? And so you don’t have to bother stirring yourself from whatever else is more interesting than raising your children. Which, face it, takes a lot of time and effort. But then, as Chris points out, the rewards can be huge (and the workload considerably lighter) when the teen years arrive.

My own parents raised my sister and me in a very old-fashioned manner. I can’t count the number of times I heard “if everyone else jumps off a bridge…” : ). I had the “mean” parents who wouldn’t let us do or have any number of things (they were also the only ones who would show up at high school parties at 11 pm to pick me up), and we weren’t nearly as well off as the other families in my private school, and I am thoroughly grateful today. Though curiously, I do hear from my mother (a formerly mean mother but very, very lenient grandmother) that she doesn’t think I’ll be able to keep the cell phone and iPod away from my kids because “everyone else has them.” I told her it didn’t work with her and it won’t work with me. Though it has, apparently, worked with my sister…

Yes, of course my information is anecdotal, based on what I’ve observed from life around here in my corner of western Canada, what I hear from my sister in the more or less expat community in and around Nairobi, and my old college friends in the northeastern U.S. I’d certainly expect that anyone else’s mileage would vary, depending on what and where they’re driving :).

Sheila said,

July 8, 2008 @ 12:25 pm

I like Chris’s comments about peer pressure being different for public school kids - and I know it was very true for me. I was one of those “arty” types in high school (supposedly the independent sort) but completely gave way to whatever was making the rounds with my group, be it drugs or alcohol. Knew I had to keep it from my parents, who would have KILLED me if they’d known. And therein lay the dilemma for me: strict parents. Strict without alternatives (not allowed to drink at home, not allowed to drink outside the home, don’t even MENTION drugs). So when peer pressure came along, I caved gladly - finally, some autonomy! I spent a year in South America I was so glad to be to make my own decisions for once (and called home precisely once).

I find myself wondering these very same things with my kids: will they be like me? will they make more sensible decisions? But I am glad for their sakes that they don’t have the added peer pressure of school to deal with.

» How Homeschoolers Differ A Teens: What The World Is Saying About A Teens said,

July 9, 2008 @ 7:02 am

[…] Homeschoolers Differ Posted in July 8th, 2008 by in Uncategorized How Homeschoolers Differ In my earlier post about teens and drinking, Tim said: … teens, not limited to alcohol […]

jove said,

July 15, 2008 @ 3:50 pm

This is a good discussion. I think Shelia’s comment raises an interesting point. I always think raising children is like carrying eggs. Not careful enough and they fall and break. But hold them too tight and you break them anyway.

and I think that wanting to be more independent is part of what being a teen is about but that we need ways of nurturing that independence that aren’t all about sullen, snarky behaviour, dangerous rebelliousness, and a complete jettisonning of our values. Yes it’s difficult. But every age is difficult in some way. The trick is not to be defeatist and to work out how to engage with those social pressures in meaningful ways.

Personally, if I see one more phone company try to sell me a phone “for my own security”, I might explode.

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