Socialization: The Best Reason to Homeschool

By Mary Ellen Barrett

When people ask me, as they still do, “What about socialization?” I like to tell them that socialization was the entire reason that I wanted to homeschool in the first place. Fifteen years ago, my son Ryan was attending the third grade in the local public school. Ryan had been diagnosed at three with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, which put him squarely on the spectrum of autism disorders. He went to a special-ed school beginning at three years old to help him become verbal, and from there he moved up into a self-contained ABA class (Applied Behavioral Analysis). He was doing as well as someone with his disabilities could do academically (his IQ tested low normal), but socially it was just a disaster.

His younger sister Katie was in first grade in the local Catholic school, and I wish I could say that socially things were better there, but that wasn’t the case. The problem with sending your children to school is that you are exposing them to other people’s parenting philosophies which may not agree with yours. That’s really a polite way of saying other people’s bad parenting.

One of the young boys in Ryan’s class was more affected by autism than Ryan, and when he was home, his parents just let him do whatever would keep him quiet, including watching highly inappropriate late night television. He would spend most of his day telling the other children all the new words he learned and all about what he saw. This horrified me as a mom; Ryan was such an innocent little guy and to have these words and images imparted to him just broke my heart.

While all of this was coming to a head, I attended a Special Ed PTA meeting in our local middle school. All the special-ed parents met to discuss an issue in the middle school of a young boy with autism being cruelly treated to the point of abuse by his peers. This young man’s mother was crying about the treatment of her son and the principal explained that he was sorry but there wasn’t much he could do. The parents of the bullies were not responsive, and bullying was not grounds for expulsion.

I came home from that meeting determined that my sweet son would never set foot in that school. It didn’t matter that the large majority of children were probably perfectly nice kids—I was not about to risk it. I told my husband, and he agreed, that we would have to explore other options.

It was at this time my dear friend Chris asked me to join her at a homeschool event. The moms were gathering at a local Gold Coast Mansion that was now a museum. The grounds were immense and filled with beautiful gardens, paths, and fields on which the children could play.

When we arrived, I saw my college friend, Alice Gunther, (author of the homeschooling socialization book, Haystack Full of Needles) and we were enjoying catching up when I did the “mom” glance. You know the one, when you look around and do a quick head count of your children. What I saw stunned me. Ryan was playing with a bunch of boys. I later learned that they called him over, asked his name, and then just asked him to play. He was running and laughing and playing with other kids. He was eight, and I had never seen that before. Kids didn’t ask Ryan to play—they didn’t invite him to birthday parties or ask him to come over. He didn’t seem lonely, but seeing him take such joy in this simple game showed me that something was lacking in his life.

These homeschooled boys who were supposed to not be well socialized saw, not a weird kid, but another boy who could toss a ball. And he was that, another boy, different but capable of having fun and being part of their fun.

I quickly said to Alice, “Ryan is playing with other boys,” and she glanced over and nodded. Clearly, she had no idea how momentous this was. When I explained why I was so stunned, and quite frankly, now weeping a bit, she said that she had never seen these kids bully or treat anyone badly because they were different. There were several “different” kids in the group but to the other kids they were just friends to play with. Fourteen years later, I can now attest to that.

When children are being raised and educated by parents who are not only concerned with their educative success, but also with an eye toward their eternal life, bullying doesn’t come up. Yes, they are kids and there is the occasional squabble or hurt feelings. Sometimes kids just do not get along, but the concentrated effort to exclude someone or to make another one’s life miserable? It just doesn’t exist, because that kind of behavior just isn’t tolerated by these parents.

When my husband came home that evening, I joyfully told him that the answer to all our problems was homeschooling. We were going to homeschool the children, and I am absolutely telling you the truth when I relate to you that his first words were, “Are you crazy? How are you going to teach math and science?”

In spite of that first reaction, he was completely open to trying it, and fourteen years later, we are so very glad we did. Ryan flourished. He became so much more confident and happy. He began to really improve academically and completely caught up to grade level in some subjects which we had been told would never happen. As wonderful as his academic improvement was, the best improvement was in terms of his social and emotional development. Ryan had friends, real friends. Boys who treated him like one of the guys, ribbed him when he acted a little weird, included him in games and outings, invited him to parties, and saw him as a real person with something to share.

Seeing my son blossom gave me the courage to send him out into the world a bit. Ryan had a great musical gift and he had wanted to join the boys’ choir at our parish. Seeing that he could be accepted, I brought him to a rehearsal and spent a ridiculous amount of time explaining to the music director about Ryan being different. That dear man shooed me away and an hour later looked at me as if I were nuts when I asked how Ryan behaved. “He was fine, why?” he asked. “Well, he can be a little weird,” I explained. “Mrs. Barrett, they are nine year-old boys; weird is what they do.”

That first year of homeschooling was wonderful. It wasn’t without its challenges—I had an autistic fourth grader, an extremely talkative second-grader, a bright kindergartner, a brand new baby, and I was expecting number five, but all the kids really began to flourish. They were involved in our homeschool group’s activities, parish life, Irish step, music lessons, soccer, little league (special-ed league) and a myriad of other things. The socialization was wearing out the tires of my van, but we were so happy it didn’t matter.

