The variety of social situations in typical schools is narrow and artificial. Once you leave school, never again in your adult life will you be forced to endure such a stifling environment.

If a homeschooled child never leaves the house, then yeah I can see it being a problem. But if they are allowed to go out and experience the world with their parents then they learn social skills by interacting with people of all ages, but mostly with adults who (most importantly) are already socialized and therefore model proper behavior instead of the insanity that goes on in age-segregated classrooms.

But by primarily socialising with adults, they aren't as successful when it comes time for socialising with people their own age.

Real life socialising is done with adults who are probably not exactly the same age as you. The kind of interactions a homeschooled child will have are a much closer model of the kind of interactions everyone has post-school than what happens in school is.

That's not what the previous poster said. They were talking about socializing with people your own age, which is critically important. When I was 18 if I acted like a 40 year old I would have never made friends or found a girlfriend.

But relative age is not what makes the difference. Interacting with 20 year olds as a 20 year old is much more like interacting with 20 year olds as a 10 year old than it is like interacting with 10 year olds as a 10 year old.

Depends. Will you know the slang your 20 year old peers use if your main source of socialization is 30 year olds? Did you go through all the same cultural crazes and fads?

A shared culture is important, and each generation has their own touchstones.

That’s not what dating or friendships are like though, which are pretty damned important for happiness.

The difference is between peer relationship. Adult friend is not a peer and has different level of authority.

How's this at all different from traditionally schooled children? Nothing you said applies to homeschooled kids at all.

You're basically just saying "if your parents socialize you then you'd be socialized." Sure, but if your parents don't socialize you then at least you'd have a slight chance to pick it up at school, if you're also kept away from school then you're just completely fucked.

I'm speaking as someone whose parents didn't socialize me.

Homeschooling typically involves very little sitting at home, doing traditional schoolwork. As others have noted, and my extended family's experience supports, it only takes maybe 4 hours max to get through the basic curriculum--usually less--when all the ceremony of public school is removed. That frees up a ton of time for a combination of self-directed learning, engagement in extracurricular activities with other children of a variety of ages (e.g., may nephews have done karate for probably ten years now, started learning with older students and progressed to helping teach younger students) and regular "field trips" (e.g., when there isn't a lockdown in effect, my kids go to the aquarium at least once a month, and interact with the... zookeepers? fishkeepers?... there to ask questions about the animals, pet the rays, etc.), and navigating the world with their parents. Now, a parent can still isolate their kid from responsibility, by, e.g., taking them along on an errand to the bank and the grocery store and making them be quiet and Let The Adults Talk, but they don't have to, and those who choose to homeschool generally don't. Heck, my kids aren't even school-age yet, but I still let them hold the credit card, talk to cashier, stick the card in the chip reader, take it back out when it beeps, and grab the receipt. And since they are around the house with their parents, they also tend to get to know many of their parents friends, which is conducive to learning how to interact with adults, who are not your teachers, socially.

On top of all that, even when engaging in core curricular study, homeschool kids are usually doing so in mixed-age groups, according to subject ability level--especially if they are part of a co-op.