Addressing Misconceptions of Socialization

For the complete article - http://kathleenscatholic.blogspot.com/2010/06/your-kids-are-stuck-in-house-all-day.html#comment-form


"Socialization is NOT compiling a list of friends on Facebook. It is NOT spending all day, every day in a classroom with the same teachers and the same children who are the same age. Just when will this ever happen again in your child's lifetime? Socialization is NOT having girlfriends at the age of 12, and a long list of buds to chat with on the cell phone. It is NOT video games, the latest movies, the hippest jeans, or the right color shirt. When children limit themselves by thinking that this is what socialization IS, their world shrinks significantly. This indeed is a shallow and lonely existence, yet peer pressures in school can raise these litmus tests to the top of a child's priority list, even for the kindest and most gentle child."

"Socialization IS also the use of proper manners and conduct at all times under all circumstances. When a child spends six hours a day with other children, it only comes to reason that his instruction in this area would come from other children. Peer pressure surely is the most significant tool youngsters apply throughout the day. And parents desperately try to combat these "lessons" in the few hours their youngster spends at home. If your child is in school, I'm sure you know what I mean."

Indeed and thank you Kathleen! By socialization do most objectors realize that they are encouraging a horizontal model rather than a vertical model? In a school, like Kathleen said, all socializing is mostly limited to 30 other kids the students same age. They learn only from the maturity level of their peers and is there such tremendous value in that? Do those peers, or the teacher for that matter,have their best interest at heart? Not like a parent does! Only a parent can love their child to that extent. In an educational atmosphere with mixed ages there are examples of nurturing the young and admiring and learning from the maturity of those older than oneself that exist. The model runs vertically.

What is more "real world" preparation?