Six years later, we lost our sweet son Ryan. He died very unexpectedly, and it completely devastated us. While planning his funeral, the funeral director thought we should use the bigger of the rooms for his wake. We thought we were having a small family funeral but we were too grief stricken to argue. It turned out he was correct. We had over one thousand people attend Ryan’s wake and even more his funeral. My poorly socialized homeschooled autistic boy had twelve priests and a bishop concelebrate his Mass. The bishop came because he had heard Ryan wanted to be a priest and he said that every priest should have a bishop at his funeral.

There were about fifteen altar boys, all his friends. Every music ministry in our parish was there, and a young lady from our homeschool group sang. The Squires from the Knights of Columbus, of which he was a member, asked to be his pallbearers and they did so with such reverence and decorum.

All this for a weird homeschooled boy. Homeschooling not only gave me the courage to let Ryan shine and to use his gifts and talents to serve God, but it also brought him friends who saw him for the cool, quirky kid he was. Those kids, who were being raised to see the face of Christ in everyone, made the last six years of my son’s life so much better than they would have been had he stayed in school.

This… this is why homeschooling is superior. Yes, math and science and well-written papers are all good reasons to homeschool. Academic excellence is extremely important, but what is even more important is raising a generation of Catholics who know their faith, practice their faith, and are being socialized—not by a classroom of similarly aged children, but by parents who want to meet them in heaven someday.

The world needs your homeschooled children precisely because they are being socialized differently than the other children. The world needs adults who do unto others, and love their neighbors as themselves. We need adults who form their consciences well, who pray in front of abortion clinics, and who see the Corporal Works of Mercy as a lifestyle rather than an ideal. We need adults who learned early that we are all made in the image and likeness of God and therefore deserve to be treated with dignity regardless of stage of life, disability, or personal appearance.

This is why socialization is important, not for the reason the person asking the “gotcha” question thinks, but because we know exactly what being well-socialized means. It means to care as much for those who can do nothing for you as you do for those who can do much. It means to be humble in our pursuit of our goals, to serve others, and to be open to the will of God. There isn’t a school in the world that will socialize your children toward that end, because the end is what we need to keep in mind. This temporal life is merely a step in the process of being with God, and a well socialized child will understand the end game.

I am so very grateful that God presented us with the option of homeschooling Ryan and his siblings at just the right time. Because of the wonderful socialization our local homeschooled friends were receiving, my son left this world secure in the knowledge that he had friends, that he was valued and loved, and there could be no greater gift those friends could have given.

Parents: The Best Teachers

By Father Frank Papa

Homeschooling, let me tell you, spiritually, morally, academically, and socially, it enriches your family. Your family becomes far more enriched by that. You found a great school to send your children to? It’s a step down. I don’t care how good it is. It’s a step down. That isn’t their mother and father educating them.

They are robbed sometimes. You’re robbed as parents. Instead of you being the intellectual authority for your children, somebody paid “X” number of dollars that works 9 months is considered the spiritual authority. They go to school, and they presume — your children do — that whatever they learn in school, because you sent them there, you must be backing up all that they’re being taught. And there are things you want your children to know you don’t want them to go along with, and you don’t want them to accept.

I would say to fathers and mothers on Judgement Day: Our Lord is not going to ask you what career you worked at, how high you climbed in society, how much money you pull in a year, how many men work under you — even if you’re a woman boss — how popular you were among friends, how wealthy or influential you have become. God will want to know what kind of father or mother were you? What kind of husband or wife were you? What kind of man or woman were you? As a husband or a wife, as a mother or a father, your mission in this world is the salvation of your family and your children — your spouse and your children.

When we die, the newspaper puts a little obituary thing in there: John Jones, industrialist, dies. I don’t want that. It should say, John Jones, father and husband, dies — and man. Because that’s your distinction. That’s your mission. Your mission is not these other things. God gave you your 1, 2, or 14 children, or 17 children, because he wanted you to have those children. They’re yours! You have a universe inside your own doors of your house. If you get 15 houses on a dead end street, every one of them is a different universe. Every one is using different rules and regulations and different things. You’ve got your own society there, and it should be a holy society, where you are giving and teaching and loving your children. God has entrusted them to you.

So I don’t think we ought to sit back and say “Oh Lord, why did you give me 5?” I think we ought to be thankful to God for whatever we got. Every one we got. That is a life you brought into the world that God has entrusted to you. You are the one that is to bring up that child as a child of God. The world doesn’t care about your children. The world doesn’t care about your husband or your wife. In fact, the world doesn’t care about you either.

So you have to make your home a breath of fresh air in a trouble world. It’s a troubled world. Chaos, a valley of tears — I didn’t make that one up, that’s in the Hail Holy Queen. The world is a valley of tears and we can have a breath of fresh air in the doors of our own home. A place where we should show gratitude to each other, gratitude for each other! We human beings, we poor people, we tend to go out and look for what’s wrong and attack it, but we seldom look at what’s right and good and holy and delightful and humorous. And be thankful to God for that antic of your son or daughter — there are good things happening! We have to show that we appreciate each other.

You are going to have yourselves together for only a number of years. Usually within twenty, most of them are out of the house and gone! It’s a quick time. You will look back and suddenly your life will be “What happened?” It came and it went and there it was. And it will go fast! So cherish the moment when you’ve got them, while you’ve got these moments with your children, with the funny things they say, or the things they do, even their mistakes sometimes, their bumbling mistakes, because they’re new at this world. And they really don’t know. And you have to educate them and show them and teach them. That’s the kind of thing that I think would be very good in a homeschooling home.