Not the norm within your social group, which was presumably mutually selected by your respective parents. That suggests that these families are not 13 independent data points, but rather a group of 13 families that all had similar predispositions and evolved along similar lines. I'd like to see the stats overall before coming to a conclusion about what the norm is.

Big no true homeschooler energy going on in your comments.

I don't mean it that way at all.

OP took their anecdote and generalized it very broadly [0]. I shared my own anecdotes, explicitly acknowledging that it's "hard to come to any conclusions from warring anecdotes alone". OP responded saying that their anecdote is actually a collection of 13 anecdotes. I countered that 13 tightly related and completely non-random anecdotes do not turn into a usable stat.

Nowhere did I mean to imply OP's experience isn't a true homeschooling experience, just that it's not necessarily as representative as they believe it is and that more information is needed before generalizing either of our experiences is fair.

[0] "it hasn’t really changed that much - it’s just something parents like to tell themselves to avoid thinking about the experiences their children are missing"

You are (unfortunately) welcome to gamble with your children’s well-being and see if the benefits of homeschooling is worth the negative consequences if you’re wrong!

When your child is coming home in tears every day because other children are mean, and the teachers and administrators won't do anything, and your child is sitting bored through bullshit indoctrination and being harangued for skipping brainless homework to write or make art or do any number of other things, feel free to sit down and tell them how valuable the public school system is, and how their suffering is stupid and they need to get over it.

The school system has many problems. That doesn't mean that homeschooling isn't 10x worse.

In aggregate, sure. At a personal level, probably not. Just pick whatever works.

So simple! Why didn't I think of that.

The reality is that what homeschooling parents think is "right" is often extremely noxious and damaging. Again, not all of them sure, but a large portion.

> The reality is that what homeschooling parents think is "right" is often extremely noxious and damaging

Yeah, which is why it’s bad in aggregate. But that generally isn’t the case for parents that send their kids to normal school first and then pull them out when things aren’t working out for whichever reason.

Just because you can point to cases of homeschooling that's 10x worse than the average public school doesn't mean there aren't homeschooling environments that aren't much better, and public school environments that aren't MUCH MUCH worse.

What a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. Were you homeschooled? /s

If you think you made a meaningful statistical statement, your fundamental misunderstanding of language is a strike against any public school that graduated you.

And original too!

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Let's end this conversation here, this is devolving into useless banter.

This entire thread is why I think public schools and private schools are both really important and need investment. Homeschooling as well but that I see as a gap solution.

Do the tears eventually end without permanently destroying the child/parent relationship? If so, you might actually be describing something better!

And the juvie outcome is so common that it makes up the most likely outcome from having a bad school experience? I think homeschooling may still be statistically worse

The tears eventually end with your child bringing a weapon to school or going hulk and slamming another kid's head on concrete like that viral meme you probably can remember, then getting suspended, getting put in Juvi, and having their life fucked up even worse.

Statistically? No they do not.

Maybe have a look at the rise of school shootings, student suicides and children bringing weapons to school (to the degree that there are metal detectors in schools all over the place now). Kids were bringing knives to school to fend off bullies back when I went to school, and getting stabbed with uncomfortable frequency, and that was 30+ years ago in a halfway decent neighborhood.

People stop talking to their parents because the relationship isn't good, not because they didn't get to take a turn being shit on in public school.

The "your choice to homeschool me harmed me" is point of contention and literally the conflict in some cases.

If your idea of homeschooling is to sequester a child away from all human contact to try and indoctrinate them in some crazy belief, maybe. Plenty of homeschooled kids have homeschool play groups, athletics lessons and other non-compulsory classes which they're free to leave at any time if they don't like their peer group.

I heard this “but we have homeschool play groups! It’s different!” in the 2000s from every single one of the parents for whom homeschool was a disaster. It’s funny hearing it fresh here.

I suspect this has more to do with your social circle, which given the density of homeschoolers is probably either hyper-religious, doomsday preppers or some other dysfunctional subculture, and I'm not surprised those children would grow up to hate their parents.

To be fair though, I'd imagine an hour or two a week of socialization is still quite insufficient. On the flip side, 10+ hours a day of socialization is unquestionably unnecessary, and forcing your kids to become conformists or get beat up/bullied/etc (which is the reality in public schools unless you live in a really rich neighborhood) in order to get a little more socialization time isn't a good tradeoff. There are a lot of non-school activities children can engage in to get peer socialization where the type of bullshit that occurs in public school doesn't fly, due to the adults that run those activities losing customers and having their livelihood threatened if they let kids be little cunts, unlike public schools.

Nope! My parents were secular parents avoiding a struggling inner-city public school system, hoping to have their children take advanced mathematics courses. Same with the rest of the group.

So I heard the same refrain from you that I heard from my parents and their peers, decades later from someone I don’t know, and your takeaway is that we must be in very different circumstances? Bud, you’re almost certainly reusing the same homeschooling materials and curriculum help my own parents did.

So if they weren't religious nutters why did you all go no-contact? Abuse is the only reason I've commonly heard for no-contact, with addiction and religious expulsion uncommon but present, were 12/13 of these families abusive or addicted? I'm just struggling to understand the relationship between the facts you've stated and the outcomes you've stated, I feel like I'm missing a lot of steps here. For reference, I am also no-contact and most of my friends are no-contact, most due to abuse, but we weren't homeschooled.

"your choice to homeschool me harmed me" doesnt have to mean the social skills alone. I never progressed in some academic areas as much as I would have liked until college/after college because my parents were not great teachers in those areas.

Did they know they were not good teachers in those areas? I'm sure they didnt. Did I know that at the time? Nope. Would public school have taught me that same subject better? Who knows but my peers seemed to generally have a better understand of it than I did.

yada yada road to hell is paved with good intentions.

You don't see how the choice to voluntarily socially isolate your kid might strain your relationship with them?

You've got a little bit of a self-selection bias going there. Your socialization group is no more likely to be the norm than the person you replied to.