It’s the big question that people want to bring up about homeschooling. What about socialization? For some, very few, special needs children, homeschooling does not provide sufficient socialization.

But for the rest of them…

See The Buck Stops Here with his quote from a study of 70 always homeschooled and 70 always traditional students. (I will say the age is awfully young, 8-10.)

The money quote?

The observers used the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist . . . , a checklist of 97 problem behaviors such as argues, brags or boasts, doesn’t pay attention long, cries, disturbs other children, isolates self from others, shy or timimd, and shows off. The results were striking — the mean problem behavior score for children attending conventional schools was more than eight times higher than that of the home-schooled group. Shyers (1992a) described the traditionally schooled children as “aggressive, loud, and competitive” (p. 6). In contrast, the home-schooled children acted in friendly, positive ways.

Re the special needs comment: I have a friend with an autistic/ADHD son. He needs peer socialization for his brain to progress. He wouldn’t get that at home.