Finding Friends for Your Homeschooled Teens… and the Unintended Consequences.
Making friends as a homeschooling teen always seemed like it would be a huge hurdle to leap for our family. When our kids were young, it was easy. If you homeschool young kids there are park days, co-ops, and even church groups that help you feel safe. Your homeschooled youngster won’t get picked on by that mean public schooled kid. That sounds like a joke but for us it was reality when our kids were young.
Friends Are Easy To Find At First
When we first began homeschooling, we quickly found a plethora of friends for my kids. The number of opportunities for homeschooled kids to get together in our area of the country is tremendous. You can even pick and choose homeschooling groups that specialize in various educational styles. There are so many that if one group doesn’t fit well for your children, you can shift to another group without trouble. So, friends were not a problem when my kids were younger.
But What About Finding Friends For Homeschooled Teens?
But as my children got older, my husband and I wondered where we would find companions for our children who would share our values. It no longer seemed simple. It was not just a matter of finding a pack of homeschooled kids at a playground and letting everyone play.
We worried that the values and principles we worked so hard to instill in our children would be incompatible with most of the other children in our local area. Between us we talked over the possibility of moving to a region of the country with a larger group of people compatible with our values.
It Happened Before I Knew It
And then, before we knew it, our children were teens. They were busy with activities and clubs. They were happily mixing with all sorts of kids. Homeschooled kids, public schooled kids, Christian kids, atheist kids, and even some kids with morals totally, diametrically opposed to our own.
Finding Teen Friends Has Unexpected Consequences
Along the way, they both made piles of acquaintances. Among the acquaintances were kids who rubbed my kids the wrong way. These were kids who thought completely differently from us. They believed in things we firmly think are wrong. And yet what my kids both learned from being exposed to these kids is how to get along with people who don’t agree with you on everything. And how to voice your opinion and your truths and how to listen to the arguments of others and not be swayed from your own opinion. These interactions and acquaintances serve to help my teens to test and cement their values.
Living and growing up in an echo chamber makes for people who cannot evangelize their morals and point of view. I know that my teens have now been through enough arguments and discussions of various points of view that their values and morals are pretty well developed as a result. And all this took place while my kids were still under my roof. They can come to my husband or I and ask us questions when they need to. They can feel safe while questioning and testing their opinions and ideas. And fundamentally this is because they have friends and acquaintances who are not just like them.
The Consequences Turn Out To Be Really Good
Out of the mix of kids that my teens know, friendships began to develop. Both of my teens made one and then two and then many true-blue friends. In general these friends turn out to have the same morals and values that our family has. But the important bit is that my kids did not set out to find other teens to be friends with who had the same values. They set out to meet a lot of other teenagers and to enjoy getting to know everyone. Out of that process, the close friendships that developed for my kids ended up being with people who share our values.
And isn’t that just the best possible outcome? My kids feel comfortable in the world mixing with all kinds. They are not scared or defensive or worried about hearing other ideas. My hope is that both my kids continue to interact in the world as adults and do not cocoon themselves in an echo chamber. Because after all, isn’t that the best way to change the world? Boldly and with a smile and a ‘howdy do’, one new acquaintance at a time.
So Don’t Worry, Homeschooling Mom, You Already Laid The Foundation For Your Kids… Now Just Trust Them
So what does this all net up to. Don’t worry about finding friends for your homeschooled children as they become teens. They will find friends for themselves and test and cement those values and morals you spent so many, many years nurturing and modeling. And I’ll bet that everything will be alright in the end, especially if you just relax and let them grow up.
