Considering I was bullied by children, teachers, and staff until I was suicidal most of fourth grade, I have my doubts.

I was moved to a different school but it couldn’t undo the damaged that caused. I didn’t learn how to socialize until my second year of college.

It wasn’t until my thirties that much of the psychological damage was revealed and addressed.

I'm sorry to hear that, but that's just an anecdote. I've never been bullied, only attended public schools, and the idea of home schooling a kid is just beyond weird. It's not even legal where I'm from(Poland) and I believe for very good reasons.

Right, like I learned how to get kicked onto the ground at recess and to make sure not to get up until they were good and done kicking or I’d get a black eye.

Or my wife learned to get back rubs from her male teacher in middle school.

All very important parts of the socialization process.

It's definitely feeling in this thread like learning to "socialize" is A.) Always positive, and B.) a fixed, shared experience We must force kids through

Right. Based on how awful my school experience was, and my wife’s, even though she could be working and commanding a similar salary to mine, we’re home schooling both of our kids.

Our older daughter is the most popular kid in the neighborhood. Everyone wants to play with her. Because she’s home school, she went over and helped a little girl who was just adopted and hasn’t started school yet feel right at home the other day.

Our other daughter is physically disabled and could hold her breath and die at any moment. If she was forced to go to a public school I have no doubt she’d be in the emergency room or worse within the course of a week.

Now that's something I would expect to see a European call an American idea. Go figure, I suppose.

For some it is a hellhole that pushes them to commit suicide or at least attempt it. Thankfully that is not my experience but we shouldn't ignore the bad examples of "socializing" in school and potential solutions to it.

> ...how to socialize.

Ah, yes. The "Socialization" argument brought up every time people mention homeschooling, as though there aren't homeschool coops and plenty of other ways to interact with people of a wide variety of ranges, instead of just your own age.

And if you drill down, it usually ends up being some version of "Well, I had to deal with the fact that other kids are little shits for 12+ years, so everyone else should have to as well."

In my experience, homeschooled kids are "a bit weird" as kids, but tend to interact smoothly with a far wider variety of ages, and they tend to not stand out as anything different as adults - except perhaps a lot more interested in longer form learning. If I run into someone who's got an oddly wide range of skills, odds are good they were homeschooled.

If you homeschool then your kids can have friends with people older and younger than them and aren't subject to bullying. Isn't that more healthy than having your kid only exposed to people of exactly the same age and maturity level, and potentially develop issues from bullying?

For some reason people think homeschooling means never seeing and socializing with other kids, which is definitely not the case. I feel like people think it's a pandemic type situation.

It's not as simple as go to school and learn to socialize period. Not all kids are the same, not all families are the same, for some it works for some others it's a ridiculous idea.