An important consideration many homeschooling parents face is the methods of teaching their children social skills at home. However, all parents have different perspectives and ideas for teaching these skills, but most or almost all consider how to achieve this important aspect of home education.

First, you may be unfamiliar or doubtful of the importance of social skills for a child to succeed in life. This aspect is vital for children because they lay the foundation for children to have great ability to interact, communicate, and form relationships, influencing their overall well-being, success in academia, and future life outcomes.

Without strong social ability, keeping relationships, regulating one’s emotional well-being, and confident/ clear communication would be lost and far from achievable. This is why homeschooling plays a disadvantage in social interaction/ development and why parents should take such education/environment of social measure seriously.

In a study written by the National Library of Medicine, the Abstract section of the post emphasizes the importance of outside and complex interaction for children to experience. This post later goes to list ways strongly developed social skills are accomplished: the use of neutral, behavioral, and environmental elements. The post explains that these elements produce positive developmental outcomes with peers, academics, and mental health.

Neutral social environments: Those that are free from strong opinions, biases, or judgments.

Behavioral social environments: Encompasses the study of how social interactions and contexts influence human behavior, including factors like family, community and culture.

Environmental social elements: Refers to the natural world and its resources.

(“Social skills refer to a wide group of abilities that allow us to interact and communicate with others. Children learn how to solve social situations by predicting and understanding other’s behaviors. The way in which humans learn to interact successfully with others encompasses a complex interaction between neural, behavioral, and environmental elements. These have a role in the accomplishment of positive developmental outcomes, including peer acceptance, academic achievement, and mental health.”)

The reason I chose to write this blog on social skills weaving into homeschooling is that most children do not experience the same social elements to become strongly developed. Most kids stay home, study, etc. Opposed to this are the children in a public or private education, gaining academic knowledge along with social interaction/ knowledge each day.

If a parent is choosing to educate in the walls of their own home, one needs to evaluate the amount of social interactions their children can be exposed to, since interaction with others, especially contrasting and different relations with others, can help support a child to live to their full potential

A few methods that parents should consider for exposing and teaching social skills include: homeschool co-ops, rec team sports, church involvement, play dates, and field trip clubs.

In summary, a vitality to child development is social interaction with others. Homeschooling parents need to find ways to make sure their child is fulfilled with such interaction/ elements since children at home are more prone to stay home and experience less communication/ play than others.