As a homeschooling family, we often get the comment, " What about your child's social skills, and what about sports and friends? Don't you feel like you are depriving them from life?"
Well, I have quite a few answers for these questions.
First, anyone who spends even a small amount of time with my children will be rest assured that they aren't deprived socially, and hopefully the social skills they do have are ones that are fine tuned with manners and good character.
Secondly, we are blessed to have several children that for the most part enjoy each other and love to play together which provided plenty of exercise and the best of friendship. They already have quite a hole dug up in the back of Phil's shop that they have already negotiated whom will manage the accounts, who will do the packaging and who will be the one to sell the oil that they find. They have put up a flag pole ( Daddy will have to make a bit more sturdy before we hang a flag) but it was done with no prompting from parents. They boys have set up ramps and an obstacle coarse that they ride their bikes and skate boards and the girls have cleared an area for an arena to ride their imaginary horses on.
Thirdly, I found this article that describes how we would like to raise our children and the reason behind it:
"We believe in "family style" socialization. We try to make our home and family life as entertaining, enriching and enjoyable as we can. We want our children to become "family dependent" rather than "peer dependent" and to prefer our home to any other place they might go. We work hard and make some social sacrifices to build strong family ties. We have a weekly family night with pizza and activities or a movie; we have a weekly "cooking day"; we have fun "Bible Times" on some weeknights; we go together on special outings and activities, and church activities. We want to do all we can so to win our children' hearts that they will value and prefer home and family."
(Educating the Wholehearted Child - Clay and Sally Clarkson)
1 comment:
I just went to a clarkson retreat. I loved what they had to say. I agree with you. Spend 5 min with my kids and you will see they are very social but have good character. We have 5 and they are all best friends! They fight just as all siblings do but for the most part they love eachother. love your blog!! (sorry for the typing got baby in arms lol)
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