Not to mention you're not locked into taking your vacations during high season.

Schooling is relatively unimportant. There's nothing your kid can't learn on their own time.

How do you handle properly socializing your kids? You can't teach them that.

My socialization while I was homeschooled was much healthier than when I was in public school. My friends were nicer, mainly. We and several other (Christian) homeschooling families would get together on a weekly basis and hang out. I developed all my social issues from not knowing how to deal with the jerks in public school. There's also church.

Something else I've noticed is that homeschooling has given me a certain resilience to crappy teaching in college. I don't care as much, because I know I can just read the book and get what I need.

you really can teach them that. in fact, it's much easier for homeschooled kids to relate to people in different ages and social spheres because you have time to actually socialize them with people born outside of a six-month window on either side of their birthday. there are an incredible number of resources both in terms of physical meetups, online classes, public schools who allow kids to show up for sports or difficult to teach subjects (like foreign language) - it's really an incredibly rich experience to homeschool these days and socialization is often only a challenge for those who don't WANT to socialize - particularly the very religously austere homeschoolers. but that's less and less the average homeschooler these days.

To your first statement: that's just the point, isn't it? How much of their own time is dedicated to high quality learning while in the school system?

We're very concerned with socialization. I dont have time to talk about it right now, but I'm not convinced that what goes on in a typical school is in any way "normal". It is a very contrived environment.

That is the bogey man[1] isn't it? That your home schooled kids will somehow become anti-social.

My wife and I home schooled (up to high school) our kids and socialization is a non-issue for three reasons:

1) There are other home schooled kids and they often get together in groups (more on that in a minute).

2) Good home schooling involves interacting with a lot more people from different backgrounds giving more social experience per unit time.

3) One of the common complaints of school students is how messed up the social scene is with regard to cliques, fashion herds, and morality memes.

The image that comes to mind when you think 'home school' is that you and your kid, one on one, going through the curriculum. However, there are lots of people and if you look around you will find that a lot of them are home schooling too. When you find the group that is compatible with your tastes you can plan group activities. Our group was covering science by each parent taking the whole group one day a week to focus on something they knew really well, that group was 10 - 15 kids of a variety of ages.

Then there are programs like the Riekes Center[2] which spend one day a week with a group of kids understanding a local park's biological diversity.

The bottom line is that socialization is the least of the problems you will face. Things that annoy you, people 'turning you in' because your kids aren't in school. People assuming that because you are home schooling you are a science hating religious fanatic, or are a science hating alternate medicine/crystal/universe fanatic, or are sacrificing your child's well-being because they are too lazy to go to school.

[1] "bogey man" that mythical creature that is going to 'get you' if you don't conform. Used by parents to tell kids that if they don't go to sleep the bogey man will get them.

[2] http://www.riekes.org/info/missionstatement.html

I don't know, I look back fondly on my school days. I'm not sure if I would have liked to miss out on that.

Anecdotal evidence, but many of us here on HN don't (1).

I went to one of the most backwards and messed-up schools here, a Christian Brothers all-male, catholic priest-taight school... in the 1990s! (it has since reformed and is now mixed-gender)

Stories of bullying often end up with lots of comments here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=709733

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1771483

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764236

Your life is different,sure. I'm sure home-schooled kids think similar things about their experiences, things they are glad to have not 'missed out on'.