Homeschoolers Are Indeed Weird

Homeschoolers, as individuals, are just as weird as public or private school families. As individuals, we all have our quirks. It just so happens, that homeschoolers aren’t too troubled to hide those quirks, because there is a general feeling of accepting each other (while at the same time being confident in ourselves being who we are too.)

Homeschoolers are different than the rest of the population, purely because we’ve chosen an non-mainstream way to educate our kids. Instant weirdness. And, we are almost all opinionated, without much fear of how others might perceive us. Double weirdness.
Homeschooled kids are weird, just like the kids on the school yard. But instead of having that weirdness squelched out of them, homeschool kids are given less pressure to change who they are in order to conform. They are often up front about how their opinions and interests are different than others. In other words, they don’t have different opinions to prove a point. They don’t have uncommon interests in order to stand out from the crowd. These interests are genuine.

Since these kids are all coming from their own unique perspective, just as any kid is, they are just as likely as school kids to judge each other’s experiences as being “different”. The younger the kids, the more likely they are to come out and say, “you don’t do things the way I do.” I don’t have any fantacized expectations that all the homeschool kids I meet are going to be nice to my kids. I expect kids to be kids. They say things that aren’t perfect. They make judgements.

The difference between kids on the school playground making comments about my kids doing things differently, is that my kids can stand up for themselves without having to worry about being beat up or ganged up on. So what if their friends (or even very un-friends) say they don’t like something they are interested in? They can say, “Well, I don’t care what you think” and move on. In school that kind of statement is a test of “are you on my side or their side.” Homeschooling kids, even if they are living a totally different life than ours, aren’t on anyone’s side, they are on their own side.

That said, there are definitely “cliques” in our homeschooling group. Both with the adults and kids. The difference between the cliques in our HS group, and the ones in school, is that there is no exclusion based on that – people just get along with each other and tend to do the same kinds of things, so they hang out together. We’re all nice to each other tho and don’t cause trouble for one another. Same with the kids in the HS group. Although there might be differences of opinion of what is fun and good, there isn’t exclusion or shunning based on this. (I realized that not all groups are like this. Homeschoolers are still people too, and are subject to the same social pressure as everyone else. I wouldn’t belong to a group that did that, homeschooling or otherwise.)

Homeschooling’s not perfect – nothing is. But it’s better. Better than kids having to be all alone in their social battles. Better than kids having to live up to someone else’s expectations of what is cool. Better than kids having to face a 6-8 hour day of worrying about being beat up for being different.

Homeschooled kids are weird. I don’t see why that’s a problem. Doesn’t school teach kids to deal with all kinds of people in all kinds of situations? If that’s the case, what does it matter that a few homeschooled kids are weird? We all learned how to get along with each other in school, without exclusion or hating upon others, right?