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Those folks are well meaning, but there are three HUGE reasons the socialization objection is a load of crap.

1. Home school by its very nature is a socialization process, where two people relate together each day to accomplish a shared set of goals.

2. Public school not only socializes your kids to the habits of other public school kids, it has less socialization than homeschooling. Sitting in a room with 30 other kids and being absolutely quiet and still while an adult talks for 45 minutes is not socialization. Sure, there’s recess and lunch, but the bulk of public schoool activities are non-social.

3. School is not all a kid does. In fact, if the typical elementary school kid is at school for six hours (and prep and travel to and from takes another hour) and sleeping for ten hours a night, it’s barely half his waking time. Add weekends into that and you have plenty of time to socialize with other kids. In fact, the first thing my home schooled kids do after public school lets out is go play with their public school buddies for at least a couple of hours. Moreover, studies show that homeschool kids have several times as many social activities as their public school counterparts.

Here’s a bonus one: If I had to choose between a kid who can think, read and write but has some social hesitance or a kid who can’t even use “their,” “they’re” and “there” properly in a written sentence but knows all they need to know about playground politics, that’s an easy pick. Fortunately, I don’t have to make that choice.

Abe Lincoln and Thomas Edison managed to figure out the social procedures. I’m betting your kids can, too.